When Lakeisha Brown knocks on doors to talk about the coronavirus vaccines, she anticipates tough conversations. Oftentimes, folks are confused or scared of the jab. They have plenty of questions but few opportunities to get answers.

“I try not to be pushy,” Brown said. “I’m not here to make your mind up for you. I’m here to help you along the way.”

Most people are grateful that she cares enough to reach out, and they welcome the pamphlets she provides dispelling myths and rumors about the vaccines. She’s often walking the blocks of impoverished neighborhoods that have been overlooked or abandoned by the health care system.

Once, while canvassing in Colfax in Grant Parish, a homeowner sicced his dogs on her. She escaped unscathed but wasn’t fazed by the encounter. She said she's used to the polarizing reactions vaccines now elicit. It’s the reason why her job is important.

Since April, Louisiana has trained nearly 300 canvassers to go door to door in hard-to-reach communities to get public health information about the coronavirus vaccines directly in the hands of residents. The targeted outreach is paired with pop-up vaccination sites and is one component of the state’s sprawling campaign to boost inoculation rates.

Canvassing garnered renewed attention last week after President Joe Biden highlighted the work as an essential tool in the nation’s vaccination drive. His comments came as Louisiana braced itself for a startling — and avoidable — surge in coronavirus cases, fueled by lackluster vaccination rates and made worse by an aggressive new strain of the virus known as the delta variant.

“We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and, oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said Tuesday.   

Louisiana began its experiment in vaccine canvassing months ago as the centerpiece of its “Bring Back Louisiana” campaign. The operation modeled itself after the get-out-to-vote campaigns that materialize ahead of elections, with the goal of mobilizing residents to attend pop-up vaccination sites at nearby churches and community centers.

The program kicked off with a pilot in each of the state’s nine public health regions and focused on ZIP codes with lagging vaccination rates that ranked poorly on a social vulnerability index, a tool used by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to predict health outcomes. In a state like Louisiana, where well-being is often divided along racial lines, that primarily consisted of Black communities.

To recruit canvassers, the Health Department has relied on partners with relationships within the targeted communities. That has included groups like Together Louisiana, a faith-based organization with statewide contacts, and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, which boasts of its ability to turn out more than a quarter-million Black voters. The “vaccine champions,” as officials call them, are paid $15 an hour for their labor.

“Most of the people I come in contact with I’m familiar with in some way,” said Brown, whose canvassing has centered around Alexandria. “I live in the community. I am the community. They trust talking to me.”

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