For Immediate Release — Continuing their efforts to proactively address inequity in COVID-19 vaccine distribution and eliminate barriers to reaching the city’s most vulnerable populations, Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) has formed a coalition of strategists and community leaders to launch a vaccination awareness and acceptance campaign aimed at reaching Los Angeles’s hardest-hit communities, including Latino, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander populations. The initiative, “It’s Time Los Angeles,” is a multiplatform campaign built by LA-based multicultural marketing firm American Entertainment Marketing (AEM) that aims to increase the rate of vaccinations for the city’s most vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities.
As California has opened vaccine availability to people age 16+, CORE anticipates the potential for increased confusion and misinformation around how people can gain access to vaccines. The multicultural and multilingual initiative of “It’s Time Los Angeles” will connect and empower people of color with cultural relevance, authenticity and accuracy on the need to receive lifesaving vaccinations by providing information on available resources, including CORE’s mass vaccination sites, walk-up sites and fleet of mobile units, to help ensure a safe and equitable distribution of vaccines. The integrated campaign includes a public service announcement, digital/social media, microsite, public relations and community outreach.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been working in close partnership with the City of Los Angeles and LAFD to protect Angelenos from the devastating impact of COVID-19,” said CORE Co-founder and CEO Ann Lee. “Our teams come from and work alongside diverse communities across LA to provide them with the relief they need through trust and breaking down cultural and language barriers, as well as technology and transportation roadblocks. Our priority is the equitable distribution of vaccines, and the most significant obstacle is often information. Breaking down this barrier requires working within existing community infrastructure and trusted leaders — and that’s exactly what we’ve set out to achieve with ‘It’s Time Los Angeles.’ We are excited to rally this robust alliance of community experts to lead the charge of this collaborative and inclusive initiative.”
About “It’s Time Los Angeles” and CORE
The goal of this culturally tailored campaign is to increase access and the rate of vaccinations to ensure a more equitable outcome for Latino, Black and AAPI communities. The program was launched by CORE, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee that is dedicated to saving lives and strengthening communities affected by or vulnerable to crisis. For more information: www.coreresponse.org/covid-19.
