LISC’s Health Access Fund helps people living on low incomes, in rural and urban places, get to and from the destinations that play into their health and well being, from doctor's appointments to social service centers to the grocery store. Last year, with support from Uber, PayPal, and Walgreens, that amounted to 137,000 rides, helping upend a host of barriers to accessing healthcare and essential services.

Last year, Uber, Paypal, Walgreens and LISC teamed up to supply free rides to COVID vaccine appointments for people with barriers to transportation via an $11 million fund. Those rides have not only expanded vaccine access to underserved residents, they have turned out to be a vehicle to broader vaccine education and wellbeing.

A group of experts, including Julia Ryan, LISC’s VP for Health Programs, gathered for a webinar hosted by U.S. News & World Report, to offer insight and solutions to tackling disparities in COVID vaccination distribution.

As part of their worldwide vaccine access campaign, Vax Because, Global Citizen invited LISC CEO Lisa Glover and Uber's global head of social impact Julia Paige to discuss their $11 million Vaccine Access Fund, designed to upend barriers to transportation to vaccination sites—barriers that primarily affect undeserved communities of color. Said Glover in the video interview, together with Uber, “we can deliver the resources to our partners that are trusted on the ground, and they can work with their communities to get the transportation needs met.”

LISC, PayPal, Uber and Walgreens have announced the launch of their new Vaccine Access Fund, which allows customers to donate to vaccine access efforts to help connect people without transportation to COVID-19 vaccination sites, particularly those in underserved communities. Customers can donate to the Vaccine Access Fund directly through the Uber app using a new donate feature supported by PayPal Giving Fund.

In a letter to the Biden-Harris Administration, which has called for corporate America to help in the fight to end the pandemic, the CEOs of Uber, Paypal, Walgreens and LISC announced a new Vaccine Access Fund that will connect people with free rides to COVID-19 vaccine sites. LISC will administer the fund, helping close the gap for thousands of people, many of them seniors and others living in under-resourced communities, who have not been vaccinated yet because of lack of transportation.

By Lisa L. Glover, Interim LISC President and CEO

In a blog describing the new $11 million Vaccine Access Fund, a partnership of LISC, Uber, Paypal and Walgreens, LISC's Interim President & CEO Lisa L. Glover details how the fund tackles more than the transportation gap that is keeping tens of thousands of Americans from accessing COVID-19 vaccines. "The fund offers a practical solution to an immediate problem," writes Glover. "But this is absolutely part of our larger efforts to address equity as well."