The communities were decimated.
Newark. Paterson. Elizabeth. COVID-19 hotspots with high infection and death rates.
The coronavirus disproportionately devastated many communities of color as it swept through New Jersey. Black and Latino residents responded, heeding public health warnings. They took precautions. They followed hand-washing and other hygiene measures. They got tested.
Throughout the pandemic, the Black and Latino communities largely embraced the advice of public health officials, according to a new Rutgers University study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
But trust in public health stopped with the COVID-19 vaccine. When it came to immunizations, Black and Latino participants remained skeptical, the study found.
“Fear, illness and loss experienced during the pandemic motivated them to intensely seek information and take safety precautions like wearing a mask, social distancing and washing hands to protect themselves and loved ones,” said study co-author Manuel Jimenez, an assistant professor of pediatrics, family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in a news release. “However, participants did not trust the vaccine development process and wanted clearer information.”
Rutgers University researchers interviewed 111 Black and Latino residents from low-income communities in Essex, Middlesex, Passaic and Union counties that were hit hard by the virus.
The study — conducted between mid-November 2020 and early February — sought to “explore the experiences of Black and Latinx communities during the pandemic to better understand their perspectives on COVID-19 mitigation behaviors,” such as mask-wearing, testing and vaccines, the study said.
Researchers also learned about logistical barriers that participants faced, including difficulty accessing testing. But vaccine hesitancy stood out as an obstacle. Researchers wanted to understand it, ultimately hoping to find solutions.
“One of the major pieces of this study is we wanted to understand where people’s (fears) were coming from,” said Shawna Hudson, a study co-principal investigator and professor and research division chief in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
It wasn’t a lack of understanding, she said. Black and Latino participants were engaged with public health messaging. But they had concerns about the vaccines, and many of them referenced the lack of trust that still exists with the government, institutions and the health care system.
That wariness among people of color can be traced to past atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis study and the testing of birth control pills on Puerto Rican women. These widely documented events have contributed to the fear and skepticism that persist today surrounding vaccines and other public health initiatives.
“I think when we went into this, we weren’t surprised to hear stories about Tuskegee and other research issues that were concerning to the African American population in particular, but also the Latino population,” Hudson said.
Some participants worried how quickly the vaccines were developed. Some wanted more information and transparency. Others worried about side effects and how the vaccine could affect their children. And some wanted to wait until they saw how the vaccines impacted others.
Hudson said it will take people on the ground in local communities to ease that mistrust.
“It’s really about getting trusted messengers who are part of the community and respected in the community to also echo what we’re hearing from both the federal, the state and the local government,” Hudson said. “So, having additional messengers who can also talk about the importance of the vaccine as we move forward.”
The goal of the study, Hudson said, “was to provide a road map for us to understand, ‘Where do we need to intervene?’” Whether with access to testing sites or vaccine hesitancy, the goal was to better understand “so that we can help to inform our public health stakeholders who are in the process of trying to get messages out,” Hudson added.
Even though the vaccines were rolled out long ago, Hudson said it’s critical that communities not lose sight of the importance of testing and access to testing sites.
“We have a large group of people who are not vaccinated, who are still at risk,” Hudson said. “And so we need to also still be focused on the testing mission and making sure that people are safe, and then still doing the mitigation for that.”
The researchers said reimagining vaccine distribution using simple measures could ease fears. Measures include offering more local vaccination sites in low-income communities and relying on trusted community partners such as religious institutions to get the message out.
“Churches and the role of the church in terms of being able to get to a certain population,” she said, “and then also making sure that they (vaccines) are locally available so that you don’t have to get an Uber or other things if there are places that you can walk to like schools and other places in the community to be able to access the vaccine.”
The pandemic is not over. Variants remain a threat. People may need booster shots. And it’s unclear what the future holds.
But what is clear is those who are unvaccinated are especially at risk.
“The remaining unknowns about new vaccines need to be acknowledged and described for these communities to make informed decisions,” Jimenez said. “Scientists and public officials need to work collaboratively with trusted community leaders and health professionals to provide transparent information, including remaining unknowns, so that these communities can make informed decisions rather than focusing on marketing campaigns to eliminate vaccine hesitancy.”
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Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com.