FOCUS: Medicaid Expansion • Pauper’s Field Burials • State Legislature • National News • Fact Checks • #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Race & Racism
Jefferson County isn’t just a moderately successful rural example of vaccination outreach—it is the most vaccinated county in all of Mississippi, approaching full vaccination for three out of every four adult residents.
Damion Portis is a barber who participates in the Mississippi State Department of Health’s Shots at the Shop program, educating his clients on the importance of the vaccine. After months of low Black vaccine uptake, Mississippi has broken through an enormous barrier of vaccine disparity.
Mississippians in underserved areas now have access to subsidized HIV-prevention services, including prophylactic treatment, from a distance. Combined with promising but underused Medicaid programs, the initiative has the potential to drive down the state’s critically high HIV and other STD rates.
Dr. Anthony Fauci joined state public-health leadership at Tougaloo College today to address America’s history of medical racism and the barriers to equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The medical experts spoke in turn over Zoom, with Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases and top coronavirus adviser to President Joe Biden, leading the event with a candid commentary on the medical establishment’s historical treatment of Black Americans.Â
Positive signs are emerging in Mississippi’s fight against COVID-19, with a continued decline in case transmission and new hospitalizations paired with an increasingly effective vaccination program. But racial disparity in the delivery of the vaccine remains an issue the state has yet to solve.Â
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