According to a new study released Friday by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Harvard, Emory and other institutions, people with color have been hugely underrepresented in U.S. vaccine trials for the past decade.
The study, which examined data from 230 vaccine studies involving nearly 220,000 participants, found that white people made up the majority, or 78%, of the participants in studies conducted between June 2011 and June 2020.
However, Black people accounted for 11% of the participants, Hispanics made up 12% and American Indians / Alaska Natives accounted for 0.4%.
The study, published in the JAMA Network Open, comes as the nation grapples with a Covid-19 pandemic that has disproportionately affected people of color. Healthcare leaders are working to combat vaccine mistrust among black and brown people, saying the shot is key to preventing further devastation in their communities.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black and Latino Americans die from Covid-19 three times as quickly as white people and are hospitalized four times as often.
Researchers are now calling for more diversity in vaccine trials, saying it will help address vaccine hesitancy, address safety concerns, and educate communities of color. They also note that many vaccine studies were unable to fully report demographic information about participants.
“This collaborative work highlights a problem that has plagued the scientific community for too long: insufficient representation in clinical trials,” says Dr. Steve Pergam, an associate professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “The diversity seen in Covid-19 vaccine studies shows that we can, but we need to ensure that future studies focus not only on early enrollment but also on inclusion.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN last year that he wanted people of color to enroll in Covid-19 vaccine trials with double their percentage of the population as their communities were hit hard by the pandemic. The US is 12% Black and 18% Latino.
But last summer, researchers said they had trouble recruiting people of color for Covid-19 vaccine trials. In August, for example, black and Latino people made up just 10% of the 350,000 people who signed up for a clinical study on the coronavirus.
Moderna has made efforts to increase the number of people with color in its vaccine trials, but the company fell short of the levels that Fauci suggested.
Black leaders say many Black Americans refused to enroll in trials because they don’t want to be guinea pigs for vaccination trials due to the country’s history of racism in medical research. They cited the 1932-1972 Tuskegee Experiments that recruited 600 black men – 399 who had syphilis and 201 who did not – and followed the progression of the disease by not treating the men when they died or suffered serious health problems.