The tension between speed and equity also is clear in the experience at mass vaccination sites. In Mississippi, drive-through clinics are being used to ramp up vaccinations. But Black people accounted for only 18% of patients at such clinics compared with their 38% share of the state’s population, Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said in a media briefing this month.
Access Barriers
Dobbs said Black communities face historical barriers to health care that “are not going to be any different for coronavirus vaccination than they are for access to health care for any other reason.” The need to book appointments online or through a call center can impede some people from getting vaccinated.
In smaller sites at community health centers and dialysis clinics, the majority of patients are Black, he said. “If we don’t also have a parallel focus in addressing health disparities, we won’t really get to the health gains that we’re hoping to make,” he said.
It’s much the same case in Los Angeles, where mobile clinics that provide shots in neighborhoods have found 70% of appointments going to Black people, according to CORE, a nonprofit working with the city. The distribution is less efficient in terms of overall numbers than the giant site at Dodger Stadium, but they “are much more accessible and will go straight to those communities,” said Ann Lee, chief executive officer of CORE, a nonprofit she co-founded with actor Sean Penn to do relief work in Haiti after the earthquake.
“If you sit around refreshing multiple websites repeatedly, you can get a slot,” said Mike Pykosz, CEO of Oak Street Health Inc., which runs the Waukegan clinic among 80 sites in 11 states. “No matter what the location is, the appointments will get overwhelmed by people who tend to be higher income, tend to have more resources.”
In response, Oak Street Health has made thousands of phone calls to older adults in the neighborhoods it serves to help them get appointments. It’s also working with churches and community groups to alert local residents when vaccines become available.
While a slower approach, such outreach can help. Rosie Parks, a 71-year-old grandmother in Chicago, initially didn’t seek to be vaccinated despite knowing hypertension and diabetes put her at higher Covid risk. When Oak Street Health called to offer her an appointment, she took it.
Worker Hesitancy
A challenge for the health-care industry is getting its employees vaccinated. Hesitancy persists even among medical personnel on the front lines: About half of New York nursing-home staff declined a shot, in a field where about one-third of workers nationwide are Black, according to federal employment data.
At SCAN Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicare health plan in Southern California, reassuring staff was the first step in addressing hesitancy among patients, said CEO Sachin Jain.
SCAN hosted a virtual meeting with Michael Rosenblatt, a scientist involved in developing the Moderna vaccine – and Jain’s former boss when they both worked at Merck & Co. – and posted the recording on social media for the public. “You’re hearing directly from the makers,” Jain said.
SCAN is holding online sessions about the vaccine in both English and Spanish. It’s also working with two local hospitals—Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center – to alert members to vaccine appointments. “A lot of what we’re trying to do is reduce the barriers that people face,” Jain said.
—With assistance from Jeff Green.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.