BOSTON (WHDH) - An activist group is protesting Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s coronavirus vaccine testing, saying not enough minorities are represented in trials even though they have been affected more by the pandemic.
“Things need to change, they have to sit down and talk to us,” said Black COVID-19 Coalition member Priscilla Flint-Banks, whose mother died of the coronavirus in a nursing home earlier this year.
Brigham and Women’s is overseeing a trial for the vaccine developed by Cambridge-based Moderna. Brigham officials say a third of the participants are minorities and 12 percent are Black, and Flint-Banks said the hospital did not effectively reach out to the Black and Latinx communities before starting the trials.
“We have only three demands — make sure community people are at the table that look like us; make sure the researchers and the doctors look like us; and give us some financial resources to help us get the information out,” Flint-Banks said.
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