One in five rural residents said they would definitely not be vaccinated. About 73% of these respondents are lean Republicans and 41% identify themselves as white evangelical Christians.
“There is nothing inherently unique about living in a rural area that makes people vaccinate,” DFF Altman, president and CEO of KFF, said in a statement. “It’s just that rural areas have a larger share of the people in the most vaccine-resistant groups: Republicans and White Evangelical Christians.”
According to the report, access to vaccines is not the biggest problem for rural communities. About 11% of rural residents surveyed who had not yet received a vaccine said they had tried to get an appointment, compared to 21% of urban and suburban residents. . About 68% of rural residents said there are enough vaccine sites in their area, compared to 52% of urban residents and 55% of suburban residents.
The KFF team did notice a gap in access among black rural residents. Black respondents were less likely than their white or Spanish counterparts to report adequate stocks of vaccine or vaccine sites in their communities.
Alan Morgan, president of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA), told CNN that rural communities can not only rely on pharmacies – which are not always accessible to residents – to distribute vaccines.
“You have to have vaccination sites there in those small towns, because there’s no way people can take people a day off from their work, to get on a shuttle bus to drive an hour to a site.”
The researchers expressed concern that the large number of rural residents who say they do not want to be vaccinated could mean that rural communities lag behind the rest of the population in the vaccination coverage.
Morgan said that although the number of rural residents already vaccinated is hopeful, he is also concerned.
“I am concerned because at the heart of this is that you have a population at greatest risk, with the highest chronic health issues, communities that have been slow to take social action and at the finish line we have a concern about vaccine hesitation,” he said, ‘There’s a lot of headwind here.’
Addressing vaccine hesitation
While the KFF researchers say there was no message that was effective across the board to those who say they would definitely not be vaccinated, but those who plan to ‘wait and see’ if they want the chance , seems to be more open to reporting and education.
About 64% said that the trial of the vaccines is 100% effective in preventing hospitalization and death, that it will be more likely to be vaccinated. More than half said the chances are they will be vaccinated if they hear that scientists have been working on this vaccine technology for 20 years.
Morgan said their members noticed that the “wait and see” group showed up in real time.
“I only hear the same thing,” he said. “Once people get it in the community, they see that there are no adverse reactions, and then they join.”
NRHA is investigating its own members to get vaccine intake among rural health workers – a group that Morgan considers critical to address vaccine hesitation in these communities.
“Let’s be honest, if your own doctor or nurse does not want to take the vaccine, there is no national campaign that can overcome it,” he said. “It requires local leadership.”