‘An island floating here’: How this neighborhood church is vaccinating its residents
Few are as frustrated by the low vaccination rates in North Highlands and Foothill Farms as Paris Dye, but she knows it’s complicated.
As director of community outreach and engagement at Liberty Towers Church in Foothill Farms, she’s organized pop-up COVID-19 vaccine sites and testing for months. But the clinics haven’t been consistent, she said. Many residents here are low-income workers with inflexible schedules. Some feel disenfranchised, Dye said, disillusioned by the government, and mistrust medical institutions.
A stretch of unincorporated county suburbs up I-80 sandwiched between the city of Sacramento and Citrus Heights, North Highlands and Citrus Heights, the lack of both a city- and county-level advocate has led to the area being frequently neglected, Dye said.
“When it comes to resources, our representation is limited,” Dye said. “We’re an island floating here.
For months, county health officials and community organizers have struggled to vaccinate residents in the 95660 ZIP code, where just over 40% are at least partially vaccinated as of this week, the lowest rate of any ZIP code in the county. It’s an area that has seen at least 242 COVID-19 cases in the last month.
The clinic at the church has opened sporadically in the last month and a half — a Monday here, a Friday there. That variability has led to several missed opportunities, as residents have shown up during off days, Dye said.
But organizers like Dye are hopeful that the coming months may mark a turning point. As booster shots become more available to residents of all age groups, and with the recent federal approval of shots for children 5 to 11 years old, Dye said she expects a steady stream of families and individuals heading to Liberty Towers.
The church is in talks with Kaiser Permanente to host a weekly vaccination service between January and June of next year, ideally each Monday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., Dye said. It’s a consistency that Dye is hoping will help improve vaccination rates.
“You need to be able to miss it,” Dye said. “If you can’t make it this Monday, you need to be able to say, ‘I can go next Monday between 9 and 3.’ It cannot be, if you miss it, it’s gone.”
J. Singh remembers how difficult it was to get his first vaccine earlier this year, “packed drive-thrus, packed clinics.” After having received a booster shot along with his parents on a recent Friday afternoon, the Natomas resident scanned the rows of chairs in the waiting area.
“Now it’s empty,” he said.
Citrus Heights resident Doris Byram, standing outside the clinic after she too had received a booster shot along with her partner Tony Silva, noticed the lack of traffic.
“I know when I went and made the (appointment), I saw I was the only one at that time, so I was hoping by today we’d see more people coming in,” Byram said.
North Highlands and Foothill Farms is a diverse community made up a mix of Asian, Black, Hispanic and white residents, many living close to or below the poverty line. In some communities, the median income is as low as $28,750, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Immigrant Russian and Ukranian communities put down roots here; longtime residents remember the days when the McClellan Air Force Base was still active.
Prior to the base’s closure in 2001, it had an estimated $1.5 billion economic impact on the region and employed more than 10,000 civilian employees — “thousands of blue-collar jobs,” the Bee reported in 1997. A business park ultimately opened in its stead, but Dye said the sting of its loss lingers. Many residents in the neighborhood are people “in transition,” she said, just trying to make ends.
The lack of investment into the neighborhood has required Liberty Towers, which has existed since the 1970s, to continue to serve as an anchor organization for residents, even those who don’t attend the church. The Black Child Legacy Campaign, the recent county effort to reduce the disproportionate deaths among Black children and teens, partnered with Liberty Towers to educate soon-to-be mothers on safe sleep practices, for example.
“We can’t stand only as a church,” she said. “That’s not fair to the community.”
Dye knows some in the community will never have their minds changed to get vaccinated — even when the risk of illness, severe symptoms and even death is higher for communities of color and low-income people. But the church has a duty to try, she said.
“If you’re someone whose grandpa told you not to do it, we have staff who’ll tell you their grandpa said the same thing,” Dye said. “We have to be a safe space for believers, non-believers and everyone in between (and) we stay focused on our community and advancing everyone together.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 9:32 AM.