Expanding Access to COVID-19 Vaccines for Homebound Older Adults

About the Program

Category: Human Services (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Homebound older adults and persons with disabilities who live alone were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and at the greatest risk of adverse outcomes. Los Angeles County Aging & Disabilities Department (AD) followed its health equity principles and (a) coordinated with the County of Los Angeles Public Health (DPH), the City of Los Angeles, and aging service providers to arrange for healthcare workers’ visit to the homebound clients at their homes to provide the vaccine and/or booster shots; (b) turned to home-delivered meals programs (HDMs) for help with assisting homebound individuals to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine; (c) partnered with the California Department of Aging (CDA) to conduct targeted outreach to 191,000 families in 71 selected zip codes that have low vaccination rates in Los Angeles County. As a result of these efforts, 947,000 clients received targeted outreach services, 8,492 homebound clients were vaccinated, and 13,379 doses were administered through January 3, 2023. In addition, as reported by Guglielmo, et al (2023), as of early 2022, only less than 6% of the 24,995 HDM’s homebound clients were unvaccinated (p. 1).