Black surgeon steps up to allay vaccine fears
Trial’s lack of diversity caught his attention
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Dr. David Tom Cooke says his choice to participate in a clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine is like his grandmother’s decision to leave the Jim Crow South to work in California’s naval shipyards during World War II.
She was determined to contribute even though the country didn’t recognize her as worthy of full rights.
Today, it’s Cooke’s sense of duty and experience as a Black man that led him to test out Pfizer’s vaccine in August and make it his mission to allay concerns about its safety among Black friends, family and community members. He’s also driven by an understanding of skepticism toward the medical profession among many Black Americans, rooted in a history of poor health outcomes and abusive research.
“When you look at the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, communities of color are disproportionately affected in regards to death,” said Cooke, head of general thoracic surgery at UC Davis Health, the Sacramento area’s major trauma center. “Therefore, it’s imperative that we enroll people of color into these clinical trials enough to show they’re effective in these really atrisk communities.”
Cooke, 48, was concerned when he saw a lack of diversity among participants in Moderna’s clinical trial.
So when UC Davis had the opportunity to connect people with a trial by Pfizer, he volunteered. He got the first shot in August and recently learned that he’d been given the actual vaccine.
For him, the understanding of distrust in the Black community is personal. Even some members of his own family didn’t plan to take the vaccine until they learned that he had tried it.
His parents, former principals in Oakland public schools, still feel the need to tell any new doctor or nurse they see that their son is a Harvard-trained surgeon.
That’s because they fear they won’t get quality care otherwise, he said.
A December survey by The Associated PRESS-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that 40 percent of Black people said they would not get the coronavirus vaccine, a higher percentage than white or Hispanic people.
A Pew Research Center study showed that 71 percent of Black Americans surveyed said they know someone who has been hospitalized or died from the virus, compared with 61 percent for Latinos and under 50 percent for white people and Asian Americans.
Cooke’s informal effort to promote the vaccine in the Black community is one piece of a larger effort to increase the number of people who get the shots.
Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse at New York’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center, was among the first Americans to receive a vaccine.
Lindsay, who is Black, told The New York Times that her goal was to “inspire people who look like me, who are skeptical in general about taking vaccines.”
Covered California, the state’s insurance exchange, held a news conference last month to promote the vaccine to Black residents. Doctors and nurses from historically Black medical universities and associations nationwide recorded a video “love letter,” saying they are working to ensure that respect for Black lives remains a centerpiece of coronavirus conversations.