The Rev. Liz Walker’s job is to minister to souls at Roxbury Presbyterian Church in Boston. But lately it’s her parishioners’ physical health — and their immune systems — keeping her up at night.

Walker, a former journalist who was the first Black woman to co-anchor a newscast in Boston, was so troubled by her congregants’ suspicion of a coronavirus vaccine that she asked Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, to speak with them.

And he did. In an online forum for which more than 2,800 people signed up, Fauci talked about the vaccine development process and why it was essential for the Black community to get vaccinated. When Walker polled her congregation afterward, at least half were unpersuaded.

“I think it just speaks to the issue of you can’t change people’s minds with one conversation when you are trying to turn people around from decades of skepticism, from decades of distrust,” Walker said. “It is not going to happen overnight, no matter what the urgency.” ...

Black people are nearly three times more likely than Whites to die of covid-19 because of health-care disparities, preexisting conditions and increased exposure at jobs deemed essential. Black children are losing more ground than their peers because of school shutdowns, and Black workers have been devastated by pandemic-related job losses.

Yet fewer than half of Black Americans say they would get a coronavirus vaccine, compared with 63 percent of Hispanic people and 61 percent of White people, according to a December report from the Pew Research Center. Many Black people say they do not trust the medical establishment because of glaring inequities in modern-day care and historical examples of mistreatment. The spread of misinformation about the vaccine development process hasn’t helped either.

This deep-seated skepticism has led to a burst of confidence-building efforts across the country, some led by the nation’s top Black doctors and scientists and funded by the U.S. government.

So far, the response has been mixed at best, with many Black Americans — like those in Walker’s congregation — saying they want more information or cannot count on the federal government to work in their best interests. ...