Nemours Children’s Health joined ChristianaCare and the University of Delaware to create a COVID-19 Vaccine Resource Center for parents and teens.
Resource center materials, including handouts and videos, were developed with input from various community partners.
That included youth and leaders from the Latin American Community Center, The Warehouse, Wilmington Center for Education Equity and Policy, Christina Cultural Arts Center, Faith Community Nurses, Kent County Coalition, and Metropolitan Urban League of Young Professionals.
Mount Pleasant High School junior Aliyah Patterson is Vice Chair of the Teen Executive Committee at The Warehouse, one of Nemours’ community partners.
She shared her own experiences in videos for the resource center, including why she was initially hesitant to get the vaccine.
“At first I wasn’t comfortable getting the vaccine because I wasn’t really educated,” said Patterson. “But once I started to, like, let myself know that it’s really nothing to be afraid of and it’s good, and it’s a good thing, as a teen, to get the vaccine because it fuels other teens that may also be afraid to get the vaccine to get it, as well.”
Patterson adds that when it comes to teens, what their parents and peers do in regard to COVID is generally what they will follow.
By including the stories of real parents and teens in the resource center, Nemours seeks to make sure more Delawareans feel comfortable getting themselves and their families vaccinated.
Yvette Santigo is the Director of Community Engagement at Nemours Children's Health. She says that community engagement was vital in creating the COVID–19 Vaccine Research Center.
“We met monthly with these community partners to help strategize and improve what would be effective in communicating key messages back to the community,” Santiago explained. “The resources were also refined with feedback from our Black and Latino youth and parents who were unsure about the COVID-19 vaccine, and are being piloted at Nemours Children’s Health in our primary care clinics.”
The launch of the COVID-19 resource is a result of a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy study published by Nemours Children’s Health just a few months ago, detailing the level of hesitancy parents have and some of the disparities in those results.
Nemours hopes the resource center helps show the vaccine is safe and effective, and encourages parents to get their children vaccinated as soon as possible.
The resource center will be available on Nemours.org/coronavirus.
