Abbey White<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Black, Latino and Asian primary care physicians in New York City are teaming with Marvel<\/a>\u2018s Avengers to educate the public around vaccination as part of a wider outreach effort across the city to inspire and increase vaccine confidence within underserved communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A collaboration between Marvel Entertainment and SOMOS Community Care \u2014 New York City\u2019s leading physician-led network of community doctors \u2014 the campaign, which launches today, will include the distribution of a limited edition comic book, Avengers: We Are Resilient<\/em>, which was written by Henry Barajas, with art by Craig Rousseau and colors by Chris Sotomayor. Additionally, there will be a poster series and in-person events for families to learn about the vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMarvel has always told stories to entertain, inspire and reflect the world around us. As many communities continue to grapple with the effects of COVID<\/a>-19, it was important to us to help promote vaccine awareness and confidence in New York City,\u201d said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Entertainment. \u201cWe are thrilled to collaborate with SOMOS Community Care for this new comic book and campaign to continue to educate and encourage our communities during these trying times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n SOMOS will distribute the 20,000 comic books and 20,000 lithographs, in addition to releasing a video comic, which will tell a story of the Avengers, front line health care heroes and a Latino family as they unite in an effort to distribute information about and inspire trust of vaccines within the Black, brown and Latino communities. The first-of-its-kind national information campaign around COVID-19<\/a> vaccinations will also feature a pop-up vaccination site in Times Square, hosted by SOMOS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSOMOS\u2019 partnership with NYC has been instrumental in avenging our city in the wake of this virus,\u201d said Mayor Bill de Blasio. \u201cLike the shields and armor that our favorite superheroes wear, vaccines protect ourselves and those around us from the enemy \u2013 COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through a grassroots mobilization strategy, SOMOS doctors aim to overcome mistrust and hesitancy as vaccination rates plateau nationwide amid the rise in delta variant-related cases. The network\u2019s 2,500 Black, Latino, and Asian community doctors have operated over 70 trilingual testing sites nationwide and administered over 1.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine across nearly 200 vaccine sites. That includes sites held at local landmarks like Yankee Stadium and Grand Central Station, in addition to churches, schools, parks and public housing, where the group has been able to reach seniors, municipal workers, healthcare workers, and vulnerable communities of color. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis pandemic has made clear that superheroes aren\u2019t just in comic books, some wear white lab coats and stethoscopes and put the shots in arms we need to keep our communities safe and healthy during a pandemic that has raged on for nearly two years now. In the same way our doctors are trusted by the families we have treated for generations, Marvel is embedded in American households and culture \u2014 offering community through cultural icons and intergenerational heroes. I am so grateful to my friend and partner Henry Mu\u00f1oz for uniting Team SOMOS and The Avengers in this mission for the health of our communities,\u201d Dr. Ramon Tallaj, chairman and founder of SOMOS Community Care, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The campaign was created by Funny Or Die studio head, activist and co-founder of SOMOS US Henry R. Mu\u00f1oz, II and is slated to run through Hispanic Heritage Month. Mu\u00f1oz told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> that the collaboration was an idea planted as far back as the start of the pandemic, in March 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was clearly a need to reach out to young people, and to reach out to people of color,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know even today, not just in the poorest neighborhoods of New York, but in neighborhoods all across the country, the young people who need the vaccination to be able to go back to school or to return home to their parents and their grandparents are the kids who are having the hardest time.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKnowing that vaccines are really an essential part of the answer, I went to Disney and Marvel and asked them if they would lend us The Avengers to be our ambassadors,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n