Just as Gov. Mike Parson came to see the “model” in Missouri’s fight against Covid, the vaccination crusade at Morning Star’s Kansas City clinic announced its latest appeal to those who still haven’t gotten their shots:

Now you can walk in and you can choose from any of the three available vaccines.

Do you want the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna? Or the one-shot-and-done Johnson & Johnson? The clinic in Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church’s Youth and Family Life Center at 2525 E. 27th St. offers them all.

This is the kind of outreach that Parson said needs to happen statewide.

“We know the vaccine works,” Parson said when he visited the clinic April 29. “So we’ve got to make sure we get everybody to understand how important it is to get that vaccine to get back to somewhat of a normal life.”

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The clinic has given nearly 17,000 vaccines since early February, targeting East Kansas City neighborhoods and vulnerable populations with a success that Parson said “will be a model for our state and it will be a model for the country.”

Parson has long known Morning Star’s Rev. John Modest Miles and knew he could rely on the church and its partnership with LINC to deliver on a plan to bring vaccines to the surrounding neighborhoods. So the governor’s office dispatched a Missouri National Guard unit to provide vaccinations that has remained on “the front line” at 27th and Prospect ever since. In March the Kansas City Fire Department joined the operation, adding more trained vaccinators.

Demand for the vaccine is dropping across the state and the nation, but the National Guard will remain on duty “for months to come,” Parson said, to continue the effort to vaccinate more difficult-to-reach populations that is needed to secure Missouri’s recovery from the pandemic.

“We need to encourage people to get the vaccine,” Parson said. “We need to encourage people it is still important to be tested.” And that means, he added, making stronger efforts with populations that aren’t coming on their own and becoming more determined “to take it to them.”

Kansas City resident Walter Bolden Sr. had just gotten his vaccination and was in the required waiting room when Parson and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas came through on the Morning Star tour and talked with him and members of his family.

Bolden has difficulty walking, he said after meeting the governor and mayor, and having an accessible clinic that is convenient is “an asset to the neighborhood.”

He was heartened by the dignitaries’ visit and he shared his own message to his community:

“Keep the faith,” Bolden said. “They’re working on getting everything done best they can. Come on out and get the shot.”

LINC and its partners want to make the vaccination process as inviting and easy as possible, said LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee.

“We are here to welcome you,” she said. “We are here to support you . . .”

In addition to its expanded walk-in hours (the clinic is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and is open late on Wednesdays from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.), the National Guard and Kansas City Fire Department have begun working with LINC to take some vaccination operations off-site to reach more people.

LINC, a citizen-driven collaborative that leverages state funds to build and support programs for children and families in the Kansas City area, seizes on these kinds of challenges, Miles-Bartee said.

“This is our work, serving the community, being a beacon of light and giving hope,” she said. “Because that’s what the vaccine does — it gives hope.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Video by Bryan Shepard