By Adonis Huggins
(Adonis is a staff journalist with the FOCUS Community Media Arts Centre)

On June 29, 2021, a community Covid-19 Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic was held at 519 Church Street, located in the down town east side of Toronto in the Wellesley-Church corridor.  519 Church Street is the home of 519 Org, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advocacy and inclusion of LGBT communities.  The aim of the 519 Covid-19 Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic was to create a barrier free space for members of the LGBTQ2S community and their allies to receive a first or second vaccine dose.

Increasingly, as more people get vaccinated, the City of Toronto is shifting away from mass immunization health clinics to a strategy of community pop-ups and mobile clinics.  The strategy is based on the belief that people feel more comfortable and more likely to get vaccinated when there is a community environment, where people are familiar with the places they know and where they have a chance to be with members of their own community.

Case in point was the 519 Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic. The timing of the clinic, which was not accidental, was planned to coincide with Pride Weekend Festival, considered the largest celebration of Gay Culture in North America.  As with most other festivals and events, official activities were held on-line due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  Even so, the 519 Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic, held on a Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm, was a lively affair.  DJ music was provided by DJ Blackcat, known to a select few as Mykel Hall, one of the first Djs to spin hip hop, reggae, and R & B in Toronto’s queer community, and has been making crowds dance for more than two decades.  In addition to music there was food and a variety of information resources made available. At the 519 Pop-Up, friends and family members requiring a vaccine met in a friendly, relaxing and supportive environment to receive P doses.

The 519 Pop-Up event was sponsored by the Down Town East Toronto Cluster Vaccine Engagement Consortium.  A collective of community services, grass-roots organizations and resident-led groups that serve neighbourhoods located in the down town east end of the City of Toronto.  The consortium is funded by the City to promote vaccine education.  These organizations and groups play a vital role in increasing vaccine confidence to residents in these neighbourhoods and helping them to access vaccine clinics.  A key strategy of the consortium is to engage and train ordinary residents to serve as ambassadors to promote the importance of vaccines to their communities. In low-income areas of Regent Park, Moss Park and St. James Town, where vaccine hesitancy is high, ambassadors are critical in delivery of Covid-19 related health promotion. And so is the strategy of the Pop-Up Clinics.  

While many affluent and educated Torontonians prefer an online or a telephone booking system and a central location to drive to, to receive their vaccine; there are many people who are from marginalized communities who, due to factors such as, prior negative experience with health care, language barriers, lack of internet access, mobility issues and unfamiliarity of location - prefer a community environment. In other words, a place in their neighbourhood that they know, where supportive staff and neighbourhood ambassadors are present to guide them through the process, and where they could meet and talk with others of their community.  

Like the 519 Pop-Up Vaccine Clinic, a similar pop-up clinic will be held in Regent Park next Friday August 27, 2021, just north of the Regent Park Athletic Field, as part of a youth planned block party and BBQ.  The Pop-up is intended to engage Regent Park youth in getting their vaccine shots. A youth planned neighbourhood block party is a perfect venue for doing so.  Like the 519 Pop-Up, this upcoming Regent Park Pop-Up clinic is a reminder that different populations require different approaches.