A Hyattsville barber shop has gotten international attention for its efforts to convince its clientele to get vaccinated.
Several years ago, The Shop Spa at 5916 Riggs Rd. was the first business to join the Health In-Reach and Research Initiative — or HAIR — initiative from the University of Maryland Center for Health Equity, a unique public health outreach program that started by training barbers how to dispense information on colorectal cancer.
But in recent weeks, barbers like Mike Brown have also promoted the coronavirus vaccine to their clients, as polls show African-Americans are as much as 20 percentage points less likely to say that they would get the vaccine.
That skepticism comes from the long history of mistreatment of Black patients in the U.S. medical system, including the infamous Tuskegee experiments.
But University of Maryland professor Dr. Stephen Thomas, who heads the center, believes that the trusted atmosphere of a hair salon or barber shop can help overcome that reticence, which led him to recruit Mike Brown and barber shops like the Shop Spa.
Brown said he’s already seen his efforts pay off.
“A couple of people who were more militant about not taking it are more quiet now,” he told the Times. “The seeds are being planted.”
The effort has gained new attention in recent weeks, leading the barber shop to be featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR, The Economist, and even Agence France-Presse.
