Got an idea for boosting SC’s COVID vaccination rate? DHEC is funding grant proposals
South Carolina health officials are open to new ideas for engaging under-vaccinated communities and will award up to $5 million in grant assistance to organizations with innovative proposals to get more COVID-19 shots in arms.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control announced Friday it was accepting applications for “hyperlocal” projects that expand awareness and information about the COVID-19 vaccine in rural and underserved communities.
The projects selected will share the $5 million.
“We have said many times that DHEC can’t end this pandemic alone,” DHEC Public Health Director Brannon Traxler said in a statement. “We need state and local officials, teachers and educators, faith and other community leaders, and the business community to be COVID-19 ambassadors.”
DHEC spokesman Derrek Asberry said the agency’s solicitation of outside proposals wasn’t an indication its own outreach efforts had failed, but rather an example of DHEC’s desire to partner with community groups to advance its vaccination mission.
“This grant program is the latest initiative in DHEC’s efforts to provide important information about COVID-19 so people can make the best decisions for themselves and their families,” he said. “We hope they choose to receive the life-saving vaccines to protect themselves and their loved ones from COVID-19.”
The agency’s call for fresh vaccination strategies comes amid a spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations that health officials attribute to the state’s low vaccination rate and the highly contagious delta variant that has risen rapidly to become the nation’s dominant COVID-19 strain.
As of Friday, only 43.6% of eligible South Carolinians were fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
DHEC will fund up to 25 grant proposals
DHEC will use federal coronavirus aid to fund up to 25 grant projects at roughly $200,000 per project as part of its hyperlocal vaccine outreach effort, officials said.
Each grant will run for six months and may be renewed up to three times, subject to performance, availability of funds, and service priorities, the agency said.
The deadline to apply is Aug. 5.
Grant applicants must be located in South Carolina and have at least one year of experience doing public health outreach and helping vulnerable populations gain access to services or information, according to DHEC’s guidelines.
The health agency said it plans to fund outreach proposals that center on providing residents accurate, easy-to-understand information about COVID-19 vaccines and why they’re essential to ending the pandemic.
Initiatives could include offering vaccine information sessions, launching focused advertising campaigns and providing transportation to people who want to get inoculated, health officials said.
They may not, however, involve unsolicited door-knocking, which Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has asked the agency to prohibit.
McMaster, seizing on President Joe Biden’s call for a national door-to-door vaccine push, last week directed DHEC to outlaw the practice, saying it would “further deteriorate the public’s trust and could lead to potentially disastrous public safety consequences.”
Agency officials said they had not and would not conduct unsolicited door-knocking as part of residential vaccine outreach going forward.
Funding for the grants comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ ELC Enhancing Detection Expansion program, which awarded South Carolina and 63 other states and territories a combined $19 billion to improve existing infectious disease response infrastructure.
In addition to funding COVID-19 vaccine outreach, DHEC has used the federal funding to hire additional staff, upgrade data and health information systems, offer free coronavirus testing and provide support to long-term care facilities, health officials said.
“South Carolina is taking advantage of this federal funding to help ensure people in rural areas and minority or vulnerable communities receive the information they need to make informed decisions about vaccines from people they know and trust,” Traxler said. “Information sharing is more important than ever since South Carolina, and several other states, are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.”
Weekly COVID-19 cases in South Carolina more than doubled between June 19 and July 10, and coronavirus hospitalizations increased about 40% over the same three-week period, according to DHEC data.
Health experts believe the delta variant, which spreads easily between unvaccinated people, is at least partially responsible for the spike in cases. Delta cases, which now account for nearly 60% of new cases nationwide, have more than quadrupled in South Carolina over the past week, according to DHEC data.