America Ferrera is among the “army of moms” participating in a national campaign to spread accurate information about COVID vaccines for children. The Department of Health and Human Services‘ We Can Do This/Juntos Si Podemos COVID Vaccine Public Education Campaign has partnered with the actress to tell her story of what it’s been like raising her young children during these challenging times.
According to Ferrera, she thinks differently about certain things she did before the pandemic. “The value of community. I’ve always valued my community and held my people close, but I had a newborn child at the beginning of the pandemic, which can be an isolating experience on a good day,” she says. “To really be physically isolated from your community from your support system — a recovery of a mother who’s recovering from giving birth, a newborn baby, a toddler who has needs —it was a lot to go through alone.”
© @americaferrera“I think the real embodied experience it’s really hard to be isolated from the community really changes how I look at and value my community and the energy that I want to put into developing my community and keeping my community close and making sure that I’m investing the time and the energy and the thought into the things that truly bring real value to my life into my children’s lives and to my family’s life.”
In addition to America, the campaign also recruited local moms in nine cities to set up interviews with doctors. The moms coordinated with other families in their area to develop interview questions so the doctors could talk about the most common questions in their community. These moms were recruited through a partnership with the City Mom Collective.
The We Can Do This/Juntos Si Podemos campaign is a national initiative to increase public confidence and adoption of COVID vaccines while reinforcing basic prevention measures, such as the use of masks and social distancing.
© @americaferreraThrough a national network of trusted and consistent fact-based public health messages, the campaign helps the public make informed decisions about their health and COVID, including steps to protect themselves and their communities. The effort is driven by communication science and provides personalized information for at-risk groups.
