Hot off the press from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is guidance for workplaces about vaccines, including tips on messaging and facts, particularly targeted to essential worker employers. While we need to rely on our individual state public health organizations for messages specific to vaccine scheduling and priorities, occupational health and safety and health professionals will find more detailed information at this time from CDC and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to help us communicate with our workforce. I appreciate being part of NIOSH’s team to provide guidance to employers for the safe return of our workforce during the pandemic through my Interagency Personnel Agreeement between NIOSH and OHSU. I will work to continue to share information, like this, with our stakeholders and partners in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest as quickly as possible.

From the CDC COVID-19 Volunteer Task Force Essential Workers Team

CDC has designed a COVID-19 Vaccination Communication Toolkit for Essential Workers to help employers build confidence in this important new vaccine. The toolkit will help employers across various industries educate their workforce about COVID-19 vaccines, raise awareness about the benefits of vaccination, and address common questions and concerns.

The toolkit contains a variety of resources including:

• key messages,
• an educational slide deck,
• FAQs
• posters/flyers,
• newsletter content,
• a plain language vaccine factsheet (available in several different languages),
• a template letter for employees,
• social media content, and
• vaccination sticker templates.

Partners are encouraged to adapt the key messages to the language, tone, and format that will resonate with the organizations and industries you serve.  It has been requested that you may place your logo on materials that have a place for your logo, but to please retain the CDC URL. The toolkit also includes sample social media posts to help promote the toolkits. targeting vaccine information to share with professional society chapters, affiliates and members (including organizations such as ACOEM, AAOHN, ASSP, AIHA and so forth.) CDC will continue to add more materials to this toolkit, so check back frequently for updates.

Finally, here in Oregon scheduling and prioritization of vaccinations information is changing rapidly. Currently, Oregon is finishing up vaccines for those in Phase 1a group with expectation to move into Phase 1b shortly (to include childcare providers, early learning and K-12 staff eligible 1/25/21 followed by people 80 years and old eligible 2/8/21, and those 75 and 70 years and 65 years plus TBA.) These are changing targets so be sure to access the Oregon Health Authority vaccine website for the most current information.  Here are some of the best places to keep up with who is currently prioritized for vaccinations and available clinics in Oregon:

• OHA COVID-19 Vaccine information for Oregon
• OHSU COVID-19 Vaccines
• Providence through Covenant Health COVID-19 information
• Kaiser Permanente COVID-19 information

See also: COVID and the World of Work for additional pandemic resources.