With about 450,000 residents, Virginia Beach is the only city in the state that falls into the last category.
Immediate priorities for the VDH are to ensure the state meets Biden’s goal of having 70% of the adult population vaccinated with at least one shot by the Fourth of July, Anderson said. But its funding overall “is designed to increase organizational capacity and to strengthen our meaningful engagement with community stakeholders.”
The Office of Health Equity will be administering the grant throughout the project period, which began June 1 and will last through May 30, 2023. The VDH has established a COVID Funding Steering Committee dedicated to ensuring equitable distribution of the money statewide. The committee is expected to meet at least monthly to oversee progress.
The VDH has broken down the grant into four separate strategies to ensure success, Anderson added. The first includes expanding existing resources geared toward areas experiencing a high risk of infections and ongoing vaccine skepticism through partnerships and billboards, radio, social media, TV, bus and train ads throughout the state.
The second prioritizes improving data collection — with an emphasis on areas facing high infection, hospitalization and death rates — which would require increasing VDH Central Office’s workforce, assuring infrastructure and resources are in place to meet the need and improve collaboration between local health districts and state VDH when it comes to testing, treatment and vaccination data.
