Vaccine trials need diverse volunteers
TAKOMA PARK, Md. – In front of baskets of tomatoes and peppers, near a sizzling burrito grill, the “promotoras” stop masked shoppers at a busy Latino farmers market: Want to test a COVID-19 vaccine?
Aided by Spanish-speaking “health promoters” and Black pastors, a stepped-up effort is underway around the U.S. to recruit minorities to ensure potential vaccines against the scourge are tested in the populations most ravaged by the virus.
Many thousands of volunteers from minority groups are needed for huge clinical trials underway or about to begin. Scientists say a diverse group of test subjects is vital to determining whether a vaccine is safe and effective for everyone and instilling broad public confidence in the shots once they become available.
The expanded outreach by vaccine researchers and health officials is getting a late start in communities that, because of a history of scientific exploitation and racism, may be the most reluctant to roll up their sleeves.
Just getting the word out takes time. “I didn’t know anything about the vaccine until now,” said Ingrid Guerra, who signed up last week at the farmers market in Takoma Park, Maryland, outside the nation’s capital.
The health promoters from CASA, a Hispanic advocacy group, explained how the research process works and how a vaccine could help end the coronavirus pandemic.
University of Maryland researchers agreed to set up a temporary lab at CASA’S local community center so that people struggling financially wouldn’t have to travel to participate.
The hardest part, many experts say, is gaining trust.
Recruiting African Americans in particular will be “a heavy, heavy lift,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, because of the legacy of mistrust after the infamous Tuskegee experiment, when Black men in Alabama were left untreated for syphilis as part of a study that ran from the 1930s into the ’70s.
In the U.S., people of Black, Latino, Native American and Asian heritage are more at risk of hospitalization and death from the virus. Together they make up nearly 40% of the population, and an equitable vaccine study would match those demographics.
As Moderna Inc. neared its goal of 30,000 study participants, some sites slowed recruitment in recent weeks to increase minority enrollment, now at about 28%.
Pfizer Inc., which recently asked the FDA for permission to expand to 44,000 volunteers, says about a quarter of its U.S. participants are from communities of color, more when counting trial sites in Brazil and Argentina. Both companies are having the most success in recruiting Hispanics.
“It’s really important that this vaccine work for everyone, or if it doesn’t, that we understand why,” said Dr. Susanne Doblecki-lewis of the University of Miami, who is helping to test the Moderna vaccine. Researchers might need to compare the different vaccines “and see how one might better fit a population than another.”