Courtesy photo A car passes through Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital’s drive-through vaccination tent recently. While clinics like this one have been a common sight in Schoolcraft County, the hospital ramped up its efforts after being awarded an extra 500 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine through a Michigan Department of Health and Human Service pilot program. It was one of three hospitals in the state awarded vaccine doses through the program and the only hospital in the Upper Peninsula.

Courtesy photo
Workers at a recent Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital drive-through COVID-19 vaccine clinic brace the cold to vaccinate residents.

MANISTIQUE — While vaccine doses are hard to come by in many places, Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital recently had a stroke of good fortune when it became one of only three hospitals in the state to receive extra doses as part of a pilot project through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The program, which was structured like a grant, asked healthcare providers to submit applications explaining how they would use some of the state’s extra doses to meet the needs of residents that needed extra support based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index. The index, commonly known as “SVI” for short, uses a variety of factors like a population’s socioeconomic status, the composition of households and disability rates, access to transportation, and whether or not residents are minorities or do not speak English as a first language to determine which areas of the country may be disadvantaged.

“Schoolcraft County had a very high rating for SVI — which is not a good thing — in our downtown core, so we put a plan together on how we were going to target the city of Manistique and the residents there,” said Sara Giles, marketing director for Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital.

While the hospital could request as many as 2,500 vaccines through the program, all of the vaccines would have to be distributed within a two-week window. Setting a more achievable goal, the hospital requested 500 vaccines to reach the residents most in need of vaccination. MDHHS agreed to the proposal and sent the hospital 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine, making Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital the only hospital in the Upper Peninsula to receive doses through the pilot project. The hospital was notified that it would be receiving the shots on March 8 and the doses arrived March 10.

“We took a boots to ground approach,” said Giles of the program. “I mean, we went from knocking on doors in downtown areas to networking with community partners, tons of phone calls, emails, 600 fliers up, we had a lot of word of mouth campaigns going and we were able to get 465 of the 500 who fit that criteria (vaccinated) in the two week period.”

The remaining doses didn’t go to waste. Schoolcraft Memorial has been actively vaccinating residents from Delta, Alger, Luce and Mackinaw counties as well as Schoolcraft County residents as part of partnerships with neighboring counties. Giles noted that the extra doses coming to the hospital through the program also freed up more vaccine for those in other areas.

“It’s definitely an honor and it helps because those extra doses went to Schoolcraft but all of our other doses were able to serve those other counties as well,” she said.

Initially, the special doses sent to Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital were just for Schoolcraft County residents that were age 60 or older or 50 and older with an underlying health condition. However, the state allowed the hopsital to open the vaccine up to residents age 18 or over than had an underlying health condition.

Reaching those residents was a challenge. In addition to distributing fliers and making phone calls, the hospital teamed up with other community programs including Meals on Wheels, the local seniors center, and local food banks to get the word out. In addition to holding drive-through clinics in the hospital’s $10,000 mobile vaccination tent, the hospital also partnered with mBank, which allowed the hospital to use its new community board room for an indoor clinic.

“So in addition to our drive through, we had an indoor location, and that kind of helped for individuals who could maybe get a ride from transit but didn’t have a drive-through ride that they could stay in the car and wait for their shot. That eliminated the transportation barrier and that went really, really smoothly,” said Giles.

Clinics were held March 11, 12, 15, 17, 23, and 24. More clinics will be scheduled in the coming weeks once the second round of necessary doses are delivered.

While efficiently vaccinating 465 people in a two-week period is an impressive feat in and of itself, Giles pointed to the community support as one of the best parts about the pilot program and the hospital’s vaccination efforts.

“It’s been probably the most positive thing I’ve seen in my career at this hospital — just the community support. People are just so grateful. Like, we’re not getting the complaints it’s taking too long or whatever, people are just dropping off food, they’re dropping off masks, they’re knitting us things and warmers and snowstorms or rain, they’re out there — the gratitude is just really cool,” said Giles.