Health group using PSAs to build vaccine trust among hard-hit minorities

SALT LAKE CITY — Minorities are one of the hardest-hit populations during the pandemic, and that is why a Utah group is building trust with them through an online information campaign.

There was certainly a lot to celebrate this week as health care workers across Utah started getting the first vaccinations. But there is a lingering wariness in minority communities.

"There's a lot of mistrust, just from past experiences," said Oreta Tupola, who works with community health workers through the Utah Public Health Association. "There's so much information that's out there that you know, people are doing their own research and then there's this belief that it's a political thing — it's not real."

Other reasons that make people hesitant include concern over side-effects, mistrust of the government and fear of deportation.

Pacific Island Knowledge 2 Action will put out some PSAs aimed at overcoming misinformation and encouraging people to take precautions now to ultimately trust the vaccine in the coming months. The group has previously put out PSAs on awareness and wearing a mask.

"We are just trying to find the best way to stop losing our community members," Tupola said. "And so that's the message that us, as community health workers, we are trying to spread is just more awareness and accurate information."

The efforts are being pushed from the ground up because building that trust in many cases will have to come from people recognized as fellow community members.

"We hope that they know, we are still sitting at these tables with state officials, and people who are making these decisions, that we are speaking through them and sharing their voice and their concerns," said Tupola.

Those PSAs are on YouTube and shared over social media.

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