Racism negatively affects birth outcomes

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Has anyone seen this fascinating PBS series called Unnatural Causes… Is inequality making us sick?

http://www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/

Here’s the description of part 2: When the Bough Breaks:

"Why do infant mortality rates among African Americans remain more than twice as high as among white Americans? Although birth outcomes are generally better for those with higher education and income, Black women with college degrees are still more likely to give birth prematurely than white women who haven’t even finished high school. Researchers are circling in on a provocative explanation: the chronic stress of racism can become embedded in the body, taking a heavy toll on African American families and on children even before they leave the womb."

Interesting...

mickeyrat

Reviving an old old thread because this gift opinion article ties directly into this .

https://wapo.st/3w1JisD

Opinion

How tens of thousands of Black U.S. doctors simply vanished

By Uché Blackstock

January 22, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST

Uché Blackstock is an emergency physician and founder and chief executive of Advancing Health Equity. This essay is adapted from her new book, “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism in Medicine.”

When I was a little girl, my twin sister, Oni, and I used to visit our mother at work. Her name was Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock and, in the 1980s and ’90s, she was an attending physician at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, not far from our home in Crown Heights.

Our mother worked long hours. So sometimes, we’d head to the hospital after school to see her and do our homework. Walking the hallways, our shoes squeaking on the linoleum floors, we’d make our way to the large cafeteria, where we’d pull textbooks from our backpacks and settle down to work alongside the physicians, nurses, technicians and aides taking a break. The staff behind the counter knew us well. They would smile warmly and ask, “Visiting your mother today?”

After our homework was done, we’d sneak into our mother’s clinic to ask for small change to spend on our favorite, red Jell-O. She’d hand it to us and, if we were quiet, let us stay and observe for a minute or two as she examined a patient. Our mother was warm but serious with those in her care. Occasionally, she would smile, but more often than not, she was extremely focused on what they were saying and what was going on in their lives.

Our mother always seemed to know as much about her patients’ children and families as she did about their medical problems. When you came for a visit with Dr. Blackstock, you weren’t only having your blood pressure or cholesterol checked — you were meeting with someone who would assess your whole being.

I believe our mother practiced what is now known as structurally competent and culturally responsive care, in which the entire complex nature of a patient’s background and the social context in which they live, work, love and pray is considered during evaluation. And people loved her for it. She wasn’t just taking care of patients. She was tending to her neighbors.

The daughter of a single mother, raised on public assistance, our mother grew up to become the first person in her family to graduate from college — and then from Harvard Medical School, in 1976.

“What am I doing here?” she remembered asking herself on her first day.

The majority of her classmates were White and from affluent backgrounds. In her class alone, one student was a relative of Jackie Onassis. Several students had parents who were Harvard professors and had written the textbooks they were using in class. Another student’s father had won the Nobel Prize in medicine.

My mother’s life couldn’t have been more different from theirs. She was a Black girl from Brooklyn. While she wanted to believe that she deserved to be at Harvard, she wasn’t always certain. Her own claim to fame was that her mother had received her licensed practical nursing degree after raising six children, attending school full time, working full time, taking care of the family and getting off welfare. Our mother was so proud of her mother’s achievements. But they weren’t a Nobel Prize in medicine.

continues.....