A Bucks GP's TikTok post of her getting her Covid jab has been seen by more than 100,000 people.
Dr Nighat Arif, a GP who is distributing the vaccine at her surgery in Chesham, has said more effort needs to be made to include non-white communities in healthcare messaging.
She is one of a number of experts to have joined Team Halo, a UN-supportive initiative which is using TikTok to spread positive messages about the Covid vaccines and tackle misinformation.
There has been much focus on vaccine hesitancy and the spread of information among BAME communities, and some of the videos produced by Team Halo’s doctors are aimed specifically at countering the issue.
Dr Arif told the PA news agency: “If you look at all the healthcare propaganda… I just have to take you to my waiting room and everything that’s there – diabetes check, cervical smear check, breast check – they’re always white middle-class people.
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“So when you don’t see yourself represented in genuine healthcare information…when you feel that disparity that the message isn’t for me, those healthcare messages don’t come forward so your ability to engage with mainstream medicine is not going to be there.”
Dr Arif is having success with her TikTok posts, many of which she does in Punjabi.
One such video, which showed her receiving the vaccine, had been viewed by more than 100,000 people.
“The important thing is I know they can use my evidence-based information TikTok, put it into the family WhatsApp group, and hopefully that will then spread in a language they can understand,” she said.
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“They’ll say ‘I can’t speak English to my grandma who’s 90 but actually she’ll understand Punjabi really well’.”
It comes after a London doctor said focus on healthcare for ethnic minority communities must continue and improve once the coronavirus pandemic is over.
Dr Faith Uwadiae told PA the pandemic has “shone a light” on existing health inequalities among minority communities.
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