After addressing hesitancy, access became the next challenge.
The Biden administration last month announced that it will spend $10 billion, much of it from the latest COVID-19 relief package, to expand access to vaccines for communities of color, rural residents and low-income people. The administration also will funnel $6 billion to community health centers so they can ratchet up vaccinations and testing, and spend another $3 billion to boost local efforts to increase equitable vaccine distribution.
Rural communities have created partnerships to combat inequity in the vaccine rollout. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Black churches became vaccination sites only weeks after leaders questioned city leadership about the lack of sites in predominantly Black areas. The Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi, a nonprofit that connects Delta counties with financial resources, collaborated with prominent Delta leaders to create a vaccine transportation initiative that rents buses to transport residents to vaccine appointments.
Vaccine hesitancy lingers among people of color despite these improvements. A recent survey of people in the San Francisco Bay Area published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed Black, Asian and Hispanic respondents were less likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Their reasons included low confidence in coronavirus prevention, mistrust of vaccine producers and a lack of faith in the government’s approval process. Transportation difficulties, low vaccine supply, language barriers and technological hurdles are other rural challenges, Hawkins said.
For example, for residents of the tiny city of Itta Bena in Leflore County, Mississippi, the closest vaccination site is the Walmart pharmacy about 10 miles away in Greenwood. With no public transit, a car is required to get there. And internet connectivity issues or a lack of broadband access can make it difficult for people to schedule a vaccination appointment online.