An all-Black female panel presented by the Ad Council, COVID Collaborative and JOY Collective, with Kelli Richardson Lawson, CEO of JOY Collective as the moderator, was held in an effort to raise vaccine awareness in the Black community. The overarching goal was to gain a better understanding about the vaccine while debunking myths that have materialized over the past several months.
Titled “Black Media Panel, Virtual Event – Talk facts vs. fiction about Covid-19 vaccines in the Black community,” the online conference was made available to the public on YouTube Live. The esteemed panel included JOY’s host Lawson, Sherry Thompson of the Ad Council; Judith Nwandu of the Shade Room; Janeé Bolden of Bossip-Global Grind; Charysse Nunez of the Ad Council; and Dr. Florencia Polite, who serves as chief of the division of general obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
What participants learned and may already have known is that confidence in the vaccine is low among African Americans. In an effort to combat that line of thinking and perhaps encourage more healthy dialogue about the vaccine, Thompson detailed a strategy that has served the Ad Council well:
1. Working with culturally relevant companies
2. Partnerships within community and faith-based organizations, including T.D. Jakes
3. Connecting to and with the Black community by fostering healthy relationships
4. Education – robust online tool kit and content that covers the gamut
From there questions were fielded by Polite, who made it clear from the onset that we need to remain patient. “We’ve been in this for fourteen months,” she said when prompted to answer a question about travel from Bolden. “If you have to wait a little longer, you’ll have to do just that. Unless the people you are traveling to see are vaccinated, don’t go.”
Read more and watch the conference call in full on the next page.
