For the next two years Baltimore City will give out small grants to organizations to help continue COVID-19 services across the city, especially in underserved areas.
The grants will max out at $25,000 and the city will give out a total of $250,000 every three months. The first grants will start in April.
The grants can go toward various services like delivering meals to senior citizens, providing vaccinations, or transportation services to clinics, according to Christian Dambreville, Baltimore’s project manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health disparities grant program.
“We’ve been doing work with over 70 different partners all through the pandemic and are always looking to increase that amount,” Dambreville said. “The result has been amazing work done by the Baltimore Health Department and partners.”
The application process is currently open and will run until March 27.
“These mini-grants will provide local community-based organizations the opportunity to help save lives, including those of their friends, neighbors, and loved ones,” said Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Letitia Dzirasa.
Funding for the grants comes from the Centers for Disease Control.
Baltimore is already promising to continue much of the services it provided over the pandemic into 2024 even as the federal government draws down the national emergency in May.
Baltimore City officials said they expect to use $80 million in federal grant money from the American Rescue Plan Act to continue many of those services, according to a memo released by the city’s health department earlier this month.
The city says it will continue to provide free COVID-19 tests at city libraries, administer free vaccines, set up clinics across the city for testing and send medical professionals to the houses of people with limited mobility to give out vaccines.
The city is also using another $8.4 million grant to build up its health infrastructure over the next five years to continue to combat COVID-19 and other diseases. Those funds will go toward things like increasing medical staff.
About 330 people a day are still dying from the COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The most recent seven-day average has about 30,000 people infected with the disease, according to the New York Times.
