Black health experts talk about what’s behind the South Side neighborhood’s low vaccination rates and what’s being done to protect it against COVID-19.
By Daniel Corral, Eric Cox, Daniela Jaime and Jonathan Wilson
Nearly 71% of all Chicagoans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the latest city data.
But in 60621, the ZIP code where the predominantly Black Englewood neighborhood is located, inoculation rates sit at just 50.5%, behind nearly all other parts of the city.
A team of four Fall 2021 City Bureau Fellowship journalists interviewed local Black health experts about the reasons behind Englewood’s low vaccination rates and what’s being done to protect the community against COVID-19. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you believe COVID-19 vaccination rates in Englewood are lower than almost every other neighborhood in Chicago?
Dr. Maya Green - Chief Medical Officer, Howard Brown Health: I’m a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago. I grew up on 95th Street and King Drive then lived in Washington Park. So I understand that experience. One part of it is African Americans and their mistrust of the medical industry. At the root of it is the medical industry and the historical untrustworthiness towards Black and Brown bodies. It’s hard to engage, for some people, in a system where even the topic is narrated differently.
Then imagine the guard you’re putting up if you’re one of those people experiencing worries and concerns about the vaccine. You’re not even ready to talk about what was done, so I know you’re not ready to talk about what’s going on today. This attitude that they should get it by now. The low tolerance of healthcare entities, when they’re just so tired of explaining the vaccine for a year, how dare us. Who do we think we are?
African Americans have had centuries of exactly the opposite in their reality. So having this conversation 50 times, 100 times is nothing! Having that conversation as many times as it takes is just a drop in the bucket towards creating equity and inclusivity.
Dr. Brittani James - Medical Director, Inner City Muslim Action Network: I’ll be very honest, now I’m putting on my physician hat and my Black woman hat. It’s sad. It hurts, because when I hear numbers like that my first thought isn’t “people just won’t do it.” It breaks my heart to think about the hundreds of years that have led us to the disparities we’re seeing today. That is a part of the same story. Right now COVID-19 is on a lot of our minds, of course. But I never want us to lose the course that COVID-19 is following the same pattern as chronic diseases like asthma, diabetes, cancer, cancer screening, life expectancy, food access, housing security.
It's heartbreaking and a lot of it is so historically inherited and that’s something I try not to lose sight of. [Getting more Black people vaccinated has] got to be from a concerted effort and it has to be across industries. Nobody wasn’t to hear that, it’s a lot of work but has to hit on the policy level, that’s the only way we’re gonna do it long term.
Rodney Johnson, Founder and Director of One Health Englewood: If you take COVID-19 out and put another disease in, you will still find the rates are similar. So if the rates are similar for that, then it’s not really as much the hesitancy, it’s the system that’s in place to engage these community members.
But it’s a structural thing, too. People begin to ignore the health consequences of their actions because they have other priorities in life. There definitely are younger people who feel trauma and violence are more important than worrying about what COVID-19 is, because most of the people they know that have had COVID-19 have survived it.
Timotheus “TJ” Gordon, Co-Founder of Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition: They are afraid of getting it either because of the information about the vaccine, especially the history of how people of color been exploited in the name of science. And there is also a legitimate concern of, “What if I get an allergic reaction or get sick from the vaccine?” or “How can the vaccine be effective while I have a second disability?' Especially if they have a chronic condition, like sickle cell or an autoimmune disability. That's why they are hesitant. Not because they don’t want to take the vaccine, but because they don't know what's in the vaccine.
Do you believe the city of Chicago’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign is doing enough to help the Englewood community?
MG: I actually do, because I’ve seen the city put the vaccines there for free, and pay people to take the vaccines. But then some people are like, “Ok, you’re telling me I should get the vaccine and I don’t even trust y’all all the way.” It’s hard to look at one factor without looking at the social determinants of health. The transfer of wealth is actually healthcare and a lot of people don’t realize that yet. Until the transfer of wealth happens, the quality of life won't get there.
BJ: When I take a step back and I’m looking at our state, January and February 2020, we just were blind-sided. We didn’t know what we were dealing with. So all things being said, I’m happy about where I live in terms of the infection risk. I feel like they have put a lot of measures in place and saved a lot of lives. I truly believe that. The one piece though—if I had to be a little more critical—would be the response to behavioral health and mental health. We were already precarious and the floor really fell out during this pandemic. There just weren't enough therapists. There weren't enough psychiatrists.
When we talk about COVID-19, a lot of people think about death rates or even hospitalization rates but for me and a lot of us, we understand that that's only the tip of the iceberg. We all just went through something extremely traumatizing. Our lives are being risked, especially in Black and Brown communities who were disproportionately affected by job loss, and were more likely to be essential workers who were exposed to the virus and had less workplace protections. All those things affect your mental health so I wish we had been a little bit more proactive on that.
What will it take to raise vaccination rates in Englewood, and what actions is your organization taking to help protect the community against COVID-19?
MG: I don’t know that we’ll get to those numbers anytime soon. I hope we will. I appreciate the numbers because they help me understand what’s going on, but I don’t then set my numbers to beat someone else’s numbers because we’re not dealing with the same stuff. We are not coming from the same base so our goals can’t be the same.
When the pandemic hits hard, I give myself time to cry and then I get up and fight. The thing about the pandemic is you have to address it at pandemic speed. You have to be flexible. Right now, we have walk-in vaccinations available. We make sure our mobile vaccination unit is available to go into places where there aren’t a lot of clinics. We go into senior homes, we go door-to-door. Whether we get 100 people or one, we go. Because it’s the consistency that's important. What’s consistent on the North Side is there’s a whole lot of health care options that cater to those people. They’ve got to know that I’m here.
BJ: We’re always thinking of innovative ways to reach people so people are not just seeing us in the clinic. We are out in the community. We had a back-to-school backpack drive, and the health center was there at a table saying, “Ask us anything about COVID-19.” You can come in anytime for a COVID-19 vaccine assessment. We made everything very accessible.
But I think the main thing is valuing our cultural partners, our community partners and making an effort to have a community presence. In the spring, we're launching a community health worker program in which we literally train community members without healthcare backgrounds to engage with the local community.
It’s not just about the people that come through our doors at the health center, because obviously they had the intention to engage with us. We have to reach people who are hesitant, be proactive and de-medicalize the whole thing and just make it a part of all of our other community activities.
RJ: UIC is directly related to the health center, Mile Square, in Englewood. So we were able to work with Mile Square and coordinate community-driven actions that are based on collaboration, communication and mutual support.
In West Englewood, we launched the COVID-19 mural, sponsored by Facebook, with some of the organizations I collaborated with. The idea from there was to actually get people vaccinated where they are, and we helped over a thousand people get vaccinated in the community.
TG: We provided people the information that they need to set up appointments to get their vaccines, to know what’s in the vaccines, and to cope with the loss of people who died or were affected by COVID-19.
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