Contact:
Eric Christopher Webb, DDiv., CPLC
Director of Communications/Editor of The Sphinx
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Cell: 443-635-5911
May 12, 2022
For Immediate Release
We were deeply saddened to learn of the one-millionth death from COVID-19 today. One million seats are now empty at dinner tables, in church pews, and at desks across the country. We cannot bring our family members and friends back, but we can honor their lives. Unfortunately, over 230,000 people lost their lives because they could not, or would not, be vaccinated.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. has partnered with Good Health Wins and the National Council of Negro Women, to join a network of national and local partners to raise awareness of the impact of timely immunizations. Through this joint-partnership, along with the other respective Fraternity and Sororities of the National Panhellenic Council, will seek to identify and implement strategies to reduce racial and/or ethnic disparities in adult vaccination coverage.
Why is Good Health WINs important? Of the 1M deaths, approximately 135,000 (or 13.5%) of them were among African Americans.
The real disparity comes in the rates of disease, hospitalization, and death. If you are African American, you are 1.1 times more likely to contract COVID, 2.4 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 1.7 times more likely to die than white people. (source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html)
Good Health WINs will continue to increase the availability of vaccines and messaging to Black and Hispanic communities; increase our range of trusted community voices and most importantly implement strategies to reduce racial and or ethnic disparities in adult and child vaccination coverage. We believe that working collaboratively will decrease Covid-19 numbers significantly, especially in our communities.
We, therefore, choose to remember our loved ones by ensuring everyone has access to, and accurate information about, COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. Please join us in our efforts to build vaccine confidence to keep our families and communities safe through this continuing pandemic.
###
About Alpha Phi Alpha
The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., headquartered in Baltimore, MD, was founded on December 4, 1906, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The Fraternity has long stood at the forefront of the African-American community’s fight for civil rights through Alpha men such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Adam Clayton Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, Andrew Young, Edward Brooke and Cornel West. The fraternity, through its more than 720 college and alumni chapters and general-organization members, serves communities in the United States, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Visit and follow on Twitter @apa1906network.