According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, 43% of the population who has already received a vaccine is White, compared to 21% Hispanic, 15% Asian, and 18% Black.
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The Houston Health Department and members of Texas’s Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel say cities in addition to the state’s massive vaccination centers also need a plan to vaccinate more people in communities of color.
Turner joined other elected leaders in the Houston area on Saturday, Feb. 6 to discuss how the city plans to combat these inequalities and reduce inequality seen in at-risk, vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.
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He covered two major parts of the plan he and other local leaders said they intended to follow.
The first is that Houston and Harris County will work to be more “intentional and targeted” with where they distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
Turner recognized that mass vaccination sites are good for numbers, not fairness. That means a lot of people show up to get a vaccination dose, but most of the people who show up are not from minority communities.
He said the state should send more vaccines to the Houston Health Department and Harris County Public Health as these departments deliver the vaccines to smaller community clinics.
He also said that addressing this inequality in vaccine allocation to smaller community clinics present in minority communities will directly address reluctance to get the vaccine.
“If neighbors and relatives see (people they know are getting a vaccine), they won’t want to be left out,” he said.
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The second key part of the plan is to actually work constructively to share the vaccine doses with other providers.
“You could have the best healthcare in the world, but if you don’t have access to it? Doesn’t matter,” said Turner.
Harris County Public Health hospitals have received fewer doses of vaccine than other providers, the mayor said. But 88% of the vaccines in Harris Health hospitals have gone to people of color.
Many of the hospitals in the Harris Health system are “closer to where people live,” Turner said, making them the perfect providers to make vaccines available and accessible to minority communities. Harris Health is also the only new hospital system in the area to serve people with low incomes or no insurance, said Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, President and CEO of the Harris Health System.
Turner said his team will work to distribute more doses to Harris Health suppliers and FQAC clinics, such as Hope Clinic and Ibn Sina Clinic.
The city has also determined priority zip codes, using age, race and ethnicity data to determine where vaccine distribution is low, said Stephen Williams, director of Houston Health Department. COVID-19 vaccines were distributed Saturday at the Settegast Health Center in northeast Houston, which falls under one of the priority zip codes.
“There is nothing genetically different in humans that makes them more susceptible to COVID-19,” said the city’s chief health authority, Dr. David Persse. ‘They are social inequalities. We should be smarter than the problem. ‘
Overall, Turner said, once more vaccine doses become available and distributed to suppliers in minority communities, the problems will start to ease.
“If we don’t get up and speak to the inequalities that are taking place, who will?” Turner said.
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