During a recent Lunar Festival in Riverside, Jennifer Cardenas talked with a young Latino man about getting vaccinated for COVID-19.

After a few minutes of conversation, the man said the main reason he wasn’t vaccinated was fear that getting his name “in the system” might lead to trouble for a family member who’s undocumented.

Cardenas, herself Latina, explained that California allows all residents to get free vaccinations without questioning their immigration status, while federal officials have confirmed that they won’t use COVID-19 testing or vaccination information when they make immigration decisions.

She saw a change come over the young man’s face.

“Those little connections are what really drive us to continue this work,” Cardenas said.

Cardenas, 34, of Fontana, is an outreach specialist with the national nonprofit Young Invincibles, which supports young adults in everything from access to healthcare to training in civic leadership. For the past year, she’s been helping to guide a team of volunteers in a project known as Generation Vaxxed. The goal is to combat COVID-19 misinformation and help young people of all backgrounds to make informed decisions about vaccinations.

Young adults continue to trail older adults in terms of vaccination rates. While 80% of Americans ages 50 to 64 had been fully vaccinated as of Feb. 11, the same was true of just 61% of adults 18 to 24 years old, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.

Government and health agencies have used social media and other communication tools to encourage young people to get vaccinated, saying the shots will dramatically reduce your personal risk of getting hospitalized or dying of COVID-19, and they’ll help slow transmission of the disease within the community.

As part of that outreach, those agencies also have teamed up with trusted community groups, such as Young Invincibles, to help spread the word, particularly among hard-to-reach populations.

Last year, Young Invincibles received grants from the federal government, as well as the national nonprofit Community Catalyst and the Los Angeles County COVID-19 Community Equity Fund. In each case, the money is aimed at engaging directly with young people in diverse communities about getting vaccinated and boosted.

“I feel like it does take a longer conversation,” Cardenas said, with the message best received when it comes from people with similar lived experiences. “I think that’s the barrier we’re breaking.”

Reaching people where they are

The grant from L.A. County is how Chynna Lloyd got hired with Young Invincibles shortly after she graduated from Cal State Northridge last year with a major in public health. Lloyd, 23, helped create the Generation Vaxxed campaign, which her nonprofit has now rolled out in California, Colorado, Illinois, Texas and New York.

Lloyd’s mother, who immigrated from Belize, is not “anti-vax,” Lloyd explained. But as a Black woman, Lloyd said, her mother has been distrustful of the U.S. healthcare system ever since learning how her people had been used in medical experiments for centuries. So when the COVID-19 vaccine came out last year and government officials were pushing for “essential workers,” which included large percentages of Black and Brown people, to get in line first, Lloyd said her mother initially feared they were once again being used to test the safety of a new treatment.

Lloyd got vaccinated. Once her mom saw she was fine, she got the shots herself, calling around to pharmacies so she could get Moderna doses just like her daughter.

Being able to relay that personal experience has helped Lloyd connect with other people who’ve had many of the same concerns as her mother, she said.

“It’s important to have those hard conversations, to listen and see where they’re coming from.”

To that end, Lloyd organized a series of listening sessions last summer where more than 100 young adults shared their concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine. Her team used what they learned to train staff and volunteers about how to talk to people. The sessions also led to a series of fliers with carefully researched responses to common questions about vaccines, and a website, DontMissOutLA.org.

They’ve also done a “Don’t miss out L.A.” sticker campaign, TikTok and IGTV videos, and a text banking effort that reaches at least 2,400 Southern California residents a month.

In early February, the Young Invincibles organized a “weekend of action” around the second anniversary of the U.S. declaring COVID-19 a public health emergency. A team of 63 volunteers reached 1.2 million people on social media, sent more than 70,000 texts reminding people to get vaccinated and providing a COVID-19 vaccine clinic finder, and spoke with more than 1,500 people at events and during door-to-door canvassing.

One of those volunteers was Diana Contreras, 25, of Rancho Cucamonga, who’s a philosophy student at Cal State San Bernardino. Contreras said she’s particularly motivated to get more people vaccinated because her mom, who’s had brain surgery, has a weakened immune system. She shared a bit of that story as she approached people sitting at cafes and in bookstores during outreach efforts earlier this month in Riverside.

While it’s difficult to measure direct results, Contreras is confident those conversations had an impact.

“When you make a connection with someone, it’s kind of like you make a small commitment,” she said. “Later, they might think, ‘I talked to this person. Maybe she is right.’”

Combating misinformation

A common concern expressed to Young Invincibles staffers and volunteers is that the would-be vaccine recipient simply can’t afford to miss work. Many work hourly jobs, with limited if any sick pay, and they’re living paycheck to paycheck. If side effects from the vaccine make them miss a day or two, they’ll struggle to put food on the table or pay rent that month.

Young Invincibles activists remind people that vaccine side effects typically are mild, and they’re much more likely to miss extended work time if they become severely ill with COVID-19. Contreras also encourages young people to talk to their employers. Her company, for example, will pay for up to 80 hours of missed work for anyone experiencing symptoms after getting the vaccine.

When it comes to combating misinformation, Lloyd said the Young Invincibles team trains to approach these conversations from a place of empathy. Often, people have heard questionable information from trusted friends or family members, and Lloyd said her group isn’t going to convince anybody that their grandma or uncle is wrong. Instead, they share facts and cite their sources, with a series of “myth-buster” fliers that flash during outreach sessions. Lloyd added that her group doesn’t push anybody for a commitment, but instead they explain that they hope people will make informed decisions.

Using that approach, none of the volunteers has had a conversation turn hostile, despite the polarizing nature of the topic.

Sometimes, the activists hear false claims about vaccines containing microchips. More often, Lloyd said, young people express concern that the vaccines might affect their fertility. So the outreach workers share research that shows vaccinations have no impact on fertility for males or females, while COVID-19 can at least temporarily reduce fertility for men and pose serious risks for pregnant women and their babies.

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Some young people ask why they should even get the vaccine if they can still get COVID-19. So they share statistics such as how the risk of death is 68 times higher for unvaccinated adults who contract COVID-19 than for adults who are fully vaccinated and boosted. Lloyd also tells her own story of getting COVID-19 after she was vaccinated and feeling like she had a slight cold, while a good friend who wasn’t vaccinated called her saying, “Girl, I feel like I’m going to die.”

Despite their communication drive, Lloyd said it’s clear to her that the only thing likely to make some young people get vaccinated are mandates. She’s talked with many college students who said they’d get shots only if it’s required by, say, their dorm or a music festival. That’s why Lloyd’s team named their local effort “Don’t miss out L.A.” because that approach is proving effective.

No matter why they ultimately get vaccinated, Cardenas said the hope is that the young people who do get their shots will share that experience, and the information they’ve learned, with their own communities. In that way, she said, those people will build on the work her group is doing.

“That’s one of our goals,” Cardenas said, “to create these trusted messengers.”