Weekly Update: October 3 – 9, 2022 – Salud a nuestro alcance

The pandemic laid bare that worker health is public health, as frontline workers, especially those in protein processing, have contracted COVID-19 at disproportionate rates. Thankfully, work is now officially recognized as a social determinant of health: “Employment and job characteristics” are now included as one of the six domains for social determinants of health put forth by the CDC’s Community Preventive Services Task Force.
The CDC’s “Find Out When You Can Get Your Booster” tool is now available in Spanish as well as English. You can use this tool or guide community members through the tool to help determine whether someone is up-to-date on vaccinations or if they should consider getting vaccinated with, for example, the new bivalent booster.
Check out this Spanish language video about how to use Sol, our digital tool that promotes understanding of workers’ rights and health issues, including COVID-19. Video in English coming soon!

CDM’s updated booster FAQ and graphic are now available in Haitian Creole as well as English and Spanish!

On Wednesday, October 12 at 3 PM ET, the CDC Foundation & Vaccine Equity Cooperation will host a webinar about keeping children healthy this school year by increasing routine and COVID-19 vaccinations. Read more & register here.
Migrant Clinicians Network is searching for their next CEO! Position descriptions are available in Spanish and English – please share widely!
CATA is hiring! The Maryland Farmworker Housing Study Outreach and Field Coordinator will recruit farmworkers for surveys, housing assessments, environmental sampling, and saliva sample collection. To learn more about this as well as other opportunities with CATA, check out their website.

As we’ve mentioned before, getting your updated COVID-19 booster and flu shot is a great way to keep yourself and your loved ones from illness, hospitalization, and death this fall and winter. Beebe Healthcare will be offering free flu vaccine clinics throughout Sussex County from Oct. 1 to November 21. Check out the schedule, or call Beebe Healthcare’s flu hotline – 302-291-6FLU (6358). Appointments are not required.

The hybrid Maryland Nonprofits 30th Anniversary Conference will take place from October 18 to 20. Oct. 18 & 19 will be virtual, whereas Oct. 20 will be in person. Learn how to build the capacity of your nonprofit and pick from a wide array of sessions, including one led by Maryland Latinos Unidos about engaging Latinx community members. Learn more and register here.

Recipients of Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) and SNAP EBT nutritional assistance are being targeted by a text message phishing scam. Program recipients who receive texts from a 1-866 number ending in 0486 from “VA EBT” should NOT respond or share any information, like card or pin numbers. Anyone who believes that they may have already been the victim of this scam can call the Virginia EBT Client Customer Service Helpdesk at 1-866-281-2448 and should report their card as stolen.

Durham County will soon be conducting a Community Health Assessment, and they are looking for bilingual volunteers to support door-to-door outreach. As COVID-19 brought the health inequities many of our communities face to the forefront, opportunities to collect data that can contribute to more equitable health policy and programs are crucial. Volunteers will receive a t-shirt, lunch, and mileage reimbursement. Learn more and sign up here.

Some shellfish harvesting beds in South Carolina remain closed due to bacterial levels in the water related to Hurricane Ian. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control indicated that shellfish harvesting has resumed in most areas and will resume in closed areas once bacteria levels return to normal.

Georgia

Our PPP partner, Sur Legal, published a series of graphics in English and Spanish explaining a citation that OSHA issued against Gold Creek Foods, a poultry processing plant in Gainesville, because of a bleach spill in March of this year. Thanks to Sur Legal for advocating for worker safety!

Data Sources:

The New York Times. (2020). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved [10/03/2022], from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). COVID Data Tracker: COVID-19 Integrated County View. Retrieved [10/03/2022], from https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view.