{"id":2124,"date":"2022-10-05T12:17:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=2124"},"modified":"2022-10-05T12:17:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:17:21","slug":"house-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2022\/house-calls\/","title":{"rendered":"House Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. Nerissa Price \u201995 stands inside the Garner Road Community Center in southeast Raleigh. As her memories churn and she tries to get her bearings, she has a question. Price grew up coming here; it was the YWCA when she was a child. It\u2019s, in fact, the place where she learned to swim. So she wonders aloud, \u201cWhere\u2019s the pool?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The center, which serves Raleigh youth and families, has been transformed on this Saturday, as it was on many Saturdays in 2021, into a vaccination site, bustling with those who want COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, community volunteers and doctors and nurses from WakeMed. Price, a psychiatrist and a medical director at WakeMed, is brimming joyously at getting more shots in arms, something she\u2019s dedicated the last year of her life to amid the pandemic. But she\u2019s also here because she has a personal stake in the vaccination game. She grew up close by in the 27610 ZIP code\u2009\u2014\u2009which is 65 percent African-American. Many residents here work low-wage and frontline jobs and have no insurance, according to Wake County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That ZIP code also had more COVID-19 cases over the last two years than any ZIP code in North Carolina, and was among the highest per capita in the state as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price, 49, sifts through her recollections about the area, leaving no doubt she\u2019s of this place. About a 10-minute car ride from the community center is the Richard B. Harrison Community Library, the first library in Raleigh for Black residents and one of Price\u2019s favorite childhood retreats, where she could get lost in Nancy Drew and Judy Blume. And there\u2019s New Bethel Christian Church, where she got to witness the virtuoso of the pastor\u2019s wife on organ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last two years, Price has been at some of those same places when they served as community vaccination sites. Early on in the pandemic, it became evident that this area was not only the hardest hit with cases, but was also lagging in its vaccination rates. So Price, along with five other Black women doctors\u2009\u2014\u2009a group that called themselves the Sister Circle\u2009\u2014\u2009mobilized to help with the Triangle\u2019s vaccine effort in Black and brown communities, running COVID-19 vaccination sites on Saturdays. Price went door-to-door with WakeMed\u2019s Doses to Doors program. She reached out and visited with homeless people to get them vaccinated. And she even administered shots herself. As of this spring, the Sister Circle has helped get some 15,000 shots in arms in Raleigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told me, \u2018You know, Nerissa, a lot of times people look far away for need, but there\u2019s plenty of need in our backyard.\u2019\u2009<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mo Johnson \u201994, CEO and senior program director at the community center, calls Price \u201cthe Sojourner Truth of southeast Raleigh when it comes to vaccinations.\u201d \u201cWe needed someone to come to our neighborhood and do this,\u201d she says of Price and the Sister Circle. \u201cI don\u2019t think they wanted to leave this to chance or hope. They decided, \u2018We are going to do this another way. We are going to the people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Price reflects on the 27610 ZIP code against the backdrop of COVID, she recalls the words of her medical school mentor at UNC, also an NC State grad. \u201cHe told me, \u2018You know, Nerissa, a lot of times people look far away for need, but there\u2019s plenty of need in our backyard.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming Full Circle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The beginnings of the Sister Circle\u2009\u2014\u2009which also includes a pediatrician, two OBGYNs, a primary care doctor and an obesity medicine specialist\u2009\u2014\u2009stretch back further than the COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Rasheeda Monroe, a pediatrician and medical director at WakeMed, says the women came together a few years back to establish a network of Black female colleagues who could share experience from their own careers. \u201cSome of us had experienced some tough times, just as Black women physicians, and navigating what it looks like to be in an environment where hardly anyone else looks like you, and certainly not in leadership,\u201d Monroe says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then COVID-19 came along. \u201cAnd then, on top of that, George Floyd,\u201d Price says, citing another seismic cultural moment from spring 2020. \u201cSo then there were unique issues that were intertwined with COVID and racial justice that we started to reach out to each other to talk about, kind of in an uncensored sort of safe way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe needed someone to come to our neighborhood and do this. I don\u2019t think they wanted to leave this to chance or hope. They decided, \u2018We are going to do this another way. We are going to the people.\u2019\u2009\u201d
\u2014 Mo Johnson \u201994, CEO and senior program director, Garner Road Community Center<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Just as potent as their conversations was what the Sister Circle saw\u2009\u2014\u2009or didn\u2019t see. At the outset of North Carolina\u2019s vaccination efforts in the latter part of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, Price and her colleagues were ecstatic that the vaccine was becoming available. Then came the vaccine events WakeMed held. Price remembers a drive-thru event early on: \u201cRasheeda Monroe noticed that there was very low Black and brown representation. And so she immediately kind of asked the question to leadership, \u2018What are we doing specifically to reach out to Black and brown communities?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘You Just Survive in Your Zone’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For much of North Carolina, vaccines were seemingly ubiquitous in 2021. But that wasn\u2019t the case for some historically marginalized and rural communities. Price points out that many jobs don\u2019t have paid time off or sick time, so showing up at a site between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. may not work. But let\u2019s say it does. Transportation can also be a barrier. And even getting signed up can be difficult for people who have no broadband or don\u2019t have a computer. And older residents may not know how to navigate the Internet to find an online portal to register.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All of these issues were at play, Price says, in the areas that make up the 27610. \u201cFor some people, they live within these completely separate segregated communities. You function in that community. You\u2019d never go over to the other side of town. You don\u2019t even know what they have to offer over there. You just survive in your zone, like that\u2019s your world. So how do you even get access to the person to tell you, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s another world over here\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n