Collier to return CDC grant money after push by 'medical freedom' supporters
Collier government is refunding $167,000 in grant funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That’s the amount spent by grant recipients, the Immokalee-based nonprofit HealthCare Network since last year.
The remainder of the COVID-19 Extra Mile Migrant Farmworker grant will be canceled.
The total grant awarded for a four-year period was $1.2 million.
Collier County is saying “no” to a federal grant for health education after outcry from residents who said the grant’s main priority is to convince migrant workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Collier County Commission voted unanimously to refund $167,000 of the COVID-19 Extra Mile Migrant Farmworker grant and cancel the remainder of $1.2 million grant from the CDC.
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The decision was made even though a report from staff to investigate if migrant workers were being pushed to get vaccinated found materials used by outreach workers in Immokalee were educational and not promotional.
Commissioner Bill McDaniel, whose district includes Immokalee, said he felt certain the materials were educational in nature and not promotional to sway migrant workers.
What’s the controversy?
More than a dozen residents who support the “Medical Freedom Sub-Committee” of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee attended the commission meeting. Many spoke of harms from the vaccine and deceptions by the federal government that the vaccines are safe.
Karen Kingston, of San Diego, who declined to share with the media if she was connected to an organization, made a presentation that the vaccine enhances diseases like heart inflammation, is experimental and is a biological weapon.
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“People have been deceived. People have been harmed,” she said.
Jamie Ulmer, executive director of the Immokalee-based Healthcare Network for 40 years, said his organization has been working with the Boston-based Partners in Health on the grant’s mission to educate about a variety of medical issues, from diabetes to heart disease, in Immokalee.
Some of the grant funding was used to hire six community health workers from within Immokalee, train them and have them go to migrant camps and elsewhere. The workers speak the same languages of the migrant workers and can connect with them on their health, he said.
Roughly 95% of the grant used was on overall primary care education and 5% for COVID-19 education, he said.
“This grant is to help us fund something we would normally not be able to do,” he said.
He acknowledged that as the pandemic has changed, the educational material needs to be updated. He also said the 5% targeted for COVID-19 education has been spent.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends everyone stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines for their age group.
What was the county’s role?
Among the speakers against the county last year accepting the CDC grant was Beth Sherman, who said the commission has been ignoring her and others with the medical freedom subcommittee for months about the grant.
Sherman said Partners has funding support from big tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the United Nations, with other motives that are not in the best interest of the community.
“We need to stop taking government grants tied to evil,” she said, imploring the commission to end the grant contract.
Ulmer said the grant terms required the funding go through a municipality, the county in this case, yet Healthcare Network is the grant sub-recipient. It works with Partners in Health in Immokalee.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring 2020, Partners was one of several relief organizations that sent teams to Immokalee to provide virus testing and support after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers complained Gov. Ron DeSantis was ignoring the poor farmworking community where the virus was spreading rapidly.
Partners later teamed up with the healthcare network to provide training for the community outreach workers.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Collier leaders end grant with CDC after outcry from 'freedom group'
