Meet Maryland's Secret Weapon In The Battle To Close The Latino Vaccination Gap

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/07/ [login to see] /meet-marylands-secret-weapon-in-the-battle-to-close-the-latino-vaccination-gap
At 72, Dolores Fontalvo is part friendly neighbor, part psychologist. She's also a linchpin in the state of Maryland's successful effort to narrow the vaccination gap between its white and Latino residents.

Fontalvo is one of dozens of volunteer promotoras — literally, health promoters — with CASA, a Latino and immigrant advocacy group. The job involves visiting high-traffic areas like shopping malls and farmer's markets in heavily Latino neighborhoods in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. With her long braid swinging and her eyes smiling behind a mask, she spends her days approaching other Latino immigrants who, like her, primarily speak Spanish, to make sure they know where and when to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

These days, Fontalvo says, many people are eager for the information or have already gotten their shots. But occasionally she encounters misinformation. "People hear negative rumors like, oh, the vaccine contains a microchip or vaccines kill people," Fontalvo tells me in Spanish.

Her answer to that? "All of us are vaccinated and we're all healthy. Nothing has happened to us."