Valleywise Health Creates Videos in 11 Languages to Combat COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation among Refugee Communities

Valleywise Health

As an Arizona leader in refugee care, Valleywise Health has launched its latest COVID-19 video series for refugee communities. Recently, educational videos on COVID-19 vaccines were produced in 11 languages to increase vaccine awareness, reduce misconceptions and reduce hesitancy to receive vaccine in Arizona’s growing refugee community.

“There is tremendous vaccine hesitancy in the refugee community and a lot of misinformation. We really wanted to combat that with factual information in a very digestible manner and in their native language,” said Dr. Crista Johnson Agbakwu, founding director of the Refugee Womens Health Clinic and a physician with District Medical Group.The video series features cultural health navigators from Valleywise Health’s Refugee Womens Health Clinic and Pediatric Refugee Clinic. Languages include Burmese, Kirundi, Lingala, Maay Maay, Spanish, Arabic, Somali, S’gaw Karen, Kinyarwanda and Swahili.

“The cultural health navigators are represented in the videos as trusted figures who speak their language, who have a lived shared experience and who understand their culture,” Dr. Johnson Agbakwu said.

This is the second set of COVID-19 education videos produced by Valleywise Health for refugees. The first videos, which debuted on YouTube at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, have been viewed more than 200,000 times.

The video outreach is part of a collaboration between Valleywise Health and the Arizona Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

Covid Vaccine Info for Refugees Playlist