PagerDuty Deploys $1M To Help Close The COVID-19 Global Vaccine Equity Gap
$1,000,000 in funding and product credits, and technical volunteer support deployed to eight organizations to equitably deliver COVID-19 vaccines, with a focus on increasing access and combating vaccine hesitancy in underserved communities.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the impact on underserved populations and the hardest-to-reach communities around the world compounds every day. With 84% of COVID-19 vaccinations being administered in high and upper-middle income countries, the majority of the world still does not have access to a vaccine. Vaccine availability, access, and trust has become critical to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity and relevant information to be vaccinated—including, and especially, those who have historically been economically or socially marginalized.
Vaccine distribution is incredibly complex, from temperature-controlled supply chain management and geographic allocations to appointment scheduling and data collection. PagerDuty’s digital operations management platform is built to handle real-time challenges like these. From orchestration across teams, supply and inventory management, and reliability across systems, to preventing and remediating extreme spikes in usage, PagerDuty is an essential tool to help create successful vaccine distribution and access.
Recognizing our platform’s immense potential to support the crucial and complex needs around vaccine distribution, we launched a $1 million USD open call for funding to ensure that COVID-19 vaccinations reach the most marginalized communities around the globe.
Photo Credit: Mobile Pathways
The goal of this funding round is to deliver more COVID-19 vaccines faster in the United States and globally—with a focus on underserved communities—and to help prepare communities and equip health systems to deploy and administer vaccines as they become globally available.
With a focus on equitable allocation and distribution, we focused our funding on two pathways to a solution:
- Vaccine Access and Distribution: Through this funding pathway, we are investing in tech-centric nonprofit partners who leverage PagerDuty. These are organizations who work to expediently and inclusively increase COVID-19 vaccine willingness and access for individuals and communities globally. Partners in this pathway will receive unrestricted funding, product credits, and specialized technical volunteer support from PagerDuty employees.
- Vaccine Equity: Through this funding pathway we’ve invested in nonprofit partners who are led by local leaders. These groups are leveraging community-based, peer-to-peer approaches to address vaccine hesitancy in their regions, and ensure equitable, safe access to vaccines in order to build trust, inclusion, and participation among marginalized communities in the United States and Canada. Partners in this pathway will receive unrestricted funding.
We are proud to announce the following recipients of our Equitable COVID-19 Vaccine Access and Distribution funding round.
Vaccine Access and Distribution Partners
CareMessage is a current PagerDuty customer using its patient engagement platform—the largest for underserved populations in the United States—to meet people where they are and help fulfill the critical healthcare needs of low-income, underserved communities. During the pandemic, CareMessage has helped address barriers throughout the vaccination process and build vaccine confidence through text message alerts. PagerDuty’s funding and product will enable the organization to expand its reach to one million underserved patients by making CareMessage’s tech-driven intervention available to additional community clinics.
“CareMessage’s infrastructure has enabled more than 10 million critical messages (and counting) around vaccine distribution and education via 250 healthcare provider partner organizations serving the most vulnerable Americans. Our ability to sustain this growing impact is directly tied to our use of PagerDuty’s solutions to monitor our infrastructure in real-time, providing the visibility and automation needed to proactively respond to issues and ensure patients receive the critical vaccine-related information they need.”
— Vineet Singal, Co-Founder and CEO
Turn.io is a social enterprise and current PagerDuty customer driving equitable access to healthcare. It does this by co-creating digital communication tools for nonprofit organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), and resource-constrained health ministries in Africa, South-East Asia, and Latin America. Reaching over 20 million people globally, Turn.io will leverage PagerDuty to expand and launch tools that utilize familiar digital channels, including Whatsapp, to provide vulnerable, disempowered and minority communities with easy and secure access to vital COVID-19 information and vaccine appointments schedulers.
WeRobotics seeks to enable locally-led applications of drone technology to tackle last-mile COVID-19 testing, vaccine delivery, and essential medical supply challenges in hard-to-reach communities. They have previously enabled medical drone deliveries in Peru, Dominican Republic, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Ghana and Madagascar, amongst other countries. With PagerDuty’s support, the organization will work with public health partners and marginalized communities in the Tawi Tawi province of the Philippines to deliver vaccines and critical supplies more rapidly to those who need them the most.
Vaccine Equity Partners
Code Tenderloin, a long time PagerDuty partner, has become the primary COVID-19 support organization in the San Francisco Area. It serves those hardest hit by the pandemic, including the underserved, homeless, LGBTQ+, and ethnic communities. With PagerDuty’s support, Code Tenderloin will partner with UCSF and GLIDE to implement a new COVID-19 Vaccination Program. The program will increase access to vaccines, leverage Code Tenderlon’s Neighborhood Ambassador Program to engage in on-the-ground outreach, and expand its Calming Corners program (of which PagerDuty was a founding partner in Spring 2020) to distribute hygiene kits and public health preventative education.
Code The Dream is a tech equity nonprofit working to ensure the nearly three million agriculture and migrant farmworkers across the United States receive culturally-relevant COVID-19 information in their preferred language and have access to the vaccine. With PagerDuty’s support, they will expand the reach of the two mobile apps its team has co-created with local partners. They are Conectate Carolina—the only app of its kind in North Carolina—and Vamos—an app currently used in five states—to help scale communication and outreach efforts to thousands of migrant workers. These workers may not be able to access the vaccine or up-to-date information due to isolation, language barriers, and lack of connection to resources in the community.
Doctors Without Borders will channel PagerDuty’s support to bolster its on-the-ground COVID-19 vaccination rollout program in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory which continues to experience major disparities in access to vaccines and medical services. Working with Puerto Rico Salud (a local organization founded by Doctors Without Borders aid workers), Doctors Without Borders will directly deliver lifesaving vaccines and combat vaccine hesitancy in hard-to-reach areas. The team will also reach vulnerable populations with high-risk factors—such as individuals who are experiencing homlessness, living in long-term care facilities, and/or living with disabilities.
Mobile Pathways is a pioneer for democratizing justice via technology. It has formed a coalition of 26 immigration-focused grassroots organizations that work across rural and metro regions in California, Texas, New York, South Dakota, New Jersey, United States-Mexico border areas. Its teams work to educate under-documented and detained immigrants and refugees about their vaccine rights, and to combat vaccine misinformation via data-driven outreach efforts. PagerDuty’s funding will support local partner campaigns to help overcome vaccine reluctance within these communities and help families navigate the vaccination process through mobile technology.
“PagerDuty’s support will enable Mobile Pathways to expand its coalition of immigration-based nonprofits that leverage technology to support direct outreach via text message and video to marginalized communities in the United States and Mexico. Our community-based approach addresses vaccine hesitancy by providing trusted information and resources to ensure equitable, safe access to the Covid-19 vaccine.”
— Bart Skorupa, Co-Founder & Development Director
Vision y Compromiso is a community health organization serving Latino residents in Central Valley, California, including low-wage farmworkers, frontline essential workers, and immigrants and refugees of all ages and residency status. With support from PagerDuty, Vision y Compromiso’s trained teams of Promotores—community leaders—will carry out culturally and linguistically relevant outreach and education to reach 10,000 residents. These programs will ensure equitable vaccine access in Central Valley counties that have been disproportionately impacted by high rates of COVID-19 infections, deaths, economic turmoil, and mental health and education crises.
PagerDuty.org is proud to support and partner with these organizations working to increase vaccine availability, access, and trust. Our efforts will ensure everyone has the opportunity and relevant information to be vaccinated—including and especially those who have historically been economically or socially marginalized. Together, we will deliver more COVID-19 vaccines faster in the United States and globally—with a focus on underserved communities—and to help prepare communities and equip health systems to deploy and administer vaccines as they become globally available.
Go Give One Campaign To Close the Global Vaccine Equity Gap
In addition to the $1 million USD commitment to our partners, PagerDuty co-launched the Go Give One Coalition campaign in June alongside Salesforce, Workday, Russell Reynolds, and Pledge 1%. The campaign aims to take a global, proactive approach to drive funding upstream, in order to mobilize a global approach to equitably procure and distribute vaccines to the hardest-to-reach communities.
Created by the World Health Organization (WHO) Foundation, the funding raised will go to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC). COVAX AMC is an innovative financial mechanism to ensure that the poorest countries receive COVID-19 vaccines, regardless of their ability to pay.
Together with our coalition partners, we call on our employees, customers, and industry peers to come together to ensure everyone, everywhere can receive the vaccine and help reach our collective goal of delivering two billion doses by early 2022. Just $5 provides a life-saving vaccine for someone who needs it. Our collective energy can help vaccinate billions of people around the world, protecting everyone’s loved ones and safeguarding our communities.
PagerDuty.org is committed to protecting and advancing equal opportunity for all persons to enjoy maximal health and wellbeing by ensuring everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated. We are proud to support and partner with these organizations to deliver more COVID-19 vaccines faster.