OC’s Latino vaccination gap still needs work, health experts say

OC’s Latino vaccination gap still needs work, health experts say

Part of the cause of the persistent Latino vaccination gap may have been early missteps, said Bernadette Boden-Albala, who is dean of UC Irvine’s public health program and sits on the county’s vaccine task force. … Boden-Albala said she’d like the county vaccine task force to renew its efforts to get Latino vaccination numbers up – and one-on-one communication may be key to that effort. UC Irvine wanted to increase vaccination rates among its students over the summer, so officials tailored their messaging to students and in some cases called them on the phone, she said, which helped boost the rate from about 70% to near 98%. “The way we did that was by literally talking to them,” she said. “You have to come up with strategies that find everyone, that touch everyone.”