Gates Package — page 1036

Growing up Black in Los Angeles, he experienced firsthand how race shapes every part of how society treats people--including the medical system. After moving to Atlanta in his twenties, he created an organization that provided assistance to young Black men who were HIV-positive. That experience ignited his interest in health inequities and led him to a career working to address them. Wallace's work at Fred Hutch is particularly focused on improving the way clinical trials are run. He and his colleagues make a point of reaching out to diverse groups of people, including consulting with leaders from different communities, tailoring communications for those communities, making scheduling more flexible, and writing consent forms with accessible, nonscientific language. Wallace was working on trials of potential HIV vaccines when the pandemic hit and quickly shifted to trials for most of the major COVID vaccine candidates (as well as some treatments). He even participated in one of the clinical trials himself, hoping that it would convince more people who look like him that the vaccines are safe. As a result, more people of color participated in those trials than in any previous one that Wallace had been involved in. Even though vaccine trials had to be sped up during COVID--just as drug trials were-- the standards for safety and effectiveness didn't change. Each vaccine approved by the WHO was tested for safety in at least 3,000 volunteers in clinical trials, and in most cases, thousands more than that. In fact, because COVID vaccines have been given to so many people and their safety records tracked so closely, scientists now have extensive safety data on the various vaccines on the market--even in groups like pregnant women, who are usually not prioritized in clinical trials for vaccines.