North Omaha Pastor Shares Vaccination Clinic Success
By Elle Love
Edit: We recently included a link to Rev. Portia Cavitt’s name as she is the main source of the first installment of Black Churches in Omaha Series.
Racial disparities in healthcare significantly impact the morbidity and mortality rates among Black and Brown communities according to the Center for Disease Control. These disparities include a lack of access to COVID-19 vaccines in some of the nation's Black and Brown communities. On March 17, 2021, when then Douglas County Health Director, Adi Pour, Ph. D announced her retirement, Reverend Portia Cavitt from Clair Memorial United Methodist Church saw the televised announcement as an opportunity to voice concerns about vaccine disparities in the city. Knowing that multiple news outlets were present, she spoke publicly about the lack of permanent vaccination clinics in North Omaha.
“We have been nonstop since I went to that board meeting. The news media was there but they weren’t there because of me, they were there because she (Dr. Pour) was announcing her retirement and they just picked up this story,” Cavitt said. “It was made accessible so that everyone knew and heard, and the compassion of our healthcare along with the community as a whole that Douglas County said ‘Yes, let’s see what we can do, Pastor Cavitt. I was willing to help be a part of the solution.”
Image credit by streetphonicz via Nappy.com
One week later after the board meeting, The Douglas County Health Department then partnered with Girls Inc. and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) to open a vaccination clinic for North Omaha residents.
Rev. Cavitt said the response towards the new vaccination clinic in North Omaha was overall positive and well-received. Cavitt said the clinic vaccinated almost 6,000 people within the North Omaha area, according to the data given from the Douglas County Health Department. NOISE conducted a social media poll via our Instagram account in late May to which nearly 1,400 people responded. According to our poll results, over half (66.5%) of people said they feel more comfortable being in public spaces after being vaccinated. However, the current rate of vaccination in Douglas county (as of the publication date of this article June 11, 2021), is just over 45%. The fact that less than half of the county is currently vaccinated might be why only about 20% of respondents said they feel comfortable enough in public to go maskless.
Cavitt, working with other health officials, has opened temporary vaccination clinics including Pleasant Green Baptist Church, Heart Ministry Center, New Life Presbyterian Church, and the Clair Memorial United Methodist Church (Rev. Cavitt’s own church).
“I have a complete list of all the places that I make referrals. I have been talking with those establishments and standing up for the community one day at a time, whether it is a drive-thru clinic or a walk-in,” Cavitt said.
Cavitt thanks the community along with Black medical professionals including the Black Nurses Association, the North Omaha Health Alliance, and volunteers. Cavitt’s efforts with other health professionals focused on representation, connecting the people of color in the health professional world to inform and address concerns in the community.”
Cavitt mentions Dr. Andrea Jones, MD, and Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, MD who led the Girls Inc. vaccination clinic site, among the doctors who focused their efforts on addressing the disparities of vaccine administration to communities of color disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic.
In December 2020, Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, MD, said on NPR’s science podcast Shortwave, that she is haunted by the memories of nearly 1 in 900 Black Americans who have died from COVID-19. On that same NPR program, she said that as a “Black woman physician” her feelings are compounded by “countless reminders of the violent oppression that Black people have to encounter on a daily basis and the numbers of people that are being shot and killed on top of being at risk for worse outcomes from COVID-19.”
Rev. Cavitt says the recent increase in access to vaccines in North Omaha is the result of a cooperative effort from everyone involved. “I raised awareness but I also realized that we had to be in partnership with each other because it was important for us to have representatives that look like us in North Omaha. We have minority health professionals and they stepped up big time to be present.”