[ad_1]
In its final report, the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force highlighted encouraging improvements over the past year in addressing inequities in the burden of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic groups, as well as disparities in vaccine access and immunization rates.
Overall, the gaps in cases, hospitalizations and deaths between Blacks and Hispanics compared to whites have closed, with nearly 90% drops in COVID-19 deaths among Black, brown and indigenous populations over the past year. Vaccination rates have also improved, with these underrepresented groups now getting vaccinated at rates that reflect their makeup in the U.S. population. “Looking back to April, we were seeing around 10 points difference in terms of vaccination rates among racial and ethnic groups. Now we consistently see in national pools and from the CDC that for eligible adults in this country, the racial and ethnic gaps are gone for vaccination,” says Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the Health Equity Task Force.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Formed by an Executive Order President Biden signed in the first few days after taking office, the task force’s mission was to ensure that the COVID-19 response, including the historic mass vaccination campaign, prioritized equity—in education and information about the shots, as well as access to them.
That mission was particularly critical as the virus hit communities of color and lower resource areas the hardest: rates of infection, hospitalization and deaths were consistently higher among Black, Hispanic and non-white populations than they were among whites, for example. Because access to health care providers who were administering the vaccines is so unequal, those trends were expected to spill over into vaccination status if intentional efforts to balance the access weren’t made.
Through monthly meetings that stretched for three to four hours each, the task force’s 13 members gathered experts and reviewed data on a handful of…
[ad_2]
Source : time
