University of Pennsylvania doctor brings transparency to COVID vaccine for Black community
WPVI
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) A doctor at the University of Pennsylvania is using her platform to raise awareness about inequities in health care and show the community the COVID-19 vaccine is safe. I m excited, a little bit nervous, Dr. Florencia Greer-Polite said in her video blog as she was about to get her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
She was one of the first people at Penn Medicine to be vaccinated, but it was a shot she wasn t sure she would get. I will be honest, I was not originally gung-ho about getting the vaccine, said Polite, who s the Chief of the Generalist Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
A doctor at the University of Pennsylvania is using her platform to raise awareness about inequities in health care and show the community the COVID-19 vaccine is safe.
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This week, our Whats In It For Us hosts discuss why many in the Black community are still reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine
Dr.
Biden-Harris cabinet picks, and how Black America is still reluctant to get the
COVID-19 vaccine.
Earlier this week, the
Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was endorsed by the FDA. With many people, from politicians to essential workers in line to receive the vaccine, the infamous photo of physician Dr.
Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
“It is not the Syphilis experiment. This is not anywhere near this is,” explains Greer.
Dr. Florencia Greer Polite receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 16, 2020.
As I walked to the top floor of the Perelman Center to receive the novel COVID-19 vaccine, I was filled with an emotion I had not felt in some time:
hope. Yet there was something else on my mind at that moment as a physician of African descent: Tuskegee.
I told my colleague that while our country could never undo the harm it caused to the many families directly and indirectly affected by the inhumane acts of the Tuskegee syphilis experimentation, my hope was that this iteration of scientific discovery would be restorative.