vaccination efforts that include:
The importance of leveraging relationships with professional medical societies and other key downstream stakeholders from the outset.
Developing effective systems for tracking distribution.
Deploying limited vaccine supplies equitably and transparently using pre established, evidence-based criteria to prioritize allocation.
Using consistent, respectful, accurate communication to earn, secure, and maintain trust.
The Report highlights key foundational principles, goals, and allocation criteria to reduce severe morbidity and mortality and negative societal impact due to the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. These include:
Ethical Principles
- Equal concern requires that every person be considered and treated as having equal dignity, worth, and value.
- Mitigation of health inequities includes the obligation to explicitly address the
higher burden of COVID-19 experienced by the populations affected most heavily,
given their exposure and compounding health inequities.
Procedural Principles
The Report identifies four phases for disseminating COVID-19 vaccines that include the following guidance of interest to AA health professionals themselves, as well as their patients, given the frequency with which their patient populations experience multiple chronic illnesses or are employed in high risk “essential” occupations:
Phase 1
Phase 1a includes high-risk health workers (e.g., in hospitals or nursing homes, or providing home care)—these health professionals are involved in direct patient care.
Also included are workers who provide transportation, environmental services, and other health care facility services and who risk exposure to bodily fluids or aerosols.
Phase 1b focuses attention on two groups that are particularly vulnerable to morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19: