Black residents are smallest share of vaccinated Floridians. Efforts aim to change that
Nearly two of every three eligible Floridians have received at least one dose of the vaccine against COVID-19, according to the state health department. But vaccination — and the protection it provides against severe illness, hospitalization and death — remains uneven among Floridians depending on their race.
As the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 drives a resurgence in new cases and hospitalizations for the disease, largely among people who have not taken the vaccine, public health officials are stepping up efforts to get more people to take the shots.
Yet the drive has stalled among some of the state’s hardest hit groups, said Dr. Cheryl Holder, a physician and professor at Florida International University’s Wertheim College of Medicine.
Holder said Black residents she has reached out to in Miami-Dade through local churches cite many reasons for being unvaccinated, from difficulty finding transportation to a vaccination site to a belief that they can overcome the virus without the vaccine to a general distrust of government.
“This is not new,” said Holder. “We’ve all been in our communities doing educational outreach and working with partners to get people vaccinated.”
Despite the harm the pandemic has caused among Florida’s Black residents — who account for 16% of all COVID-19 deaths and 14% of cases while making up 17% of the population — they make up the smallest share of all vaccinated residents in Florida, the state health department’s vaccination data show.
As of Aug. 5, Florida’s Department of Health reported that race/ethnicity was known for 85% of the more than 12 million residents who had received at least one dose of a vaccine.
Among that group, about 985,000 people, or 8% of the total, were Black. White residents accounted for more than 7.7 million, or about 64% of the total, while making up 73% of cumulative COVID-19 deaths and 57% of cases, according to the health department.
Trusted messengers
A low vaccination rate among African Americans across the country has spurred a renewed push among government officials to increase uptake of the vaccine among that group, including a video conference this week promoted by the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team.
Speaking at the conference, Dr. Rachel Villanueva, a physician and professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black people, many of whom cannot work from home during the pandemic or take paid time off to get vaccinated.
“The pandemic has unmercifully ravaged our communities,” said Villanueva, who is president of the National Medical Association, the largest organization representing African-American doctors.
Many African Americans also live in multi-generational homes, which raises the likelihood that an infected family member could spread the virus throughout the household and potentially impact a grandparent, she said.
Villanueva added that a history of unequal access to healthcare and treatment has caused many African Americans to be distrustful but that their concerns must be treated with respect if they’re ever going to be persuaded to get vaccinated.
“Research has shown many in the community just need their questions answered and their concerns validated,” she said. “They’re the ready and willing group to get vaccinated. They just need trusted messengers and information.”
Dr. Cameron Webb, a practicing physician at the University of Virginia and a senior policy adviser for equity on the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team, noted during the video conference that the percentage of cases among African Americans has been proportionate to the group’s population, about 13%.
But, Webb cautioned, “That’s not telling the full story. We’re still seeing that deaths are higher in the Black community.”
Blacks in the United States make up about 13.8% of COVID-19 deaths with available race and ethnicity data, according to demographic data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But only about 9% of Black Americans are fully vaccinated, the CDC reports, although Webb said uptake has been rising lately.
Still, he said, there’s a long way to go, especially in the face of the fast-moving delta variant.
“We don’t want this to take too long,” Webb said. “We don’t want it to be too late.”
Getting buy-in
While white residents make up the largest number of unvaccinated Floridians — more than 9 million people of all ages — Black residents are less likely than their white counterparts to have received a vaccine, health department data show.
About 7.7 million or 46% of nearly 17 million white Floridians have received at least one dose of a vaccine and about 985,000 or 26% of more than 3.7 million Black residents have taken a shot, according to the health department. Figures for both groups include children younger than 12, who are not eligible for a vaccine.
That leaves more than 9 million white residents who are unvaccinated compared with 2.7 million Black residents who have not been inoculated.
In Miami-Dade, the Florida Department of Health reports that 81% of the eligible population 12 and older has received at least one dose of a vaccine — the highest of any county in the state. But the health department does not publish demographic data for county-level vaccinations, only statewide.
FIU’s Holder has teamed up with colleagues to create a group called Keeping the Faith, which has partnered with about 50 local churches in predominantly Black communities to encourage parishioners to get vaccinated. The group chose churches because they’re trusted, and because they’re intimately familiar with the harm COVID-19 has caused in their communities.
“They know it,” Holder said. “The churches have been doing the burials, so the pastors know it.”
She said the most difficult group to persuade are young African Americans, particularly men, who believe they’re healthy enough to beat COVID-19 without the vaccine and generally distrust the government.
“It is very, very hard to get buy-in and understanding,” Holder said. “There’s a lot of fear about the vaccine. There’s fear about the government. There’s fear about the side effects. And just the usual feeling as if they’ll be able to fight through this.
“To me, it’s the feeling that they’ll get through this,” she added. “They’ve done this sort of situation before, and they can’t depend on the government being truthful and honest with the information.”
A hard population to reach
Holder said that while Florida’s health department reports that 85% of residents aged 65 and older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, she suspects that rate doesn’t carry much significance in Miami-Dade, where the population of people 65 and older (17%) is lower than the statewide ratio (21%).
When Florida’s governor prioritized seniors aged 65 and older for vaccination in December, Holder said Black physicians told public health officials that the order would exclude many African Americans, particularly in Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county.
“A lot of the physicians, we tried and let the state know you’re not going to get a lot of Black folks because most don’t make it past 65, and if they have, they’ve probably left Dade County,” she said.
“We don’t have a lot of Blacks and the older Blacks aren’t there,” she added. “So we work with a lot of the younger Blacks, and that’s a very hard population to reach.”
Holder said her group tries to recruit grandparents and parents to persuade their younger family members to get vaccinated.
Keeping the Faith has been organizing vaccine drives at local churches on weekends for about three months, Holder said. So far, the group has inoculated 160 people.
The group’s most successful drive led to 78 vaccinations, Holder said, but most events attract 8 to 10 people. The logistics of vaccinating small groups is much more difficult, she said, because Miami-Dade requires a confirmed list of at least 100 people before county officials will send out vaccine supplies and help to administer the shots.
So, Holder said, Keeping the Faith has found a physicians group that is willing to bring small numbers of vaccines to churches.
“I’ve been reaching people where they are,” she said, “and that’s the main thing.”
But that’s only half the battle. Holder said she spends hours talking to parishioners just to get a few people to change their minds.
“Somebody has to go out and do a lot of the talking,” she said, “getting the women to get the family members, bring in the men and bring in the daughters.”
Holder said the group has set a goal of vaccinating 450 people in six months. And though Keeping the Faith is less than halfway there, Holder said they will keep plugging away amid Florida’s unrelenting surge.
“We need to push these next few weeks,” she said, “as many sites as possible.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 5:35 PM.
