INDIANAPOLIS — Getting a flu shot in Indianapolis is easier than ever before, as Indianapolis EMS holds a month-long mobilized flu shot clinic.
It’s part of a partnership with Shepherd Community Center, Indiana State Department of Health, Marion County Public Health Department, and the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
IEMS is the first in the state to pilot a program like this. The goal is to help protect community members against the flu.
They also hope to create a plan for the future as they work to figure out the best way to get vaccines out to a large group of people so they will be ready to go if or when a COVID-19 vaccine is available.
"What we are doing is we are going to identify best practices and create that roadmap for other EMS agencies across the state to help stand up mass vaccination clinics, not just for the flu, but future pandemics as well, and most notably right now with COVID-19,” said Shane Hardwick, a paramedic with IEMS.
They hope to gather data and figure out how many people they can safely vaccinate in a specified time period. They decided to work with Shepherd Community Center because people who live in this area could be most at risk.
“The benefit of the 46201 and 46203 zip code is that there is a lot of multi-generational families that live within this neighborhood," Hardwick said. "You have very young and very old living in the same house and that's the people that we are most concerned about with flu obviously is the young and the old."
The mobile clinics will be held at Shepherd Community Center each Wednesday throughout the month of October. They run from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. and 4 – 8 p.m.
