Black Feminist Scholars Host Talk About Black Maternal Mortality
posted by Tatiana Gantt | April 8, 2024 | In NewsFSU’s Black Feminist Scholars hosted an event called “Black Women and Maternal Mortality” where guest speaker Dr. Charity S. Watkins taught about the health disparities Black women continue to face during pregnancy.
Dr. Watkins, holding a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and a master’s and a doctorate in social work, focused on how social work can interrupt racial inequities in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiac-related severe maternal morbidity. After experiencing these life-threatening conditions herself, her work aims to foster critical social support for other Black women.
After an introduction of herself and the presentation objectives, Dr. Watkins wasted no time in stating facts. Black women are three-to-four times more likely to lose their lives in pregnancy compared to non-Hispanic white women, regardless of factors such as education, income, and insurance status. This all means that no matter where you stand on the scale of privilege, Black women are dying at disproportionate rates.
“84% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable,” Dr. Watkins said.
So why are some of these preventable deaths happening in the first place?
The three main reasons are implicit bias, lack of consistent anti-racism training in medical fields, and lack of diversity in medical fields.
The research consortium on race Perception Institute stated that implicit bias is when we have attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge. Unfortunately, in the United States, Black women were medically exploited as slaves, and harmful stereotypes with no medical foundation have persisted to present-day. The legal advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative reported that the myth that Black women feel no pain stem from experiments conducted by the “Father of Gynecology,” James Marion Sims. Sims was known to non-consensually experiment on enslaved Black women and girls – making them go through endless pain and death until he deemed the procedures safe enough to perform on white women.
During her own pregnancy, Dr. Watkins had an unplanned cesarean section which led to an enlarged heart and fluid accumulation in both her abdomen and legs. She recalled having her doctor painfully rip blood clots out from her body, noticing how other heart patients were more than twice her age, and remembering how she thought in the two weeks she was in the hospital her newborn daughter was going to forget her.
Dr. Watkins stated: “Personal experience is a valuable form of professional expertise. If one person experiences it, then it’s a problem.”
Dr. Watkins concluded that there’s always room for improvement because if one patient has an issue, there is still work to be done to solve it, not only for that specific patient, but also for patients who don’t know what to look for and for whom there are no advocates.
Black Feminist Scholar member, Kinaya Gibson, wrapped up the presentation by asking about certain tests Black women should be taking and for what young people should be asking.
To answer those questions here is some advice from Dr. Watkins:
– Engage in annual checkups and participate in preventative health
– Keep track of your body and family medical history
– If you’re comfortable, think about genetic testing
Stock photo generated by Image FX
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