Shortly after the FDA approved emergency use authorization of two COVID-19 vaccines, California ranked 49th in vaccine distribution.

California’s geography and diversity were its greatest challenges. Mega-cities and small towns are linked by a network of local health jurisdictions (LHJs). Over 200 languages are spoken across the state.

Many residents, particularly in hard-hit minority communities, are skeptical of government policies, unsure about vaccine access, and distrustful of media.

The State turned to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to orchestrate the massive distribution and communications effort. The solution required new ways of communicating and unprecedented deployment speed. It needed to create awareness of a new brand, address distrust, consider diversity, simplify eligibility questions, and work with 61 LHJs and thousands of providers.

The solution had to enable learnings, optimizations, and scalability. Finally, it had to react in real-time to expanding eligibility, availability, and equitability. Vaccinating California would be Herculean.

Removing barriers to COVID-19 vaccine access simply wasn’t enough. Californians, both public and clinic, needed a central point of truth, a resource that was informational and actionable, a reliable, equitable path to vax and facts, informed by a sense of community, that “We’re all in this together”. A new brand, My Turn, was created for both public and clinics.

The portals became the integration point between the public, providers and California Department of Public Health. Beyond functionality, like registering for eligibility updates, scheduling appointments and reporting, it provided the foundation for messaging consistency across the entire patient journey and associated awareness campaigns.

Our cross-channel strategy encompassed the complete patient experience, including virtual assistant, emails and texts, community management, call centers, social posts, and campaign materials that helped local health jurisdictions and clinics consistently spread the word about My Turn and get their communities vaccinated.

Strategy: Get vaccinated. Quickly.

With no playbook for a global pandemic, we knew we could drive action by helping people easily find and receive the vaccine, so life could get back to normal.

Science suggested “normal” meant a significant portion of vaccinated Californians. Data showed education, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation impact hesitancy. Other research confirmed vaccination rates increase when more people go first.

Our strategy needed to address all audiences and barriers. It had to provide timely content, address evolving sentiment and guide users, supporting them whether they were registering for notifications or wondering what to bring to their appointment.

Public: Health fears, misinformation, skepticism, and frustrations over appointment availability heightened Californian’s anxiety and accelerated their need to know

Medical Community: While this audience had vaccine distribution experience, they had never faced a statewide effort this enormous. Thousands worked to distribute COVID 19 vaccines, including LHJs, clinic managers, and practitioners.

My Turn is an end-to-end experience, launched at record speed, which became California’s source for everything COVID-19 vaccine-related. Messaging was clear: Everyone gets a turn. We drove Californians to My Turn with audience-specific awareness campaigns which could react in real-time.

Once underway, we defined the patient journey and communications plan, across email, text, call centers, and social. This nurture campaign helped patients navigate eligibility, availability, confirmations, and more.

Californians’ response helped us refine the experience, updating content based on sentiment, increasing CRM type and cadence, and focusing on equitable distribution. We cleared pathways with virtual assistants, group/family scheduling, walk-in searches, in-home vaccinations, and transportation. An API with third-party clinics helped Californians find appointments convenient to home/work.

For the medical community, we integrated systems and included functionality like geofencing and coded clinics to enhance equity. We provided promotional support, including printable patient forms in 14 languages for clinics without reliable internet.

When My Turn launched in January 2021, California had the nation’s second highest COVID-19 case rate. By April, it had the lowest, with up to 95k vaccines/day. Launched in 10 days, the portal enabled mass vaccination sites to administer 10,000 vaccines/days just 17 days later.

The multifaceted program rapidly increased vaccinations across the state, making California one of few states to achieve a week-over-week increase.

The incentive program drove a 33% increase in vaccinations, including 10% in the hard-hit Latino community.

California achieved 70% of adults partially vaccinated a month ahead of schedule.

Success enabled us to expand brand support into flu season and during the Omicron spike, helping residents easily find testing.

As trust grew on the clinic side, so did the numbers. Participating LHJs increased from the pilot’s original 2 to 60, while daily vaccinations jumped from 93 to 95,844 in the first 3 months.