Carlos Moreno/KCUR toggle caption Carlos Moreno/KCUR Yvette Richards, director of community connection at St. James United Methodist in Kansas City, checks temperatures before Sunday morning services. The church is hosting vaccination clinics and holding socially-distanced services after shutting down for much of the pandemic. Carlos Moreno/KCUR Throughout the COVID-19 vaccination effort, public health officials and politicians have insisted that providing shots equitably across racial and ethnic groups is a top priority. But it's been left up to states to decide how to do that and to collect racial and ethnic data on vaccinated individuals, so states can track how well they're doing reaching all groups. The gaps and inconsistencies in the data have made it difficult to understand who's actually getting shots.