The United Way of Greater Union County (UWGUC) is leading this project, in which up to 6,000 vulnerable people in Elizabeth, Hillside, Plainfield, Roselle, Roselle Park, Linden, Rahway, Union and Summit will take the COVID-19 vaccine at community-based, pop-up vaccination clinics. The Union County Health Department and the Department of Human Services are partnering in this work by serving as the vaccine points of dispensing. Together with the Visiting Nurse Association, faith-based partners and community-based organizations, UWGUC is working to provide information about the vaccine in English, Spanish, Creole and Portuguese and testing opportunities to engage residents throughout Union County. This effort builds on COVID-19 Vaccination Initiative for Housing Insecure Populations in New Jersey, an earlier phase of collaborative work that focused on vaccinating 400 persons experiencing homelessness, including families who are living in hotels and motels. Through the UWGUC’s commitment to collaboration and partnership, this program could create a model for providing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

UWGUC 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.