Alliance Medical Center — a federally-qualified health center (FQHC) that serves low-income families in Healdsburg, Geyserville and Windsor — recently launched invitation-only vaccination clinics for older seniors and farm workers. A team of eight traveling nurses from across the country are partnering with Alliance to help get the vaccine into the arms of essential workers and the most vulnerable.
“We elected to do something unique, not place the registration portal online — which would have been easier — but would have enabled mostly tech-savvy, out-of-towners to register for the vaccine. Instead, we created a huge volunteer network between Windsor and Healdsburg to hand-register our most vulnerable neighbors,” said Terry Leach, vice chair of the Alliance Medical Center Board. “Our data is impressive. A majority of our recipients are Latinx and we’ve also registered a significant senior population, many over 75 with no access to the Internet. We’ve partnered with churches, senior centers, low income housing, Corazón Healdsburgand area unaffiliated doctors.”
There were two Alliance vaccine clinics visited on Friday, March 5. The first clinic, which was at the Healdsburg High School gym, was for older seniors in their late 70s, 80s and 90s.
The second clinic at the Huerta Gym in Windsor was serving agriculture and wine production workers.
“Today’s clinic is targeted at farm and agriculture workers and wine production. Basically, we’ve been following the county guidelines as far as who we can vaccinate, but we also recognize that a huge number of folks who work in the agricultural industry are our patients in the community we serve so it’s following those guidelines, but also following the mission of helping to protect the community,” said Alliance Medical Center Medical Director, Sue Labbe.
“One of the reasons we’ve been able to do this is the support we’ve gotten from the state and (SnapNurse), traveling nurses that are helping to support the clinic as well as traveling nursing assistants, which are the folks doing check-in,” Labbe said.
SnapNurse is an on-demand nursing agency that employs nurses and sends them out to various locations for crisis response.
“The county actually did a resource request to the state and the state then allotted a certain amount of the staff back to the county and then the county allotted it back to us,” Labbe said.
The eight nurses working at the Huerta clinic include Mohamed Daramy, RN clinical supervisor; Yaser Menendez Sanchez, RN observer; Treasure Havior, vaccinator; Sharnella Deloch, vaccinator; Kerri Teague, vaccinator; Jamel Hill, admin; Sharon Preston, admin; and Briel Ward, admin.
The nurses hail from Florida, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.
“It’s been really neat, they’re from all over the country. It’s like this national effort to support the vaccine center so it’s been a really good experience being able to work with them,” Labbe said.
She said without the help of the SnapNurse they wouldn’t be able to operate the vaccination clinics at the capacity that they’re currently working at.
Sanchez, who’s originally from Cuba but lives in Kentucky and recently received his U.S. citizenship, said he’s glad to be here to help.
“I was a physician in Cuba in primary health care for four years. I was granted a visa to come here eight years ago, so it’s been a big journey, lots of regulations and lots of pros and cons,” he said.
Sanchez attended a five-year program and since then has worked in dialysis and as a medical assistant and has been working his way up.
“Then I applied for this agency, SnapNurse, and it’s been a blessing working here,” he said.
He said he spent two weeks doing vaccination work in Los Angeles and then two weeks in Sacramento and is now in Sonoma County.
“And here we are, happy to be here,” he said.
With SnapNurse’s help Alliance can vaccinate about 1,000 people a day depending on the vaccine supply.
“That’s really been our biggest challenge, meeting demand,” Labbe said. “There’s been a huge amount of anxiety — everybody’s wanting the vaccine, everybody’s wanting to get in front of the line and we totally recognize that and respect it, but at the same time we have to really protect the most vulnerable members of our community to make sure that we’re getting the vaccine into the arms of folks that are at the greatest risk of real, serious outcomes as well as those with the greatest risk of rapid spread.”
Labbe said the main goal of the vaccination clinic is to get the vaccine to those who need it through an equity lens.
“Our role in facilitating a vaccine program in Sonoma County as a federally qualified health center (FQHC) is to do so with equity as our north star and to make sure we’re looking at how we can protect those vulnerable members of the community because really that’s the mission of what we do … This is what we do, is support the underserved in the marginalized communities and protect their right to a quality healthcare. It’s been a really important labor of love,” Labbe said.
As of Feb. 28, Alliance had vaccinated 4,254 people. 58% of that figure were Latino, 42% were non-Latino, 28% were age 65 and over, 6% were insured with Medicaid, 19% were insured with Medicare, 37% were uninsured, 23% were retired and 65% were farm workers.
The SnapNurse isn’t the only ones who’ve been lending an extra hand in this effort.
Alliance has also recruited and managed many community volunteers who help with the logistics of setting up a vaccination clinic.
“I’ve trained over 50 volunteers from the area,” Leach said.
One such volunteer is Santa Rosa resident Gary Bayless, a volunteer at the Healdsburg High School senior clinic who’s manning the front entrance directing cars.
“I’ve been in three Rotary Clubs in Santa Rosa and I’ve always enjoyed helping and this is just another extension of wanting to help people and the smiles I get after they get their shots (are great), I love that feeling,” Bayless said.
