White House adviser and Covid equity task force director Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith provided an update Monday on the administration’s efforts toward vaccine equity, emphasizing that there is still work to be done.
Factors including race, ethnicity, rural versus urban geography, poverty, disability, living situation and type of employment are “exerting tremendous influence on the outcomes we see in Covid-19,” Nunez-Smith said at Monday’s virtual Covid briefing.
She outlined with charts how Latinos have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 cases, while Black Americans have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 deaths. Vaccination rates, she said, are “significantly lower” for Latino, Asian, and non-Hispanic Black Americans relative to their share of the general population, nothing that there is still limited data on vaccinations.
“We're not getting from individuals, from providers and from states, the critical information about who has access to these three lifesaving vaccines that need to be equitably distributed across our country. So I want to emphasize here: It is possible to do better,” she said.
The information that is being reported, she said, shows there is “critical ground that we must make up.”
Nunez-Smith also detailed the challenges of vaccine hesitancy, noting that the Biden administration is implementing “a comprehensive and national public education campaign,” and hosting roundtables with constituencies to get those efforts right.
“We're building relationships with trusted messengers, all over the country, to make sure they have the best information possible to share with their communities,” she said.
However, she pressed, public health officials “cannot and will not” accept that vaccine confidence is “the end all and be all of the difference in vaccine uptake,” citing the need for other intervention, like community vaccination sites, mobile units, and other equity-oriented vaccination site features, like targeted geographic eligibility, weekend extended hours, and reserved slots for registration through faith-based and community-based organizations. She also touted the federal retail pharmacy program to address these issues for some of the nation’s most vulnerable.
Going forward, she said the administration will continue to prioritize filling gaps for high-risk communities and will call on states to “offer clear, transparent equity goals for their residents” and provide more data.
“We must take significant steps at every level of intervention to bend the vaccination process towards justice,” she said, adding that equity is “mission critical” and not just an aspirational goal.