Dr. Mehmet Oz urges communities of color, particularly the Black community, to get the COVID-19 vaccine.  

Oz spoke on Start Your Day with Sharon Reed and Mike Hill and addressed the hesitancy that some in the Black community have against taking the vaccine.  

“We’ve known for decades that Black and brown communities have a higher instance of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, asthma and all the other things that go along with mediocre health,” Oz said. “It is one of the deeper realities of systemic challenges that our society has. We’ve got to make our nation a healthier nation or we’re going to continue to have disproportionate numbers of deaths, especially if you have an inflammatory disease like COVID-19.”  

Oz said that he’s working with a Black doctor’s COVID-19 consortium with Temple University to help educate the Black community on the vaccine and get more people to get vaccinated.  

Since COVID-19 vaccines started rolling out in December, Black Americans are getting vaccinated at a slower rate than white people, according to data from KHN analysis.  

The television host said that the slower rates are because of hesitancy within the community to take the vaccine and lack of access.  

“Across the nation, we’re seeing initiatives that are starting to address that,” Oz said.