, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Communication Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 10;14(1):23591. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73116-1.
Early racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates have been attributed primarily to personal vaccine attitudes and behavior. Little attention has been paid to the possibility that inequitable vaccine distribution may have contributed to racial disparities in vaccine uptake when supplies were most scarce. We test the hypothesis that scarce vaccines were distributed inequitably using the shipping addresses of 385,930 COVID-19 vaccine doses distributed in the first 17 weeks of Pennsylvania's Phase 1 rollout (December 14, 2020 through April 12, 2021). All shipments we analyze were allocated via the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, a public-private partnership coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Overall, White people had an average of 81.4% more retail pharmacy program doses shipped to their neighborhoods than did Black people. Regression models reveal that weekly vaccine allocations determined by pharmacy chains-rather than initial shipment and administration site decisions requiring state and federal approval-drove these effects. All findings remained consistent after controlling for neighborhood differences in income, population density, insurance coverage, number of pharmacies, and other social determinants of health.Our findings suggest that the private distribution of scarce public resources should be assessed for racial impact, regulated as public resources, and monitored continuously.
早期 COVID-19 疫苗接种率的种族差异主要归因于个人的疫苗态度和行为。很少有人关注到，在疫苗供应最紧张的时候，疫苗分配的不公平可能导致疫苗接种率的种族差异。我们使用宾夕法尼亚州第一阶段推出的 385930 剂 COVID-19 疫苗的前 17 周（2020 年 12 月 14 日至 2021 年 4 月 12 日）的运输地址，检验了疫苗供应短缺时疫苗分配不公平的假设。我们分析的所有疫苗都是通过联邦零售药房计划（由疾病控制与预防中心协调的公私合作伙伴关系）分配的。总的来说，白人社区收到的零售药房计划剂量比黑人社区平均多 81.4%。回归模型显示，由连锁药店决定的每周疫苗分配——而不是需要州和联邦批准的初始疫苗接种和管理地点决定——导致了这些影响。在控制了社区在收入、人口密度、保险覆盖范围、药店数量和其他健康社会决定因素方面的差异后，所有发现仍然一致。我们的研究结果表明，应评估私人分配稀缺公共资源对种族的影响，将其作为公共资源进行监管，并持续监测。
