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Vaccination rates lag in communities of color, but it's not only due to hesitancy, experts say
Focusing on hesitancy, rather than access, is looking at the problem backward.
• 13 min read
Catch up on the developing stories making headlines.CJ Gunther/EPA via Shutterstock
It started with the op-eds. Even before COVID-19vaccines were widely available, newspapers' opinion pages warned that some Black people would be hesitant to get the shot. Those columns often referenced the infamous 1930s Tuskegee Syphilis Study, during which doctors withheld treatment from Black men with syphilis, as evidence of lingering well-founded mistrust that might drag down vaccination rates in the Black community.