Previous research has indicated that racial-ethnic minority communities lack a wide variety of health-related organizations. We examine how this relates to the early COVID-19 vaccine rollout. In a series of spatial error and linear growth models, we analyze how racial-ethnic residential segregation is associated with the distribution of vaccine sites and vaccine doses across ZIP codes in the five largest urban counties in Texas. We find that Black and Latino clustered ZIP codes are less likely to have vaccine distribution sites and that this disparity is partially explained by the lack of hospitals and physicians’ offices in these areas. Moreover, Black clustering is also negatively related to the number of allocated vaccine doses, and again, this is largely explained by the unequal distribution of health care resources. These results suggest that extant disparities in service provision are key to understanding racial-ethnic inequality in an acute crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

先前的研究表明，少数民族社区缺乏各种与健康相关的组织。我们研究了这与早期 COVID-19 疫苗推出的关系。在一系列空间误差和线性增长模型中，我们分析了种族-族裔居住隔离如何与德克萨斯州五个最大城市县的疫苗接种地点和疫苗剂量分布相关联。我们发现黑人和拉丁裔聚集的邮政编码不太可能有疫苗分发点，这种差异的部分原因是这些地区缺乏医院和医生办公室。此外，黑人聚类也与分配的疫苗剂量数量呈负相关，同样，这在很大程度上是由医疗资源分配不均造成的。