Phil Galewitz: Vermont giving priority to minorities for COVID vaccinations
Starting April 1, Vermont has explicitly been giving Black adults and people from other minority communities priority status for vaccinations. Although other states have made efforts to get vaccine to people of color, Vermont is the first to offer them priority status, said Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
All Black, Indigenous residents and other people of color who are permanent Vermont residents and 16 or older are eligible for the vaccine.
It will be a short-term advantage, since Vermont opens COVID-19 inoculations to all adults April 19.
Still, Vermont health officials say they hope that the change will lower the risk for people of color, who are nearly twice as likely as whites to end up in the hospital with COVID-19. “It is unacceptable that this disparity remains for this population,” Dr. Mark Levine, M.D.,
Vermont’s health commissioner, said at a recent news conference.
But providing priority may not be enough to get more minority residents vaccinated — and could send the wrong message, some health experts say.
“Giving people of color priority eligibility may assuage liberal guilt, but it doesn’t address the real barriers to vaccination,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious-diseases specialist at NYU Langone Health and a former member of President Biden’s COVID advisory board. “The reason for lower vaccination coverage in communities of color isn’t just because of where they are ‘in line’ for the vaccine. It’s also very much a question of access.”
Vaccination sites need to be more convenient to where these targeted populations live and work, and more education efforts are necessary so people know the shots are free and safe, she said.
“Explicitly giving people of color priority for vaccination could backfire,” Gounder said. “It could give some the impression that the vaccine is being rolled out to them first as a test. It could reinforce the fear that people of color are being used as guinea pigs for something new.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that’s why he has opposed using race as a risk factor to determine covid vaccine eligibility.
But he sees signs that vaccine hesitancy is declining nationally and called Vermont’s new approach “admirable.” Still, he said, states should continue to use a range of options to get vaccines to minority communities, such as providing vaccination sites in Black neighborhoods and places that residents trust, like churches.
No state is achieving equity in its vaccine distribution, said KFF’s Kates.
“People of color, whether they be Black or brown, are being vaccinated at lower rates compared to their representation among covid cases and deaths, and often their population overall,” she said.
Blacks make up about 2 percent of Vermont’s population and 4 percent of its COVID infections, but they have received 1 percent of the state’s vaccines, according to KFF.
“Since states are really not doing well on equity, other strategies are welcome at this point,” said Kates.
Yet, there’s another reason public health officials have balked at explicitly giving people of color vaccine priority. “It could be politically sensitive,” she said.
Phil Galewitz is a Kaiser Health News reporter.
Phil Galewitz: pgalewitz@kff.org, @philgalewitz