FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Biden-Harris Administration Launches National Vaccination Outreach Drive for Underserved Communities
$144 Million American Rescue Plan Initiative Deploys 14,000+ Community Health Workers to Close Persistent Immunization Gaps
Washington, D.C. – November 21, 2025
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced a nationwide expansion of its National Vaccination Outreach Program, targeting the one-in-five Americans who remain under-immunized against COVID-19, influenza, and emerging respiratory threats. The initiative—funded by a fresh $144 million allocation from the American Rescue Plan—will embed more than 14,000 community health workers (CHWs) in 200 high-need counties through 150 local and national partner organizations.
A 2024 analysis by the National Academy for State Health Policy found that states using data-driven clinic placement and trusted-messenger campaigns raised first-dose uptake in communities of color by up to 28 percentage points within six months . Building on that evidence, the new federal program will equip each deployed CHW with tablet-based enrollment tools, real-time vaccine-hesitancy analytics, and a sliding-scale transportation voucher fund that covers an estimated 450,000 rides to pop-up sites over the next 12 months.
“Every additional 10 percent of the population we vaccinate in underserved zip codes prevents roughly 2,400 hospitalizations and $41 million in acute-care costs,” said Dr. Cynthia Hallett, CEO of the Public Health Institute, which is co-leading the outreach consortium. “By pairing hyper-local data with culturally competent messengers, we can finally narrow the 18-percentage-point coverage gap that has persisted between White and Black adults since 2021.”
The program’s first phase, launching December 2, will prioritize 48 counties identified by the CDC as having both low booster uptake and high Social Vulnerability Index scores. Mobile “vaccination buses” staffed by bilingual CHWs will rotate among faith centers, dollar stores, and night-shift factory parking lots, offering same-day appointments with no insurance or ID requirement. A parallel home-bound initiative will dispatch 1,200 EMS-certified teams to administer vaccines to roughly 60,000 seniors and people with disabilities who cannot travel.
Early projections from HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation indicate the outreach blitz could avert 42,000 symptomatic COVID cases and 890 deaths by April 2026, while generating $3.20 in direct medical savings for every $1 invested. The effort also earmarks 15 percent of funds for tribal nations and Pacific Island territories, where historical under-investment has left immunization rates 22 percent below the national average.
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