Sentinel Communities Insights—COVID-19: One Year Later Vaccine Roll-Out, Implications for Community Recovery, and Critical Gaps that Remain: White Plains, New York
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: July 2021
This report examines pandemic recovery in White Plains, N.Y., 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:
- New York’s vaccination rollout, including in White Plains and surrounding Westchester County, was largely successful. Westchester Medical Center Health Network created a task force to address lower vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic residents.
- Corporations headquartered in White Plains, such as MasterCard and PepsiCo, helped fund the health care system’s medical response to COVID-19. The mayor of White Plains used existing relationships with community organizations to provide information and support to underserved populations who were bearing the brunt of COVID-19.
- The Business Council of Westchester’s Coalition for Smart Development launched a task force to lead an economic recovery strategy.
- New York extended its eviction and foreclosure moratorium through August 2021. Westchester County Department of Planning created a program to help homeowners and renters pay housing costs and stay in their homes.
- White Plains Public Schools provided a mix of in-person and online learning at the start of the 2020–2021 school year and transitioned to full-time in-person learning beginning in March.
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 White Plains, N.Y.
In this report, the authors wanted to paint a picture of the situation in White Plains soon after the one-year anniversary of the pandemic.
Hypothesis or Approach
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 White Plains, N.Y. In this report, the authors wanted to paint a picture of the situation in White Plains soon after the one-year anniversary of the pandemic.
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 White Plains, N.Y., 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.
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