Strategies to Counter COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Mitigate Health Disparities in Minority Populations

Beyond the enormously complex logistical task of prioritizing, distributing and safely storing millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine, state and local governments must simultaneously devise transparent plans to prevent the minority health disparities that defined the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic from bleeding into the vaccination phase. Using insights gleaned from four focus groups conducted with health care professionals serving minority communities in New York as well as existing research on seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccination, we find that vaccine hesitancy – particularly within minority communities – may be a significant hurdle to achieving herd immunity through widespread acceptance of a newly developed COVID-19 vaccine. More concerning, this hesitancy may be especially damaging to communities of color that have already experienced the greatest loss during the pandemic.

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