Funding Opportunity to Prevent COVID-19 in Refugee, Immigrant, & Migrant Communities

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A new funding opportunity is now available for local health departments and community-based organizations to assist these groups to reach refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities to prevent and decrease COVID-19. A strong focus of the project is on strengthening and increasing partnerships between local health departments and refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities, as well as between community-based organizations and local health departments. The new funding is provided by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Community-based organizations and health departments are invited to apply, regardless of previous relationships with local refugee, immigrant, and migrant (RIM) communities. Applicants for the grants will be categorized into ‘Tier 1’ or ‘Tier 2’ applicants dependent on their proposed projects. Tier 1 applicants include those applicants who are proposing one or more communications activities focused on preventing or decreasing COVID-19 which would be completed in a partnership with their local refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities. These proposed activities might include “health communications that raise awareness of risk, promote preventive measures such as mask wearing and social distancing, or address vaccine hesitancy,” as described on NACCHO’s Request for Applications page [2]. Tier 2 applicants include those who propose a Tier 1 activity, in addition to a supplemental “secondary prevention activity to support scale up of COVID-19 vaccine delivery, testing, and/or contact tracing in partnership with the RIM community.” A maximum of $175,000 will be available for those in Tier 1 and a maximum of $250,000 will be available for those applicants in Tier 2.

NACCHO aims to “improve COVID-19 prevention and mitigation and reduce inequities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in funded jurisdictions and to identify best practices and sustainable models for preventing COVID-19 and other communicable diseases through partnerships between [local health departments] and RIM populations.” Other goals include to determine models and best practices that may be used to address other diseases during future efforts to reach refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities as well as to “identify sustainable approaches for strengthening partnerships between LHDs and RIM populations and adapting public health strategies for RIM populations.”

Applications for the grants are due June 11, 2021 at 11:59 PM PT. For additional information, access the NACCHO’s grant page here [3]. Grant receivers should expect the project to continue over a 12-month period.

This project offers a great funding opportunity for community organizations to work with health departments to help refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities prevent COVID-19. Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) can offer technical assistance for any community-based organizations that require assistance with applying or designing outreach strategies, especially those related to Tier 1 communications projects. For more information on MCN’s experience working with local health departments, community-based organizations, and refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities on CDC-funded projects intended to work with and reach refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities regarding strategies and communications campaigns to prevent and decrease COVID-19, please see the following links. For questions, please contact Cloé Destinoble at cdestinoble@migrantclinician.org [4].