Vaccine Hesitancy Among Minorities Addressed In Manatee County

MANATEE COUNTY, FL — As Manatee County’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues, more work needs to be done getting the vaccine to the county’s Black and Hispanic communities, said Dr. Jennifer Bencie, the Department of Health in Manatee County’s health officer.

She spoke at a March 10 Manatee County Chamber of Commerce event about the pandemic’s one-year anniversary.

As of Wednesday morning, nearly 111,000 people have received at least the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the COVID-19 Florida vaccine summary.

The majority of those vaccinated — more than 84,000 — have been white, though. Of those vaccinated in Manatee County, just about 2,600 are Black and 3,500 identify as Hispanic, the vaccine summary said.

Bencie acknowledged more needs to be done to address the vaccine hesitancy among the Black and Hispanic communities, noting the county has received grant money for this work.

Christopher Tittel, the DOH public information officer in Manatee County, told Patch the county is hiring a vaccine hesitancy consultant and has three candidates under consideration. The position is paid for by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-supported grant administered through the National Association of County and City Officials.

Only three grants were awarded to local health departments across the country, he added. In addition to the DOH in Manatee County, health departments in King County, Washington, and Linn County, Iowa, also received money for a vaccine hesitancy consultant.

Manatee County has addressed the reluctance in the county’s minority communities to receive the COVID vaccine in various ways during recent months, Tittel said. The county has partnered with MCR Health, “which serves a large percentage of the populations we’re talking about,” to bring the COVID-19 vaccination to its clients, he said.

Physicians and pharmacy retailers are also allowed to give the vaccine, he added, and as Gov. Ron DeSantis expands eligibility for the vaccine and “the list of approved dispensers, we’re hoping that the populations we’re talking about take advantage of any/all of these avenues to acquiring a vaccination,” he said.

Other initiatives during the pandemic have included the Mask Up Manatee! Coalition, a partnership between the DOH, county government, the School District of Manatee County, and other businesses and organizations that launched in August to distribute masks and deliver information about COVID-19 prevention and, these days, vaccination.

“To date, the coalition includes about 50 members representing/serving all sectors – nonprofits, health care providers, businesses, multilingual, multiracial, government, elected officials, etc. We have a brand that is circulating throughout the community on face masks, hand sanitizers, T-shirts, signage — lots and lots of exposure,” Tittel said.

In January, Mask Up Manatee! hosted two Spanish-language educational events about COVID-19 with UnidosNow and the American Lung Association, respectively. Early in the pandemic, teens from the Manatee Healthy Teens Coalition volunteered to share messaging with Spanish- and Haitian Creole-speaking audiences, as well, he said.

The DOH and other Manatee County Public Safety partners have discussed the possibility of launching mobile units to connect directly with “hard-to-reach populations, be they Black, Hispanic, without transportation, low or no income,” Tittel said.

Everyone eligible for the vaccine — which, as of Monday, is adults in Florida who are 50 and older, and other groups — is encouraged to register for the vaccine through the DOH in Manatee County. The county is also allowing all adults 18 and older to pre-register for the vaccine.

The DOH-Manatee is also working with The Patterson Foundation to address vaccine hesitancy in Manatee, Sarasota, DeSoto and Charlotte counties head on, Tittel said.

“Our goal is to make sure that everyone in Manatee County who wants a COVID-19 vaccine gets access to the vaccine, be it through DOH-Manatee/Manatee Public Safety, hospitals, commercial pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens, Publix, etc.) or other identified dispensaries,” he said.

While Tarnisha Cliatt, president, CEO and founder of the Manasota Black Chamber of Commerce, appreciates these efforts, “it has not been enough rollout” in the Black and Hispanic communities, she said.

“We actually have seen, unfortunately, vaccinations that have taken place in areas and communities around the African-American community, while only three vaccination (events) were in communities in the African-American corridor (of Manatee County,)” she said. “When you see that you have preferential vaccination for one group, there’s a lot of frustration on our end.”

The Black community, which is dying at a higher rate from COVID-19, should have been an early focus of the vaccine rollout, Cliatt said. “It seems the ones that are hardest hit should get the greatest resources first.”

At the same time, she acknowledges there is vaccine hesitancy among minority communities in Manatee County and beyond.

“There’s a lot of reservation, a lot of mistrust in the African-American community around the Tuskegee experiments and a host of other instances where the African-American community was made guinea pigs. I do understand the reservation they have, the reservation we have, but with the pandemic, we need to move forward.”

The Manasota Black Chamber has released two surveys to better understand community sentiments about the COVID-19 vaccine. One survey, which the chamber released on its own, can be found online here.

The second survey is a partnership between the chamber and the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications. This survey, which is open to Manatee County residents who are 18 or older, and who are African American or Hispanic, can be found online here.

“We're conducting a study with the purpose of obtaining your perceptions about the COVID-19 vaccine. As an African American or Hispanic ethnic member of Manatee County, your perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine are important to researchers who work with vaccinations as they impact minorities,” Cliatt said.

Once the survey results come in, they’ll be used as the basis for a campaign promoting the vaccine in the county’s minority communities, she said.