As local leaders and public health officials have called out since the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted Black and Latinx Chicagoans, due in part to longstanding racial inequities in healthcare quality and access.

Last spring, the City brought together West Side United, community leaders, and healthcare providers to form the Racial Equity Rapid Response (RERR) Team to flatten the COVID-19 mortality curve in Chicago’s Black and Latinx communities, and to build a foundation for future racial health equity.

Civic Consulting Alliance supported the RERR Team from the beginning. Read more about our work with the RERR Team and its outcomes in our October 2020 newsletter, and about our work with its provider working group to develop the Racial Equity in Healthcare Progress Report in our February 2021 newsletter.

Developing a Structure and Framework for Collaboration

One of our key contributions to the RERR Team was the development of its collaborative structure (aligning community anchor organizations, West Side United, healthcare providers, the Mayor’s Office led by Candace Moore, Chief Equity Officer and Sybil Madison, Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, and the Chicago Department of Public Health) and framework (with four strategies – Education, Prevention, Testing and Treatment, and Support Services). Together, this structure and framework sought to ensure that the City’s COVID-19 interventions were community-driven and targeted to immediately mitigate harm in high-need areas.

This approach was critical when the second COVID-19 surge hit Chicago in November 2020. At that time, Civic Consulting Alliance staff helped the RERR Team launch a hyperlocal intervention, which later became part of the City’s Protect Chicago initiative, and project managed a pilot of this strategy in Belmont Cragin, one of the hardest hit community areas. Leveraging the structure, framework, and relationships we had developed with the RERR Team earlier in the year, we worked with community anchor organizations and the City to build a ‘table’ of Belmont Cragin community organizations, healthcare providers, faith leaders, City staff, and elected officials. Additionally, we:

• Created a tracker to review outreach activities, communications efforts, resource needs, and COVID-19 rates at the Census tract level;
• Managed weekly meetings; and
• Ensured the group had access to hyperlocal data to determine weekly strategies and interventions.

With our support, this community table guided the City’s intervention efforts in Belmont Cragin, and ensured coordination between stakeholders working to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the neighborhood. Following these efforts, Belmont Cragin experienced a significant drop in COVID-19 case numbers and testing positivity rate – demonstrating the power of utilizing a community-led, City-resourced and supported approach. (Explore the data on the City’s COVID-19 dashboard, developed with support from Civic Consulting Alliance pro bono partner Slalom.)

“When the autumn COVID-19 surge hit Belmont Cragin, we needed to intervene quickly. Civic Consulting Alliance provided a structure to help us approach the challenge, stay organized, and coordinate with the City and other local stakeholders.”- James Rudyk, Northwest Side Housing Center (Belmont Cragin community anchor organization)

Leveraging Learnings for Hyperlocal Vaccine Distribution

Given the success of this hyperlocal approach in Belmont Cragin, the City leveraged a similar collaborative structure and framework when developing Protect Chicago Plus, its strategy for equitable vaccine distribution. Since February, the City has launched Protect Chicago Plus pilots in four of its 15 priority community areas – Belmont Cragin, Little Village, Gage Park, and Austin – ramping up mass vaccination efforts in these communities to get them at or above the citywide vaccination rate.
Civic Consulting Alliance continued to provide advisory and project management support as the City rolled out these pilot programs. In March, we helped launch the Austin pilot, which entailed:

• Collaborating with Austin Coming Together, Rush University Medical Center, and the City to build its community ‘table’; and
• Providing thought partnership to the Vaccine Corps Partnership – a cross-sector collaborative dedicated to coordinating resources and learnings to ensure all Chicagoans can access the COVID-19 vaccine, incubated by the Health First Collaborative at Michael Reese Health Trust – to document lessons learned for future community area pilots.

So far, Protect Chicago Plus and the community engagement strategies that underpin it have made a difference in achieving more racially equitable vaccination distributions. By late March, 76-87% of those vaccinated in Belmont Cragin, Little Village, Gage Park, and Austin were Black or Latinx. Moreover, in the six weeks from February 6th to March 20th, the first dose vaccination rate in those neighborhoods increased by 335%, 385%, 459%, and 203%, respectively, compared to 177% in Chicago overall.

“While our fight against COVID-19 is far from over, the City is encouraged by the progress we’ve made in increasing vaccine uptake in Protect Chicago Plus pilot communities. This preliminary outcome is a testament to the value of taking a community-driven and equity-focused approach to address our city’s challenges. We are grateful to Civic Consulting Alliance for sharing their expertise structuring inclusive collaboratives in Chicago to support the RERR Team and the hyperlocal COVID-19 intervention initiatives that have followed it.” – Sybil Madison, Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, City of Chicago