Zeitgeist team links Duluth’s Hillside with vaccines

By Andee Erickson Duluth News Tribune

Around the time that COVID-19 vaccines started rolling out, nonprofit community development organization Zeitgeist formed a team of people with diverse connections to help connect Duluth’s Hillside residents with vaccine resources.

Andrea Crouse, the community development manager at Zeitgeist, is the facilitator of the Healthy Hillside Steering Team made up of seven people, each dedicating between five and 10 hours a week to assessing and addressing the needs of the community.

“The Healthy Hillside leadership team is so inspirational to work with,” Crouse said. “When they were hired, every single one of these individuals was already doing this kind of work in some way in the community. They just weren’t getting paid for it. They were seeing needs and challenges faced by either themselves or their neighbors or their family and they were looking for solutions.”

Zeitgeist, a nonprofit located in downtown Duluth that’s more than just a restaurant and theater, has engaged in community development work for years. When the pandemic hit, the nonprofit saw how it was uniquely affecting Duluth’s most diverse neighborhood where there are higher rates of unemployment, poverty and people without health insurance, and they saw an opportunity to address.

The Healthy Hillside team hosted a vaccine clinic with Essentia Health in March at the Gloria Dei Church. Ahead of the event, they posted flyers, got the word out at various organizations and set up a phone line with Essentia to help register people. The clinic vaccinated 146 people, 100% of whom came back for their second dose in April.

“I would say a big reason for that is because of the care the team put into it,” Crouse said. “We’ve had individual conversations with over 7,000 people about vaccinations and health care. So we’re building these relationships in a broad way, but it still comes down to the individual.”

Using CARES Act funding from the city and a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to address vaccine hesitancy, Zeitgeist is paying the steering team to reach people where they’re at.

Tiffany Fenner was already doing that through various volunteer work before the Healthy Hillside job opportunity presented itself. Every other Saturday morning she would hand out coffee to people outside the Damiano Center.

Now she’s using the trust she’s built with people to answer questions about vaccines and help them make plans to get vaccinated if they’re interested.

“I really just want to help build this community up and this is a community my children live in. It’s important to me that it’s safe,” Fenner said. “Sometimes a smile is all somebody needs to brighten up their day, and so if I can be that person,

I want to do what I can. It makes me happy to help other people and so that’s what I do. My kids are out there helping and that’s really what my kids want to do.”

In late July, the team began its first canvassing effort with the goal of knocking on the doors of 500 homes in the Hillside to support anyone who still has questions about vaccines or isn’t sure how to make an appointment. The group will also link people with whatever other resources they need, from food to transportation.

Fenner wants people to know there’s an entire community out there happy to help them. She wants to make sure those who aren’t typically paying attention to the news or who don’t have access to health care aren’t left behind.

“I think that’s important, especially during a pandemic when people don’t know what’s going on,” Fenner said. “So it’s important to have a friendly face out there.”

She hopes the effort will reveal that there’s enough interest out there in vaccines to warrant another neighborhood clinic. u