COVID-19 vaccine faces Black communities’ centuries-long mistrust of health care

Behind the Black community’s wariness of the COVID-19 vaccine is the lingering legacy of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis, which was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Services (USPHS) starting in 1932. Six hundred Black men—399 with syphilis, 201 without—were intentionally misled about the study’s purpose and were denied the facts required to provide true informed consent.