Corey Hebert, MD Louisiana Health Equity Task Force, LSU Health New Orleans Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Ambulatory Service
The CDC says COVID vaccines should be widely available to the public by mid-2021, however members of the Louisiana Health Equity Task Force worry that Blacks and Latinos will forgo being vaccinated. Dr. Corey Hebert, LSU Health New Orleans Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Ambulatory Service, who serves on the task force said it is due to mistrust of the medical community.
“They tend to not want to be a part of the medical establishment because of historic distrust. They feel like the medical establishment doesn’t take care of them, and really tries to use them as guinea pigs for things,” said Herbert.
Herbert says another hurdle with the vaccines for minorities is the double dose factor and the health disparity issue for minorities such as lack of transportation to obtain medical help in their community.
“Not a one-dose vaccine, two-doses, so to be able to capture a person to get the vaccine and get them vaccinated again, in about a month after the first time, that’s going to be a real challenge,” said Hebert.
Early in the pandemic around 70-percent of fatalities from COVID in the state were among blacks now it is approximately 44-percent. Herbert credits the task force’s outreach with changing that number.
“We have blanketed the African-American and Latino population with faces and information that dispels so many myths,” said Hebert.
Hebert says the task force will also launch a media campaign aimed at minorities about the benefits of the COVID vaccination.
“If we don’t take it as a group, and not just African Americans, but America as a whole, then we won’t reach herd immunity as fast and we will still be living in this hell that we call COVID-19 for longer,” said Hebert.
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