All Rev'd Up: COVID-19 Vaccines Must Get To The People Who Need Them Most

Virus Outbreak Vaccine — The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is seen, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020, in Boston.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

February 01, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

Coronvirus vaccines aren't getting to the Black and brown communities that have been most heavily impacted by the pandemic — and that has to change, the Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III told Boston Public Radio on Monday.

"We need to know that those fault lines that were in society before we had this pandemic would be even greater when you have a pandemic," Monroe said. "Anything of this momentum causes all of those cracks to become wider."

The Revs' comments come after Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley sent a letter to Republican Gov. Charlie Baker last week calling on him to improve the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Black and brown communities.

"Black and Latinx residents make up less than 3% and 4% respectively of those who have been vaccinated thus far, compared to 60% of white residents," Pressley wrote.

The issue at the heart of the matter is access, according to Price.

"The information is here," he said. "We know what to do. But we don't where to go or how to get it. So the disparity comes out in terms of access and opportunity even beyond the information piece."

Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Price is a professor of worship, church and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the founding executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience. Together they host the All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by GBH.