July 14, 2021 11:57 a.m. Correction: This article has been corrected to change “have” to “haven’t” in the quote from Dr. Kennedy about how vaccine clinic locations were chosen.
UAB is holding COVID-19 vaccine pop-up clinics until August in an effort to bring the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine directly to students this summer.
According to Rebecca Kennedy, Ph.D., assistant vice president for Student Health and Wellbeing, the clinics have been strategically placed across campus in an effort to target as many students as possible on campus this summer. Locations include Heritage Hall, the Hill Student Center, the Chemistry Building and the Education/Engineering Complex.
Remaining dates and locations can be found on the UAB HSC Instagram here.
“The idea was students told us ‘If you bring it to us, we will do it,’” Kennedy said.
In order to decided clinic locations UAB analyzed where students were taking in-person classes and what times the most students were going to and leaving class.
“For the three others that are not in the Hill we specifically looked to see of those students who haven’t uploaded their vaccination status related to COVID, where did we have the largest student populations in-person classes,” Kennedy said. “We set it up so that in and around the times that those students would be there we would be providing them onsite.”
There have been issues getting exact numbers of how many students have been vaccinated. Kennedy would not give the number of students who have been vaccinated based on submissions to the Student Health portal.
“What we have in terms of who we vaccinated does not reflect who has been vaccinated. We know that because the larger group of students that have uploaded their vaccine got their vaccine somewhere else in the community,” Kennedy said.
These other locations include pharmacies, primary care physician offices and the mass vaccination clinics UAB Medicine held.
Other surveys have been done since summer classes started such as a text survey that went out asking if students were vaccinated.
“We looked at all the people who are registered for summer classes and we looked at all the people that had not yet uploaded their vaccine records to us. We sent all of those people a text and said, ‘have you been vaccinated? Yes or no,’” Kennedy said. “Some of them did say no. Then we provided them with some information about where they could get vaccinated. A large percentage of them said yes, that they had been vaccinated already, even though we don’t have record of it.”
Kennedy said if everyone who answered ‘yes’ to the text was truthful, vaccination numbers would be up to 72% of summer students. Confirmed vaccinations show approximately 36% of students have been vaccinated.
Instructions on how to upload your vaccination status to the patient portal can be found here.
UAB is also giving the information they are gathering on what is and isn’t working with the clinics to the White House for the COVID-19 College Vaccine Challenge as well as receiving suggestions and feedback for ways to improve.
One approach UAB is taking includes using student leaders who are considered “social influencers” to encourage students to get vaccinated.
“We also have identified a couple of student leaders that are considered social influencers. They have a very strong desire to assist us in helping the campus community stay well,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got a couple of folks that are going to actually be sort of taking this on as sort of a platform and that’ll be interesting to see kind of how that, how that works.”
The J&J COVID-19 vaccine was found to be 66.3% effective in clinical trials and had high efficacy in preventing hospitalizations and death in those who did get sick.
You can also schedule an appointment with Student Health Services to make an appointment for any of the three vaccines approved in the patient portal here.
Additional pop-up clinics are planned for the fall and will be held on the Campus Green.
