Stay Well Health Fair at Cass Tech Boosting Vaccine Access in Detroit

As we approach the holiday season, a new year and the two-year mark of the pandemic, vaccine rates for Black Americans are still lagging behind their White counterparts across the United States. According to a recent report, less than 35-percent of Black Americans in Michigan have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. To close the gap, boost vaccine rates and vaccine access in Black communities, the Cobb/National Medical Association (NMA) Health Institute recently hosted a Cobb Institute-We Can Do This Stay Well Community Health Fair and Vaccine event at Cass Technical High School in Detroit.

The event featured local trusted Black health care professionals and other Black voices in panel discussions about the impact of COVID-19 and its emerging variants is having on Black communities. Additionally, local partners provided health exhibitor booths for vaccinations, health screenings and well-living information.

One of Black trusted doctors who attended and supported the event was Dr. Randall Morgan, Present and CEO of the Cobb/NMA Health Institute. The NMA was founded in 1895 and the Cobb Institute, the research arm of the organization, spearheadedthe eventin Detroit. The organizationwill be hosting health fairs in other cities in the upcoming months.

Dr. Morgan said dispelling myths about the vaccines is one key area that Cobb is addressing which they hope will educate more Black Americansabout the virus and as a result encouragemore of them to get vaccinated.

"We're all unified that the appropriate measures have taken place in the development in the vaccine and the safety in the vaccine," Dr. Morgan said. And the data that we've seen almost a year or more after vaccinations world-wide has shown the vaccine to be safe" he said. "We feel if we follow the science, it will certainly negate most of the misinformation. So, we just simply have to keep repeating the same message. Sooner or later we think people will understand, feel comfortable and move on with it."

An abundance of mistrust in America's health care system is still ingrained in many Black communities due to the many and well-documentedmedical malpractices, including the 40-year Tuskegee Experiment. However, Dr. Lonnie Joe, another physician with the Cobb Institute, said from a factual standpoint of view Black Americans need a historical perspective to really understand what's happening today with the vaccines and stop buying into the myths.

"Half of us in this facility today would have been dead from things like polio, smallpox, diphtheria, TB, if hadn't been for the modern scientific approach of that day and that time," Dr. Joe said. "This is what we base a lot of the way that we do things now and the discoveries that we have made," he said. "This is a proven fact that works. We don't claim to be perfect. But what we do claim to be is beneficial to populations of our people with the knowledge that we have."

The recent event at Cass Tech was very beneficial for the Detroit area's Black communities with more than 300 people attending the event and more than 50 attendees getting a COVID-19 vaccination or a booster shot.More Cobb Institute – We Can Do This/Stay Well Community Health Fair and Vaccine Events are scheduled for the upcoming months. These events will be crucial in helping our Black Americansget closer to the other side of the pandemic, one community and one vaccine at a time.

"Because of the thinking of Cobb and the leadership of Cobb, you get a program like we can do this out of it to say listen this can be done," Dr. Joe said. "We can achieve those numbers. We can achieve these goals. We can make a difference in these outcomes," he added. "These kinds of investments in communities like this with partnerships like this are going to pay off in the future for us very handsomely."

Dr. Morgan reminds us that the science and the statistics show the adverse impact COVID-19 is having on Black Americans, including the morbidities of health which make the African American race as a whole more susceptible to the virus. These serious health conditions make it imperative for Black Americans to get vaccinated.

"Whether it be heart disease, obesity, diabetes and various forms of cancer. That makes us at risk for this COVID-19 virus and all of the variants," Dr. Morgan said. "So, for that reason alone, African Americans should pay attention and want to do everything they can to protect themselves," he said. "We can do this, but it has to be together. We can't do this by ourselves."

To find out more about the schedule for the Cobb Institute/NMA Stay Well Health Fair events, Stay Well Community Health Fairs

To learn more about the Cobb Institute please visit https://www.thecobbinstitute.org

For more information about booster shots, please visit, CDC – Booster shots

To learn more about COVID-19 and find a location near you to get vaccinated, visit http://www.vaccines.gov.

Darryl Sellers is the Director of the Public Relations Team for Creative Marketing Resources, a strategic marketing agency in Milwaukee and a partner of the Cobb Institute.