Montgomery Township Health Department (MTHD), which also serves the boroughs of Hopewell, Pennington, and Rocky Hill, is a local health department in central New Jersey. We serve a population of nearly 27, 500 residents within Somerset and Mercer Counties. The demographic breakdown of our population is: 55.6% White, 38.5% Asian, 2.9% Black or African American, and 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native. Our health department staff consists of 1 Health Officer, 1 Public Health Nurse, 1 Health Educator, 2 COVID-19 grant funded positions (outreach coordinator and generalist), 2 Registered Environmental Health Specialists, and 1 Animal Control Officer.
OVERVIEW
During the initial roll out of the COVID-19 vaccine and our continued efforts to vaccinate the populations we serve, the vaccinator capacity within our local health department staff and at the within the County Medical Reserve Corp was nowhere near enough to meet the demands of our community. As a result, MTHD has worked to expand its hyperlocal community team of surge vaccinators that includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and nursing students. The goal of this practice was to increase clinical surge capacity to address public health needs in our community. Our objectives were to increase membership in our surge vaccinator program; increase the number of vaccination clinics offered within our community; increase the number of vaccinated individuals.
Activities implemented:
o Developing a process to streamline recruiting
o Offering paid positions at a reasonable rate
o Targeted outreach to:
§ Elected and appointed officials
§ Professional associations
§ Community groups
o Promoting this program at our vaccination clinics
With these activities, we have been able to increase our surge vaccinator membership to 24 members, which is a 118% increase from our pre-COVID-19 pandemic membership. This increased vaccinator capacity has allowed us to increase the number of vaccination clinics hosted by the health department throughout the year. It has also allowed us to bring pop-up vaccination clinics to high-needs areas in our community (e.g., long term care facilities, older adult housing, homebound residents, low-income housing, food pantry recipients, faith based organizations, restaurant workers, landscapers, schools). Since 2021, our health department has held on average 12 vaccination clinics a year. This increased vaccination capacity would not have been possible without the support of our hyperlocal team of surge vaccinators.
A specific factor that led to the success of this practice was recruiting surge vaccinators locally at our vaccination clinics as our community has a large number of healthcare providers and personnel. For those that expressed interested in becoming members of our program after attending one of our vaccination clinics, having an efficient intake process helped boost our membership numbers.
Overall, this model practice has allowed our health department to boost vaccinator capacity by identifying the issue at hand, get out into the community to provide a needed public health service.