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Black mothers have worse health outcomes Advocates in Virginia want bias training for doctors, but can it narrow the racial gap? KATE MASTERS
Like many health experts, Dora Muhammad was dismayed when national headlines began to highlight growing racial disparities in maternal mortality. Virginia was no exception. Black women in the state are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth than White women, according to the most recently available data from the state Department of Health. But Muhammed, the health equity program manager for the nonprofit Virginia Interfaith Center, was even more concerned about why. “It’s already well-known that the rates are higher,” she said. Not as familiar was a 2019 report from the Virginia Maternal Mortality Review team, which analyzed the role of chronic illnesses in pregnancy-related deaths. Among women with long-term conditions, Black women died at more than double the rate as White patients. But 44 percent of all deaths, researchers found, were linked to at least one provider-related failure, including “a lack of diagnosis, treatment or follow-up.” “The most common thread I hear is that a Black woman will come in with pain, with a condition where she knows something is wrong with her body,” said Muhammed, who worked with the governor’s office to coordinate a series of listening sessions across the state. “And instead, she’s just not taken seriously by her doctor.” Those experiences have informed a growing push to require implicit bias training for Virginia’s medical professionals. The concept isn’t new for the state’s General Assembly, which recently passed a similar law requiring teachers to be assessed on “cultural competency.” While the trainings sometimes go by different
Tiffany Casby cradles her newborn son Zayne, shortly after birthing him at Embrace Midwifery & Birth Center in Richmond, circa 2017. PHOTO: Cheyenne Varner names, the underlying concept is similar, Muhammad said. The idea is that poor outcomes, whether in education or health, can be linked to unconscious differences in how people of color are treated. But if providers learn to recognize and counteract those biases, treatment could improve. Other states, including Michigan and California, have passed similar laws aimed at ending discrimination in doctor’s offices.
“It’s a training to undo that level of thinking that comes with seeing race,” Muhammad said. “Like, when you hear the exact same thing coming from a Black woman that you hear coming from a White woman, why is the response different?” It’s an approach the Virginia Board of Medicine
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