Distrusting the Shot
African-Americans more likely to forgo flu immunizations; ad campaigns attempt to change their minds
Oakland, Calif.
Jimmie Inghram, a 70-year-old African-American, had his last flu shot 30 years ago. “It made me real sick,” he said as he played a video game at the Golden Agers Senior Activity Center.
Since then, Inghram has avoided the vaccine, as have many others at the center, even though free shots are offered periodically in the building.
As the country faces another flu season — heightened by fears of bird flu in Asia and Europe — health officials are grappling with a seemingly intractable problem: Many Americans, particularly Blacks, don’t trust annual flu shots.
In 2004, 45 percent of Blacks over the age of 65 — the age group most susceptible to the illness — received the shots, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That compares with 55 percent of Hispanics and 67 percent of Whites. About 53 percent of Asians got the shot, but public health officials consider that figure to be abnormally low, possibly due to vaccine-supply problems last year.
The disparities partly explain why African-Americans are 6 percent more likely than Whites to die from seasonal flu or pneumonia, a common flu complication, according to the CDC.
