NASW Social Work Talks - EP80: Vaccine Education with "Connect to End COVID-19"

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Learn about "Connect to End COVID-19," an initiative that helps social workers and their clients to make informed decisions about life-saving vaccines, with guest Anna Mangum, NASW's Deputy Director of Programs. Visit the show notes for more resources.

This episode is sponsored by eSENSE, the world's most collaborative case management system. Welcome to Social Work Talks. I am Greg Ray. Social workers are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic in hospitals, in schools, in senior care and mental health facilities, just to name a few. Now, social workers can take part in an initiative to inform people about life-saving vaccines. Here to talk about the Connect to End COVID initiative is Anna Mangum, Deputy Director of Programs at the National Association of Social Workers. Welcome to Social Work Talks, Anna. How are you? Great, great. Thanks for having me today. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So our first question is, we have a grant now to help social workers and their client make informed vaccine decisions.

So I am wondering if you could, like, tell us a bit more about that grant and our partners on that grant. Yeah, absolutely. as you mentioned, Greg, it's called Connect to End COVID-19. And it's a major initiative that we are engaged in. It's funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And we're partnering with the University of Texas at Austin, Steve Hicks School of Social Work on it. And the goal is to help or support social workers so they can, in turn, support their clients in making informed decisions about the vaccines. And the ultimate goal is to boost vaccine uptake among social workers and their clients. We know that vaccines are highly effective and safe

in preventing severe illness and death. And so they're really a key tool in moving beyond this devastating pandemic. And although many people are vaccinated and we have new treatments if people get infected, we do need to get this rate up, the vaccination rate up, in order to return to normal. The recent surge of the Omicron variant shows us just how contagious and dangerous this virus is. So CDC has been working with a number of healthcare workforce organizations. Social workers are one of them, but there's others as well, because healthcare workforces are really an important part of the equation in terms of reaching people and talking with them about the vaccines. And as you said, Greg, we're in a lot of settings, we're in a very broad range of settings,

and we're trusted messengers. So we're really in a unique position to talk with people from all walks of life, wherever they are in their journey on getting fully vaccinated. Yeah. So why is it an important thing that social workers be informed on how to talk about like vaccines with like people in the best way? Yeah. So it's important to, as I was just talking about, our social workers do play a key role. We've been an essential workforce during the pandemic, and we play a really important role in helping us move past the pandemic in terms of the vaccines. And so one of the ways that we are helpful is we bring expertise and frameworks in health decision making. So social workers are a little different than maybe other kinds of health care providers

in terms of what we bring to the table to facilitate this type of decision making. So people have questions or concerns about the vaccines, despite their demonstrated safety and efficacy. And so with different modalities that we'll talk about a little bit more, we can support people in making those vaccine-related decisions and making decisions also for their families. Now that the vaccines have been approved for children, we want to be able to support families as they consider getting their children vaccinated. Yeah, so I was wondering if you could offer us a bit more details on how this grant will actually be put into effect. Is it a training program? Will there be some seminars, webinars, et cetera?

So it's a comprehensive initiative for sure. And so it includes professional development programming. So we've had two webinars at the national level. One has focused on the myths and facts and kind of the basics on COVID-19 and the vaccines. We had a webinar on the use of modalities such as motivational interviewing and talking with clients about the vaccines. So those are two, that's a key area is the webinars. We're going to have some intensive trainings on MI or motivational interviewing as well at the state level. And we have a lot of resources on our website. We have a webpage devoted exclusively to this Connect to End COVID-19 initiative. So we have a lot of information there. So it's multi-layered and it's really

aimed at getting information to social workers and equipping them to have these kinds of conversations and just, you know, really contribute to the national conversation about the safety of the vaccines and making sure people are getting accurate information. Yes. So there is a lot of myths out there about the vaccine. So I was wondering, what are you hearing from our social workers out there about, you know, some of the myths and misinformation that they're hearing? Yes. Well, there are definitely myths and there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation about the vaccines. And that's been true since the beginning of the development of the vaccines and has gotten more extensive since the vaccines have been introduced. And as we know, these are myths. These are not truths. Social workers have similar, you know, in some cases have similar

questions about the vaccines, whether it's safety, for example. So they're not necessarily different from what the public might have as a, in their mind, as kind of a myth about the vaccines. But an example would be, you know, is it safe to use mRNA technology in these vaccines? This is an entirely safe use of mRNA technology. It's not something that was put together hastily. mRNA has been studied for many, many years before the development of these vaccines. And so that's an example of a concern someone might have, and the myth being that this would somehow impact your DNA or RNA, which it doesn't. What's your biggest social work challenge? I bet

eSins can solve it. The world's most collaborative case management system, eSins can solve just about any case management problem. And even better, you can get eSins for free by applying for the U.S. pilot program at eSINS.com slash NASW. Solve, automate, engage, collaborate. eSINS gives you the tools to provide the best support possible, and you can get it for free. Apply at eSINS.com slash NASW. That's E-C-I-N-S dot com slash NASW. Yeah, so one other part of it is that there are populations that this grant wants to actually get more vaccine information to? And I was wondering if you could explain what is a special population and how are each of these populations perceiving vaccines?

Yeah, so, you know, with any public health crisis, there's often an aspect to it that regards certain populations of people being either at greater risk of a severe outcome or bad outcome than other populations. That can be based on lots of different things, but this is not unusual with a public health crisis. And in COVID, of course, we've seen that some populations are at greater risk than others of severe illness or death from COVID infection early on. And this is still true. We know that people in certain racial and ethnic groups are at greater risk of severe illness or death. And so it's been especially important to make sure that these folks are fully vaccinated and get boosted. And so these would be African-Americans in particular,

and Native Americans as well. Although the gap is closing in terms of the rate at which people of color or racial and ethnic groups are getting vaccinated compared to white Americans. So they're getting vaccinated now at about the same rate. So that gap has closed. It is still the case that certain racial groups are more vulnerable to severe outcomes and death. So we really need to prioritize making sure that they're protected from infection. Another special population would be children. So children are now eligible for the vaccines starting at age five and soon we'll have an approved vaccine for children under five. This is an important population because although the death rate isn't as high as it is for say

people over 80, when they're not vaccinated they can transmit the virus to other people who are over 80 years old or in other risk groups. So children is a really important area to focus on. And unfortunately, you know, we have a low vaccination rate at the moment of children and we need to get that number up. Another special population would be pregnant people. We have low rates of vaccination in that population. I think it's under 40 percent, even though people who are pregnant are at higher risk of severe illness. And then we have folks who are, you know, vulnerable in other ways. Perhaps they have disabilities. Research has shown that people with disabilities have had more difficulty accessing the vaccines. So we need to make

sure that they're able to get the vaccines. But there are people who, these would be physical or mental disabilities. There could be other reasons that would be hard for them or that they're not vaccinated, which could have to do with maybe a mental illness that they have. People who are housing insecure are also a group that we need to make sure is vaccinated. And we have seen lower vaccination rates in that population as well. So there are a variety of different populations or subgroups that are, again, we need to make sure are protected from infection. And vaccination is really the best way to do that.

And social workers work a lot with people in these circumstances and with, you know, great diversity of people. So we're in a really unique position to help with the special populations. Yes. So about a few months or so back, the association put out a statement about vaccines. And I was wondering if you could tell our audience what was actually in that and why is it so important? Sure. Yeah. So we issued a statement in December of 2021, which urges all social workers to be fully

vaccinated. And we indicate that we support employer requirements that people be vaccinated with a testing option being provided. So for those who don't want to be vaccinated, we want to make sure there's a testing option available. Many, many other organizations that represent different health care professionals have been issuing statements over the last year urging their workforce to become vaccinated and supporting different kinds of requirements.

So millions of social workers are fully vaccinated, which is great. every day and a social worker gets vaccinated, another one. But we want to make sure that all of us in this profession are vaccinated as long as they don't have a medical contraindication against vaccination. Because we are public-facing health providers, we work with individuals in person in a lot of settings, and we're role models in our communities. Thank you. Thank you. So, you know, there are over 700,000 social workers all around the nation. Are you like hopeful that if we get more of them informed about vaccines that we'll end this and we'll be like back to more of a normal life eventually? What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, I really do think that we're already playing a role in helping respond to the pandemic in lots of different ways. And I do believe social workers will continue to play a key role there. Now, we too have suffered in this pandemic as just people, you know, putting aside our role as professional social workers, we've had our personal losses. Indeed, I lost my brother-in-law just a few weeks ago to COVID. He got infected and wasn't vaccinated. Um, it was a tragic loss for, for our family.

And, um, so it's something that we're, you know, we all have personal experiences with this pandemic. Um, it, it, nobody has been untouched by it. And, um, you know, we're entering the third year of this crisis. Um, and I think we all want to get beyond it as quickly as we can. So connect to end COVID-19 is really a way to, um, to do that as a way that our profession can, um, to move this forward. Thank you. So if you want more information on a Connect2End COVID campaign, that is at

our website, socialworkers.org. We'll also have a link to it in our show notes for this episode. Anna, thank you so much for being up early and being our guest. And you have a wonderful day. Thanks so much, Greg. you have been listening to nasw social work talks a production of the national association of social workers we encourage you to visit nasw's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies you can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever

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