Consider This: Why aren’t there more COVID-19 vaccine clinics closer to Harvard?

The Board of Health has been asked why there aren’t more vaccination clinics closer to Harvard.

The goal of public health is to “promote and protect the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work, and play, ” according to the American Public Health Association (APHA.org). Public health experts promote policies, systems, and services that enable good health and seek to remove obstacles and systemic and structural barriers that create health inequities—inequities that we are seeing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

We all want our family and friends and ourselves to be vaccinated as soon as possible, but with so few vaccine doses available, not everyone can be first. Public health officials in Massachusetts and the federal government have been forced to develop a phased rollout to allocate the limited number of doses in a way that targets both “hot spots” and the most vulnerable populations.

Think of it as a forest fire. When you have a limited number of planes that can drop water on the flames, you drop water on the hot spots—where the fire burns the hottest. And then you look for the most vulnerable places, where the threat of fire or the damage from fire will do the most damage—maybe locations with historical or cultural importance, or, in the case of COVID-19, the people who will get severely ill from the disease.

The state’s Department of Public Health is tracking the disease across the state. Harvard is a lower-risk community, as are neighboring towns like Bolton, Boxborough, and Stow. We are not high-risk communities or hot spots. The Nashoba Associated Boards of Health, NABH, has just started a weekly vaccination clinic for residents over 75 years old in the 16 towns covered by NABH. But because this area is at lower risk, the Department of Public Health has told NABH to plan on an allocation of just 100 doses of vaccine a week while it works to control hot spots in Chelsea, Roxbury, Worcester, and other places in the state.

The Nashoba Associated Boards of Health, each local board of health, and the emergency managers in the NABH towns will expand local vaccine clinics as soon as possible after the supply of vaccines increases, which we hope is not long in coming. What the entire country needs now is for additional vaccines to be approved and for manufacturing to increase. Until then, residents in lower-risk communities will need to wait if they want an appointment at a clinic close to home and to continue wearing a face covering, social distancing, and washing hands.

Libby Levison is a member of the Harvard Board of Health. Fellow members Sharon McCarthy and Chris Mitchell contributed to this op-ed.