be living with this virus for an extremely long time. dr. uchi blackstock. thank you for being with us. and coming up on morning joe, five states will hold primary elections tomorrow. steve kornacki will be at the big board to break down the biggest races. plus, a deal on reconciliation could boost democrats. but will senator kyrsten sinema stand in the way. we ll hear from senator murphy about the negotiations in the upper chamber. also, ahead, the latest on the war in ukraine as russia advances the stall. and a ship carrying grain leaves for the first time since russia s invasion. we ll get analysis from navy admiral james stavridis. and john kirby will also join the conversation. ease. you can already have it and not know it. if you have chronic kidney disease
and dr. yuchi blackstock, founder and ceo of advancing health equity and an msnbc medical contributor. reverend richardson, let me start with you. i don t know what we can do to address the partisan nature of the vaccine split, but there s also a racial split, and it s more about access than hesitancy. fewer than half of u.s. states have vaccinated more than a third of their black population, something i know that you and cnbc is digging down in. what can be done? what are we doing at a state, local, and federal level to make this vaccine more equitable? first of all, thank you, reverend sharpton. first of all, we have to own the fact that there s this inequity
has given us an opportunity to begin to focus on it and to correct it because this is not over when the pandemic is over. and the pandemic is not going to be over when we think it s over. and so we still have to have a long-range commitment to changing the issues around health and trust in our communities. our people fundamentally do not trust the government, and that s why it s important to put trusted voices into the conversation and there s nobody more trusted in our community than pastors who talk to their people every week, who preach to them, who bury their dead, who bless their babies and marry their young. so this is very urgent. i m calling on all pastors. we have a website. you can sign up and become a be trained. we re doing 3,000 pastors. we re already done about 500, and we re getting this out. we re mobilizing the churches and the pastors. dr. blackstock, even though it s father s day, i want to address the vaccination rate
vaccinations for the pandemic. the pandemic has unfolded the fact that the african-american community has been denied and addressed to vaccinations or we re falling behind in the major population. so we have generations of vaccine denial, and it s cost us death and it s cost us pain. and the church, i m happy to say, is engaged across this country in all denominations, and we will be in partnership with the cdc, making this happen. the cdc has owned the challenge, and we know that the pastors are trusted voices in african-american communities. and we ve got to do a lot more. dr. blackstock, a study published this week by the kaiser family foundation warned that even if we reach president biden s 70% vaccination goal by july 4th or later, the failure to get some shots into arms equitably in the black and hispanic communities could limit the recovery overall and widen existing health disparities.
impact of the vaccine on a pregnancy that are just not true. so, again, this is about getting that information that s accurate, that s concise, that s culturally responsive out to our community because we already have a black maternal mortality crisis in this country. we cannot risk exacerbating those inequities by having our pregnant people undervaccinated. so, again, we need to you know, the next few months are going to be very crucial because we can see over the summer and in the winter as the weather gets colder and the virus is more likely to spread in those conditions, we could see our communities being disproportionately impacted yet again. we have to really use this moment as a transformative moment. all right. thank you to both of you, reverend dr. w. franklin richardson and dr. blackstock. coming up, as we celebrate father s day, i m going to bring you some facts about black fatherhood that might surprise