Who Gets a Vaccine First? U.S. Considers Race in Coronavirus Plans - The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an advisory committee of outside health experts in April began working on a ranking system for what may be an extended rollout in the United States.

“Giving it to one race initially and not another race, I’m not sure how that would be perceived by the public, how that would affect how vaccines are viewed as a trusted public health measure,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a group represented on the committee.

typically makes recommendations and state and local public health departments decide whether to follow them — the White House has pressed the agency at times to revise or hold off on proposals it found objectionable.

At the public advisory committee hearing, held in mid-June, a Defense Department representative said the operation would address the distribution plans in coming weeks.

Romero, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, predicted.

The group includes 15 voting members selected by the health secretary who come from immunology, infectious disease and other medical specialties, 30 nonvoting representatives from across the health field, and eight federal officials focused on vaccines.

Nancy Bennett, a health professor at the University of Rochester who led the advisory committee from 2015 to 2018.

Romero is among four committee members who have been deliberating on the plans since this spring alongside doctors at the C.D.C., representatives from the health field, ethicists and other outside consultants?

As they come up with a multitiered schedule for the first 1.2 million vaccine doses and then the next 110 million, they have focused on who should be considered essential workers, what underlying conditions should be taken into account and what kinds of living environments — nursing homes, homeless shelters — put people at high risk?

Not only do the groups have less access to health services, they have a documented history of receiving unequal care.

He wondered if a lot could be accomplished for minority groups by prioritizing people in general with underlying conditions and by trying to improve their access to health care.

Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of the George Washington University Law School, who has focused on racial inequality in health care and is serving as a consultant on the prioritization issue, agreed.

“It’s racial inequality — inequality in housing, inequality in employment, inequality in access to health care — that produced the underlying diseases,” Dr.

Harald Schmidt, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, is not a member of the committee, but has been suggesting other ways vaccine prioritization could work.

A recent Pew survey found that a little over half of Black adults said they would definitely or probably get a coronavirus vaccine if one were available today, while 44 percent said they would not.

Among Hispanic and white adults, 74 percent said they would get the vaccine, while around a quarter said they would not.

“Because of Tuskegee and structural racism within the health care system, you have to make a case much more strongly to the African-American population,” Dr.

Romero said that the advisory committee would start holding more frequent public meetings on prioritization later this summer, and that it would eventually involve representatives of the communities being considered in its deliberations

Matthew Hepburn, the Defense Department’s vaccine coordinator in Operation Warp Speed, said the multiagency effort was preparing to focus on prioritization