In an attempt to increase vaccinations in Dallas-Fort Worth communities disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus, physicians answered questions asked by African American church leaders in a series of video recordings by the Dallas County Medical Society.
“The African-American community frequently has been a group that has been not focused on well enough in terms of efforts to vaccinate and to educate about COVID-19 and clearly is a patient population that, in many cases, is at higher risk for COVID-19,” said Dr. Beth Kassanoff-Piper, an internal medicine specialist from Dallas. “So, it’s very important that they get the correct information […].”
As of Oct. 22, only 15.9% of African Americans in Dallas were vaccinated compared to 28.5% of Caucasians, 32.9% of Hispanics, 8.4% of Asians, and 13.9% of people who identified as ‘other,’ according to Dallas County’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The North Texas Medical Society Coalition created this video outreach project. Through this project, nine religious leaders sat down with Dallas County Medical Society doctors individually to discuss various topics such as fertility and childbearing, the inclusion of African Americans in vaccine clinical trials, and building trust between African Americans and medical communities.
“Each faith leader sat down with one of the community physicians to ask whatever questions they were hearing from their congregation to dispel some of the myths that some of the people in their congregation had brought up,” said Kassanoff-Piper, who is vice-chair of the North Texas Medical Society Coalition.
For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black men died while under the false impression they were receiving treatment during the Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee University from 1932 through 1972.
“They brought the topic up as a whole in terms of why African Americans may be distrustful of the medical system,” Kassanoff-Piper told Dallas Express. “That’s very well-recognized.”
According to media reports, the African American population is at higher risk for COVID-19 due to the likelihood that they are frontline workers.
“There do appear to be some increases in African-American patients in terms of risk regardless of their job, but very frequently it is job or exposure-related,” Kassanoff-Piper said in an interview. “If a family member doesn’t have all the information that they need to make them feel comfortable with getting the vaccine and one person in the family gets it, it may quickly spread to the other members of the household or other family contacts that are visitors.”
The nine video sessions are available online for all to review, and the North Texas Medical Society is planning to schedule more recording sessions with other area faith leaders.
“The hope is that there will be more people who are interested in having these kinds of conversations that they can share,” Kassanoff-Piper added. “We’ve got physicians who are ready, and they are scheduling a date.”
The project was paid for with a $2,500 grant from the Texas Medical Association.
Note: This article was updated on October 25, 2021 at 9:50 am.