CUNY urges its community to ‘Vax Up’ ASAP

The City University of New York today launched #VaxUpCUNY, a multifaceted, multimedia campaign to encourage CUNY students, alumni, faculty and staff to get their COVID-19 vaccination as soon as they become eligible. The campaign will target communities of color to ease anxiety and hesitancy to the vaccine.

“It is incumbent upon each of us to do all we can to help our city, state and nation finally overcome this horrific pandemic,” said Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “As a public University deeply embedded in New York’s DNA, it is our responsibility to educate and inform about the critical importance of these vaccines to the health and well-being of our CUNY community, and also our loved ones, friends, neighbors, colleagues and the city as a whole. That is the mission of #VaxUpCUNY, with a special emphasis on allaying fears and concerns that exist in communities of color around these life-saving vaccines.”

A central element of the #VaxUpCUNY Campaign is a special video message from two-time CUNY nursing alumna Sandra Lindsay (BMCC ’94, Lehman ’98), the first person in the United States to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. In her video, Lindsay stresses the importance of being vaccinated, and emphasizes the reasons why people of color should receive a vaccine as soon as possible, as these communities have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The virus does not discriminate,” said Lindsay. “I am seeing too many minorities die as we’re disproportionately affected — two to three times more than our white counterparts. COVID affects young people, people with no co-morbidities. Our best defense forward is a vaccination. This is the only thing that will get us out of this dark time and preserve life.”

For those reasons, Lindsay proudly proclaims in the video and posters: “I #VaxUpCUNY for myself. I #VaxUpCUNY for my family and friends. And I #VaxUpCUNY for all of you.”

The #VaxUpCUNY Campaign also includes a newly created CUNY webpage with the latest vaccine information, including eligibility updates and links to federal, state and city resources on how and where to receive vaccinations. Members of the CUNY community are invited to submit photos and messages of themselves receiving their vaccinations in an effort to dispel the widespread fear and hesitancy that surround the vaccines. In addition, CUNY’s various social media channels will regularly dispel common vaccine myths and answer students’ questions.

Other components of the campaign will include:

• Illustrated Posters: Posters of current and former students sharing why they’re eager to #VaxUpCUNY. These posters will be shared and advertised on CUNY websites and across social media.
• Peer and Expert Messengers: CUNY is recruiting students to record encouraging messages and dispel vaccine myths, along with experts from the CUNY School of Medicine, its various nursing programs and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health.

• CUNY Newsletter: The campaign —including updates, key vaccine information and other important news— is being amplified in a newly created section of the CUNY Brief Newsletter which is emailed to nearly 300,000 CHECK NUMBER students, faculty and staff twice a week. After the vaccine becomes widely available to our student body, a special vaccination edition of the CUNY Brief Newsletter will also be sent.
• Student Podcast: Macaulay-Hunter student Hannah Kavanagh, creator and host of the Tea for Three podcast, will produce a special vaccine episodefeaturing students of color discussing their vaccine anxieties and questions.
• Youth Vax Forum and Town Hall: CUNY TV will produce a youth-focused forum with student leaders, medical and nursing students, as well as community activists to encourage vaccination among young people. And produce a town hall on dispelling myths and misconceptions about the vaccine.

The #VaxUpCUNY Campaign is the latest effort by CUNY to help New York recover from the pandemic. Last month two CUNY campuses, Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and York College in Queens, were converted by New York State-Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into mass vaccination sites, at the request of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to address vaccine distribution inequities in traditionally underserved communities of color hit hardest by the pandemic. To date, both sites have already administered over 150,000 COVID-19 vaccines.

In addition, some 2,500 CUNY nursing students are assisting at state-run facilities including those at Medgar Evers and York, while nearly 1,000 students are volunteering throughout the NYC Health + Hospitals system’s 11 hospitals and Gotham Health community-based clinics throughout the five boroughs, under the supervision of CUNY faculty.

To check your eligibility to receive a COVID vaccine visit New York’s ‘Am I Eligible’ Website, or call 1-833-NYS-4-VAX (1-833-697-4829), or visit New York City’s COVID-19 Vaccine Finder. For the latest vaccine news and information about eligibility, appointments and evolving University guidance, visit CUNY’s Coronavirus page.