Community advocates and health officials are working to engage with Nevada's diverse communities and reach out in Spanish and other languages as the state lays plans for mass COVID-19 vaccinations.

Community advocates and health officials are working to engage with the state’s diverse communities and reach out in Spanish and other languages as Nevada lays plans for mass coronavirus vaccinations. Erika Marquez, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas public health professor and vice chair of the Nevada Minority Health & Equity Coalition, said merely translating information about the vaccine into other languages is not enough. “We had to engage these communities in the conversation, and that takes some time,” Marquez told the Las Vegas Sun. Nevada is a diverse state with a 29% Latino population that includes native Spanish speakers. Nevada also has a fast-growing group of Asian American and Pacific Islanders, of which 70% speak a language other than English at home, according to data shared by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote. Marquez’s coalition has been working throughout the pandemic to share information encouraging physical distancing, hand hygiene and masks with diverse communities and is preparing vaccine education materials in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Thai.

Community advocates and health officials are working to engage with Nevada’s diverse communities and reach out in Spanish and other languages as the state lays plans for mass coronavirus vaccinations.

Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey has rejected the state’s top education official’s call for Ducey to order public schools to use only online instruction for the next two weeks unless they have waivers from health officials.

Government and nonprofit health and community services organizations are expanding their COVID-19 educational campaigns about the newly released vaccines not just in English and Spanish, but soon, Thai and Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese.