Bristol’s Covid vaccine team praised for ‘phenomenal’ effort

Health bosses have praised an award-winning approach taken in Bristol to encourage “hard-to-convince” people to get the Covid-19 vaccination.

Local NHS staff worked with Bristol City Council to target communities who were less likely to get vaccinated.

Staff also gave advice on how to access healthcare in general, council services and support, and interpreters translated information for people with little or no English.

But despite the success in improving access to healthcare, the government has stopped funding the project.

The community development team at Bristol City Council worked alongside health staff to administer the Covid vaccine in job centres, workplaces, mosques, temples and churches.

Details were given to the council’s health and wellbeing board on Thursday, July 13.

Anne Morris, chief nurse for the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Covid-19 vaccination programme, said: “What we discovered during the pandemic was that there was a huge amount of inequity around how people access services.

“Our ethos was: we won’t leave anyone behind. We wanted to make sure we were vaccinating absolutely everybody who needed vaccinating, regardless of where they lived and the communities they lived in.”

Vaccines were administered at the council’s ‘Citizen Service Point’ on Temple Street, where people can access face-to-face council services like help with homelessness or accessing cash from a crisis prevention fund.

Staff also gave advice on how to register with a GP, how to access healthcare in general, or advice on how to care for wounds.

Morris added: “These are people who probably wouldn’t have that support without that place in Temple Street.

The achievements of the team there were phenomenal, and it wasn’t just about the numbers who were vaccinated.”

The programme in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire won the Health Service Journal award last November for “improving health outcomes for minority ethnic communities”.

But a report to the health and wellbeing board said the government has stopped funding the input from the community development team, leading to a sharp drop in attendance.

Clare Cook, maximising access lead for the BNSSG vaccination programme, said: “Some of the first doses were only delivered at the beginning of 2023.

“Perhaps they hadn’t taken the vaccine before as they didn’t feel confident, but with support in this particular venue — and some of the [interpreters] who spoke to them in their first language — we could start to empower people to make that choice for themselves.

“In the small length of time that we were there, we did 450-plus Covid-19 vaccinations, and we also co-administered flu, which is something that we haven’t done before.

“Some of these people have been eligible for the flu [vaccine] for many years. People got spoken to, listened to, felt valued and felt empowered in a place that they were comfortable.”

Alex Seabrook is a local democracy reporter for Bristol

Main photo: Shutterstock

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