Ascension, 16th Street Expand Vaccine Program

Ascension Wisconsin is working with a health clinic on the south side of Milwaukee to expand access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

The healthcare system is partnering with the Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers to ramp up vaccinations in Milwaukee’s Hispanic community with a goal of vaccinating approximately 2,000 people a week at the Parkway Clinic at 2906 S. 16th St.

In Milwaukee County, Hispanic people, as a group, have experienced high rates of COVID-19, hospitalization and death. According to statewide data, they are the least vaccinated racial or ethnic group in the state. 

Currently, only 5.6% of Hispanics have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. 17.7% of white people, 12.9% of American Indian people, 8.4% of Asian people and 6.2% of Black people have received at least one vaccine.

Ascension is coordinating hundreds of healthcare workers that will volunteer to staff the clinic with an additional 22 people five days a week into the middle of April.

“Partnering with Ascension Wisconsin gives us the manpower we need to dramatically increase the number of community members we can vaccinate and work to minimize the racial and ethnic vaccination disparities,” said Liz Claudio, vice president of operations for Sixteenth Street.

If you are a patient of Sixteenth Street and are eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, you can schedule an appointment by calling 414-672-1353.

Sixteenth Street is receiving allocations of vaccine directly from the federal government as part of the Health Center COVID-19 Vaccine Program. This federal program is supplying vaccine directly to clinics that already serve populations that are hard for health care systems to reach and that have been severely affected by COVID-19.

Clinics that serve a large number of homeless, public housing residents, migratory and seasonal agricultural workers or people that speak limited English were prioritized for the program.

The program is being run by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There are 199 clinics nationwide that are participating and 16th Street is the only clinic in the state that’s part of the program. 

As the number of eligible candidates for vaccination grows, local governments and vaccinators — like health systems and pharmacies — are working to expand access to the vaccine. The most popular strategy so far has been an effort to expand vaccination directly into communities or to target specific, hard-to-reach populations or areas for vaccination efforts.

The City of Milwaukee Health Department has launched community vaccination sites for educators and child care workers. The city is also launching pop-up vaccination sites for eligible residents in neighborhoods whose residents are likely to have limited access to the vaccine. Milwaukee County recently began targeting residents from two ZIP codes that have been hard hit by the pandemic for vaccination.