In minority communities, doctors change their minds about vaccination

Like many black and rural Americans, Denese Rankin, a 55-year-old retired accountant and receptionist in Castleberry, Alabama, did not want the Covid-19 vaccine.

Ms Rankin was worried about side effects – she had seen stories on social media about people developing Bell’s palsy, for example, after being vaccinated. She thought the vaccines had arrived too quickly to be sure. And she feared that vaccinations were another example in the government’s long history of medical experimentation on blacks.

Then, one recent weekend, her niece, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta, came to town. Dr Zanthia Wiley said one of her goals while making the trip was to talk to her friends and family back home in Alabama, getting them to hear the truth about vaccines from someone they know, someone who is black.

Across the country, black and Hispanic doctors like Dr Wiley are speaking to Americans in minority communities who are suspicious of Covid-19 vaccines and often distrust officials they see on television telling them to get the vaccine. Many reject public service announcements, say doctors, and the federal government.

Although acceptance of the vaccine is increasing, black and Hispanic Americans – among the groups hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic – remain among the most reluctant to roll up their sleeves. Even health workers in some hospitals have refused vaccines.

But insurance from black and Hispanic doctors can make a huge difference, experts say. “I don’t want us to benefit the least from it,” Dr. Wiley said. “We should be the first to get it.”

Many doctors like her now find themselves not only urging their friends and relatives to get the shots, but also posting on social media and conducting group video calls, asking people to share their concerns and offering advice. reliable information.

“I think it makes all the difference,” said Dr Valeria Daniela Lucio Cantos, infectious disease specialist at Emory. She has hosted town halls and online immunization-themed webinars, including one with black and Hispanic employees of the university’s cleaning staff.

She thinks they’re listening, not only because she’s Hispanic and speaks Spanish, she said, but also because she’s an immigrant – her family is still in Ecuador. “Culturally, they have someone they can relate to,” said Dr. Cantos.

Many of the vaccine-reluctant are pillars of health in their own families. Ms Rankin, for example, helps take care of Dr Wiley’s grandmother, who is blind, and her grandfather, who cannot walk. Ms Rankin looks at Dr Wiley’s mother, whose health is fragile. And she is the single mother of three daughters, including a 14-year-old who still lives at the home.

“If my aunt were infected my family would be in dire straits,” said Dr Wiley.

Dr Wiley met Ms Rankin, her daughter and mother in the living room of a brick ranch house on a quiet street – socially remote and wearing masks. Dr Wiley answered questions and explained the science behind the vaccine.

No, she said, the vaccine is not made from live coronaviruses that could infect people. No, just because someone was vaccinated and got sick doesn’t mean the vaccine made them sick.

And yes, the vaccine has been tested on tens of thousands of people and the data scrutinized by scientists with nothing to gain and everything to lose by pushing it prematurely.

Dr Wiley told them she couldn’t wait to get the vaccine herself.

Dr Virginia Banks, an infectious disease specialist in Youngstown, Ohio, who is black, understands the community’s long-standing distrust of the medical establishment.

But she has seen too many people – and not all of them elderly – suffer and die in the pandemic, she said. And Dr. Banks worries about her own risks when caring for patients. “I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette,” she says.

So she tells stories to those who hesitate to be vaccinated, like that of a patient she recently treated, breathless. He asked her, “Am I going to make it out alive?” She told him she didn’t know.

“We have to tell these stories” to black Americans, she said. “And it has to come from someone who looks like them.”

“My friends and family say, ‘Even if the risk is one in a million, I’m not taking it,’” she added. “I said, ‘I understand your distrust, but this is beyond Tuskegee. It’s beyond “The Immortal Life of Henrietta is Missing.” We are currently in a pandemic. We have to trust science. “”

Dr Banks stresses the ripple effects of individual decisions: “If you don’t take this vaccine and it’s safe, we’ll be wearing masks for a while. If you want to get your life back, if you want to get back to normalcy, you have to rely on trusted messengers like me.

Dr Leo Seoane, an intensive care doctor at Ochsner Health in New Orleans who is Hispanic, has already been vaccinated. When he started talking to his friends, family and other members of the community, virtually all said they would not get the shot.

They feared that the vaccine was developed too quickly, that it was not safe, that it was not effective, or that it could infect them with the coronavirus. Now, after a gentle persuasion, “for one person, they’ve all changed their minds.”

But few believe that it will only take one or two conversations with a trusted doctor to convert vaccine skeptics into believers.

“When they started talking about the possibility of a vaccine in April, I said, ‘No way,’ said Phelemon Reins, a 56-year-old federal government employee. He was wary of the rapid development of vaccines and knew all too well the history of the mistreatment of blacks by the medical system.

“The Trump administration has done nothing to make anyone trust anything that will come out,” he added. “I reject everything they say.”

But Dr Banks, a friend, made him rethink his reluctance. “At the end of the day, it will be people like her that I will depend on,” Mr. Reins said. “I believe her.”

“How to convince the African-American community?” he said. “They might need people who look like him.”