City leaders, physicians urge people of color to get vaccine
NORWALK — Physicians from Norwalk Hospital and Norwalk Community Health Center took to Mayor Harry Rilling’s coronavirus task force town hall to assuage concerns of the city’s people of color regarding the COVID-19 vaccine.
Statewide, 15.5 percent of Connecticut residents have received the first dose of the vaccine, which amounts to about 553,000 people, according to the state Department of Public Health. Of these individuals with at least the first vaccine dose, less than 20,400 self-identified as Black.
The goal of the meeting was to educate and encourage Norwalk’s communities of color to get the vaccine, particularly as Black people are three times more likely to be hospitalized from COVID and over 1.5 times more likely to die from the virus, according to Dr. Priscilla Agyemang, a physician in internal medicine at
Norwalk Hospital who attended the meeting.
The virtual town hall was attended by Dr. Tichianaa Armah, an adult and adolescent psychiatrist with Norwalk Community Health Center Inc.; Dr. Priscilla Agyemang, a physician in internal medicine at Norwalk Hospital; Norwalk Chief of Community Services Lamond Daniels and Rilling.
Dr. Tichianaa Armah, an adult and adolescent psychiatrist with Norwalk Community Health Center, expressed her own initial hesitancy to receive the vaccine.
“I’m here because I’ve been vocal about my own evolution in thinking about the vaccine,” Armah said. “I personally have a great number of patients who were very worried about the vaccine. I had to do a little self-reflection on myself to say, ‘Why haven’t I jumped in front of the line to get the vaccine myself?’ I have had both at this point and I’m very happy about it.”
Armah works weekly at the Day Street Community Health Center vaccine clinic, in part to encourage others to receive the vaccine with her presence.
“I had a patient last Friday who said, ‘I was going to cancel my appointment because I still think they’re trying to kill us,’” Armah said.
The vaccine recipient said it was the encouragement of her nieces and nephews to get the vaccine that allowed her to push through her doubts, Armah said.
To Armah, the concern from communities of color regarding the vaccine is valid, and can be understood and overcome in stages, the first of which is educating the city’s minority populations on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
“Being an African American, born and raised in this country, there’s so many layers here,” Armah said. “Part of it is self-preservation. You have to be cautious. If you’re not looking at the past, you can repeat the same mistakes. People need the info and not everyone has access to it. Unfortunately, they’re getting bits and pieces of partial truth and partial rumors, like the game of telephone.”
The second step in the process, Armah said, is seeing relatives or friends, safely receive the vaccine and engage in open conversation about the vaccine.
On Monday, South Norwalk, which as a large minority population, was identified by the state DPH as a key ZIP code set to receive extra doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The DPH, in conjunction with Yale School of Public Health, determined which ZIP codes would be included based on those ranked highest in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index, which weighs factors including poverty, employment, housing, access to transportation, education and other variables.
South Norwalk has an overall social vulnerability index rating of 0.8 as of 2016, with the highest rating being 1.0. SoNo marked highest in the minority population factor with a rating of 0.9.
Wednesday’s meeting is set to be the first in a series working to educate the city’s residents about the vaccine and residents’ eligibility.