Vaccinations For Everyone
In 1996 Siler City suffered an outbreak of Rubella in the Immigrant population. The FRC was a key to coordinating the outreach, education and interpreter corps with the health department in quelling this outbreak.
In 2002 the FRC Vaccinations for Everyone project provided over 2300 Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) and Tetanus/Diphtheria (Td) vaccinations to immigrant residents of Chatham County in many venues including 22 plants. This project reduced the threat of Rubella to the unborn child as measured in the blood titers of women delivering babies at the UNC Medical Center after the project.
This project was one of four funded by GlaxoSmithKline and the NC Immunization Branch. It was the only project funded to vaccinate Immigrant adults. This project coordinated 22 employers with public health, hospital, private medical providers, volunteers, and the VISTA Program.
These experiences provided the FRC the expertise to organize the Chatham Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) funded by the US Surgeon General’s Office in 2003. This MRC has since become one of the most studied in the United States for its innovation in conducting disaster preparedness exercises that involve all first responders, the public and volunteers.
The MRC is now a program of the Chatham Citizen Corps Council, another startup of the FRC that brings all the first responders together to plan local disaster preparedness, response and recovery, and to conduct exercises that include the public and volunteers.
The Vaccinations for Everyone project had another positive outcome for Chatham County. Since the MMR vaccine should not be given to women whom are, or plan to become pregnant within a month of vaccination, an Interpreter needed to ask each woman whether or not she was pregnant. In the plant-based clinics this was a strategic moment to discuss women’s health, especially family planning, with a hard to reach population.
This simple step propelled the FRC to success in implementing the Immigrant Family Planning Initiative funded with CDC and Public Health State Reproductive Health and Family Planning Branch monies. Recent studies report this project is having an impact on planning child spacing, teen pregnancy and numbers of children.