This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg.

We have made a valent effort to make sure that black scientists have been at the table

of the vaccine discovery and development, the evaluation of the data in the clinical trials,

and then the decisions at the FDA and CDC of the allocation.

Even with such concerted efforts and successes with bringing black scientists to the table,

many people of color in the United States still express hesitation about receiving the new

COVID-19 vaccine. Americans of color serve in essential jobs

across society, which makes it even more urgent that they be vaccinated. They are the people who

check people into the emergency room. They're the orderly. They're the ones in food service.

They're the ones in transport. So you know that they were at increased risk

of being infected. According to the CDC, Black Americans are 1.4 times as likely to be infected

with COVID-19. Indigenous, black, and Latinx Americans are at least 2.7 times more likely to die

than their white neighbors, according to American

public media research lab. As COVID-19 vaccines roll out across the country, the medical establishment

faces this problem. How do you reestablish trust or establish it in the first place?

If there's ever a time to understand history and to understand how that has influenced people's ability to trust a health system, the time is now.

Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice is the president and dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine.

She was among the first people to be vaccinated in the United States. Her shot was broadcast live on CNN. She thinks

this is a problem we can solve. I believe that we can move from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine certainty.

Dr. Montgomery Rice, I'm so happy to be able to talk to you about this today.

You know, I think a lot of us have been watching the catastrophe within the catastrophe,

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