Monday, January 10, 2022
What is COVID-19? Why does everyone need a vaccine? Why do the recommendations about COVID-19 keep changing? What is all the talk about needing a booster shot? Who better to answer these questions than a doctor who works with many members of the disability community in the District of Columbia (DC), and who has provided care for many years to the disability community. Dr. Kim Bullock is a family physician, who starred in a series of videos answering these questions about the virus and the vaccine. Dr. Bullock is the Medical Director at Providence Urgent Care Center in DC, and an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Georgetown University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (GUCEDD).
Updates around the virus and the vaccine keep changing. In choosing the topics for these videos, the GUCEDD team had to consider what information would still be relevant as new information arises. These topics were all raised in a conversation with a local self-advocacy group, Project ACTION!
Throughout the series, the GUCEDD team chose to use Dr. Bullock’s first name to keep the videos a little simpler and easier to remember: Ask Dr. Kim. The series addresses people who still have questions about the virus and require more confidence about getting the vaccination.
The Ask Dr. Kim video series can be found on the COVID-19 project page of the GUCEDD website. Four versions of the series are available for accessibility, with Spanish language dub-over, American Sign Language (ASL), audio description, and English language versions. The videos are also short in length to be shared on social media, and in plain language for additional accessibility.
These videos are important for persons with disabilities to see because the disabled population has an increased risk of getting sick with more complications and of dying than the rest of the population. “Persons with disabilities are more likely to be sicker, require hospitalization, and potentially have worse outcomes [from the virus],” Bullock said in one of the videos.
These videos carry the message that getting the vaccine protects the community, and we are getting vaccinated to prevent death and the spread of the infection within our families and within our communities.