The leader of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation says Black Ohioans are getting barely 5% of the COVID-19 vaccinations because the distribution hasn’t overcome longstanding obstacles that Black people confront when seeking medical care.
Putting vaccination clinics in supermarket pharmacies creates automatic barriers to people who do not have computers or live in food “deserts,” neighborhoods without grocery stores, said former state Rep. Barbara Sykes, president and chief executive officer of the OLBC Foundation.
Making signup dependent on computer access, and on having the time to wait for responses, puts vaccination out of reach for people without computers, Sykes said. The campaign needs boots on the ground to canvass neighborhoods and reach people where they live, she said.
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“We have been dealing with this virus for more than a year, and from the onset, it became very clear that Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by this,” Sykes said. “The pharmaceutical companies have been coming up with a vaccine for months, and today you’re telling me that they’re working on setting things up for Black and brown people?”
“It is the system that we take issue with, how things are set up,” she said.
Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday the state is moving as quickly as it can to broaden distribution to Black and Hispanic Ohioans. The low vaccination numbers trouble him, he said. “It’s a work in progress, and we have more to do.”
The foundation is the nonpartisan policy arm of the Legislative Black Caucus in the Ohio General Assembly. Sykes, from Summit County, was responding to a story Monday on Cincinnati.com that Black people have received 4.7% of the vaccinations in Ohio, although they have been nearly 20% of pandemic hospitalizations and 12% of all deaths.
There currently are no vaccination sites in three of the 10 Hamilton County ZIP codes with the highest percentages of Black residents, an Enquirer analysis shows. Roughly 20,000 people live in those three ZIP codes located primarily in the city of Cincinnati: 45224 (College Hill, Springfield Township and North College Hill), 45213 (Pleasant Ridge and Kennedy Heights) and 45217 (Avondale, North Avondale and St. Bernard).
The story included a second Enquirer analysis that showed that among Ohio's most populous counties, seven of 10 have fewer vaccination locations than the statewide average. Hamilton and Butler counties are among those lagging the state in access so far.
At his regular Tuesday news briefing, DeWine said that since the start of the pandemic, “one of the things we have focused on, frankly, that we’ve been concerned about, is inequality in health care and inequality in how these vaccinations are being distributed.”
Ohio is only getting about 100,000 doses of vaccine a week, and by next week, anyone 65 and older will be eligible to get inoculated. About 2.2 million Ohioans are over 65.
DeWine said he also wanted to ensure that all 88 counties got a share of the vaccine. At the moment, that means urban counties have fewer vaccination sites, compared to their population than in rural counties, DeWine acknowledged. More than 700 providers are giving vaccinations.
“The easier thing for our team to have done, for me to have done as governor, is simply to set up seven or eight sites, rock ‘n’ roll, and let it go,” DeWine said. “But that was not the responsible thing for Ohioans.”
There currently are no vaccination sites in three of the 10 Hamilton County ZIP codes with the highest percentages of Black residents, an additional Enquirer analysis shows. Roughly 20,000 people live in those three ZIP codes located primarily in the city of Cincinnati: 45224 (College Hill, Springfield Township and North College Hill), 45213 (Pleasant Ridge and Kennedy Heights) and 45217 (Avondale, North Avondale and St. Bernard).
To widen distribution, DeWine said more than 60 federally qualified health centers will be receiving a portion of the state’s vaccine allotment this week. The state also is planning for pop-up vaccine sites, coordinated through the health centers and faith leaders. Local health departments are holding aside doses for underserved populations.
DeWine’s advisory group on getting the vaccine to minority communities are collecting feedback from residents, “and this will help us develop solutions.” A media campaign on Black radio stations from the state about vaccinations also is unrolling this week, he said.
Another problem for the state in tracking vaccinations is that providers are not required to gather information on race. Nearly 25% of vaccinations in Ohio have been given to people of “unknown” or “other” race.” The minority advisory committee has told DeWine that providers must do better in collecting the information. Tuesday, the governor underscored the state’s need to know.
“We’re telling all our providers who are vaccinating people, make sure they get IDs for race,” DeWine said. “That’s the only way we can tell, frankly, how we’re doing. Too many times, that box is not checked, not filled out. People maybe don’t want to do that, but for us to understand how we’re doing, we need to know that.”
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