In an effort to better distribute the coronavirus vaccine to under-served communities, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and counterparts from 35 other cities asked the incoming Biden administration to distribute the vaccine directly to cities, rather than to states.

“We hope to work closely with you to ensure your administration can meet its stated goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in your first 100 days,” the mayors, included Aurora’s Mike Coffman, wrote. “However, to meet this ambitious and crucially important challenge, cities need direct access to vaccines, funding to support scaling the distribution infrastructure, and funding to support engagement and outreach to disadvantaged communities that are ‘vaccine hesitant.'”

Hancock announced that he’d signed onto the letter at a press conference Thursday afternoon. He and Bob McDonald, the executive director of Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment, said that they were working on the city’s plan to distribute the vaccine to more members of the general public. They said that effort will use smaller, community-based sites that are more accessible to low-income and under-served communities, which have been uniquely and disproportionately hammered by the pandemic.

Though there will likely be mass-vaccinating sites in Denver, Hancock and McDonald indicated that those sites will be run by institutions like UCHealth, rather than by the city itself. The officials said that though mass-testing sites had been utilized earlier in the pandemic, such locations had barriers to access for those disadvantaged groups.

For one, McDonald said, they can be difficult to access because they require travel out of those communities. For another, they often require registration, a process that isn’t accessible to all.

In their letter, the mayors wrote that they knew their cities the best, and giving them direct access will give them the ability to better reach those specific groups and neighborhoods.

“Even for cities like Chicago that are receiving their own vaccine shipments, the doses received are woefully inadequate and simply will not be enough to reach Brown and Black communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” they wrote.

“While the traditional healthcare network will be the answer to ongoing vaccinations in the long term, by allocating vaccines directly to cities and providing funding to support their efforts, more vaccines can be administered in a more quick and efficient manner.”

Both Denver and state officials have said they’ll have specific plans and efforts devoted to reaching disadvantaged communities and those that are particularly vaccine hesitant, like members of the Black community. Officials have said that outreach will include incorporating community leaders and groups, and earlier this week, Gov. Jared Polis gave a shoutout to a predominantly Black church that had led a vaccination effort.

There’s been frustration, in Denver, at the state level and across the nation, about the sluggish rollout of the vaccine. Polis, Hancock, McDonald and others have all said their biggest limitation to distributing the vaccine is the supply of doses, which is not only limited but often inconsistently distributed.

Biden has promised to accelerate that distribution, hence his goal of 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office. The mayors said that can be better accomplished by incorporating cities more directly, rather than allocating doses to the states, who then distribute them downward.

As of early Wednesday morning, the last time the state updated its vaccine data, more than 209,300 people in Colorado have received their first dose. Nearly 44,000 have received their second dose.

Currently, the state is still near the top of its priority list. Though it’s largely vaccinated its front-line health care workers, it’s just beginning to make inroads into its sizable population of older Coloradans. Thousands of those over 69 years old have been inoculated, but there are 535,000 of them statewide. Polis has said he wants the bulk of that effort done by late February, and he announced earlier this week that those over 64 years old will be next in line.

The state is scheduled to begin its second-tier priorities in the spring. The rest of the general public — those that are younger, healthier and aren’t essential workers — are set to begin receiving their inoculations in the summer.