Protect Alabama: A Doomed Public Health Campaign

By Holden Habermacher

Alabama's vaccination rate stands at a disappointing 33.6%. To try and combat widespread vaccine hesitancy, the state has begun a program to encourage vaccinations. The Alabama Department of Public Health has released a series of campaign videos with state celebrities, such as Charles Barkley and Nick Saban, in an effort to amp up the vaccination rate. Yet, these campaigns have done little to help with vaccine hesitancy.

Sports are a huge part of Southern culture and figures such as Saban and Barkley wield a great deal of influence in the state. With about 25,000 students from Alabama high schools going to either the University of Alabama or Auburn, those institutions have a huge sway over much of Alabama’s youth. To try and encourage vaccinations within a large swath of people, the Alabama Department of Public Health launched Protect Alabama. This campaign utilized Alabama’s sporting culture by recruiting Alabama sports icons. The campaign included Charles Barkley, an NBA hall of famer and former Auburn basketball player, and Nick Saban, the head coach of the reigning college football champion Alabama, both of whom encouraged Alabamians to get vaccinated.

The campaign has only enjoyed minimal success. Since the last vaccine video from Protect Alabama was released in late June, Alabama’s vaccine rate has only risen 1.4%. Unless vaccines become required, many Alabamians seem unlikely to receive the shot, and appear happy to continue unvaccinated while disregarding most protocols. Considering that disregard, it is likely many of Alabama’s unvaccinated people will die from the virus or its variants as nearly all COVID-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated.

Even if sports play a large role in the lives of many Alabamians, a vaccine encouragement campaign which relies on the state’s most prominent sports figures can do little in the face of overwhelming vaccine hesitancy. If anything, this campaign may turn out to be a hindrance for some, who feel the state is taking advantage of its celebrated heroes. Government mistrust is a difficult problem that should be fixed by addressing poverty, terrible school structures, and wide access to health care in their communities, not by manipulating Alabamians heartstrings and forcing them into further hesitancies. To help curb this and the next pandemic, Alabama needs to work harder to prove to all citizens that the government is an entity of helpfulness and truth, not of deception and failure.