“PUTTING RACE AT THE FOREFRONT”

By Katherine Rapin | The Philadelphia Citizen

At Penn Medicine, white workers were three times more likely to sign up for a vaccine than Black workers. Dr. Florencia Greer Polite and fellow Black physicians set out to change that with a program getting noticed across the country

According to a new vaccination data tool put together by the Philadelphia Department of Health, white Philadelphians are getting vaccinated at twice the rate of Black residents. As of March 13, 21.9 percent of white citizens in the city had been partially vaccinated, compared to 11.4 percent of Black citizens.

And, in case you missed this news: Nearly 87 percent of Rite Aid’s 31,100 Philadelphia vaccine doses administered through Feb. 21 went to white customers, and just 4 percent to Black customers. That’s 21 shots for white people for every one shot given to a Black person.

These numbers aren’t all that surprising to Dr. Florencia Greer Polite, associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and chief of the division of general OB/GYN at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Polite, who is Black, was losing sleep (literally) over fears of these disparities months ago.

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