Thursday, March 28, 2024

Black Mississippi Residents Desperate to Get Vaccinated – But They’re Challenged with Barriers

Black People COVID Vaccination - Getty

*JACKSON, Miss. — On the last Saturday in January, Johnny Thomas paused as a train snaked through the heart of Glendora, Mississippi. The accompanying roar reverberated through the predominantly Black Mississippi Delta town with a population of fewer than 200 people.

“Ever heard of the other side of the tracks?” Thomas, the town’s mayor, asked. “That’s us.”

In a community where the nearest hospital is more than 20 miles away, the phrase stretches past the proverbial. More than 50 percent of residents live in poverty.

Lately, Thomas has felt pushed even further to the margins. No coronavirus vaccination sites for the general public are operating in Tallahatchie County, where Glendora is. The area’s only hospital, Tallahatchie General, doesn’t expect to have vaccines until mid-February. The nearest state-run drive-thru vaccination clinic is in neighboring LeFlore County, 30 miles away.

“We couldn’t find two people to get that far without it being a hardship,” Thomas said.

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Black man getting covid vaccine - iStock-1223299706-960x640

Even for those who have the means to travel, appointments go quickly. Last month, Thomas, who is 67, spent almost an hour trying to reach someone on the state’s vaccination hotline hoping to book a slot for himself, only to meet a busy signal.

The pandemic has hit Mississippi’s impoverished, rural and primarily Black communities hard. And disparities are present in the state’s vaccinations. The state’s Black residents are vastly underrepresented among Mississippians who have been vaccinated so far. Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents in the nation — 38 percent — but only 17 percent of those who have received the shots have been identified as Black. That’s one of the worst racial gaps in the country.

Mississippi’s leaders have focused on hesitancy to get the vaccine in communities of color to explain this gap, and they have devoted resources to partner with prominent Black community leaders, many of whom have gotten the vaccine on camera in an effort to overcome concerns about its safety and effectiveness.

Black woman getting COVID Vaccine shot - GettyImages-1230521780-768x432

But over the past several weeks, local doctors, community leaders and even state officials say it’s become increasingly clear that many Black residents want to get vaccinated — they’re just hitting roadblocks that have prevented them from doing so. Lasting scars from slavery and segregation — including a long history of unequal treatment of Black residents by the state government — touch many aspects of life in Mississippi, leading to racial disparities in access to health care that mean Black residents often have to travel farther for medical check-ups. Only 4 of the state’s 10 counties where residents are least likely to live in a household with a car have a vaccination site this week. All of these counties are at least 60 percent Black.

“What recently I’ve heard is that the balance has changed and actually, the access issue is a bigger issue than the trust,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said at a news briefing last week. “We will try to address both of those as aggressively as we can.”

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

source: Passer, Emily (NBCUniversal) 

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