The Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEChoose format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEThe Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States
Publication date: 30.06.2023
Teoria Polityki, 2023, No. 7/2023, pp. 215 - 230
https://doi.org/10.4467/25440845TP.23.011.17524Authors
The Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States
In her famous book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot describes not only scientific importance of using HeLa cells in biomedical research, but also the fact that the cells were obtained from Henrietta without her knowledge nor consent. Because the Lacks family was Black the case is repeatedly described as an example of ‘Medical Apartheid’ (Batelaan, 2021). 70 years after Lacks’ death the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that vaccine hesitancy among Black communities in the US may have political roots dating back to slavery. According to Quinn et al., only 40% of Black adults were ready to be vaccinated at the beginning of 2021 (Padamsee et al., 2022) and death rates from COVID-19 are still very high among these groups (Ajasa, 2021). As some scholars argue, the tendency may result from political distrust of Black groups towards official public health measures against the pandemic (Woko, Siegel, Hornik, 2020; Restrepo, Krouse, 2022). Therefore, public health response regarding vaccinations becomes an important field of non-institutional politics where social distrust towards this medical procedure mirrors political distrust of Black communities towards the government. The paper explores the main features of anti-vaccinal movement among Black population in the US and argues that during the COVID-19 pandemic the field of public health may be more politically-sensitive than it had ever been before.
Abraham, J. (2010). “Pharmaceuticalization of Society in Context: Theoretical, Empirical and Health Dimensions”. Sociology, 44(4), pp. 603–622.
Ajasa A. (2021). “For some Black Americans, Vaccine Hesitancy Is Just One Part of a Legacy of Mistrust”. Available at The Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/20/black-americans-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-mistrust (accessed: 25.06.2022).
Alsan, M., Wanamaker, M. (2018). “Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(1), pp. 407–455.
Bailey, Z.D., et al. (2017). “Structural Racism and Health Inequities in the USA: Evidence and Interventions”. The Lancet, 389(10077), pp. 1453–1463.
Batelaan, K. (2021). “≪It’s Not the Science We Distrust; It’s the Scientists≫: Reframing the Anti-Vaccination Movement Within Black Communities”. Global Public Health, pp. 1–14.
Bogart, L.M., et al. (2021). “What Contributes to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Black Communities, and How Can It Be Addressed?”. Research Report of RAND available at: https://view.ckcest.cn/AllFiles/ZKBG/Pages/288/341536abb73df3df6ad0682d1c3ced3a0b416e9c.pdf (accessed: 27.06.2022).
BSI (2022). “HeLa cells (1951)”. Available at British Society for Immunology website: https://www.immunology.org/hela-cells-1951 (accessed: 27.06.2022).
Brooks, D.D., Smith, D.R., Anderson, R.J. (1991). “Medical Apartheid: An American Perspective”. JAMA, 266(19), pp. 2746–2749.
Callaghan, T., et al. (2021). “Correlates and Disparities of Intention to Vaccinate against COVID-19”. Social Science & Medicine, 272, pp. 1–5.
CDC (2022). “Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death by Race/Ethnicity”. Report of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention available at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html (accessed: 27.06.2022).
Chandler, D. (2010). “The Underutilization of Health Services in the Black Community: An Examination of Causes and Effects”. Journal of Black Studies, 40(5), pp. 915–931.
Conrad, P. (2007). The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cortese, A.J. (2003). Walls and Bridges: Social Justice and Public Policy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Dhawan, D., Bekalu, M., Pinnamaneni, R., McCloud, R., Viswanath, K. (2021).
“COVID-19 News and Misinformation: Do They Matter for Public Health Prevention?”. Journal of Health Communication, 26(11), pp. 799–808.
Frazier, C. (2020). “It’s More Than Just News: Print Media, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Collective Memory among African Americans”. Journal of Historical Sociology, 33(3), pp. 280–296.
Dube, E., Vivion, M., MacDonald, N.E. (2015). “Vaccine Hesitancy, Vaccine Refusal and the Anti-vaccine Movement: Influence, Impact and Implications”. Expert Review of Vaccines, 14(1), pp. 99–117.
Gill, M., Erevelles, N. (2017). “The Absent Presence of Elsie Lacks: Hauntings at the Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, and Disability”. African American Review, 50(2), pp. 123–137.
Golub, M., et al. (2011). “A Community Mobilizes to End Medical Apartheid”. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 5(3), pp. 317–325.
Hamel L., Lopez L., Munana C., Artiga S., Brodie M. (2021). “Race, Health and
COVID-19: The Views and Experiences of Black Americans”. Available at Kaiser Family Foundation website: https://files.kff.org/attachment/Report-Race-Healthand-COVID-19-The-Views-and-Experiences-of-Black-Americans.pdf (accessed: 25.06.2022).
Hogan, M.J., Pardi, N. (2022). “mRNA Vaccines in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond”.Annual Review of Medicine, 73, pp. 17–39.
Kricorian, K., Turner, K. (2021). “COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans”. PloS One, 16(8), pp. 1–14.
Hoberman, J. (2016). “Why Bioethics Has a Race Problem”. Hastings Center Report, 46(2), pp. 12–18.
Innis, J. (2022). “Medical Apartheid Author Harriet Washington Details History of Racism in Medicine”. Available at UMass Chan Medical School website: https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2022/02/medical-apartheid-author-harrietwashington-details-history-of-racism-in-medicine/ (accessed: 27.06.2022).
Jamison, A.M., Quinn, S.C., Freimuth, V.S. (2019). “≪You Don’t Trust a Government Vaccine≫: Narratives of Institutional Trust and Influenza Vaccination among African American and White Adults”. Social Science & Medicine, 221, pp. 87–94.
Jamison, P. (2020). “Anti-vaccination Leaders Fuel Black Mistrust of Medical Establishment as COVID-19 Kills People of Color”. Available at The Washington Post website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/07/17/black-anti-vaccine-coronavirus-tuskegee-syphilis/ (accessed: 25.06.2022).
Johnson, K.A. (2017). “A Black Theological Response to Race-Based Medicine: Reconciliation in Minority Communities”. Journal of Religion and Health, 56(3), pp. 1096–1110.
Laurencin, C.T., Walker, J.M. (2020). “A Pandemic on a Pandemic: Racism and COVID-19 in Blacks”. Cell Systems, 11(1), pp. 9–10.
Laws, T. (2018). “Tuskegee as Sacred Rhetoric: Focal Point for the Emergent Field of African American Religion and Health”. Journal of Religion and Health, 57(1), pp. 408–419.
Laurencin, C.T. (2021). “Addressing Justified Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community”. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 8(3), pp. 543–546.
Nino, M.D., Hearne, B.N., Cai, T. (2021). “Trajectories of COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions among US Adults: The Role of Race and Ethnicity”. SSM – Population Health, 15, pp. 1–8.
Padamsee, T.J., et al. (2022). “Changes in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Black and White Individuals in the US”. JAMA Network Open, 5(1), pp. 1–12.
Peterson-Besse, J.J., et al. (2014). “Barriers to Health Care among People with Disabilities Who Are Members of Underserved Racial/Ethnic Groups: A Scoping Review of the Literature”. Medical Care, 52(10), pp. S51–S63.
Pollock, A., Jones, D.S. (2015). “Coronary Artery Disease and the Contours of Pharmaceuticalization”. Social Science & Medicine, 131, pp. 221–227.
Restrepo, N., Krouse, H.J. (2022). “COVID-19 Disparities and Vaccine Hesitancy in Black Americans: What Ethical Lessons Can Be Learned?”. Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, 166(6), pp. 1147–1160.
Robillard, A.G., Annang, L., Buchanan, K.L. (2015). “Talking about Race: An Important First Step in Undergraduate Pedagogy Addressing African American Health Disparities”. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, 1(1), pp. 18–23.
Rossmann, C. (1988). “Medical Apartheid in Canada”. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 138(6), p. 492.
Schmidt, H., Gostin, L.O., Williams, M.A. (2020). “Is It Lawful and Ethical to Prioritize Racial Minorities for COVID-19 Vaccines?”. JAMA, 324(20), pp. 2023–2024.
Skloot, R. (2010), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers.
Snyder, T. (2020), Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary. New York: Crown Books.
Stump, J.L. (2014). “Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa Cell: Rights of Patients and Responsibilities of Medical Researchers”. The History Teacher, 48(1), pp. 127–180.
Tai, D.B.G., Shah, A., Doubeni, C.A., Sia, I.G., Wieland, M.L. (2021). “The Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the United States”. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 72(4), pp. 703–706.
Tikkanen, R.S., et al. (2017). “Hospital Payer and Racial/Ethnic Mix at Private Academic Medical Centers in Boston and New York City”. International Journal of Health Services, 47(3), pp. 460–476.
Washington, H. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Broadway Books.
WHO. (2022). “Noncommunicable Diseases”. Available at World Health Organization’s website: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/noncommunicablediseases (accessed: 25.06.2022).
Woko, C., Siegel, L., Hornik, R. (2020). “An Investigation of Low COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions among Black Americans: The Role of Behavioral Beliefs and Trust in COVID-19 Information Sources”. Journal of Health Communication, 25(10),pp. 819–826.
Viswanath, K., Bekalu, M., Dhawan, D., Pinnamaneni, R., Lang, J., McLoud, R. (2021). “Individual and Social Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake”. BMC Public Health, 21(1), pp. 1–10.
Information: Teoria Polityki, 2023, No. 7/2023, pp. 215 - 230
Article type: Original article
Titles:
The Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States
The Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States
Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Gołębia 24, 31-007 Kraków, Poland
Published at: 30.06.2023
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY
Percentage share of authors:
Article corrections:
-Publication languages:
EnglishView count: 495
Number of downloads: 344