Fresno County deploys ‘trusted messengers’ to reach Black, immigrant residents in COVID-19 response
Seventeen community-based organizations will send representatives into Fresno County neighborhoods to help residents cooperate with COVID-19 prevention efforts.
On Tuesday, some county supervisors joined Emilia Reyes, the executive director of Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission, to announce funding that will go to community organizations to target Black and immigrant outreach.
The effort is seen as a way to get to residents who have been wary of communicating with health officials during the coronavirus pandemic. The populations being sought out include farmworkers and rural residents.
Fresno County EOC will supervise the project. Some of the organizations that are being called in include Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce, Building Health Communities, West Fresno Family Resource Center and Central Valley Health Policy Institute among other groups. Reyes called them “trusted messengers.”
Some groups have already been in communities as volunteers to get the word out about COVID-19 and prevention strategies, according to Reyes. She said the county’s allocation of $5.5 million for outreach to the vulnerable groups will make it possible to compensate the work of volunteers and expand the services to residents.
The funding will provide for an additional 300 contact tracers to work in the county and reach families with education and for medical investigations.
Reyes said deploying the community organizations into the community will also seek to build trust with immigrant populations who might hesitate to respond to communication from county health workers. She said information that is gathered by the community organizations won’t be shared with immigration officials and won’t adversely affect the residents.
‘They trust someone that looks like them’
“People are scared of this pandemic, and they trust someone that looks like them versus the county government,” Reyes said, speaking outside the Fresno County Hall of Records.
An additional plan that is still being proposed but was shared by Reyes on Tuesday outlines a way that the county plans to reach packing house and farm workers. Reyes said the county plans to bring onsite testing and provide private transportation to the workers to a motel for quarantine. That proposal would also include providing food and case management.
The state plans to roll out a similar plan to house workers in motels, which the county will take part in. Reyes said the efforts are crucial especially for large families who live in small homes.
CARES Act
The funding will be issued by the county from money that it received through federal coronavirus relief given to county and city agencies. Fresno County received $90 million in federal and state-issued CARES Act relief.
The county has spent nearly 40% of its federal funding on things like medical capacity and increased testing, as well as improving county telework operations. The contracts with the community-based organizations will be formally approved at a later meeting by the supervisors.
Congressional discussions on a new relief package have stalled, and that was what local officials have clung to for hope in getting additional aid for future needs.
The county has relied on the control of the coronavirus spread in order to decide how to spend its federal funding. With months left until the funding expires, county officials said they want to spend the funds sparingly and where it’s most needed in case needs arise in the fall and winter.
At the same time, officials hope the added community efforts provide residents with more education about gatherings and taking the pandemic seriously.
Discouraging large gatherings
Supervisor Brian Pacheco shared during Tuesday’s news conference that hundreds of people gathered at Skaggs Bridge Park over the weekend and some possible infections of coronavirus derived from that gathering.
He said the county is working to limit gatherings there, including having sheriff’s deputies quarantine some areas, but he said he is unsure of the best protocol since the sheriff’s office does not respond to enforce distancing rules.
“We really need to do the public outreach and the community education for the young people, and all people, that this is real,” Pacheco said. “We need preventative measures or we’re never going to get past this.”
