The Community Planning and Advocacy Council (CPAC) is partnering with the Rutgers School of Nursing – Camden (RSNC) for this project, in which up to 2,000 vulnerable residents in the City of Camden and greater Camden County will take the COVID-19 vaccine at community-based vaccination events. To complement the mobile vaccination clinics that RSNC is coordinating to reach high-risk residents in Camden and throughout the county, CPAC is providing mini-grants to its network of trusted, community-based nonprofits to support educational outreach and meal distributions to families through safe, festive events. Through this project, CPAC and RSNC are providing information about the vaccine and resources to residents to address their hesitancy and support the local economy. Through CPAC’s commitment to collaboration and partnership, this program could create a model for providing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

CPAC and its partners are among the nonprofits and service providers that have come together as the Moving New Jersey Forward Learning Collaborative to share accomplishments and lessons learned from this work with each other, with New Jersey Health Initiatives and the state, to benefit every community. Ensuring more equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine originally connected these thought leaders as the New Jersey Vaccination Learning Network for over a year. In March 2022, the network renamed itself the Moving NJ Forward Learning Collaborative to better represent the partners’ systems-level thinking and commitment to applying the lessons from the past two years to unlock the doors to opportunity that marginalized communities face. Learn more about the collaborative’s expanded focus.