On March 19, after a challenging COVID-19 pandemic year, graduating Harvard Medical School students gathered online for the second year in a row to find out—and celebrate—where they will spend the next phase of their medical training.

Booster is a series exploring the COVID-19 vaccine, and what it means for young people — from the science behind it to how it impacts our lives. In this op-ed, LaShyra "Lash" Nolan explores how centuries of medical racism contributes to some in the Black community mistrusting the COVID vaccine.

"For Annie Cathcart, a graduating Harvard Medical School MD/PhD student, applying for her residency in OB/GYN this year could have been very challenging. She gave birth last September and traveling for interviews would have been difficult, especially having to decide whether to bring her infant son with her or leave him at home.

But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she didn’t have to."

It’s December in my Southern California town, and the mornings are always cold. If I can convince my father to turn on the barely functional heater before bedtime, he will turn it off by four in the morning to save money. I do not blame him. Neither he nor my mother has a stable job — and not only because of the widespread job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In spite of being two of the hardest-working people I know, they have lived at the economic edge — and sometimes slipped over it — my entire life.