Doctor joins COVID-19 vaccine trial to combat mistrust in the Black community

Racialized communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in infections and deaths, but as the vaccine provides hope for many across the world, doctors are working to combat mistrust in the COVID-19 vaccine within the Black and Indigenous communities.

One doctor in the United States took matters into her own hands, by signing up to be a part of a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial and sharing her story online.

Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Rutgers University Medical School. In a thread shared on Twitter, Fitzhugh detailed why she decided to join the trial and what it was like participating in one.

Fitzhugh tells CityNews she initially decided to research participating in a clinical trial because historically, it’s very difficult to get communities of colour to trust in medical establishments and to trust in some of these scientific developments, citing Henrietta Lacks’ story as just one example of this.

In the 1950s, researchers took a sample of cancer cells from Lacks without her permission while she was under anesthesia and found the cells could be grown indefinitely.

The so-called “HeLa” cells became crucial for understanding viruses, cancer treatments, in-vitro fertilization and development of vaccines, including the polio vaccine.

“There is a lot of mistrust, particularly in the Black community in the United States, around experimentation on black and brown bodies which happened, unfortunately, quite a lot in the earlier parts of the 19th century,” Fitzhugh said.

She had also heard that participation by people of colour in COVID-19 vaccine trials was low.

“Everything I had heard and everything I read had noted that the participation by people of colour was a lot lower than what they wanted at that time,” Fitzhugh said.

“The biggest driving force for me was representation by the Black community. I felt like doing my part and adding to that trial. Giving a little bit something of myself for the greater good made it so worth it.”

A study on race and health conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation in the U.S. found that Black adults were less likely than any other groups to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Just 17 per cent of Black adults said they would definitely get the vaccine and 27 per cent said they would definitely not get it.

Fitzhugh said by sharing her story, she hoped to open up an important discussion within the Black community about getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

Since tweeting on Dec. 12, her story has been retweeted almost 10,000 times.

“I want people to be educated. You have to trust the process and trust the science. If I at least tell my story and tell what I went though, it may give people an idea what to expect, should they get vaccinated,” Fitzhugh said.

Dr. Fitzhugh could not disclose the trial she is participating in, but said she received her first dose in October and second in November. She doesn’t know if she received a placebo or the actual vaccine at this point.

Dr. Fitzhugh says she could be “unblinded” soon and find out whether she has been vaccinated. She’s currently eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine through her work as a physician, but doesn’t want to take the vaccine away from another doctor or hospital worker if it is not necessary.

“I’m tired of seeing people who look like me die of this disease.”

“What I find to be so important now is that we have these discussions, we openly discuss why the hesitancy is there, why the mistrust is there so that we can have educated conversations going forward about people at least considering being vaccinated,” Dr. Fitzhugh said. “I don’t think trying to convincing people to be vaccinate is the appropriate approach. We need to have the conversations, acknowledge the hesitancy and why it’s there.”

Fitzhugh says hearing so many stories and seeing the pain of those who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic made it all the more important to become apart of the trial.

“I’m tired of seeing people who look like me die of this disease.”

“I hope people at least consider being vaccinated. I do want people to get the information that’s available. I want people to talk to their physicians…and ask the difficult questions,” she said.

Gerald Evans, the Chair for Infection Diseases at Queen’s University, says there is a clear difference between those who are hesitant to receive a vaccine and so-called “anti-vaxxers.”

“It isn’t anti-vaxxer at all. There is an intrinsic hesitancy when you think to yourself ‘Were there enough people who are like me enrolled in these studies so I can be confident about the data?’ Over history, there has been a significant disadvantage amongst people who were not white in scientific studies,” Evans said.

With most of the data around vaccine hesitancy and mistrust coming from the U.S., Evans said they are making a push to collect similar data in Canada as vaccine rollout plans continue to be formulated.

“I know that there is a big move to make sure we do the same move here in Canada, getting away from just general polling information and really understanding within these communities what is the feeling about taking the vaccine,” Evans said.