NEW YORK (Reuters) – When a major health organization called on AR Bernard, the black head of a Brooklyn megishurch, to sit on a committee tasked with increasing acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines in communities of New York City colors, he rejected.
Bernard, who runs the Christian Cultural Center, the city’s largest church, said he turned down the offer because he was concerned that some members of his congregation might see his involvement as “joining forces with the system. “to use African Americans” as guinea pigs ”For vaccines that have been developed in record time.
Like most of the dozen black faith leaders interviewed by Reuters, Bernard still did not want to show public support for an inoculation he believes he does not know enough about and runs the risk of endangering the trust of his community.
“We’re concerned about testing people of color,” Bernard said, referring to people who would get the vaccine soon in its public deployment. Blacks accounted for approximately 10% of vaccine volunteers compared to 13.4% of the American population.
The pastor was hospitalized with the virus in March and said he wanted to “wait and see” for more information on the side effects of the vaccine.
The hesitation to recommend vaccination is surprising because black pastoralists have been playing a key role in educating their communities about the risks of COVID-19 for African Americans, who are 2.8 times more likely to die. ne than white Americans, according to American centers. for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Public health officials hope black faith leaders and other black models will help alleviate strong skepticism among African Americans about the safety of the vaccine, which is distributed across the country. The shootings are critical to ending a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans so far, health experts say.
According to a Reuters / Ipsos poll this month, only 49% of black Americans would be interested in taking it, compared to 63% of white Americans. The survey showed that blacks, like whites, are deterred by the rapid development of the COVID vaccine and the Trump administration’s confusing coronavirus response. Black pastors also cited a deep mistrust in the medical establishment among members of their communities.
“What we’re dealing with right now is the byproduct of … generations of mistrust, suspicion and fear about the way medical systems work,” said Edwin Sanders, head of the International Metropolitan Church in Nashville, Tennessee, who has participated with public health education since HIV / AIDS occurred in the 1980s.
Distrust has its roots in decades of unequal access to and treatment of health, lack of representation in clinical trials, and a history of use as involuntary test subjects, as in the famous Tuskegee syphilis study. it continued until 1972 and withheld the treatment of syphilis from infected black men without their knowledge.
Pastors said this story has fueled fears that the COVID-19 vaccine will not work for black Americans or that they may be given a different trait from the rest of society.
“I can’t say in good faith to my people that they accept this wholesale, but I also don’t try to support any unfounded conspiracy theories. It’s a loose rope that I have to walk here, ”said Earle Fisher, pastor of Abissini Missionary Baptist Church, a congregation of about 50 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Of the dozen black church leaders interviewed, all said they thought the vaccine was needed to end the crisis, but only one was willing to approve it directly at this time.
Most said they wanted more information so they could inform their parishioners about how the vaccine works in the body, where they could get it, and about possible side effects.
“As a pastor and as a health worker, I can see why people should take it because of the devastation I have seen. But I also understand why the African American community does not trust us because of how we have been treated in the past, ”said Reginald Belton of Brownsville First Baptist Church in Brooklyn, who also conducts pastoral care in a hospital.
Belton said he planned to take the vaccine and wants to provide his members with more information about it, but stopped saying he would approve it.
The importance of black religious leaders in the vaccine advocacy effort was underscored by a CDC report this month, which showed that health officials were successful when they partnered with African American churches to educate underserved communities. .
Black churches have long played a critical role in the social welfare of black Americans, perhaps the most famous during the civil rights movement.
TRUST IN THE BUILDING
Pastors interviewed by Reuters said local government and other public officials must build trust with their religious communities to increase the acceptance of vaccines among black Americans.
Elijah Hankerson III, head of the International Life Center, Church of God in Christ in St. Louis, Missouri, said the results of clinical trials, which show that Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are more than 90% effective, are not enough to promote a vaccine.
But if the officials of St. Louis is committed to the vaccine and his legal team and his church health unit say it’s okay, Hankerson said he would promote it on his webcasts and social media, reaching a combined audience of about 70,000.
“Data is one thing,” said Hankerson, who lost his uncle and two colleagues to the virus. “If there are people we trust who can assure and say, ‘Hey, this is for the benefit of the people, take that out,’ we wouldn’t mind doing that.”
The National Medical Association, an organization of black health care providers, tried to offer that guarantee to black Americans on Monday, when it announced support for the U.S. government’s emergency approval of the Pfizer and Moderna shootings after a independent review of clinical trial data.
Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, a coalition that seeks to reduce health disparities, said he predicted black churches would eventually join to mobilize to vaccinate people.
Some religious leaders are encouraging the vaccine despite their own hesitation because they see little alternative.
Pastor George Waddles of Second Baptist Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a congregation of about 400, has hesitated before the vaccines. He received the flu vaccine for the first time in 2019 because he previously believed it could make him sick.
But seeing the suffering caused by COVID-19 has motivated him to encourage his parishioners to take a leap of faith and get vaccinated.
“We have three options,” Waddles recalled saying in a virtual prayer call this month. “Vaccination, Isolation, or Decimation.”
Report by Gabriella Borter in New York and Makini Brice in Washington, edited by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman