Black Americans ’ COVID vaccine hesitancy stems more from today’s inequities than historical ones

Key takeaways:Doctors and distrust. Black Americans are more likely than whites to report poor interactions with their physicians.Not history but here and now. These personal experiences — rather than wrongs of the past — tend to heighten their distrust of the health care system and lead to skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines.Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate in the Black community lagged well behind that of whites, a gap many in the media speculated was the result of fears based on historical health-related injustices like the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.Butnew research by UCLA psychologists shows that vaccine hesitancy and mistrust of medical professionals among Black Americans may hinge more on their current unsatisfactory health care experiences than on their knowledge of past wrongs.The findings, the researchers say, clearly illustrate the need for both broad and specific changes within the medical community to improve experiences and build better trust with Black patients. The research is published in the journal Health Psychology.“History is important, no doubt, but Black Americans do not have to reach into the past for examples of inequity in health care — many have experienced it themselves,” said Kimberly Martin, who led the research as a UCLA doctoral student and is now a UC President’s Postdoctoral Scholar at UC San Francisco.In the first of two studies, Martin and her UCLA colleagues surveyed approximately 300 Black and white pa...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news