DES MOINES, Iowa — The League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa (LULAC) is launching "Por Mi Familia," which translates to "for my family," a new campaign to make vaccines more accessible.
LULAC is partnering with Forward Latino to get more Latino, Spanish-speaking and immigrant Iowans vaccinated.
"We'll be launching our campaign to ensure that there is truly equity in healthcare and equity in the distribution of the vaccine," said Darryl Morin, the president and chairman of the Forward Latino board of directors.
Morin said the campaign will run advertisements in both English and Spanish on TV and radio as well as in print and on social media. It also plans to set up new vaccine clinics in certain parts of the state.
"We'll couple that with community vaccination clinics in eight counties in which about 70% of Iowa's Latino population resides," Morin said.
Those counties are Polk, Woodbury, Scott, Muscatine, Pottawattamie, Marshall, Tama and Buena Vista.
The campaign received $155,000 from the Iowa Department of Public Health to put toward those efforts, but Morin said more funding is still needed to improve access for all of Iowa's minority groups.
As of Oct. 16, 35% of Hispanic or Latino Iowans are fully vaccinated compared to 48% of the non-Hispanic or Latino population according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. This lags behind the 39.5% of all Hispanic or Latino Americans who are fully vaccinated according to the CDC.
Racial minorities have also been disproportionately affected by the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adjusting for population age differences, estimates that Native Americans, Latinos and Blacks are two to three times more likely than white people to die of COVID-19.
An analysis by the Associated Press also found Latinos are dying at much younger ages than other groups.
Thirty-seven percent of Hispanic deaths were of those under 65, versus 12% for white Americans and 30% for Black people. Hispanic people between 30 and 39 have died at five times the rate of white people in the same age group.