Sostento Launches Project Finish Line Initiative to Reach One Million Unvaccinated Americans
Hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated people nationwide either want to be vaccinated or could be persuaded to be vaccinated against COVID-19. After a devastating 18 months of this pandemic, reaching herd immunity hinges on vaccinating the hardest-to-reach individuals.
We are not talking about the anti-vaxxers that refuse to be vaccinated. We are talking about groups that need special targeted interventions to achieve vaccination. For example essential workers that cannot take a day off of work, individuals who are unable to navigate vaccine appointment websites and those that cannot reach a vaccination site due to lack of transportation or are homebound.
If we truly want to see an end to the pandemic, we need to invest in the resources needed to vaccinate members of the hardest-to-reach communities.
Sostento, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to save lives by supporting health workers on the frontline in poor, marginalized and disadvantaged communities, was founded in 2019 to address the opioid crisis. In early 2020 Sostento joined the pandemic response assisting on COVID-19 prevention, access to care and testing.
Now, we are ready to launch our plan to get one million hard-to-reach unvaccinated individuals access to the vaccine through our initiative called Project Finish Line.
The plan is simple: get needed resources and support a type of community-based safety net health provider — known as Free and Charitable Clinics — that are already a trusted source of care for these unvaccinated individuals.
Over the past six months we’ve done all the groundwork. We have 100 Free and Charitable Clinic partners located in 15 different states with some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. We’ve onboarded all 100 clinics to the program through a series of virtual sessions and in July we begin all together onto the one million vaccinations mission.
Part of Sostento’s goal with Project Finish Line is to raise $10,000 for each of these clinics — allowing them to fund their vaccination work currently not resourced. Things like buying a freezer for vaccine storage, hiring community outreach workers or funding pop-up clinics. Additionally we will be providing the clinics with additional tools and services, such as vaccine helplines and free vaccine transportation options, as well as facilitating connections and learnings across the entire clinic network.
We believe we CAN reach the one million vaccinated goal by Christmas. We’ve already raised over $300,000 for the clinics and begun testing new innovative strategies to achieve vaccinations for those hard-to-reach individuals. We are ready to help the country get across the pandemic finish line.
How can you help us reach our vaccination goal?
- Individuals can donate directly to one of the free and charitable clinics in our network.
- Corporate brands can sponsor Project Finish Line network activities through Sostento
- Technology and Health Service providers can offer clinics in-kind donations
- Media can write stories about Project Finish Line and raise awareness about the initiative by the free and charitable clinics.
To learn more about Project Finish Line visit www.covidfinishline.com.
You can also follow along on Twitter @CovidFinishLine
