Metro Nashville is bringing COVID-19 clinical research vaccine trials to local residents. The city is partnering with medical institutions including Vanderbilt, Clinical Research Associates and Meharry Medical College.
The effort is part of Operation Warp Speed, a federal initiative to “deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 by January 2021.”
Metro Public Health Director Dr. Michael Caldwell says that while the country needs a vaccine as soon as possible, it needs to be developed in an ethical way.
“Anyone who volunteers needs to be able to look carefully at the risk and benefits of their participation,” said Caldwell during a Thursday morning press briefing. “They will be fully informed of what those risks are.”
Caldwell says the studies that are being conducted in Nashville will be with vaccines that have already been tested on hundreds of other people. He referred to them as “Phase 3 studies.”
“The reason that Nashville has been chosen is because of our high number of cases,” says Caldwell. “When you look to test a vaccine and to see if it works, you want to be able to test it in a place where there’s a lot of disease.”
But while the trials are seen as a benefit by local health professionals, there is concern about the safety of vaccine trials within communities of color, who have been historically subjected to racist medial practices.
“I’m particularly concerned about people from minority communities who have a long history of mistrusting, distrusting, and not necessarily accepting what medical research has to provide,” says Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College.
Hildreth says he’s excited about the opportunity for communities of color to participate in the trials, but that there will be a need for “ambassadors who have been through the vaccine process” to help health officials convince these residents to participate.
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