Black health leaders try to build trust in the Covid vaccine among African Americans
- Black doctors and health professionals are trying to build trust in the African American community to distribute the new Covid vaccines.
- Seven in 10 African Americans know someone who's been hospitalized or has died from Covid, but only 42% plan on getting vaccinated.
- Though widespread availability of the vaccine is still months away, health-care and community groups are doing outreach in Black communities that have already been hit hard by the coronavirus.
Dr. Lou Edje enrolled in the Moderna vaccine trial at her health system in Cincinnati, Ohio, after three of her relatives died from the coronavirus this year. That made her want to do more to inspire confidence in her community to get vaccinated.
"I felt that I might be able to have an impact that has some credibility, for the patients that I take care of every day who look just like me," said Edje, who is Black and the associate dean of graduate medical education at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
While she hasn't been told whether she got the actual vaccine during the trial, she had a bit of swelling in her arm after the booster shot — which makes her believe she did. That's helped when patients ask her what to expect.
"Some of the side effects were a little bit more robust the second time around, so I try and tell them exactly what I went through," she explained.
It may take months for the general public to get inoculated with new vaccines once they're approved. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to quickly clear Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use after an advisory panel overwhelmingly endorsed the shots on Thursday. The initial doses have been designated for front-line health workers and the elderly in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes.
Yet, African American health professionals and community health groups across the country have already begun to do outreach in Black communities hit hard by the coronavirus. Seven out of 10 African Americans know someone who's been hospitalized or died from Covid, according to a Pew Research poll conducted last month. Yet vaccine skepticism runs high. Only 42% of Blacks surveyed say they plan to be vaccinated, compared with more than 60% for Americans overall.
"They want to know and have real reasons for trust. They want to know that the process is going to be fair, that they are not being guinea pigs to a system that is rigged against them," explained Dr. Reed Tuckson, co-founder of the Black Coalition Against Covid, and a former health commissioner of Washington, D.C.
The speed at which the Covid vaccine has been developed has been one of the issues that has many Americans wary about being in the first wave to get the shot. But for African Americans the skepticism is also partly based on history. As part of the notorious Tuskegee Study of syphilis, African American men were treated with placebo drugs instead of antibiotics that could cure it, so that officials could track the disease's progression for years.
The coalition on Covid has brought together the major African American medical groups, including the National Medical Association and the National Black Nurses Association, as well as leaders from the four historically Black medical schools, including Howard University and Morehouse College, to advocate for African American patients.
On the clinical front, they've been pushing government officials at the federal and local level to prioritize access for communities of color where the prevalence of pre-existing conditions such as hypertension and diabetes have made people more vulnerable to the virus.
"We should not allow the dissemination of a lifesaving vaccine to worsen health inequities. In fact, it should help to narrow them," said Tuckson.
In terms of outreach, they've held a number of informational town halls online with government leaders including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious diseases expert, to address particular concerns of African Americans.
They are also working with community health groups, local churches and advocacy groups that can make a personal appeal from a place of trust, at the grassroots level.
"Fifty percent of a neighborhood will need to go ahead and have the vaccine, to be able to burn out the virus in the other 50%," Edje explained. "We really need to have every neighborhood get some immunity for us to have a global effect."
The fact that it will take time for the general public to gain access to the vaccine could prove to be a silver lining. Health officials say it will let people see how the first wave of those who get the shot react, which can help combat skepticism and fear.