Medical students improve access to COVID-19 vaccine information for multilingual community
UMass Medical School Communications May 05, 2021
A group of first-year School of Medicine students are working to increase the accessibility of COVID-19 information for non-English speaking residents of Worcester. The students recruited volunteers to provide multilingual services and materials on the coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.
From left: First-year School of Medicine students Sarah Danforth, Maia Fefer, Laura Labb and Sabine Shaughnessy
Maia Fefer, Sarah Danforth, Sabine Shaughnessy and Laura Labb are all fluent Spanish speakers. Their group provides document translation, in-person vaccine clinic translation and one-on-one phone calls in a variety of languages, in collaboration with the student-run Crisis and Emergency Preparedness Committee.
Apr 15, 2021 4:01 PM EDT
When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, Ellen Wormser’s work as a nurse-midwife for Fair Haven Community Health Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Connecticut, changed significantly.
Gone were the sort of family scenes that Wormser said she was accustomed to seeing in delivery rooms before COVID-19, when women giving birth often had a number of people cheering them on. Wormser said she saw many of her colleagues don PPE to assist COVID-positive women in labor, often spending hours face-to-face with them.
“I was scared for all of us but everybody went and did their job,” Wormser said. “We were so anxiously awaiting a vaccine because we knew that that would turn the corner in allowing patients to come in and get the care that they need.”