Testing

Refugee, immigrant, and migrant (RIM) community members have experienced significant obstacles to accessing consistent and free COVID-testing. Community members face a lack of walk-up and/or trusted testing sites, limited (and fluctuating) cost-free testing supplies and a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate testing resources on-site. Testing is a critical tool in the mitigation of COVID-19, particularly during surges.

To reach communities that are most impacted by inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to integrate considerations for these communities of focus into all aspects of the response efforts. When equity work is sequestered to one area of the response, there are often siloes in the work and equity considerations can become reactive instead of proactive.

In the COVID-19 response, partnerships are essential to reach underserved communities, maximize resources, reduce duplication of efforts, and improve the delivery of culturally- and linguistically-appropriate services and resources. Community Health Workers (CHWs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and local health departments (LHDs) share goals to improve community health, particularly among disproportionately impacted populations.

In the COVID-19 response, partnerships are essential to reach underserved communities, maximize resources, reduce duplicating efforts, and improve the delivery of services and resources. Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and local health departments (LHDs) share goals to improve community health, particularly among disproportionately impacted populations. Collaboration allows limited federal, state, and local resources to be targeted and allocated to areas that need the resources most.

Refugee, immigrant, and migrant (RIM) community members face several challenges to accessing COVID-19 testing services due to transportation barriers; difficulty using online registration platforms; and inability to use drive-through testing services if they do not have a car. Furthermore, COVID-19 educational resources may not be translated into RIM languages at traditional COVID-19 testing sites and different elements of the testing process may feel unfamiliar or be challenging to navigate.