Members of the Voice of Westmoreland, a local grassroots organizing group, raised a call for the county to establish a health department during an online town hall forum on the vaccine rollout in the region.

The online town hall brought together representatives from Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Healthcare PA, the Greater Greensburg-Jeannette NAACP and Westmoreland Community Action as well as 220 households.

Participants weighed in with questions and complaints throughout the two-hour forum Tuesday that featured state Sen. Lindsey Williams and speakers from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s office, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office as well as a panel of medical experts.

Chief among those: The lack of information directing eligible vaccine candidates to local sites that have the vaccine, the need to use a computer or smartphone to find information, and the long, long wait times to get through to a site and register.

“I can’t get on the computer, and I can’t be on the phone all day,” one woman wrote.

Others questioned the accuracy of information on the county website and the need to sign up online.

“There has to be a better way to sign up than on the website. It’s hurting our most vulnerable citizens,” said forum co-moderator Diana Steck. “We need to build and implement a distribution system that works for everyone, including people of color and people in rural communities. … Only 55% of our vaccine has been distributed. The system is broken and it needs to be fixed.”

Brenda Jones of Latrobe shared those concerns.

Jones, a cashier at the Giant Eagle supermarket in the Eastgate Shopping Center and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said she is frightened as she deals with public anger, confusion and denial about the virus everyday in a front line job where she has been tasked with informing shoppers that masks are required in the store.

“We’re all tired to the breaking point. I have been spit on. I’ve had masks thrown at me. I’ve been called everything but my name,” she said, her voice breaking.

Co-moderator Sarah Skidmore said getting out good information from trusted sources has been a challenge in Westmoreland County.

Dr. Robin Sims, a pediatrician who is active in the Greater Parkview Church in Greensburg, said mistrust is real in minority and under-served communities across the region. Sims said she has worked within the Black community to assuage those fears.

“I am here to tell you there were not steps skipped in the vaccine,” she said. “There was just a lot of money and a lot of smart folks worked together to get this. I received the Moderna vaccine because I meet the age requirements and had underlying health issues, and I had only mild side effects.”

Dr. Ken Ho, medical director of the Pitt Men’s Study, a long-term HIV study at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, noted that there have been many safety studies.

Ho said he participated in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is expected to be approved soon for emergency use. He said he recently learned that he was among participants who received the vaccine. He said the varying degrees of efficacy on all of the vaccines tested to date are still much higher than the average for the annual flu vaccines.

Dr. Thuy Bui, an associate professor at Pitt’s Medical School who studies global health issues, rounded out the expert panel. The physicians said it’s important for people to know that even those who had had the virus should get vaccinated when vaccines are available.

Dan Carney, director of the Union Mission in Unity that addresses homelessness, said he worries that the lack of a local health department adds to confusion where vaccination plans are concerned.

“We don’t have that ‘North Star’ in our county that allows agencies to aspire to a unified plan,” Carney said. “How do we prioritize limited resources? We need some tool or metric on how to make this equitable and ensure it serves the marginalized in our community.”

Meaghan Abbott, of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said the agency is attempting to maximize the benefits and minimize harms through vaccinations.

“But we have a very limited amount of vaccine,” she said. “Our role is to get vaccine out to the providers and the providers need to get it out to the community. We want to make sure the providers are being held accountable and vaccinations are being given.”

Abbott said the agency is working with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and local EMS agencies to try to ensure counties like Westmoreland that lack local health departments are well served.

As for calls for more involvement at the local level, Abbot said the state would welcome it.

“The Department of Health would be so pleased if Westmoreland County was interested in starting its own health department,” she said. “We would love to work with you.”

But she warned the process is not simple and requires a local financial commitment, among other things.

“It’s a heavy lift,” she said.

“It may be a heavy lift, but we need it now,” resident Carrie Muniz of North Huntingdon weighed in online.

Steck said the group has been working to bring local and state officials in county into the conversation and has been urging them to take a more public role in the discussion.

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