When UC San Francisco researchers and their community partners in the Unidos en Salud collaboration asked people coming to their COVID-19 testing site in San Francisco’s Mission District if they wanted to be vaccinated, a whopping 86 percent said yes.
That is a higher number of people willing to be vaccinated than several national, statewide or even Bay Area surveys have shown – and a testament to the trust that UCSF’s Diane Havlir, MD, and colleagues have built over many months of working side by side with the Latino Task Force to help a community that has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus.
Now, with the help of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Unidos en Salud is bringing vaccines to the people of the Mission District. With limited supply, the first doses are going to community health workers and those who are 65 years and up.
“The data are quite overwhelming in dispelling the myth that the entire Latinx community is vaccine hesitant,” said Havlir, a UCSF professor of medicine who collaborated with the leaders of the Latino Task Force to create Unidos en Salud, which provides rapid “test and respond” services at the BART plaza at 24th and Mission.
Carina Marquez, MD, a UCSF assistant professor of medicine and a leader in the effort to develop the rapid response model with the Latino Task Force, said the community vaccine hub is the perfect complement to the testing site.
“With this vaccination hub now in place, we will be able identify and support those who become infected during this surge, and we’ll also be ready
