LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo Begins TODAY
ForumPhilly launches an ambitious new unified campaign to dramatically increase COVID vaccination rates among Philadelphia & Delaware County's most vulnerable and hard-to-reach residents
ForumPhilly, a non-profit community advisement and engagement organization in the Philadelphia area, today announced the launch of a creative, multi-faceted regional COVID-19 vaccine awareness and access campaign. Now known as LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo, this newest city-to-county wide effort will mobilize a unified strategy towards dramatically encouraging and facilitating increased vaccination and connection to other critical resources for vulnerable Black, Brown and low-income communities in Philadelphia and Delaware County.
The use of the iconic statue symbol LOVE is, for the purpose of this campaign, actually an acronym that stands for Local Outreach and Vaccination Effort. LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo officially kicked off today on Monday, February 14th … deliberately on Valentine’s Day to underscore the need for L.O.V.E. in the Philadelphia region, especially as the destructive public health and economic impacts of the pandemic rage on.
LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo is the result of a grant provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and administered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It will represent a multi-month campaign mix of five ingredients activated in phases: 1) open vaccine access, 2) essential public health messaging, 3) COVID disinformation counters, 4) ongoing connection to critical community resources and 5) planned celebrations of the arts through live music performances and visual arts workshops scheduled as a LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo Regional Arts Festival in the Spring. Partners such as Healthcare Ready will provide ready ongoing support through public educational materials and curriculum for vaccine ambassadors.
The inaugural LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo event will be a 1-hour special broadcast conversation scheduled Monday, 2/14 at Noon ET on WURD’s “Reality Check” with host Charles Ellison. Expert voices for this LIVE open-phone-line discuss will include medical professionals and representatives of LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo partners such as Jefferson Health, Temple Health and Philly Counts.
“Our focus and plan is to reach and positively serve as many vaccine hard-to-reach and hesitant Black, Brown and distressed people in our communities as we can,” said ForumPhilly Founder and CEO Rev. Dr. Malcolm Byrd. “The key is not just vaccination, either. This is all about being proactive. It’s about going that extra mile to connect underserved residents to the resources they need as they continue to struggle through this pandemic.”
“Black, Brown and low-income communities that have been hit by COVID the hardest and are still being hit the hardest as we’re still in the thick of pandemic,” said Charles Ellison, WURD host and also Principal of B|E Strategy, the strategic communications firm tasked with planning and implementation. “Even as governments and businesses are prematurely pushing us into a return to ‘normal,’ it ignores the fact that many of these communities are on the front lines of healthcare neglect, food deserts, medical deserts, and environmental racism. We need to continue fighting this.”
Initial LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo partners include …
This first broadcast phase of the LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo campaign will also include daily conversation on WURD’s “Reality Check,” along with evolving social media engagement on #LOVEPhilly and #LOVEDelCo. Information such as vaccine schedules, data trends and community services will be updated and shared routinely on the LOVE Philly | LOVE DelCo hybrid website and email newsletter. A number of state legislators representing Philadelphia and Delaware County have also agreed to partner with the campaign. As the campaign enters March, more announcements will be made about upcoming events in the region.
For more information, please contact info@lovephillydelco.org.