LYNN — Fenway Health will be hosting a mobile research site in Lynn until the end of the year to study Moderna’s recently-approved COVID-19 vaccine.
Meant to test how safe and effective the vaccine is in protecting against the virus, participants will be required to make 10 or more visits with researchers over the span of one to two years and will receive compensation of up to $1,600.
“What’s happening in Lynn is basically an extension study for what we did with Moderna,” said Coco Alinsug, outreach and enrollment manager for Fenway Health. “This might be a bandaid vaccine. We don’t know if this will last for a year, or (what). There will be a lot of followup studies, and this one in Lynn in one of them.”
Fenway Health is a member of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, and the Fenway Institute, which was founded by the National Institutes of Health to be a research branch of Fenway Health, is an interdisciplinary center created for research, education, and policy development.
Because Alinsug serves as the global CAB chair for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network and was part of the protocol team that reviewed Moderna’s vaccine study, Fenway Health has been involved in the study since its early days.
The company’s new temporary site at 73 Buffum Street, which will remain in operation until at least the end of the year, is one of just two sites state-wide conducting vaccine research for Moderna.
“The site has always been in Boston, so the participants have all been in Boston,” Alinsug said. “This is the first time they’re bringing a van outside of Boston, and they selected Lynn.”
Lynn was chosen for a number of reasons, he said, but primarily because of its close proximity to Boston, its standing designation as a COVID-19 hotspot, and its high population of people of color, whose enrollment in such studies so far have been disproportionately low.
Adrianna Boulin, community engagement manager at the Fenway Institute, said dispatching a mobile research site to Lynn was done with the intention of making enrollment easier in communities outside of Boston.
“We had a campaign of reaching out to different community health centers, because we feel like they’re most connected to their communities and they know them best, so why not set aside spaces in those areas,” Boulin said, noting that Fenway Health is trying to recruit as many people to join as possible to meet the organization’s 250-person enrollment goal.
Anyone interested in participating will be given a pamphlet with extensive details about the study, as well as a link to an online survey that will determine whether they’re eligible.
Once approved, patients will be scheduled to present to the van during a specified time slot.
“We’ll review the consent (forms) with them and go over the logistics,” said Frances LeBlanc, RDH, RN. “We tag-team together with the patients, do all of their intake, and then we do split enrollment, so we’ll screen them first and make sure they’re eligible for the vaccine trial, and then we return with the unit and vaccinate everybody on the same day.”
LeBlanc emphasized that everyone will be well-informed of what the trial entails before participating, adding that the 26-page participant information sheet and consent form is available in both English and Spanish.
“It details everything in regards to what we’re doing with the study,” she said. “Patients are sent this before they even come to us, and I make sure that when they come on the bus, regardless of if they’ve read it or not, I detail the most important, key factors on it.
“Before we even start anything, we make sure participants fully understand what (they’re doing).”
Those interested can find out their eligibility by taking the survey at http://tinyurl.com/C19vaccine. Participants must be 18 years of age or older and test negative for COVID-19.
For more information, those interested are asked to call or text 617-927-6450, or email [email protected].
“We are all in this together,” Boulin said. “It can seem very much like joining something like this is joining something outside yourself, but it takes all of us to make something like this work.”
Elyse Carmosino can be reached at [email protected].