Lack of data hampers efforts to improve racial equity in vaccinations

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials are struggling to gather accurate data on the race and ethnicity of people being vaccinated against the coronavirus, hampering President Biden’s push for racial equity in a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on communities of color.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly said racial equity will be at the core of his administration’s coronavirus response. On Tuesday, White House officials announced a program to ship doses of vaccine directly to a network of federally funded clinics in underserved areas, beginning next week.

“Equity is our North Star here,” Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale professor who has been appointed by Mr. Biden to lead a Covid-19 equity task force, said during a White House virus team briefing. “This effort that focuses on allocation for community health centers really is about connecting with those hard-to-reach populations across the country.”

But so far, the federal government has gathered race and ethnicity data for just 52 percent of all vaccine recipients, according to a report issued last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health experts say that while delivering vaccines directly to underserved communities is helpful, the absence of comprehensive data makes it impossible to know whether vaccine distribution is truly equitable, and how to correct disparities. ...

There are various reasons for the gaps. Some states have laws barring the collection of race and ethnicity data, or policies limiting how such data may be shared. Sometimes the fields are left blank in forms that patients use to register for vaccination.

Dr. José Romero, the health secretary in Arkansas, said his state was missing race and ethnicity data for about a third of its vaccine recipients — despite his efforts to track that information. ...