A lot can change in a year—especially for nonprofit organizations who work to raise awareness about vaccines in underserved communities.
A year ago, CBOs adapted their outreach strategies to overcome COVID-19 variants, changing government guidance, and pandemic fatigue.
And while COVID-19 and the flu are still around in 2025, measles outbreaks in several states and a surge in whooping cough are some of the pressing concerns in community conversations now.
To better understand how CBOs are navigating the changing landscape and adapting to the needs of the people they serve, Public Good News spoke with Peyton Thomas, manager of the Take Care Utah program at the Utah Health Policy Project, who we spoke with last year about their work to get people in Utah access to the state’s health care system.
Thomas shared her reflections on what’s changed at her organization since then and how they’re approaching community education.
Here’s what she said.
[Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]
PGN: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us again. What’s changed at Take Care Utah since last year?
Peyton Thomas: Overall, since we last talked, Take Care Utah’s services have really been snowballing and in demand ever since the Medicaid unwinding. We’ve had a lot of new community partners reach out to us, and word of mouth is getting around quite a bit.
The Take Care Utah program is a direct service of the Utah Health Policy Project. It employs about 30 health access assisters. Basically, their job is to be super familiar with Medicaid, the Health Insurance Marketplace, and, naturally, learn a little bit about Medicare as well.
We go out into the community to find folks who don’t currently have health insurance coverage, or maybe they’re unsure if they might qualify for another program. And we walk those folks through an application, from start to finish.
Then, once they’re approved for benefits, we make sure that folks understand where they can go to use those benefits, how to pick a plan, and make sure they actually get a Medicaid card.
Really, [it’s] looking at accessing health insurance holistically and what that means to access preventative care.
The unwinding had a big impact on individuals and families across the country, and we’re still seeing the effects of that. Folks are really turning to our services after seeing the effects of losing that coverage and understanding more about the importance of continuing to have it in the future.
PGN: Last year, we also talked about Take Care Utah’s vaccine outreach as a part of those preventative care conversations. What’s still working? What’s changed?
P.T.: When we spoke last time, we were focused on mostly COVID-19 and flu vaccine outreach for adults. But now the program has expanded to cover all vaccine preventable diseases and those that impact children, too.
So we’ve really been focusing on safety, relevance, and just making information practical for these families.
Now, because of the broadened scope, I’ve been joining calls with the state department of health, where they have experts talk about current priorities.
So we’ve been aligning our messaging and materials with the state as well. For example, with the measles outbreak going on right now.
They’ve also talked about the increase in pertussis [also known as whooping cough] nationwide and internationally. So, based on hearing what the state is concerned about, we’ve been able to tailor our materials a little bit better.
PGN: How are measles outbreaks in neighboring states affecting the conversations you have in Utah?
P.T.: While it’s really unfortunate that these outbreaks are happening, the increased media coverage of these really critical health issues seems to have instilled some understandable fear in families and individuals. And I think that’s opening up the conversation about vaccines again.
I think when we spoke last time, we talked a lot about vaccine fatigue, but our newer materials are focused more on vaccine safety and overviewing the basics about these diseases. People have been a lot more receptive, including providers themselves.
They’ve mentioned that they appreciate having these kinds of flyers. They get a lot of questions about vaccine safety.
And we’ve had more people on our social media sharing and liking our posts about things like whooping cough and measles. So, I think people are looking for the information.
This year, we’ve also created a childhood immunization schedule tracker like you would get back in the day. [Because] now, they’re all electronic.
Something we had heard from the community and from some of the mothers that work here is that they liked having those physical cards. And when we’ve taken those to events recently, clients really love those. So, I think that’s showing that people are wanting to stay on track and wanting to talk about some of these real issues going on in order to protect their children.