Original publication date: April 2023
This month, we are honored to feature New Direction Health Care Solutions, one of our Vaccine Plus: Community Health & Power grant partners. In conversation with Founder and President, Ms. Cynthia J. Finch, we discuss her biggest takeaways from New Direction’s COVID vaccine equity work including lessons on community engagement, trusted messengers, and faith-based health initiatives.
Three Things
Embracing Civic Engagement as a Core Tenet of the Health Sector
Watch: A webinar from Civic Health Alliance, Healthy Democracy Healthy People, and Vot-ER
The Dose’s Improving Health Care for Trans Youth
Listen: From the Commonwealth Fund, The Dose podcast
The Highland Project’s Q&A Spotlight with Dr. Stella Safo
Read: “Reimagining Healthcare with Highland Leader Stella Safo”
New Direction Health Care Solutions
In 2021, the Rx Foundation made a rapid response Vaccine Equity grant to New Direction Health Care Solutions (NDHCS), a Black-led health education and training non-profit organization in Knoxville, TN, based on the recommendation of our trusted partners at the Tennessee Health Care Campaign. In March 2020 NDCHS quickly pivoted to focus their programming on COVID response efforts “because nobody was listening to our citizens about their needs” as Founder and President Ms. Cynthia J. Finch recently shared with me.
Since 2021, New Direction Health Care Solutions, Ms. Finch, and her growing team of five paid staff and many more volunteers, have connected more than 100,000 people with COVID vaccines in the greater East Tennessee region through a variety of tactics including mega-vaccine clinic events hosted on weekends, weekly vaccine sites, and one-on-one outreach.
In the early days of the pandemic, Ms. Finch kept a binder of lined pages full of stranger’s names and phone numbers, all of whom expressed an interest in getting vaccinated but experienced barriers when attempting to access appointments in their community – they needed her help. NDHCS
created the VACImpact initiative to inform, engage, and build trust in communities of color in connection with taking the COVID vaccine; it saved a lot of lives.
I recently reconnected with Ms. Finch to ask her about her biggest takeaways from NDHCS’ COVID vaccine equity work, and she shared her insights, lessons, and hopes for the future.
In the early days of the pandemic, Ms. Finch kept a binder of lined pages full of stranger’s names and phone numbers, all of whom expressed an interest in getting vaccinated but experienced barriers when attempting to access appointments in their community – they needed her help. NDHCS
created the VACImpact initiative to inform, engage, and build trust in communities of color in connection with taking the COVID vaccine; it saved a lot of lives.
I recently reconnected with Ms. Finch to ask her about her biggest takeaways from NDHCS’ COVID vaccine equity work, and she shared her insights, lessons, and hopes for the future.
In Conversation with Ms. Cynthia J. Finch
(Megan, Rx): When looking back at your COVID vaccine equity work, what lessons stand out to you?
(Ms. Finch, NDHCS): There are many. First, I decided that we were not going to be afraid to say that we were focusing on the Black community. I’ve never been afraid to say “this project that we’re working on is specifically targeting African-Americans or Black folks”. That was a wonderful strong lesson. When people realized that we’re talking about Black issues, issues impacting Black folks during the pandemic, that created another level of partnership for us. Never before have we had institutional healthcare providers like the major hospital systems in our city, physicians, or the state or local public health department engage with us about an issue in our community. One example comes to mind – I was partnering with the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital on an upcoming Mega Children’s COVID vaccine clinic NDHCS was hosting, and the Chief Medical Director said he was just going to drop by the day of to see how things were going. When he got there, he saw all the people, parents, and children in attendance – and most of them looked like the people from our community, they were African-American or Black. The Chief Medical Director ended up staying there the whole time. Matter of fact, he went out to his car and got his white lab coat, put it on, came in and helped mobilize the crowd. The Children’s Hospital had already sent a team of nurses there, but he personally stayed the whole afternoon, from 3-8pm. The next day, he was onsite before I even arrived. And he stayed the whole time again. During that time, he turned to me and said, “This is amazing!” and I replied, “One thing I know that’s causing this responsiveness is the fact that we have healthcare professionals here that look like the community we are in”. They were the majority, not just sprinkled around – they were the majority. We had Black doctors, nurses, and volunteers. I think that was one of the profound things that happened with our work as it relates to the COVID response: we gave people a purpose.
Ms. Cynthia Finch, inside her office on Wednesday, January 27, 2021, flips through pages of her binder, listing names of Knoxville residents who wish to receive a vaccine but need assistance to do so.
PC: Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel
The second is health institutions are getting better. They realize without relationships in communities of color and specific cultures and communities, they can only have a fraction of success. When they say, “We’re working really hard but we’re not getting anywhere,” I ask, “Who have you called?” If you want to get a fast return on your project, reach into communities or increase the participation of people of color, I ask, “Who have you called?” Now they know they can pick up the phone and call NDHCS, or other people-of-color-led organizations in the area. I can go down my list of peer organizations that are willing and ready to serve. For example, we are now partnering with the University of Tennessee Medical Center cancer mammogram mobile clinics to bring them to our free medical clinics. Organizations like NDHCS also go around personally and encourage people to get their mammograms. That’s what it takes in communities of color whether they are Black, Latinx, or Jewish. People respond to people they know.
Finally, I’ll say that we created a conversation where health and faith intersect. Never before have pastors or missionaries engaged in a collective response like COVID. We know in the Black community, the culture is that the pastor speaking from the pulpit is the one that people listen to most because they are there every Sunday, Wednesday, and all throughout the week. So, we mobilized them, not just independently but together through the Faith Leaders’ Health Initiative. Over 80 churches, pastors, missionaries, and health ministries meet weekly every Thursday on a virtual Zoom call to address health-related issues in our community. I recall one pastor saying to me, “Ms. Finch, I’m so glad you started the Faith Leaders Initiative because I was scared, and people were asking me questions that I didn’t know how to answer. I was listening to news from the TV, but when I say that I went to a Zoom meeting and there was a Medical Director from University of Tennessee Knoxville, Vanderbilt University, or the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, or a scientist and subject matter expert, my congregation knows I’m speaking the truth because I heard it from the call”. Because of the Initiative and all that he gleaned from those weekly meetings, his congregation felt more comfortable and supported with trusted information. So, another lesson learned was to never ever leave out your churches when there is something going on; include them in whatever the conversation is, whatever the issue is.
(Megan, Rx): What’s your North Star? What sustains and nourishes you?
(Ms. Finch, NDHCS): When you look at the news and see so much devastation happening across the world, it circles back to health. Health is a holistic conversation because it’s the whole person, the whole piece – food insecurities, foster care, housing, education. The health of the soul, the health of the spirit, the health of the finances – it all comes back around full circle. If you don’t have food, you can’t be healthy; if you don’t have a job, you can’t buy food, you can’t be healthy; it just goes around and around in a circle. So, my hope is that we can continue to elevate and lift and educate people about how they can get involved to be the solution and not the problem.
(Megan, Rx): Lastly, what are you most proud of?
(Ms. Finch, NDHCS): I’m reminded of an experience I had while shopping at Kroger, minding my own business trying to put food in my basket, and a lady said to me, “Hey, lady! You’re the woman that saves lives!”, and I thought to myself, “What is she talking about?” And when I turn around, she goes, “Hey, lady! Yeah, I’m talking about you. You’re the woman that saves lives”. We’ve saved a lot of lives. We saved a lot of lives.
“We Saved a Lot of Lives”
Ms. Finch and New Direction Health Care Solutions did save a lot of lives, especially when considering two key metrics – COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates and preventable hospitalizations and deaths.
Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor data showed a narrowing in vaccination rate disparities between Black, Hispanic, and white adults by the end of 2021. As a result of community-led health initiatives, trusted messengers, and public health professionals like Ms. Finch, who broadened access and provided accurate health information to their communities throughout 2021, Black and Hispanic vaccination rates, which once lagged, eventually exceeded the uptake of white populations. As Ms. Finch shared, “People respond to people they know”. Vaccine uptake data reflects the positive response Ms. Finch and her peers experienced on the ground, directly connecting individuals to vaccine appointments and providing them with trusted information.
Increased vaccine uptake rates mean decreased hospitalizations and deaths. Drawing on data gathered from December 2020 to November 2022, The Commonwealth Fund estimates that COVID-19 vaccination programs in the United States prevented more than 18.5 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million additional deaths. Ms. Finch, and thousands of grassroots groups like New Direction Health Care Solutions, did save lives – and lots of them.
New Direction Health Care Solutions exemplifies the powerful impact of community-led health initiatives. In the year ahead, NDHCS is working to establish the New Direction Health Equity Institute to design and lead community-driven research contributing to health equity, inclusion, and access for all. You can learn more about their work and connect with them by visiting their website.
Resources, Events, and More
Resource
Resource List for the
Unwinding Public Health Emergency
We, at the Rx Foundation, want to uplift several resources for community-based organizations, coalitions, advocates and individuals working to ensure everyone’s health and wellbeing during the unwinding public health emergency. So we compiled several toolkits, webinars, and publications from our grant partner network and others, aimed at providing background information, messaging, and actionable tools and resources to organizations serving individuals expected to be directly impacted by dis-enrollment.
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