Lack of health services and transportation impede access to vaccine in communities of color

For decades, Emery Wright filled his prescriptions at the community pharmacy around the corner from his Atlanta home. Now, the drugstore is gone, transformed into a private dialysis clinic that filled one need but created another, with the closest pharmacy a long car ride away.

“It’s not like we needed less pharmacies in the neighborhood,” said Wright, 44, the co-director of Project South, a grass-roots social movement organization. “People should be able to access health care where they live.”

As efforts accelerate nationally to provide the coronavirus vaccine to communities of color, skepticism about the inoculations is often highlighted as a major impediment. But a lack of pharmacies, hospitals, providers and transportation has emerged as an equally significant concern in those communities, where covid-19 has wrought its worst damage.