Why some communities are distrustful of doctors and public health efforts - Fox News

As the latest updates on COVID-19, the monkeypox virus, polio and other health concerns and issues continue to circulate, one doctor pointed out that health care is very much like a product.

He told Fox News Digital that trust is the "glue" between doctors and patients — especially in underserved communities.

"Less trust leads to patients not complying with treatment or screening recommendations, and that in turn leads to reactive health care, as opposed to preventive care," he said.

In the infamous Tuskegee experiment, the federal government let a group of Black men in rural Alabama go untreated for syphilis for 40 years for research purposes.

Some doctors and medical professionals also believe that knowledge of the infamous Tuskegee experiment ever since 1972 continues to have impacts today.

This year of 2022 is the 50th anniversary of when the public first learned that the federal government denied a group of Black men with active syphilis the proper treatment for the disease.

The federal government, reported Jean Heller of the AP, had let hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama go untreated for syphilis for 40 years for research purposes. .

A public outcry ensued — and the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study" ended three months later.

"In the context of the history of the end of the famed Tuskegee experiment, Black and Brown citizens are reticent to participate in clinical trials and often delay critical care for curable diseases to the point that few if any option are available by the time they present," Dr.

Public Health Service started a study on Black men from an area in Tuskegee, Ala., with the highest rate of syphilis at the time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

"It was originally called the ‘Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male’ (now referred to as the ‘USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee’)," the health agency said on its website. 

"The study initially involved 600 Black men — 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease," the CDC added, but the "participants’ informed consent was not collected."

Left untreated, syphilis can have serious complications

The study done in Tuskegee is "one of the prime reasons why people in minority communities remain distrustful of doctors and of public health efforts, such as COVID-19 vaccines," said Dr