Promising Practices for Ensuring Equity in COVID-19 Vaccination: The Devil’s in the Details

The United States has made tremendous progress in delivering COVID-19 vaccines. As of January 2022, more than 79% of the eligible population had received ≥1 dose of the vaccine.1 Encouragingly, the relative proportions of administered vaccines among Black and Latinx populations have increased compared with their population sizes.2 As of late July 2021, among the 58% of people who had received ≥1 vaccine dose and for whom race and ethnicity were known, Latinx and Black people had begun to receive a larger share of recent vaccinations compared with their total population share (30% vs 17% and 13% vs 12%, respectively).3 These recent trends provide reason for optimism. However, because vaccinations among Black and Latinx populations, who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, have only just begun to match or exceed their population proportions, their overall vaccination rates continue to lag relative to White populations. While we lack vaccination data in more granular race and ethnicity categories, it seems likely that many other racial and ethnic groups, in addition to Black and Latinx populations, included under the broader term Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), are experiencing the same lag relative to White populations..

Author(s): Laura J. Faherty

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