Covid-19: Cold calls part of drive to get 90 per cent vaccinated with first dose

Thursday, 30 September 2021

Te Ao - Māori News talks to health researcher Dr Rawiri Taonui about the alert level 3 shift for Tāmaki Makaurau and his concern that Māori will be adversely impacted.

Māori health providers are phoning hundreds of patients in rural Canterbury and east Christchurch to ensure 90 per cent of the population get their first dose of the Covid vaccine in the next four weeks.

The latest figures show Canterbury continues to trail behind Auckland and Wellington in the vaccination roll-out.

Just 76.6 per cent of Cantabrians have received a first dose, compared to 83.1 per cent of those in the Wellington region and 82.7 per cent in Auckland. Authorities have been unable to explain the lag.

As of Wednesday, 39.4 per cent of Canterbury’s population was fully vaccinated, compared to 43 per cent nationally.

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Waitaha Primary Health Māori advisor Pari Hunt says calling Māori patients to invite them to a Covid-19 vaccination clinic has proven very successful.

Groups with lower rates of uptake in Canterbury include those aged 20 to 30, Māori, Pasifika, people in areas of high deprivation, and residents of east Christchurch, health board data shows.

Rural health organisation Waitaha Primary Health's strategy to personally contact Māori patients and encourage them to go to vaccine clinics in Ashburton and Kaiapoi High School had been extremely successful, adviser Pari Hunt said.

Peter Solomon and his son Riwai, 14, at a kaupapa Māori vaccine clinic at Kaiapoi High School last Saturday.

“What we decided to do was have Māori on the other end of the phone, and obviously greet whoever they’re talking to in their own language.”

Canterbury’s largest public health provider, Pegasus Health, started to replicate the strategy for Māori patients in east Christchurch last week.

Waitaha decided against sending bulk texts as they would be impersonal and were less trusted, opting instead for phone calls, Hunt said.

Kaiapoi construction worker Peter Solomon, Ngā Rauru, was among up to 70 people who responded and went to a vaccine clinic at Kaiapoi High School last Saturday.

The 59-year-old had already booked an appointment for late October but jumped at the opportunity to get it done sooner.

“I just wanted to get it done for my wellbeing and my family and the people around me.”

Pegasus Health Māori Manager Melody Tuliau says the group started cold calling Māori patients in east Christchurch last week.

He took his 14-year-old son Riwai, a student at Kaiapoi High, along to get the jab too.

“He just knows we’ve just got to get it done.”

In late August, Waitaha arranged for 245 South Canterbury Māori patients to get the vaccine at Ashburton Health First medical centre.

30092021 CHRIS SKELTON Maui Clinic Administration coordinator, Shanna Taula is calling M?ori patients from east Christchurch to get them to come in for a Covid-19 vaccination.

The team was now gearing up to phone patients at five medical centres in the Hurunui District, and had three clinics planned to cover patients from Hanmer to Amberley.

Pegasus Health Māori manager Melody Tuliau said phone calls were also being made to about 500 east Christchurch Māori patients yet to receive their first dose.

The calls were a follow-up on texts sent by services agency He Waka Tapu, and practice engagement supporter Shanna Taula said about 100 people had been called so far.

While just nine of those had booked in for a vaccine, many wanted more time to consider it and appreciated the support, she said.

“Sometimes people just have questions to ask, and they appreciate that there’s a team of people reaching out and making contact with them, and it’s not just a letter or an email.”

The team was getting important feedback about some barriers to the vaccine, such as full-time workers being unable to get an appointment in their community when they were not working, Taula said.

Others said they wanted to wait “to see how this all played out”, and some said they thought the vaccine was not necessary when there was no community outbreak of Covid-19 in Christchurch.

Tuliau said getting the vaccine was less of a priority for people facing other challenges such as feeding their family or dealing with relationship breakdowns.

Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand – Ohu Kaupare Huaketo executive director Dr Fran Priddy said it was wrong to label groups with lower vaccination rates as ‘hard to reach”.

“If you turn that perception upside down, it's not the populations but the programme that is not fit for them.”

She said success in engaging with diverse groups usually “involves getting down to an almost individual level of communication or influence”.