Meeting rural and farmer people where they gather: Experience with COVID testing and Vaccination from our mobile clinic
Convened by Kelley J. Donham MS DVM DACVPM Professor Emeritus, College of Public Health Vice Chair Rural Health and Safety of Eastern Iowa
kelley-donham@uiowa.edu
Kelley Donham originated as a farm boy in Johnson County Iowa. He began his early higher education in the College of Medicine, University of Iowa He
obtained a doctorate degree in Veterinary Medicine, with residency training in Public health and Preventive Medicine. He had a 40 year career as
professor in agricultural medicine at the University of Iowa, having transitioned to Emeritus Professor in 2013. He currently writes and speaks on the
subject, and is a co-founder of Rural Health and Safety of Eastern Iowa.
Learning objective:
Participants will be able to describe rural covid prevention strategies.
Discuss this presentation with the authors on Thursday, November 19 from noon – 12:30 on the Zoom Live-stream.
The mission of Rural Health and Safety of Eastern Iowa is “ to promote the health, safety and well-being of rural families and their employees – by providing occupational health, safety and wellness services and – encourage best health and safety practices.” (https://ruralhealthandsafety.org/about/).
We began a project with support from a pilot grant from the Midwest Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (MRASH). This was to model Certified Safe Farm (https://www.unmc.edu/publichealth/cscash/_documents/CSFManual-81216i.pdf) wellness services out of our mobile clinic. And then COVID 19 hit. Realizing that we could not conduct the wellness services we planned in this pandemic, we turned to the most needed service to our farm and rural populations at the time – COVID testing and vaccination. We learned that due to the political and cultural divide on COVID issues, we sought to find ways to encourage providing these services to those who would. With extensive promotions, using education from trusted sources, support from local organizations, and aiming our messages with cultural sinsitiviy, we had success – measured not my high numbers of accepters, but with acceptance from the willing, many who likely were “on the fence” on the issue. We sill discuss what we learned about what we feel works and what will not work in gaining acceptance from a reluctant population.
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