Geoffrey M. Roche, Harrisburg University Executive Director of Healthcare Initiatives and Partnerships, has been selected to serve on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force’s Racial Equity Subcommittee which is focused on the state’s vaccination rollout and COVID-19 fight.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found “long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19,” according to Gov. Wolf’s office.
The Department of Health (DOH) has worked throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to address these disparities, but community partnerships and leadership from trusted messengers is critical in addressing racial inequities.
This subcommittee will help with messaging of current efforts to advocates and stakeholders, lift issues for the consideration of the administration and the legislature and provide more public input into the current vaccine rollout process.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roche has stepped up to serve on numerous local, state, and national committees and taskforces, including the National Health Equity Task Force of the National Infrastructure for Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 within Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities (NIMIC) initiative out of the CDC Foundation and Morehouse School of Medicine, the Pennsylvania Department of Health Office of Health Equity Advisory Committee, the Lebanon County Economic Recovery Taskforce Leadership Team, and more.
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Accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Harrisburg University is a private nonprofit university offering bachelor and graduate degree programs in science, technology, and math fields to a diverse student body. For more information on the University’s affordable demand-driven undergraduate and graduate programs, call 717.901.5146 or email, Connect@HarrisburgU.edu.
