Faith community nurses are meeting the vaccine-wary where they worship.
written by CHRISTY PERRY TUOHEY
IN THE MIDST OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, a nonprofit religious research organization surveyed a random sample of Americans to find out how likely different faith groups were to receive vaccinations. Among those most hesitant were various Protestant groups.
Health departments across the nation took note of this data. And as West Virginians are largely both Christian and Protestant, the Monongalia County Health Department recognized the need for vaccine outreach here. It received a grant from the National Association of City and County Health Officials to improve religious residents’ trust in immunizations, according to Jennifer Goldcamp, the county’s public health nursing manager. “Our pitch was to utilize faith community nurses, who are already kind of our boots on the ground,” Goldcamp explains.
The grant supports a partnership between state health departments and WVU’s School of Nursing, which has offered a faith community nursing curriculum since 2014. Graduates of the Foundations of Faith Community Nursing course are now working with churches in 23 of West Virginia’s 55 counties.
As part of the faith community vaccine grant, surveys that will help the project assess the roots of vaccine hesitancy are being filled out by churchgoers from the Northern Panhandle to the southernmost parts of the state. “The model really centers around the fact that, in Appalachia, one of our major issues is lack of trust,” says Professor Angel Smothers, the School of Nursing’s associate dean for community engagement.
The survey findings so far indicate that, when it comes to getting vaccinated, religious West Virginians have more faith in nurses than even their pastors. “People still trust nurses,” Smothers says. “The interesting thing is that, consistent across the state, people who completed the survey do not depend on their faith community leaders to guide them in getting vaccines.”
The preliminary West Virginia survey results square with a 2023 Gallup Poll of most trusted professions, in which 78% of U.S. adults believe nurses have the highest honesty and ethical standards.
West Virginia’s health departments provide faith community nurses with a range of vaccines that are free to the public, including the tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (Tdap), flu, COVID, pneumonia, shingles, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines.
So far, the faith community vaccine initiative is only in the state’s Christian churches, but Smothers says outreach to West Virginia’s non-Christian faith communities is in the works. “We’ve learned some of our barriers, and we can build strategies to engage moving forward,” she says.
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