Overall, this Irish Community Care health event was a huge success and great partnership work with the Liverpool Irish Centre and Sláinte Le Chéile, as well as Central Liverpool Primary Care Network to tackle health inequalities surrounding COVID-19 and the vaccine within our communities.
Amy Bird, BAME COVID-19 & Health Community Support Worker at Irish Community Care and Clodagh Dunne, Health and Wellbeing Project Co-ordinator at the Liverpool Irish Centre spoke with Irish in Britain's health and wellbeing officer, Ellen Gavin about the event, which included a pop-up vaccination centre.
Clodagh reflected on the day and what they’d learned from it. It is hoped that other organisations will consider holding similar health events.
Clodagh was thrilled with how the event went saying "It was such a great day where everything ran smoothly". The event included a vaccine pop-up clinic, diabetes checks, severe mental illness (SMI) health checks and general health checks.
Amy stated that "our aim for this health event was to incorporate a vaccine pop-up clinic, but also give community members the opportunity to link in with other Liverpool-based organisations, surrounding health and well-being". Amy also stressed that "It’s really important that we focus on linking the community back in with organisations, after nearly two years of isolation and lockdowns due to COVID-19."
Vaccine pop up
There were over 200 people at the event including 140 attendees and 50 staff between various organisations and the NHS workers.
Clodagh highlighted the success of the pop-up vaccination centre "96 people received their vaccine or booster on the day".
Amy, who led the event, stressed how she "really wanted to encourage the increase of the COVID vaccine, but also acknowledge other health concerns. So it was great to have health and well-being organisations attend and do pop-up stalls at the event".
Clodagh agreed and highlighted that "merging a health event with a pop-up vaccine clinic worked very well". She explained the process of organising the pop up as being ‘quite straightforward with the NHS provider carrying out a check of the venue prior to the event to ensure that the room was adequate’. Furthermore, Clodagh explained how ‘thankful the NHS staff were to the team for setting up the clinic and preparing the room for them in advance’.
When asked to reflect on the event, Clodagh suggested that "offering transport to our service users would have been very beneficial" and if they were to do this event in future, she would ensure that this was considered.
She reflected that lack of transport may have been a possible reason behind some of their members/service users not attending the event or using the vaccine pop-up clinic.
tips for others
Clodagh also highlighted the benefit of providing a small incentive to people for attending the event. For example, at the Liverpool Irish Centre event, attendees were given a packed lunch and there was merchandise handed out from Irish in Britain’s Vaccine Le Chéile campaign.
This event shows the positive impact that such community health initiative can have. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Irish in Britain urges our member organisations to consider holding a similar event if they have the capacity to do so as the impact is evident.
If you would like support, advice or information on setting up a health event including the set-up of a pop-up vaccination centre, please contact Ellen at health@irishinbritain.org