Mobile Clinics and COVID Care

Studies look at impact of mobile health units on COVID-19 services

By HALEY BRIDGER | Brigham and Women's Research Care Delivery

3 min read

Image of a healthcare worker vaccinating a patient
Image: SolStock/Getty E+ collection

This article is part of Harvard Medical School’s continuing coverage of COVID-19.

Two new studies by Harvard Medical School researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital demonstrate the effectiveness of bringing COVID-19 health care services to the people who need them the most where they live.

In early May 2021, the research team began providing COVID vaccinations to medically underserved populations living in the greater Boston area by sending mobile health units to 12 predominantly low-income and racial and ethnic minority communities in Massachusetts.

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Using community health vans, teams offered easily accessible vaccinations on a walk-in basis without regard to insurance, immigration status, or ability to pay.

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In a paper published in The American Journal of Public Health the authors describe the success and challenges of the new program, which had higher vaccination rates among adolescents, non-white populations, and people of Hispanic ethnicity compared to rates in other communities.

“To date, our program has provided almost 20,000 COVID-19 vaccination doses,” said corresponding author Priya Sarin Gupta, an HMS instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and medical director for mobile health services.

“Our goal was to take COVID-19 health and vaccination services to the community and meet people where they are. The data from the first few months show us that if you build it — and you build it well — they will come,” Gupta said.

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In their AJPH paper, Sarin Gupta and colleagues outlined what it took to build their program well and implement it effectively. Key elements of the program included:

  • Engaging and partnering with community nonprofit organizations, local departments of health, and school board representatives
  • Staffing vans with trained, multilingual staff members and engaging a large volunteer network
  • Identifying the right places and times to reach communities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19

The program also used a “double equity” model, engaging with a local transportation company at risk of downsizing because of economic losses during the pandemic.

In a companion paper recently published in Preventive Medicine, investigators analyzed results from the first three months of the program.

In 2021, from May 20 to Aug. 18, the community health vans held 130 sessions and administered 2,622 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

During the study, just 20 percent of people who received a vaccine from one of the mobile clinics self-identified as white. More than 56 percent listed their ethnicity as Hispanic (compared to the state’s vaccination rate of about 18 percent). Participants were more likely to be adolescents and the average age of people vaccinated at the mobile clinics was 31.

These early findings allowed the program to develop and expand to more communities to maximize the program’s reach to medically underserved communities.

The authors noted that mobile health units could be used to help address other community health needs beyond – and sometimes connected to — COVID-19. The vans are now expanding their offerings to include a menu of services to offer care for preventable and chronic conditions, including blood pressure screening.

“Already, we are seeing participants come to us who are interested in getting vaccinated, and also get screened for high blood pressure while they are there — and vice versa,” said Sarin Gupta.

“Some participants asked us what we are going to provide next. It gives me hope. If we can provide care with cultural humility and ensure that everyone has access, we can begin to overcome barriers such as mistrust.”

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (RADx-Up grant NIH P50 CA244433-02S1), the Massachusetts General Hospital Kraft Center for Community Health, and Mass General Brigham.