'No excuse': Hamilton vaccine group member wants BIPOC community prioritized

A member ofthe group advisingHamilton public health says the city isn't doing enough toprioritizeracialized, disabled and low-income residents in its vaccine rollout.

But Hamilton Public Health Services (HPHS) says it'smaking "small strides" in doing that.

Ameil Joseph, a member of theHamilton Vaccine Readiness Network anda McMaster University associate professor who studies critical race theory, haswritten to public healthurging it to make changes to who gets first access to local vaccinations.

"There is no reason, no excuse for leaving racialized groups off the priority list for vaccination when we know these groups are disproportionately impacted due to pervasive and persistent historical and contemporary contexts of inequity," he wrote.

"We cannot claim that we recognize systemic racism and then, when given this knowledge and charged with the responsibility to address it, we knowingly choose to perpetuate it.

"The time to act is long past due."

Other members have voiced concernstoo, including representatives fromtheAfro-Canadian Caribbean Association, the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton and Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre.

The second phase of Ontario's vaccine plan included prioritizing adults living in communities with the highest COVID-19 infection rates, noting people of colour and lower-income families have been disproportionately impacted.

HPHS has previously acknowledged people of colour have been hit harder during the pandemic.In its report last year, it saidout of 992 cases between March and the end of August 2020,51 per cent of those peoplesurveyedidentified aspeople of colour, despitepeople of colour only makingup about 19per cent of the city's total population.

Getting rid of barriers

"One of the simplest ways to address that is to add those groups to the list of people that can book appointments," Joseph said in an interviewThursday afternoon.

"What that does is it gets rid of all these other barriers they're now creating through other interimmeasures to try and target thosegroups via through postal code or condition or income ... it doesn't reduce them, it increases them."

HPHS has made changes to serve some equity-seeking groups. Itpreviously allowed members of the homeless community to get vaccines. Indigenous adults are also able to get vaccines as part of the province's phased rollout.

HPHS'swebsite says a registration and booking option for theBlack and racialized population is "coming soon."

Public healthalsostopped collecting race-based data months ago because the infection rate started overwhelmingcontact tracers.

Public health says it's making 'small strides'

In a statement, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, the city's medical officer of health, says Hamilton is making "small strides."

"We are currently locating mobile pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinics throughout the city in order to increase access, including locations this past week at Norman Pinky Lewis Recreation Centre, and Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre and at Lake Avenue School in the Riverdale neighbourhood," she said in anemail.

"Placement of large-scale clinics with our healthcare partners throughout the city in order to increase access, such as the Hamilton Health Sciences vaccine clinic in the heart of the Beasley and Keith neighbourhoods, and the FirstOntario Centre mass vaccine clinic bordering Beasley and Central neighbourhoods in the downtown core."

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Kwame McKenzie, the CEO of the Wellesley Institute and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, says the pandemic has magnified existing issues in marginalized communities.

Richardsonsaid public health will keep listening to the community despite challenging times.

The city has previously said it hasn't received enough vaccines from the province to immunize as many people as it possible could.

Joseph acknowledgedpublic health is listening and making progress, but hasn't taken the critical step of changing the vaccine strategy.

His letter has been co-signed by more than 400 others as of Mondaymorning, including the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, and theHamilton Social Medicine Response Team.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of.You can read more stories here.