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How to Improve Vaccination Equity in Your Community

Are COVID vaccination rates in your community lower for Hispanic or Black residents than for White residents?

Read on if you want to know why – and how to do better. We’ve reviewed reams of vaccination data, plus our survey results from customers (that seem general enough to share).

Below are 4 tips from the data (3 you can do immediately with communication changes) that might help you vaccinate more people and save some lives.

Check out the infographic summary below (or download the PDF), then the full story after that.

What is going on with different White, Black and Hispanic vaccination rates?

First, yes, there are certain things out of your control like different Age distributions for each group. According to US Census data categories for 2019:

  • 17.7% of all “White” people are over 65
  • 11.0% of all “Black or African American” people are over 65
  • 7.8% of all “Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race)” people are over 65

Age is far and away the biggest risk factor for COVID and the most important to prioritize. So with “Over 65” people prioritized to save the most lives, that is the biggest reason that Black and Hispanic numbers started out much lower overall than for White.

But looking across other age groups today, you probably still see some relative gaps, even after adjusting for the different population numbers. And if you are curious how your state is doing overall compared to the other 49, you can see the latest data by White, Black, Hispanic and Asian categories here.

This seems to have sparked a recent narrative that the differences are because Blacks and Hispanics don’t want the vaccine as much as Whites.

That story is BS. For two reasons:

  • Our survey data (and others) shows very small differences in vaccine hesitancy between these three groups – single digit percentages at most, if any.
  • All three groups have been in the 65% to 70%+ range for wanting the vaccine since February.

This means your vaccination rates haven’t even gotten up to where you’d bump into hesitancy limits, except for maybe in the oldest groups.

So if the gap is not from demand, what is going on?

Besides some effects from the different occupations that some states have prioritized, the short answer seems to be that a mix of awareness, appointment making challenges and vaccination locations have had disparate impacts.

The good news is that unlike age or hesitancy, you have some real control over those.

So here are the 4 best ideas from our data to help you close some equity gaps and even reduce hesitancy as it becomes a factor.

4 quick tips to boost vaccination rates

#1 — Are you consistently using “Free” in all your messaging? It’s the lowest hanging fruit we’ve seen.

Pretty much everyone (95%+) knows vaccinations are available. But about 15% to 20% of people don’t know that COVID vaccination is free. This number trends higher (approaching 30%) with younger or poorer – where this knowledge might make the biggest difference.

Mention “Free” always and everywhere.

#2 — Are you mentioning safety data enough? It’s the number one point of concern for everyone.

The top concern we see is vaccine safety. “Not sure about vaccine safety/side effects” is almost twice as important as the second place choice “I want to see how other react to the vaccine first” (which is also safety related).

This is especially important after the Johnson & Johnson pause. Let people know that that “XX million” (use the latest number for XX since its moving fast!) people in the US have been vaccinated since December without significant side effects. And use the social proof of “just ask your friends and neighbors who have been vaccinated”. You can also look up the COVID death rate in your state for vaccinated people (probably zero) and unvaccinated people in your state or county since December (definitely not zero) and make that comparison with to focus on the risk of dying from COVID – with and without the vaccine.

#3 — Do your signup pages pass the “blink test”? You can make appointment signup easier.

After safety data, the #1 request to make vaccination more likely is: “Make it easier to make an appointment”.

Do a quick “blink test” with your web page(s) – glance at your main COVID page for no more than 5 seconds and see if a big “Get Your Free Appointment Now” button jumps out at you (check on your mobile phone also). If not, you’ve found something important and simple to fix. We did this test recently for the state sites and the vast majority failed… but, here is a good example from one state that also (coincidentally?) happens to be one of the very top performers in overall vaccination rates.

Add in a phone number to call for assistance right there below the buttons (and maybe a Spanish link) and you’ve made a significant upgrade. Then repeat the blink test on each subsequent page in your process for the ONE thing people seeking vaccination are looking to do next. Fix what you can as quickly as you can.

#4 — Are you making vaccinations available where people already go? You can remove another barrier as big as signup challenges.

Almost tied with appointment making is: “Making vaccinations available somewhere I already go or that is easier to get to”:

And its twice as important to poorer households (under $40k income) as it is to those above that who have more job/life/transportation flexibility. This is improving with the federal drug store and grocery store programs, so maybe you can help point people to those too.

Do you want to kill both the appointment and location birds with one stone? Don’t just do canvassing or door knocking for awareness, bring the needles along too. Try a mobile service that goes to different businesses, events and other gatherings (churches, parks, etc). Bring the appointments and vaccines to them in a single trip.

Want more details or breakdowns? We’re here to help.

That’s probably enough to work with for now… and hopefully this helps you cut through any uncertainty or confusion on this topic.

For more general tips or data breakdowns (Age, Gender, Hispanic English-speaking vs Hispanic Spanish-speaking, political affiliation, etc), or if you want specific messaging ideas to overcome hesitancy just contact us. You can also go ahead and book 15 minutes with our Chief Scientist, Kevin Lyons, or email him (kevin@flashvote.com) directly.

Please feel free to share this info with public health colleagues/counterparts or regional collaborators (cities, etc) who can also use it.

About FlashVote

If you don’t already know about FlashVote we’re public decision-making experts who invented a system to make scientific survey data for governments 90% faster, easier and cheaper.

While we’ve covered hundreds of different topics with customers over the last few years, since March 2020 we’ve been helping counties and cities navigate COVID issues and data. We even created a lives saved calculator that showed the importance of prioritizing vaccination by age.

For a typical local government, the information here should be pretty close to what’s happening in your community right now. But if you want your own custom, up-to-the-minute data to inform your specific vaccination challenges, we can probably have it to you in about 48 hours for a price you can P-card. Just contact us for a free (that word!) review of what you have and what you might need. 

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