It took three doctor visits — and a desperate call to a colleague — for a Black scientist to be diagnosed with monkeypox.
On a Monday morning in mid-July, William L. Jeffries IV decided it was time to call a colleague for help. Jeffries is a senior health scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where he researches the ways that racism and homophobia impact health in the United States. Jeffries, who describes himself as a same-gender-loving Black man, sees the work as a way to serve his people and, by extension, God.
By the end of September, more than three-quarters of people diagnosed with monkeypox in Georgia were Black, and Georgia had the second-highest rate of cases among all U.S. states, trailing New York. As the outbreak has spread, the federal government has been forced to reckon with the disease’s disproportionate burden on Black communities around the country. Black people make up more than half of monkeypox cases nationally, even as they represent less than 14% of the U.S. population.
Federal and state officials nevertheless failed to make testing readily available, slow-walked the rollout of vaccines and didn’t make it clear during the first two months of the outbreak that people of color, like Jeffries, were at elevated risk for harm. Those missteps amplified long-standing health inequities.
Four years later, with a Ph.D. in hand and a Dr. in front of his name, Jeffries entered the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. There, he trained to be a disease investigator like the ones his professor had told him about. It was the only job he applied for. Jeffries has been with the CDC ever since.
Jeffries knows when he got monkeypox. It was during a sexual encounter in the early hours of Saturday, July 9. Later that same day, Fulton County Board of Health staff finally held its first monkeypox vaccine clinic. The next morning, Jeffries lay in his bed, uncomfortable and exhausted, and prayed. He knew it was time to go to the emergency room.
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