Infectious disease doctor Angela Branche needed help.
Branche and colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York were running a clinical trial for a vaccine against the coronavirus, which kills Black people at three times the rate it kills whites — yet it was mostly whites signing up. They needed more African Americans.
Unbeknownst to Branche, five miles away in Rochester’s poorest zip code, ordained minister Marsha Allen was planning a door-knocking campaign to educate residents of the mostly Black neighborhood about the virus that has killed more than 420,000 Americans.