Add a Product’s Short Description to customer email template? (M2.4)

Could anyone kindly suggest how I could have my product’s short description shown in a customer order confirmation email?

I am currently running Magento (Community) 2.4.2.

I’ve attempted to add the following code to my theme @ “THEME/Magento_Sales/templates/items/order/default.phtml”. I get the surrounding HTML code, but no data returned.

<td class="item-info<?= ($block->getItemOptions() ? ' has-extra' : '') ?>">
    <p class="product-name"><?= $block->escapeHtml($_item->getName()) ?></p>

    <-- TRYING TO GET SHORT DESCRIPTION HERE -->
    <p class="short-desc"><?= $block->escapeHtml($_item->getShortDescription()) ?></p>

    <p class="sku"><?= $block->escapeHtml(__('SKU')) ?>: <?= $block->escapeHtml($block->getSku($_item)) ?></p>
    <?php if ($block->getItemOptions()) : ?>
        <dl class="item-options">
        <?php foreach ($block->getItemOptions() as $option) : ?>
            <dt><strong><em><?= $block->escapeHtml($option['label']) ?></em></strong></dt>
            <dd>
                <?= /* @noEscape */  nl2br($block->escapeHtml($option['value'])) ?>
            </dd>

Any suggestions on how to achieve this are greatly appreciated.