Black doctors want to vet vaccine process, worried about mistrust from years of medical racism

By Meryl Kornfield, The Washington Post

When Black physician Tina Carroll-Scott started working at South Miami Children’s Clinic, she said none of her Black patients would consider getting a flu shot.

A complicated history with forced vaccinations and experiments had undercut trust of medical procedures and immunization within Black communities. For more than a decade, Carroll-Scott, the clinic’s medical director, toiled to build a relationship with those in the diverse South Florida neighborhood, where the majority of residents are Hispanic and nearly 14 percent Black and African American, according to U.S. Census data.

“After being at the clinic for 13 years and educating patients about the flu vaccine and dispelling any myths they had about it,” Carroll-Scott said, “I’ve now gotten my patients to a point where they talk to me, and they’re willing to take it.”

But now, as the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly assure the public that the vaccine for the novel coronavirus will be safe, indications that the review process may be undercut by politics has turned off people in minority communities to getting the vaccine when it becomes available — worrying physicians that communities disproportionately devastated by the covid-19 pandemic are most at risk of being left out of immunization efforts. Read more …