After operating what is widely regarded as one of the most successful COVID-19 testing centers in Florida, and the nation, Florida Health leaders are again hoping to repeat that success by opening a Vaccine center on campus last week.
Since opening up last, the vaccination center was well under its modest goal of providing 200 vaccinations per day. On the first day, 65 people were vaccinated. On Friday, only 67 received vaccinations.
Florida health leaders are learning a valuable lesson, that without an adequate outreach, communications, and education plan to reach minority community their vaccination goals may not be reached.
Covid vaccine mistrust among Black Americans
According healthline.com, many Black and latinx people are reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Concerns about vaccines have left some Black people entirely unwilling to take a vaccine, while others have said that they want to wait and see how the first wave of vaccine distribution is handled.
The reluctance dates back past, racist, and at times dangerous, health polices and clinical experiments that have targeted particularly vulnerable Black and brown communities.
Without real and trusted engagement, the long-held mistrust may be hard to overcome.
It’s all part of a cycle of a distrust in medicine that some Black medical providers say is both completely warranted and deeply concerning.
“It is not paranoia, it is not that Black people don’t ‘get it’ or are simply uneducated and unintelligent about their health,” Dr. Brittani James, a Chicago health professional told NBC News. “The reality is that their worries have been earned and will not be corrected until medicine and public health and the government reckon with the past and what has been done to Black and brown people.”
In Florida, Black Floridians don’t exactly trust Governor Ron DeSantis, and he’s now learning that you can’t just place a vaccination center at FAMU or Edward Waters College without providing those centers with funding for real engagement.
