Londonwide LMCs and London general practice are supporting Public Health England (PHE) London’s “speaker bureau” initiative, connecting speakers with good general clinical and Covid-19 vaccine knowledge with community events. This involves GPs and other general practice clinicians acting as surrogates for PHE at local and pan-London public meetings to address vaccine hesitancy.
The meetings generally provide a forum to answer questions and address concerns or information gaps around the current Covid Vaccination Programme. Some events may involve specific communities or groups, whilst others may be more wide-ranging.
Events are typically delivered via an online video conferencing platform (such as Zoom) and hosted by a community ‘anchor’ organisation. They may be delivered in a specific language and/or using speakers with knowledge of the particular community. There are generally translators available if a clinician with the specific language cannot be identified for the event.
If you are a clinician working in general practice and you are interested in helping, please drop us a line at info@lmc.org.uk.
Given the current desire to address vaccine hesitancy, events can be arranged at relatively short notice. We are currently looking for volunteers to assist with two events:
- A Latin American Londoners event will take place on Saturday 27 March at 12:30pm and will be hosted by CLAUK. They would like to have a GP who has worked with this community before, as this would offer some reassurance to community given that a key challenge within the community is registering with GPs. The organisers will have Spanish and Portuguese interpreters in place but a Spanish or Portuguese Speaker would be great.
- The Big Conversations event for the Romanian community is confirmed for Tue 30 March, 5:00 – 6:00 pm. It would be really good if we could find a Romanian GP or senior nurse.
We would also like to thank Dr Marek Jarzembowski of Merton LMC, who is speaking at a Polish language event on 31 March.
Typically, there are common questions across communities:
- When will I get my vaccine?
- What are the side effects?
- What are the ingredients?
- Can people with x, y, z health conditions get vaccinated?
- Can pregnant women get vaccinated?
- Why the delay between doses?
- Will we have another wave or will be go back to “normal” after this summer?
There are also community specific concerns, which speakers will usually be briefed on ahead of participation in an event.