The omicron variant has been a stark reminder of something we’ve known from the start, that there’s little chance of the pandemic ending while large parts of humanity remain unvaccinated. The ongoing question for leaders, in the U.S. and around the world, is how can we change the situation?

A while back, Ken Banta spoke with Gary Puckrein, PhD, about the value of localized data in tackling this problem. Gary is the founder and CEO of the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF), a healthcare equity organization that collects and analyzes big data on health, and breaks it down to the level of zip codes.

The NMQF’s huge database of health information serves as a “data backbone” for patient advocacy groups and community-based organizations. During the pandemic, its hyperlocal analytics — which have predicted COVID events about 30 days before they happened — have helped those organizations identify and target vaccine hesitancy and opposition on the ground.

One obvious problem with the vaccine rollout last year was “the unfiltered content and disinformation pouring into minority communities,” Gary says. That’s gotten better, but many communities, across all ethnicities, are still woefully under-vaccinated. Both the NMQF’s data trove and the experiences of its partners point to a few key steps leaders can take to influence those communities — in the U.S. or anywhere else. Here's what Gary advises:

Be clear, simple, and timely

"As we were developing Warp Speed, we should have been talking and preparing our community. I think for the business community, nonprofit organizations, etc., the job right now is to take very complicated ideas and repurpose them so that they’re accessible to people at a moment when they can use them, and to do enough of that so that we are crowding out disinformation and the unfiltered content that is really confusing people about whether they should get vaccinated."

Collaborate to amplify trusted voices

"There’s a big problem of communications and trust in minority communities, but there are trusted voices — they live in the community, they’ve been there a long time: . . . physicians, federally qualified clinics, faith-based organizations, patient advocacy groups, community-based groups, elected officials, businesspeople — there are a lot of trusted voices here. The problem is that they’re disjointed. And those who are specializing in disinformation and unfiltered content, they’re drowning out those trusted voices. So the trusted voices have to work collaboratively to get things done."

Stress that this is about the people around you

"Help people understand: We're not going to get out of this thing unless we all work together, in a deep collaboration to fight this virus off. . . . We have to explain to people, “Guess what, the virus is not mobile — it doesn't have wings. The way it transmits itself is through us and our interactions. And the way we can stop its transmission is we’ve got to wear a mask, we’ve got to get vaccinated, we have to social distance.” Those are ideas that we need to help the public understand so that they get why they're doing things, and the implications not just for themselves, but for their families and for their community."

Check out the video for highlights of Ken and Gary’s talk, or the podcast for their full conversation.