Black Birth Matters In a radical paradigm shift to healthcare delivery, a UIC Nursing-led team is taking a novel approach to addressing stark disparities in pregnancy outcomes for Black people. Instead of focusing on
Y
just one intervention, a $7 million grant will allow researchers to implement multiple strategies to increase maternal health equity and attenuate the impacts of structural racism in healthcare. Ymani Blake had just given birth to a healthy baby girl, but something was wrong. The 31-year-old, first-time mom was having hot flashes and throwing up. Her breathing was irregular. Drowsy and unable to talk, Blake only caught snippets of conversation from her hospital bed. The wrong medicine. A bad reaction. Suddenly, a dozen doctors and nurses surrounded Blake. On her left, a Black provider appeared, and Blake grabbed for her arm.
“I remember just being so lost when that was happening to me,” Blake says. “I felt like I was disappearing. When I saw her, I just felt like, ‘OK, maybe she’ll see me in this moment as a Black woman.’ It just gave me hope that someone would speak up for me.” Blake had never met the person before—and in fact still doesn’t know who she was—but she was comforted by the color of the woman’s skin, which matched her own. Emerging research shows Blake isn’t alone in seeking out a provider who looks like her. Now, a group of researchers from UIC is exploring that idea to try to address deep-rooted disparities in maternal health. The problem is at a crisis point. The barriers that Black patients face to getting high-quality—or even adequate—maternity care and support have led to mortality rates three to four times higher than white women. In Chicago, those numbers are even more bleak. Black women are six times as likely to die of a pregnancy related condition as non-Hispanic white women, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. “Many of the patients I work with are nervous,” says co-principal investigator Karie Stewart, MS ’17, CNM, MPH, who is an adjunct faculty member at UIC Nursing as well as director of midwifery care at University of Chicago Medicine. “They don’t feel trust with their providers. Patients may think, ‘I’ll try to have baby at home without the proper provider,’ and we don’t want that.”
20 |
College of Nursing
