Panel to discuss safety, equity of COVID-19 vaccine
The East Carolina University Ledonia Wright Cultural Center has scheduled a virtual panel discussion about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccination at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
“COVID Vaccination Panel: Safety, Efficacy and Equity” is open to ECU students, faculty and staff as well as the general public, and is geared toward minority communities.
A panel of health experts and researchers from ECU’s Division of Health Sciences will discuss the COVID-19 vaccine and some of the myths surrounding it.
“We know that the African American community, the Black community, is being disproportionately impacted by COVID,” said Dr. Cedric Bright, associate dean of admissions for ECU’s Brody School of Medicine and one of the panel members. “We’re maybe 15% of the national population, but we’re 25% of people who are being infected with the COVID virus and 39% of the people who have succumbed to the COVID virus.”
One study showed that 1 in 800 African Americans in the United States has died from the COVID-19 virus, Bright said.
“I think there’s a real sense of fear, and so with fear comes a lot of misinformation, and what we need to do is we need to start speaking to that fear and helping people address their fear with knowledge because when we can give people knowledge, it assuages the fear,” Bright said.
In addition to Bright, the panel will include Dr. Keith Keene, director of the Brody School of Medicine Center for Health Disparities, Dr. Pamela Reis, associate professor in ECU’s College of Nursing, and Dr. Rachel Roper, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Brody.
ECU students can register for the event through Engage. ECU faculty and staff and the public can access the discussion after registering through a Qualtrics link.
Appalachian State University Intercultural Student Affairs is a co-sponsor of the event.
For more information on the panel discussion, contact Shaun Simon, associate director of the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center in the Department of Intercultural Affairs, at 252-328-6495.
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Phone: 252-328-6481
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Contact: Natalie Sayewich, ECU News Services, sayewichn16@ecu.edu
Media Information: Dr. Cedric Bright, a member of the COVID-19 vaccination panel, will be available for interviews from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday, March 1. Dr. Rachel Roper will also be available, subject to her schedule. Contact Natalie Sayewich to arrange an interview.