Miami Gardens partners with Black-owned company for citywide COVID vaccination program
Concerned with the lagging rate of COVID-19 vaccinations in minority communities, the Miami Gardens City Council voted Wednesday night to partner with a for-profit company on a new, citywide vaccination program.
At the urging of Vice Mayor Reggie Leon, the council unanimously authorized City Manager Cameron Benson to license city land at 2775 NW 183rd St. to WorldSafe1st, a Black-owned company that plans to administer COVID-19 vaccines for the first time.
City documents explain that the program “will be implemented Citywide among the 113,514” residents in Miami Gardens, beginning with the three ZIP codes that have the highest concentration of senior citizens. Leon said the site will also cater to North Miami and Opa-locka.
When the vaccination site will open is unclear. The goal, however, remains unchanged: increase vaccinations among Black and brown individuals.
“It’s right on our bus route, our trolley goes there and, for those people who don’t have transportation, it’s easy for them to access the site that we’re using,” Leon said in an interview.
COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black Americans has made vaccinations a pressing issue within Florida’s largest majority-Black city. Though a massive vaccination center sits within city limits at Hard Rock Stadium, Leon said he doesn’t believe the site really caters to Miami Gardens residents.
“We rode around [Hard Rock Stadium] and looked at it and we didn’t see people who looked like us or were from Miami Gardens in those lines,” Leon said.
To address the issue, the vice mayor looked to the Delaware-registered company WorldSafe1st. Leon said he liked that WorldSafe1st uses Black nurses and doctors to administer shots, something that could help alleviate vaccine hesitancy. The company will also have both online and on-site registration, according to both Leon and WorldSafe1st CEO Trevor Brooks, a key factor given the racial divide in internet access.
Brooks told the Miami Herald that when it comes to healthcare, African Americans “tend to trust people that they’re familiar with, who look like them.”
“We just think that if you’re going to serve our people, it takes our people to serve them,” Brooks added.
Documents provided to the Herald by a Brooks representative show that Centers for Health Promotions — a company that also lists Brooks as its CEO — applied to distribute the vaccine through the Centers for Disease Control on Jan. 6. Brooks said the company was approved and was supposed to begin receiving doses two weeks after being approved, but shortages have left the company waiting. He hopes that the recent approval of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine means his doses will arrive by late March, though he said it’s unclear which vaccine the company might receive.
The state of Florida has partnered with companies like CVS and Navarro and Publix to help administer vaccines. But WorldSafe1st is an unconventional operator for the city, having never before administered vaccines.
Brooks said the company is an umbrella for his other startups, including GunBail, which encourages nonviolent offenders to effectively trade guns for bail money. He also founded HomeSafe1st, an app designed to help curb gun violence. The app received a contract from the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, but when the pandemic hit, Brooks said the attorney’s office asked him to figure out an effective way to test minority communities. Now, with the help of Amazon Web Services, the platform can evaluate a user’s self-reported COVID-19 symptoms, connect them with healthcare professionals and, most recently, guide them to testing locations.
“I noticed that [the testing sites] were always too far from minorities or the people who lived below the poverty line,” Brooks explained.
This insight led Brooks’ company to begin administering COVID-19 tests in the St. Louis area, eventually branching out to Miramar and Baltimore, he said. At its peak, HomeSafe1st would test about 1,200 people a day in St. Louis, according to Brooks. Once the company gets its allotment of vaccines, Leon hopes that it could provide approximately 4,500 shots a week.
“If we have to, we are willing to run 24 hours a day,” Brooks said.
Leon has spearheaded several events to vaccinate residents of Miami Gardens, the largest primarily Black city south of Atlanta. In late January, he and fellow council member Katrina Wilson bused more than 100 seniors to Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami Gardens to receive shots.
This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
