Feb 24, 2021 4:59 PM EDT “‘Are we going to be guinea pigs for the vaccine?’” For months, Dr. James Hildreth’s sister had been asking questions like this. While public health officials were urging Americans to take measures to help stop the coronavirus, high rates of infection within Black communities fueled his sister’s mistrust, said Hildreth, the president of Meharry Medical College, an historically Black institution in Nashville. She had no desire to be vaccinated, and thought officials wanted people like her — Black people — “to prove the vaccine is safe so others will take it.” Those concerns have been echoing from communities across the U.S., according to Hildreth, a member of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. He also has worked as a Food and Drug Administration adviser on the veting of the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety and effectiveness for their emergency use authorization. He knows whose lives are at stake if he doesn’t take these roles seriously.