The Center for Civic Innovation hosted the 2022 Good Trouble Honors on March 31 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Among the honorees was DeKalb County, Georgia, for their vaccination initiative.
La’Keitha Carlos, the chief of staff to DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, detailed the county’s efforts in getting residents vaccinated.
How does it feel to be recognized?
We are so excited that the Center for Civic Innovation has decided to honor DeKalb County’s COVID-19 response, DeKalb Together, particularly our Get Vaxxed campaign.
We are just out of our minds with joy that the work that we have done over the last two years to get over 67% of our employees, and all of the residents we’ve gotten vaccinated. We have vaccinated over 10,000 folks. That is huge.
We accomplished getting higher vaccination [rates] than the state and [higher rates] than the country. We’re just really excited that we’ve been able to do this, not just for DeKalb County, but for the state of Georgia, and to do our part in the world right now.
You’ve all made a concentrated effort to get students, staff and family members of local schools vaccinated through incentives. Talk about that.
Absolutely. We have spent the last two years giving away food, giving away rapid test kits, doing actual testing and giving away vaccines. We had an incentive program where we incentivize residents to come and get a $100 gift card just to get vaccinated. It was that important.
We really wanted to do the work to try and end this global pandemic, particularly because [of] how it was how impacting lower-income communities. We wanted to make sure that not just DeKalb residents, but everyone who wanted to get a vaccine were able to get a vaccine.
When you see the number of COVID cases now, how does that make you feel?
The numbers today have shown us that our work has not been in vain. It’s not over, but we are happy to have played a small part in fortifying our constituency against this deadly virus.
These are the Good Trouble Honors. What does John Lewis mean to you?
John Lewis is such a hero of mine. I will always remember him telling me all the time to, “Make sure you get in the way.”
So, that’s what the county is doing. That’s what I try and do in my personal life every day, make good trouble, keep up the trouble and we are happy as DeKalb County to be continuing to do that every day as we continue to fight COVID-19.
