Sentinel Communities Insights—COVID-19: One Year Later Vaccine Roll-Out, Implications for Community Recovery, and Critical Gaps that Remain: Tacoma Washington
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: July 2021
This report examines pandemic recovery in Tacoma, Wash., one year after the start of COVID-19, focusing on how the area rolled out vaccines, advanced economic recovery and equitable housing, and returned students to in-person schooling.
Primary Takeaways
Among the authors’ findings:
- Washington State and the city of Tacoma collaboratively rolled out vaccines, incorporated lessons learned from H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccination campaigns and attempted to address vaccine inequities in their plans.
- The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department focused on access to testing, partnered with community groups, and mailed tests to residents’ homes. County council members tried to dismantle the department but were rebuffed by supportive residents.
- Layoffs at Boeing and its suppliers deeply impacted the region. The state and county offered support to small businesses to weather the pandemic and reopen safely.
- The city provided over $1 million in rental aid and opened new shelters to allow for social distancing among those experiencing homelessness.
- Tacoma Public School took a cautious approach to reopening. Despite precautions, schools experienced outbreaks in early 2021.
Overview and Objectives
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began tracking response and recovery in nine communities that were part of its Sentinel Communities Project, including Tacoma, Wash.
In this report, the authors wanted to paint a picture of the situation in Tacoma soon after the one-year anniversary of the pandemic.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors collected information available through mid-May 2021.
How This Influences Change
Understanding how local officials responded to the pandemic, rolled out vaccines, and promoted their community’s recovery can help shape future policies and responses to new health threats.
Research: Go Deeper
In 2020, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) began tracking the COVID-19 response and recovery efforts of nine communities across the United States with the goal of better understanding how the pandemic, and the local response to it, is impacting health, well-being, and equity in those communities. Lessons from these nine Sentinel Communities may also be informative to other communities on their journeys to respond to and recover from COVID-19 and promote health and well-being more broadly.
Previous reports summarized the pandemic’s early impacts (published July 2020), the ways cross-sector collaboration has contributed to ongoing response and recovery efforts (published October 2020), and the impact of the pandemic on children and families (published March 2021). In this report, over a year into the pandemic, we review efforts toward vaccination and community response and recovery across sectors—and the critical gaps that remain.
The past year has shown that recovery from COVID-19 has demanded a response across sectors—health, economic, housing, education, and more—and communities have approached their response across these sectors in different ways. The American Rescue Plan also brings historic funding to local communities and communities have significant discretion over how funds are used. While some have used COVID-19 response and recovery resources
to reaffirm their approaches to health and equity, other communities continue to encounter long-standing barriers to solving such entrenched community problems.
In this report, based on information available through mid-May 2021, we look at the path Tacoma, Wash., has taken toward COVID-19 vaccination, health and well-being, economic recovery, equitable housing, and in-person schooling, keeping an eye on the gaps that still must be addressed to achieve equitable community recovery.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, July 2021
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- RAND Corporation
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