COVID-19 Vaccine Webinar

Mind the Gap Initiative, Corp. partnered with the Indo-American Senior Citizen Center of New York, Inc. to offer an educational webinar on vaccines, and more specifically, the COVID-19 vaccine. Our talk was attended by over 200 South Asian senior citizens in the New York area. This initiative aimed to ease the anxieties many people are facing about taking the COVID-19 vaccine related to side effects, the unknown, and the relative new-ness of this vaccine.

As of 01/18/2021, in New York those aged 65 and above and certain essential workers are eligible to receive the vaccine. Senior citizens are more susceptible to adverse outcomes secondary to COVID-19, and therefore, it is important for this group to receive the vaccine to protect themselves and those around them. Our talk provided a background of what vaccines are and the history of mistrust surrounding vaccines, and then progressed to address the mechanisms of mRNA vaccines and the logistics, risks, and benefits surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. We the opened up the discussion for questions and comments from the webinar attendees.

Anonymous feedback surveys were collected from our webinar attendees. There was a high interest in this current topic, with 100% of responses stating they were “Very Interested” in hearing this talk. Uncertainty of side effects (47.8%), short term side effects (34.8%), and history of anaphylaxis (21.7%) were the most common concerns of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine prior to hearing this talk. Prior to hearing this talk, 39.1% of responses stated they were “Not Comfortable” about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, which went to only 4.5% of responses stated “Not Comfortable” receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.