Bubba Wallace Partners With Novant Health to Educate About COVID-19 Vaccine

Bubba Wallace has made another major move during his first season with the Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin co-owned 23XI Racing. He joined forces with Novant Health to promote health equity and address vaccine hesitancy. Wallace started by receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Novant Health announced the news in a press release on Wednesday. The company will serve as the official health and wellness provider of 23XI Racing and its employee. Novant Health will also develop platforms and tools to manage the health and wellness of the race team employees. This vaccination effort is also only the tip of the iceberg for Wallace. He will partner with Novant Health for “future initiatives designed to bring awareness” to key health equity issues in the community.

“I’m really excited to partner with Novant Heath this year on several community initiatives, starting with getting my COVID vaccine this week,” Wallace said in a press release. “For me, it’s important to learn about the vaccine and do my part to help get us back to normal. I want to see fans safely back at the race track and filling the grandstands, I want to safely attend concerts and sporting events, all the things we did before COVID. To do those things, it starts with getting vaccinated and I encourage others to get their shot and help get us all safely back to normal.”

This partnership is not the first for Jordan. The six-time NBA champion has previously worked with the organization to open health clinics in North Carolina. He first donated $7 million in 2017 to fund the Novant Health Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic. His money was used to purchase the land, construct the 6,800-square-foot building, and equip the facility.

In 2020, this original clinic transformed due to the coronavirus. It became a respiratory assessment center where members of the community could head to the location on Freedom Drive for accessible coronavirus screening, testing, treatment, and education. The clinic and a mobile health unit held 12,584 appointments and performed nearly 14,000 COVID-19 tests.

While the original clinic transformed to address new issues, some of the money from Jordan’s original donation helped create a new medical center. He and Novant Health partnered in October 2020 to open the Novant Health Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic to provide medical care for the uninsured or underinsured. The new clinic featured 12 exam rooms, an X-ray room, and a space for physical therapy. Similar to the first location, the clinic also implemented a full-time on-site clinical social worker to help address “social detriments” of health.