Even as much of the country thrills at the prospect of getting their COVID-19 shots, sizable pockets need convincing. In the immigrant and refugee communities of southwestern Kansas, cultural barriers and access to the shots could leave those hit hardest by the pandemic in ongoing peril.

So town by town, county by county, public health officials find themselves shooting down unfounded fears about the shots that could finally beat back a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and millions around the world.

“COVID has been very challenging for a lot of people,” said Janeth Vazquez, the marketing director at Southwest Medical Center in Liberal.  “And so hearing rumors about the vaccine just terrifies and scares them more.”

Not all of the vaccine myths she’s heard are as easily pushed aside as the conspiracy theory about microchips. Some of the people Vazquez has talked with are afraid the state is working in conjunction with immigration officials.

Among people of color nationwide, there’s also some justified mistrust of how the government has cared for their health over the past several decades — from the Tuskegee syphilis study that withheld medical information and treatment from hundreds of Black men in rural Georgia to the Indian Health Service’s forced sterilization of thousands of Native American women.

Vazquez is starting to see some of her vaccine-hesitant relatives change their minds as she talks with them. But she thinks it’s going to take time to overcome the many barriers that might keep people in her community from getting a shot.

“It’s working,” Vazquez said. “We just need to continue that community effort, that communication.”

Read the full article about promoting vaccines in Latinx communities by David Condos at Harvest Public Media.