Stanford Vax Crew: A Model for Agile, Community-Centered Vaccination Campaigns

Stanford Vax Crew, one of the largest medical-student-led vaccination programs in the United States, serves as a case study of a successful community–university partnership that adapted its existing operations to enable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. It offers a model for agile, community-centered vaccination campaigns that harness diverse stakeholder strengths to promote vaccine access and uptake in underserved communities. This case study aims to outline the history and structure of the community–university partnership model developed through Stanford Vax Crew, describe key observations of factors that contributed to the scalability of the model, and provide experience-based recommendations for future community–university collaborations.