Dear Friends of Stop the Spread,
I hope this note finds you all enjoying the start of spring. At Stop the Spread, the new season finds us increasingly focused on supporting vaccine equity. Through our extensive (and growing!) partner network, we continue to facilitate value-added connections between organizations and to introduce communities to resources that augment their response to the pandemic.
We are excited to announce that we will be codifying our work into an open source Community Vaccination Toolkit. This will include implementation guides for pop up and fixed sites, curated resources, and executable downloads that share best practices and tools that we hope will help provide inspiration, learning and efficiency to community health clinics, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and public health agencies. We have engaged the Inspire team from Bain's San Francisco office to help with this effort and are thrilled to have their support. The first version of this Toolkit will drop soon.
|
|
Stop the Spread on the Virtual Stage
We are pleased to have had the opportunity to share our work with these forums.
Pledge 1%: On February 25, we presented for a second time to Pledge 1%'s COVID Coalition. "The Race to Vaccinate Americans: Trading Off Speed for Equity" was well received and continues to generate follow-on interest from Pledge 1% members. Presentation is available here.
HealthTech4Medicaid: On March 17, Molly Chidester, Stop the Spread's COO who joined us from New York City Health + Hospitals kicked off HealthTech4Medicaid's Vaccine for the Vulnerable series with an engaging conversation titled "Equity in Vaccination: A Plan to Work with Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond".
If you are interested in learning more about approachability, equitability, and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccination among vulnerable populations, including Medicaid, please join Molly again on March 30 at 10 AM PST/1 PM EST for the second meeting of the series "Views from the frontlines of FQHC leaders" along with our partner David Gross from Community Healthcare Network, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving 85k residents of NYC. Register here.
|
|
For more information about our work with CHN, you can read more in our latest position paper on our hyperlocal model for vaccinations.
In April, we will be speaking about vaccine access at two upcoming events:
Harvard Club of Southern California's Anti-Racism Club - 4/12 @ 12.30 pm PDT / 3:30 pm EDT. Please reply to this email if you'd like an invitation.
Greater New York Hospital Association - 4/23 @ 8:30 am PDT / 11:30 am EDT. A registration link will be available this week here.
|
|
|
CALL TO ACTION: Are you aware of other organizations that are hosting events addressing vaccine equity and how vaccination efforts can address healthcare disparities? If so, we would welcome an introduction and the opportunity to share our experience.
|
|
|
We're Hiring
Stop the Spread is seeking to hire two full-time paid Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives Leads - one for the East Coast and one on the West Coast for a period of 4 - 6 months starting in April to support our programmatic work in NY, LA, SF and elsewhere. This is a great opportunity for a former STS volunteer who might like to re-engage or for someone who is between roles and seeking to have a meaningful impact this spring/summer supporting our vaccine equity programs. Contact information is included in the role descriptions linked here.
|
|
|
CALL TO ACTION: Please share these role descriptions with your networks.
|
|
|
New Project with UCSF
Stop the Spread is partnering with UCSF Pandemic Response Initiative for Equity & Action (UPIEA) to stand up a new initiative to conduct COVID-19 vaccine education & outreach and stand up vaccine administration sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. In close collaboration with two community-based organizations (Umoja Health and Rafiki Coalition) this initiative aims to reach and vaccinate the ~50,000 Black/African Americans and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders in San Francisco that have been hard-hit by the pandemic. Leveraging the testing infrastructure community-based efforts that have been spearheaded by Dr. Kim Rhoads, the coalition's goal is to design a replicable model for community-based vaccinations that can be applied to additional communities in the Bay Area. This effort will inform a "next generation" approach that elevates trusted community leaders in the role they play in bolstering the public health of their communities.
Stop the Spread is raising $2M to directly support education, outreach, and the actual administration of COVID-19 vaccines in the Bayview Hunters Point, Western Addition, and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods of San Francisco with the intent to expand to East Palo Alto among other Bay Area regions.
This slide deck provides more detail on the project.
|
|
|
CALL TO ACTION: We are seeking introductions to corporations, family offices and foundations with an interest in addressing vaccine equity and healthcare disparities or the needs of vulnerable communities in San Francisco. Please let us know if you can introduce us to a funder who may be interested in learning more about this project.
|
|
|
|
Partner Spotlight
Stone Cold Systems (SCS) had spent 5+ years iterating on a portable, rechargeable cold storage unit with the ability to monitor temperatures, GPS data, and other metrics to facilitate global vaccine delivery. SCS realized their product could solve urgent domestic challenges around transportation of COVID-19 vaccines. Community Healthcare Network (CHN), a Federally Qualified Health Center in New York City with 14 locations, was looking for a solution to ease the process of redistributing ~600+ doses to their city-wide network of clinics and pop-up sites in hard hit and historically underserved neighborhoods. Because of the strict cold storage requirements of the vaccines, CHN had been redistributing vaccines to satellite sites on a daily basis to make sure doses were used within the required timeframe. This created significant complexity in their daily operations, including increased demands on limited staffing resources.
Stop the Spread facilitated a partnership between CHN and SCS, who piloted their product in New York City. This enabled SCS to validate a new use case for their product, and it significantly eased the complexity of CHN’s operations, allowing them to more efficiently disseminate vaccines. SCS will look to take their learnings from this pilot to further improve their solution as they look to deploy across the country and the globe.
|
|
CALL TO ACTION: Stone Cold System is raising $4M in investment capital. These funds will allow for rapid response to the challenge and opportunity of COVID, bolster an existing lean operating team, build out sales and marketing functions, commercialize the product line, and reach a $10MM run rate. They are seeking strategic investors interested in the commercial and impact opportunity and investors who want to make a difference in this global pandemic. SCS' pitch deck is available here.
|
|
|
|
Upcoming COVID Challenge Event
By April 15, most states will have extended vaccine eligibility to all residents 16 and older. It's an important date as U.S. vaccine supply is poised to exceed demand for the first time. For those of you who may be looking for a way to help as we head into this new phase of the pandemic, please consider joining The COVID Challenge. The event kicks off in the evening on Thursday, April 15 and will virtually convene a set of startup founders, collaborators, corporate teams and healthcare partners for 1.5 days to build products, programs and campaigns to address some of the more unyielding challenges of the next chapter: access, education, misinformation, and reaching across the digital divide to underserved populations. For more information, please see https://bit.ly/svp-covid or contact Antony Brydon <abrydon@svpvc.com>.
|
|
|
CALL TO ACTION: Please share news of this April 15-17 event with your networks. This is a fantastic opportunity for individuals to collaborate for good and to build new relationships.
|
|
|
We welcome your support in augmenting our impact.
Sharon Knight
Executive Director
sharon.knight@stopthespread.org
|
|
About ImpactAssets
ImpactAssets is a nonprofit financial services firm that increases the flow of capital into investments delivering financial, social and environmental returns. The ImpactAssets Donor Advised Fund and field-building initiatives enable philanthropists, other asset owners and their wealth advisors to advance social or environmental change through investment and granting.
About Stop the Spread
Stop the Spread fosters the private sector’s response to COVID-19. STS addresses the evolving critical needs of the pandemic by identifying and vetting novel solutions and providing innovators with capacity building support including access to impact investment and philanthropic capital through ImpactAssets’ COVID Response Funds. Through research, partnerships and coalition building, STS serves the communities hit hardest by COVID-19 with a focus on addressing the needs of historically underserved populations. STS’ partner network totals over 650 companies and organizations and has resulted in more than 300 value-added connections that have spurred the production of more than 40,000 ventilators and 20 million units of PPE, supported development of novel diagnostics and therapeutics, and promoted equitable allocation of resources.
|
|
|
Connect with us on social media.
|
|
|
|
