Bakersfield vaccine program goes mobile
Story 7

Speaker 1: Our work is to make sure that everybody is well. Until that happens, our work isn't done.

Speaker 2: We are the children's mobile immunization program with Adventist Health Bakersfield. We park at various locations around the county and offer immunizations for children zero to 18 years of age.

Speaker 3: We have incorporated COVID vaccines into our normal pediatric patient clinics. Our day-to-day involves COVID vaccines in the morning and a combination of pediatric patients, zero to five, all day.

Speaker 4: Did baby get an owie, too? Okay, we're going to give baby next. You did good.

Speaker 3: Not a through drive-thru model, but we do have the COVID patients wait in their cars. We come to them. We immunize them in their vehicles. There is a 15-minute observation period. The nurses are checking in on everyone.

Speaker 5: Okay. There, you're all set to go. Have a great day. Okay?

Speaker 2: We have three nurses, and one is our supervisor. Right now I'm the only community outreach associate. I do drive the mobile unit. I am one of the drivers. I consider us all to lead. We have a good strong team.

Speaker 3: Everyone has been playing triple roles sometimes. It's been very challenging on the team. At the end of the day, we think back about all of the happy patients and all of the patients that we were able to immunize and protect against COVID-19 and all of the grateful people that we served. The work is definitely worth it. We have seen upwards of 300 patients in a day, which is a great accomplishment.

Speaker 1: We've had so many people that have been taken from us by this pandemic. We have folks that have been severely impacted, have been disabled by this pandemic, and folks that have just been plain sick. So the idea that we can actually offer the shot and provide hope is a really big thing.

Speaker 3: We've had a lot of patients with access issues, outlying communities that don't necessarily have the transportation. People are very grateful. They've said, "We don't know where we would have gone if you didn't come out here."

Speaker 2: What excites me about coming to work every day is just the smiles on their faces because they feel better. They feel safe. And we were part of that.

Speaker 1: The community means a huge amount to Adventist Health.

Speaker 3: We've all seen the statistics. We know that the minority populations are at greater risk, so we want to make sure that we're making use of the resources that we've been given and protecting the most vulnerable.

Speaker 1: We work with the Kern Latino Task Force here in Kern County to get out to the Latino community.

Speaker 3: We've partnered with African-American communities, the whole Indian tribe.

Speaker 1: Our mobile unit at Adventist Health has gone out to the Sikh community and gone out to one of the Sikh Gudwaras, which is one of their temples, translated all of our materials into Punjabi.

Speaker 5: We live in such a multilingual community. We have these multilingual interpretation stations.

Speaker 1: We basically have an iPad on a cart. It's like a translator on wheels, that's HIPAA-compliant, reliable and safe.

Speaker 5: So if we're not able to communicate with any of our team here that happens to have multilingual skills, we have over two dozen languages communicated through this system to help answer any questions and explain what is going on. The goal is that we leave no one behind. Our aim is to get to everyone.

Speaker 1: In all the different locations, including our mobile unit that we're using at Adventist Health, our goal is to not see people in our hospitals sick. Our goal is to keep them outside our hospital.

Speaker 3: This has always been my dream. Helping people. So it's been a blessing on my end to be able to be of service to others. We'll move on to the next community and make sure that we're spreading the same message of hope and delivering COVID immunization and protection to the next community.

Speaker 2: Even though our team is small, I feel that we're mighty. So we're willing to do this as long as it takes.