Mary Quinlan: Fighting for health equity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic

July 7, 2021 | By Kortney Scroger

Mary Quinlan’s connection with MultiCare began with her experience as a mother with sons who needed care at the MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) after birth. Their special health care needs and regular appointments at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital kept Quinlan home.

Because of her personal and professional experience, Quinlan decided to become a family support social worker for Parenting Partnership, a program at Mary Bridge Children’s that provides extra support to families facing the challenges of caring for a medically fragile child. She’s since been with MultiCare for more than 20 years.

Today, Quinlan is the Executive Director of MultiCare’s Center for Health Equity and Wellness.

The center promotes healthy lifestyle choices and works to address health disparities in our communities to improve population health outcomes. The center’s mission is to address health inequities so that everyone has access to health care when, where and how they need it.

Quinlan and her team try to address and remove as many barriers to access as possible.

“Some of the populations that we’re trying to serve might need additional support to have a positive experience and outcome with their health care delivery,” she says, “It’s important that we have the necessary tools to address their needs.”

Typically, this work includes partnering with public health agencies to create community needs assessments for every MultiCare hospital, managing interpreter services and staff cultural competency training, to name a few.

“I think that my personal experience has really highlighted how important it is to have local hospital services, specialty care close to home,” Quinlan says. “With that, my commitment to providing services that are really a value to the community that we reside in is important to me.”

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her team helped address food insecurity and access to COVID testing, treatment and vaccines. Thanks to these efforts and generous donor support, 15,000 free meals have been given to local children.

Now Quinlan’s biggest focus is organizing COVID-19 vaccination clinics and events in partnership with community. More than 18,000 people have received their COVID-19 vaccines through mass vaccination sites that Quinlan and her team have partnered with other community organizations on throughout Pierce County. In all, her team has facilitated and coordinated filling 1,549 volunteer shifts with both clinical and non-clinical MultiCare staff and volunteers at community-focused clinics providing over 3,800 hours of volunteer support.

This effort compliments the work of MultiCare’s internal mass vaccination clinics, which have provided over 196,000 vaccinations to date since the end of December.

Quinlan is also a leading member of MultiCare’s COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Task Force, a group focused on ensuring that vaccines get into the arms of underrepresented groups and those most at risk of serious COVID-19 illness. They have a plan to provide 23,000 vaccines to people who are most at-risk of COVID-19 serious illness and/or face barriers to getting the vaccine, including lack of access to transportation and technology.

“The pandemic put a light on what we’ve known about health equity and disparities, bringing it to the public’s attention,” Quinlan says. “My team has been grateful that our work has had the opportunity to be seen as a central department.”

Quinlan credits her team, her family, gardening and her dog Jackson for helping her recharge and begin every day with the devotion it takes to support our community’s health care.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Task Force

Health equity has many definitions. Sarah Dryfoos-Gus, health equity and outreach program manager at MultiCare, defines it as a strategy.

“Equity is a strategy that we can use to achieve equality,” Dryfoos-Gus says. “Within that definition, we acknowledge that there are barriers and disparities. Some people have way more than others, and the system is created in a way that oftentimes perpetuates those dynamics. So, health equity is a strategy that we can use to change that by acknowledging that all of our communities deserve to be cared for and treated. And MultiCare, as a system, wants to be able to care for all of our communities and create an environment where everybody is healthy and thriving.”

Although these disparities have existed for quite some time, the current COVID-19 pandemic — specifically vaccine distribution — has shed a light on the needs of vulnerable communities.

How will MultiCare remove these barriers? Strong community outreach, partnerships and the strategies created by the members of MultiCare’s Center for Health Equity and Population Health teams that make up MultiCare’s COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Task Force.

The cost to implement the plan outlined above to provide 23,000 vaccines is around $810,000 — about $22 to $33 to reach and vaccinate someone who many not otherwise receive the COVID-19 vaccine. MultiCare Foundations launched an urgent fundraising campaign in March, inviting people to contribute to the program through the MultiCare COVID-19 Response Fund, and raising more than $900,000 to date.

Donations to this fund will make the ultimate impact, says Quinlan.