The reasons I hear African Americans will not participate are heartbreaking and disappointing
A study conducted by the APM Research Lab shows that Black African Americans have been disproportionately devastated by COVID-19. Accoding to official statistics coronavirus has claimed about 112,000 American lives through June 9.Black Americans continue to experience the highest overall mortality rates and the most widespread occurrence of disproportionate deaths. Since we began reporting these data, the Black mortality rate across the U.S. has never fallen below twice that of all other groups, revealing a durable pattern of disproportionality.
The latest overall COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.3 times as high as the rate for Whites and Asians, and 2.2 times as high as the Latino rate.
A clinician at Infinite Clinical Trials outside Atlanta, Calethia Hodges s tasked to persuade Black people who have a deep mistrust of experimental drugs and medical institutions to participate in clinical trials to help find a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus.
She recruits African Americans for human trials of COVID-19 trials.
"The reasons I hear African Americans will not participate are heartbreaking and disappointing," Calethia said.
According to NBC News report, Hodges has to overcome the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, when infected Black men were solicited to be a part of a 40-year study (1932 to 1972) to treat the disease with penicillin and were offered free medical exams, free meals and burial insurance.
But they were not given the drug, and 28 of the original 399 Black men died of syphilis, 100 died of related complications, 40 of their wives were infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis. That dark past remains a hurdle to clear.
A retired pulmonologist, Dr. Larry Graham understands the lack of trust but insists that African Americans have to get over it.
"Genetics related to racial differences make it essential that we be involved in broad-based and diverse clinical trials of medications and vaccines," he said.
"The expanding discipline of pharmacogenetics has taught us that we may respond differently than other races to both medicines and vaccines. We must be sure it works in Black folks. This can only be determined by our inclusion in the research-based trials of such vaccines," he added.
A COVID-19 vaccine will only work if trials include Black participants, experts say. https://t.co/CEXsbqLrSB
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 17, 2020
Hodges added that COVID-19 human trials at her location will not occur for another month or two. She has been successful in getting African Americans to participate in other trials — most recently for women who experience "hot flashes" — through distributing educational pamphlets. "Information is power," she said.
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