“Communities should be able to generate daily and certainly weekly data to understand the demographics of who is being vaccinated. Local health departments and health institutions need to respond to these data in real time to identify where COVID-19 vaccine uptake is not matching COVID-19 disease burden,” wrote Northwestern University Department of Medicine’s Vice Chair of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dr. Muriel Jean-Jacques and Boston University School of Medicine’s Dr. Howard C. Bauchner, a professor of pediatrics and community health.
“If disparities emerge, then additional targeted approaches to vaccine outreach, education, and administration, for example, house to house contact, may be necessary,” they continued.
Due to longstanding systemic inequities, people of color are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, with Black Americans twice as likely as white people and Native Americans more than three times as likely.
But differing methods of how race data are reported in health settings—such as observation upon intake, which might not be accurate, or self-reporting—coupled with a lack of uniform laws for race and ethnicity collection and reporting, those figures could be a gross understatement, Echo-Hawk said.
