NEW YORK (Reuters) – When a major medical organization asked AR Bernard, the black head of a Brooklyn church, to sit on a committee tasked with increasing acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines in color communities in New York City, he he gave up.
Bernard, who runs the Christian Cultural Center, the city’s largest church, said he turned down the offer because he worries that some members of his congregation might view his participation as “joining forces with the system” to use African Americans. “Guinea pig” For vaccines that have been developed in record time.
Like most of the twelve black faith leaders interviewed by Reuters, Bernard has yet to show public support for an inoculation he believes he does not know enough about and risks jeopardizing his community’s trust.
“We are concerned that it will be tested on people of color,” Bernard said, referring to people who would receive the vaccine at the start of its public launch. Black people accounted for about 10% of vaccine study volunteers, compared to 13.4% of the US population.
The pastor was hospitalized with the virus in March and said he wanted to “wait and see” more information about the side effects of the vaccine.
The reluctance to recommend vaccination is striking because black pastoralists have played a key role in educating their communities about the risks of COVID-19 to African Americans, who are 2.8 times more likely to die because of it than white Americans. according to the US Centers. for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Public health officials hope that black faith leaders and other black models will help alleviate strong skepticism among African Americans about the safety of the vaccine, which is distributed across the country. The shootings are crucial to ending a pandemic that has so far killed more than 300,000 Americans, health experts say.
Only 49% of black Americans would be interested in taking it, compared to 63% of white Americans, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll this month. The survey showed that black people, like white people, are discouraged by the speed of development of the COVID vaccine and the confusing coronavirus response from the Trump administration. Black pastors also cited deep distrust of the medical institution among members of their communities.
“What we’re dealing with now is the byproduct of … generations of mistrust, suspicion and fear about how medical systems work,” said Edwin Sanders, head of the Metropolitan International Church in Nashville, Tennessee. has been involved with public health education since HIV / AIDS struck in the 1980s.
Distrust is rooted in decades of unequal access to and treatment of healthcare, underrepresentation in clinical trials, and a record of its use as unintended test subjects, such as in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study that continued until 1972 and retained syphilis treatment from infected black men without their knowledge.
Pastors said the story fueled fears that the COVID-19 vaccine might not work for black Americans or that they might be given a different vaccine than the rest of society.
“I can’t tell my people in good faith to accept this wholesale trade, but I’m not trying to support any conspiracy theories without reason. It’s a rope I have to go here, “said Earle Fisher, pastor at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church, a congregation of about 50 people in Memphis, Tennessee.
Of the ten black church leaders interviewed, all said they felt the vaccine was needed to end the crisis, but only one was willing to support it at the moment.
Most said they want more information so they can inform their parishioners about how the vaccine works in the body, where they might receive it, and about possible side effects.
“As a pastor and as a health worker, I can see why people should take it, because of the devastation I have seen. But I also understand why the African-American community doesn’t trust it because of the way we’ve been treated in the past, “said Reginald Belton of the First Baptist Church in Brownsville, Brooklyn, who also provides pastoral care at a hospital.
Belton said he intends to take the vaccine and wants to give his members more information about it, but stopped saying he would support it.
The importance of black religious leaders in the effort to promote the vaccine was underscored by a CDC report this month, which found that health officials were successful in partnering with African-American churches to educate medically served communities. .
Black churches have long played a critical role in the social well-being of black Americans, probably most famous during the civil rights movement.
BUILDING TRUST
Pastors interviewed by Reuters said local government and other public officials need to build trust in their faith communities to increase vaccine acceptance among black Americans.
Elijah Hankerson III, head of the International Life Center, Church of God in Christ in St. Louis, Missouri, said the results of clinical trials, which show that Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are over 90% effective, are not enough for him to promote a vaccine.
But if officials in St. Louis guarantees the vaccine, and his legal team and the church’s health unit say it’s okay, Hankerson said he will promote it on his webcasts and social media, which reach a combined audience of about 70,000.
“Data is one thing,” said Hankerson, who lost his uncle and two colleagues to the virus. “If there are people we trust who can guarantee and say, ‘Hey, this is for the benefit of the people, get this out,’ then we wouldn’t mind doing it.”
The National Medical Association, an organization of black health care providers, tried to offer this assurance to black Americans on Monday when it announced support for the U.S. government’s emergency approval of Pfizer and Moderna photos after an independent review of clinical trial data.
Anthony Evans, president of the Black Church National Initiative, a coalition trying to reduce healthcare disparities, said he anticipated that black churches would eventually get on board to mobilize to vaccinate people.
Some faithful leaders encourage the vaccine despite their hesitation because they see few alternatives.
Pastor George Waddles of the second Baptist church in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a congregation of about 400 people, has doubted vaccines before. He received the flu vaccine for the first time in 2019 because he previously thought it could make him sick.
But seeing the suffering caused by COVID-19 motivated him to encourage his parishioners to make a leap of faith and get vaccinated.
“We have three options,” said Waddles, who said in a virtual prayer call this month. “Vaccination, isolation or decimation.”
Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York and Makini Brice in Washington, edited by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman