NEW YORK (AP) – Lani Muller doesn’t have to visit a doctor’s office to help test a COVID-19 experimental vaccine – she just climbs into a blood cell-like van parked on a busy street near her neighborhood of New York.
The United States is rightly focused on the chaotic launch of the first two vaccines authorized to fight the pandemic. But with more vaccines underway – essential for increasing global supply – scientists are worried about whether enough volunteers will join and stay with the tests needed to prove if they really work.
These studies, like the previous ones, should include communities of color that have been severely affected by the pandemic, communities that also express concern about the impetus for vaccination, in part because of a long history of racial health disparities. and even research abuses. To help, researchers in more than a dozen places across the country are running mobile health clinics to better reach minority participants and people in rural areas who would not otherwise be volunteers.
Muller, who is black, said her family is worried about the vaccine research, so she did not mention that she signed up to test AstraZeneca’s shot.
“The legacy of African Americans in science in this kind of study has not been great and I have not forgotten,” said Muller, 49, a Columbia University employee whose participation in some previous research projects made her willing to give a test injection earlier this month.
Muller knows more than 20 people who received or died from COVID-19. “I’m much more afraid of the disease than the vaccination process,” she said.
From the beginning, the National Institutes of Health has been adamant that COVID-19 vaccines be tested in a population as diverse as the nation’s – key to building confidence in any of the photographs that have been shown to work. In studies conducted so far on Pfizer and Moderna photos for widespread use in the United States, 10% of volunteers were black and more were Hispanic.
Diversity is an even tougher challenge now. High-risk volunteers needed for the final testing of other vaccine candidates must decide whether they want to stay with an experimental injection – one that could be a fake shot – or try to line up for a streamlined but proven dose.
AstraZeneca, with about 30,000 volunteers so far, has not released specific numbers, but said the last weeks of enrollment are focused on recruiting more minorities and people over the age of 65. Another manufacturer, Novavax, has just started recruiting for its final test last month.
Studying vaccines in diverse populations is just one step in building trust, said Dr. Wayne Frederick, president of Howard University, a historic black university in the nation’s capital.
Howard’s Hospital shared videos of Frederick and other health workers getting vaccinated as a public service announcement that encourages African Americans to make their own hit as soon as it’s their turn.
Frederick, a surgeon who is also at high risk for diabetes and sickle cells, said he is dismayed to receive emails that support conspiracy theories, such as that vaccination is “an experiment on African Americans. ”.
“There is misinformation that requires us all to be at the forefront of involvement and challenge,” he said.
But efforts to build trust in vaccines could be undermined if, once there are more resources to circulate, severely affected minority communities lag behind.
“The issue of equity is absolutely important,” said Stephaun Wallace, a scientist at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, which is also part of the NIH-created COVID-19 prevention network, which helps research and vaccine education. “It’s important to make sure the vaccine reaches people and that’s an access issue.”
The use of vans to reach at-risk communities has long been a key element in the fight against HIV, another disease that has disproportionately affected black Americans. And as more doses of COVID-19 Pfizer and Moderna vaccines arrive, mobile clinics will help expand access to COVID-19 vaccination, especially in rural areas.
But the NIH program has a different focus, offering mobile RV-sized clinics from the Matrix Medical Network to help improve the diversity of ongoing vaccination studies. Officials say they were used on a Lakota reservation at mostly Hispanic chicken processing plants and in cities like Washington, where Howard University is recruiting volunteers for the new Novavax study.
“I don’t think we can sit in the ivory towers and hope that people will come to us. I think it would be a mistake, “said Howard’s Frederick.
Researchers at the New York Blood Center regularly park their wheeled lab in parts of Queens and Brooklyn, with large populations of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, so that even after enrollment in the study, participants can participate in the necessary checks.
They also intend to stand out to answer the questions of confused passers-by about COVID-19 vaccination in general.
“Build trust and relationships,” said Dr. Jorge Soler, who helps study the AstraZeneca vaccine as part of the Achieveaza Blood Center project. “I am Latino and I am a scientist. Being able to say that to people means something. ”
Soler sometimes has to dispel fears that vaccination could mean “chip injection” or gathering information for surveillance purposes.
He points out that the Pfizer and Moderna shots used now cannot give anyone a coronavirus – which is biologically impossible, as none are done with the real virus.
And people are always wondering how these vaccines came about so quickly.
Soler’s simple explanation for speeding up research without cutting corners? “This is what happens when the world is invested in something. Build a car with 20 people faster than you do with two. ”
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.