Abstract

COVID-19 shots in black Mississippi arms: A system-level analysis of how Mississippi achieved black vaccination parity

Lamees El-sadek, MHS¹, Victor Sutton, PhD, MPPA² and Lisle Hites, PhD, Med, MS³
(1)Mississippi State Department of Health, Jackson, MS, (2)Mississippi State Department of Health,, Ridgeland, MS, (3)University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo

Mississippi has a long history of racial health disparities. On March 11, 2020, when the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) identified Mississippi’s first presumed COVID-19 case, the MSDH Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity (OPHHE) recognized its mission: to prevent the disease from exacerbating the already existent morbidity and mortality chasm suffered by the state’s African-American communities.

Mississippi emerged as one of the nation’s top-performing states in COVID-19 vaccination parity among Black residents. Through its historic and continual investment in community-based partnerships, prioritizing proactive, continuous data monitoring, and institutionally elevating health equity as a core MSDH principle early in the pandemic’s evolution, the OPHHE team centered its COVID-19 vaccination strategy.

Early pandemic mortality data indicated Black Mississippians represented nearly 60% of all Mississippi COVID-19 deaths. By December 2021, they represented nearly 28% of deaths. Currently, 37% of Mississippians are African American, yet constitute 40% of administered COVID-19 vaccine doses: one of the nation’s top-performing states.

Over 200 cross-sectoral community partners and five research studies conducted by the OPHHE (analyzing protective COVID-19 behaviors, vaccine hesitancy, and trusted messengers of COVID-19 education) helped support vaccination equity strategies, helping Mississippi emerge as one of the nation's 15 highest African-American COVID-19 vaccination rates.

A critical evaluation of how the MSDH worked with people, numbers, and principles to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastation within Mississippi’s African American population can serve as a strategy to be utilized in other racial-ethnic minority communities across the nation to bolster health disparity reduction efforts.

Administration, management, leadership Program planning Provision of health care to the public Public health administration or related administration Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health