The long shadow of racism in medicine leaves Black Americans wary of a COVID-19 vaccine
A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that only 27 percent of Black Americans plan to get a coronavirus vaccine if and when one becomes available. Dr. Uché Blackstock, a Yahoo News medical contributor and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, says this distrust is not unique to COVID-19. “It’s preexisting," she says, "just like the health inequities are preexisting."
Video Transcript
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DR. UCHÉ BLACKSTOCK: A new poll by Yahoo News YouGov shows that a significant number of Americans have concerns over taking a vaccine when it becomes available. And we see, particularly among Black Americans, a high degree of vaccine hesitancy and distrust. I think one of the reasons that we're seeing this vaccine hesitancy is because, what we've seen over the course of the pandemic is a level of political interference in our public health agency that we haven't seen in the past before. The timeline and the push for it to come out around Election Day, I think it's really an issue for many people.
DONALD TRUMP: We remain on track to deliver a vaccine before the end of the year, and maybe even before November 1.
DR. UCHÉ BLACKSTOCK: Particularly for Black Americans, there is a significant history of exploitation abuse by the health care system of Black communities that have left a very low level of trust in these communities towards the health care system. In the past, we have had the Tuskegee Syphilis study, and other medical experimentation where Black Americans have been the guinea pigs that have left Black communities with particularly low level of distrust towards the health care system. There is a concern about, am I going to be a guinea pig for this vaccine, especially if the process is being rushed.
There is also the current day issue of Black patients still experiencing discrimination. Black babies have the highest infant mortality rates, Black women have the highest maternal mortality rates, and Black men have the shortest life expectancy. And this is despite significant advances in therapeutics and how we care for patients. So this distress is not unique to COVID, it's pre-existing, just like the health inequity are pre-existing.
| think a lot of the work actually should start in the clinical trials, targeting Black communities and other communities of color. We need an adequate representation of Black Americans in these vaccine trials, because it's Black communities that are being most disproportionately impacted by the virus. And so while there is no biological difference between people of different races, what we know is that racism shapes the health of these communities, and this data is incredibly important to know.
I think one of the ways to increase the number of people who would be willing to take the vaccine is to have transparency in the process, first and foremost. While we may have some concerns about the political motivations of this administration, what we do know is that we have messaging from these vaccine manufacturers, that they will wait until we have that data that we need to have to make sure vaccines are safe and effective for Black communities, and other communities of color. Vaccine manufacturers need to allocate resources for messaging and outreach in these communities, to do it alongside of trusted leaders, and trusted community members. These efforts should be ongoing, this is not just sort of a one time thing with this pandemic, and forming long term relationships with communities will be incredibly crucial to ensuring that community members will be willing to take the vaccine.
