'I got a scare.' LINC/Morning Star, Truman Medical Centers double down on vaccinations

Shirley Lockett of Kansas City and her son LeRoy Biggs came to Morning Star for Covid-19 vaccinations.

The pursuit of the unvaccinated is dogged now — “drilled-down” — as Truman Medical Centers has returned with its mobile clinic to Morning Star’s community center at 27th and Prospect Avenue for moments just like this:

Along came Shirley Lockett, seeing through her windshield the signage of Truman’s mobile health truck parked in the Morning Star parking lot.

This is her community’s trusted hub — where she got her Johnson & Johnson vaccine back in March when she and others lined up to get protected.

She thought of her son — LeRoy Briggs — still going without a vaccine so many months later.

For schedules of vaccination opportunities at Morning Star and in the KC area, go to: kclinc.org/covid19

Read more: 'Teetering on crisis,' KC medical directors plea for vaccination, masking; here's how to save lives

Inside the center, Truman’s mobile team was at work, prepared to dispense both vaccines and medical assurances for an east Kansas City community among the most vulnerable to Covid-19’s pain.

Lockett called her son.

“Today,” she told him, “you’re going.”

By noon that day, August 11, Briggs had gotten his first Pfizer shot and an appointment to get his second.

So many of the factors that brought Truman back to Morning Star had played out.

There was the comfort, convenience and confidence people felt about Morning Star, said Niki Lee Donawa, chief community relations officer for Truman.

There was the practiced presentation of Truman’s team, ready to “take the time . . . to calm fears and dispel myths,” she said. "It's a drilled-down effect at this point. (When people feel hesitation about the vaccine) we've got to take the time to find out why."

Truman Senior Director of Community Strategies and Innovation Hayat Abdullahi, right, talks with her department’s coordinator, Maria Savoy, at Morning Star.

Add in the fear of the Delta variant and its rapid spread particularly among unvaccinated populations.

“I’d gone without it (the vaccine) this long,” Briggs said, “but Covid came back and I got a scare.”

Finally, there was that push, Briggs said, that he got from the person sitting beside him at the clinic. He nodded her way.

“My mother.”

Truman had teamed with Morning Star in the past, including using the center for Covid-19 testing, and then conducting some of Truman’s first remote vaccination operations in February.

“We went back to the grassroots because we had to gain the trust of the community at a very difficult time,” said Hayat Abdullahi, Truman’s senior director of community health strategies and innovation.

From March into June, inspired by Truman’s clinic at Morning Star, church pastor Rev. John Modest Miles and LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee kept the vaccination clinic operation going, working with Gov. Mike Parson’s office to bring in Missouri National Guard units to give vaccines, and also teaming with Kansas City Fire Department paramedics.

More than 24,000 vaccines were distributed by June. But now the campaign is harder, and Truman is combining a weekly scheduled clinic at Morning Star with a wide-ranging field operation, knocking on doors and calling on businesses to help arrange vaccination opportunities — particularly in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities, Abdullahi said.

“Breaking the (vaccine) hesitancy in our community is very big,” she said. “Morning Star is a safe place for everyone . . . and it takes lots and lots of education.”

LINC and Morning Star are also collaborating with Heart to Heart International to provide vaccines, as the center will be scheduling two or more clinics weekly into the fall.

Schedules of vaccination opportunities at Morning Star and at other venues throughout the Kansas City area are available at kclinc.org/covid19. Vaccination information through Truman is available by calling 816-404-CARE (2273).

The partnerships at Morning Star have made a difference, Abdullahi said.

“Together,” she said, “we’ve saved lives here.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer