Want to see his major event. Teacher. Join us with coverage and analysis of the trump impeachment on aljazeera. Ok and here in the stream today its not a news story but its one that continues to astound why is Maternal Health in the United States so bad but take a look at the statistics the stories behind the numbers and the world some are tirelessly doing to reverse the trite american this conversation is live on you tube where we welcome your questions and your comments for. All this is a show weve had a lot of feedback on already with people wanting to share their stories so here are just a couple. I knew the statistics of black women and our Maternal Health i knew of the stories of black women dying in childbirth and it freaked me out when i became pregnant because i did not want to be a statistic i want every appointment with lots of questions i would ask everything i wanted to know and it didnt matter because 5 weeks before my due date my daughter decided to arrive early my birth plan was out the window so i asked all the questions again in the hospital i found her doctor i would make notes because i knew that literally her life depended on my questions thankfully we left the nicu a week after her birth and were here healthy and happy 8 months later i had a difficult pregnancy where i didnt feel like myself at all and i wasnt sure what was going on but i knew that i had to do something i later found out that i was suffering from congestive Heart Failure this made me realize how important it is for black women to have Quality Health insurance to ensure proper medical care prior to pregnancy to potentially save lives. Theres a lot to talk about today and with us onset brianna green is the director of operations and a parent nato Community Health worker at mama toto village in washington d. C. Mama toto is a Nonprofit Organization that creates Career Pathways for women of color in Public Health and provides accessible Perinatal Support Services and Las Vegas Nevada dr joy a career perry is founder and president of the National BirthEquity Collaborative shes also cofounder of black mamas matter and an obstetrician gynecologist and in Atlanta GeorgiaCharles Johnson the 4th is an improved Maternal Health advocate and founder of work hero for moms his wife Carol Johnson passed away in 2016 and everybody its good to have you here thank you so much for making the time i want to take you back to 2 years ago in april and thats when kara and charles were in the hospital and baby langston had just been born and there was so much joy and happiness in the hospital have a look. Ok. Thank. You very. Very very. Good and we. Were happy. That is one handsome baby so that would have happened so many years ago this coming April Charles what happened next. Thank you so much and that video scope with the smile on my face. That was one of the happiest moment of our lives and it quickly turned into a nightmare so shortly after my cousin with the liver by routine with their inspection they took us back to recovery and and i mean theyre soaking up all the pride of becoming a father the 2nd language and its just relaxing in right i call that the toaster or the incubator and here is resting i look down and the the catheter from your bedside begin to tilt. Broadly the tension of the doctors in the stack of peter Sinai Medical Center and they came in they ran tax including the. Blood work and a c. T. Scan was going to be that in. Long story short that they allowed cure the condition to the teary a doctor for most 10 hours before they finally secure a back to surgery by family and i advocated the baby pleaded with the staff if your son not going to take action and they kept on telling us well well just wait well just wait we just wait. Finally when they did take her back to surgery. When they finally open her out there were 3 and a half liters of blood in her abdomen and curious are stopped immediately and there is nothing they can do to save. To save her dont do what you make. No. Child left to get them every time i hear it so i am always. So i really. Really. Waiting for so long its going to work out yours will to listen. To their right away. But it is over and over again. There is a lot of. Family members are not listening to. And theyre not about. Community and its about why you. Believe. What i. Say. And this brand this occurred at cedar sinai which is a Major Hospital system in Los Angeles California here in the u. S. So keeping that in mind i wanted to bring up 2 perspectives here this is. That these stories remind this person that the element of class and affordability contribute a big deal to this imbalance were seeing but he almost immediately got some pushback from someone who wrote in this is sara on twitter who says a black woman with a ph d. Has a higher chance of dying during pregnancy childbirth or postpartum than a white woman who didnt graduate high school this disparity is not due to poverty or being more unhealthy its an equity due to racism and discrimination on many levels who are we talking about here is there is there are as there are a certain type of person is there are certain circumstances there and what does that look like i mean when were talking about disparities with black mothers where yes ok income socioeconomic status they plan role but thats secondary because at the end of the day black moms who are educated. Have the same outcomes are not or have lower Socio Economic status so were really looking at the structural issues that are repeat it and all these stories and all these situations have similar. Base backgrounds and impacting it so at the end of the day we had to address. The racism its and it has its inherent within the system and thats what at the bottom line of it theres no other when balancing all the other factors thats the bottom line so structural if you mind if i had a company way i could get out my bed to run with it absolutely have it directly on. Me book a curious case unfortunately bigger. Of what i feel a great bulk narrative associated with women that are dying in childbirth is that there seems to be somewhat of a big complex she must not have had access to care she must have had complication the baby might have been in distress she might whod been in a Community Hospital and all would be mothers regardless of their sort of economics economic status or background or question but the thing about keira story is she defied every single one of the narrative she was exceptionally how she was diligent about her prenatal care she was it was supposed to be one of the best hospital now in the country with the world and it still didnt matter because she was spared to be seen and valued as human child so when we talk about a wembley on a set stuck to a shuttle teaching you can jump in hand because when youre little to say you know in times like that mechanic you cant like unless structural issues that code full rank this m. And i think its important for us to really tactically say that to rank them people think of it as an emotion or a moral assessment or as if someone calling someone a bad name and the same people do call for that names and it does happen that will be i think about racism we have a history a legacy of United States and the close of battling people face the funniest skin color in the fire that we have a higher kicking the value based on skin color but thats codify that not only our policies like laws and procedures but even how we interact and how we treat people and so its why you see if its fairly ordinary but even if some of my friend will tell you 3 to 4 times the rate of some places 8 that well its not because black women are not getting here and that is effectively still up and they do seem to care if i tell you that there is about axis and they are not the valuable or the human but in the sense that you would say knowledge someone leading a muslim saint you get data to show that those that did not see. And to that point its not them the mother. You know job to. Take care of herself or herself in a way that her providers inherently be doing you know so its not the moms fault theyre being blamed for things that are not their responsibility they should be going to these if its been expecting that theyre going to be receiving care that is most unfair to respect as any human would come into a hospital brianna i want to share the story with Fantasia Graham because it really emphasizes how horrific lack of k. Can be when your having a baby. Is in a National Geographic. Sprite and in the National Geographic spread theyre looking at Maternal Deaths in baby steps in the u. S. And why theyre so high this is fantaisie a story have a listen have a look i was in and out the hospital i was a lie. By dying. And i they just ignore me is that i you know when i checked their. You know ok go back home everything is fine. And i deep down in my heart everything with not because my body was given a lie so much for. I was among roma. You know you know ready for school i just saw a lie and i knew that something was wrong and i saw my grandmother and she was i go to the hospital like. When i got there. And they told me they didnt hear a heartbeat. Brianna she knew something was wrong she knew her own body then what happened. She knew something was wrong and we i went with her several times to the hospital on those is this you saying she was sent back home and she was articulating to them something is not right. And not being a medical provider she couldnt say exactly wasnt right what wasnt right but she knew something wasnt correct and every day she was sent back and we went probably about 4 or 5 times that i went with her personally. When she lost that baby at that visit she was actually alone when she went to that and she sat in the hospital waiting room for about 3 to 4 hours before someone actually called me to come and be with her and once i arrived there we sat for another several hours before someone even actually came out and spoke to her about what her next steps were going to be can you explain what those next steps were i will never forget what the next steps were so we went back to speak to the doctor and the doctor told her. It was the day before thanksgiving so they said you can have to deliver your baby today. And the baby the baby had to have died inside of her yes ok so this is a options that you can deliver this baby today by induction or if you want to go home and have thanksgiving tomorrow you can come back after the weekend and when they told her that she was she literally was dumbfounded why would you ask me Something Like that it just felt so. So so heartless it didnt take into consideration what she was feeling at that time when she was devastated and then that just added to her devastation so we did go on and she had that baby that same night so tough to hear and of course even tougher to have to live through our community is weighing in on that as well one person just wrote on you tube stan says they see her color and they do not see us as human beings so its that idea being dehumanised here but i wanted to push on just a little bit to try to explain this from a medical perspective we got a video comment from the twin doctors and full disclosure one of those doctors is my brother in law and they sent a video about why they think this is how to listen. So i think a big part of the problem of poor people care and postnatal care for black and brown women has to do with the fact that we dont have universal health care we need universal health care to provide care i think the 2nd issue is the social safety net we dont have the social safety net there are people who get to the doctor you dont have a good doctor you dont have some of the watch your children having Health Insurance is going to do anything no access to care is certainly an issue for minorities but another issue is the fact that minorities are typically kerrick or by the majority and so you have issues of implicit bias and so what happens oftentimes with implicit biases majority Healthcare Providers when they look at minorities dont relate to them what that would really maan their sister their brother their neighbor and so oftentimes theyre kind of put it when there is an emergency this developing and oftentimes they dont recognize that theres an emergency the need to be addressed dilip becomes an urgent life threatening situation. So dr there when we talk about implicit bias bias here in the medical field when did you realize that this was a problem did you learn in school. What i tell the story when i was in school and it was in my mind that long ago and its like 1982000 i was taught that there were 3 races mongoloid theory and this in this country where weve been teaching that the medics basis races are physicians so that allows them to be to believe in a higher value because thats what hes been thought so really we can use to him and they could see thousands every year and so we said a lot of metaphor viruses races that met a dynamic that means that when we say things like the spirit when they hear those words what they hear is of course youre going to hear words because your genetic material and that if you did expect a serious medical even that was a saying is embedded in how we provide care and embed it is that the implicit biases with every one of the clear people are treated not just based upon a feeling but the act of we not sometimes there are harmful because they explicitly believe that we are different so that is both implicit and explicit in what way different. Different meaning that we are not genetically the same it blackness in and of itself our skin is sacred we dont feel pain in the same way we must have higher rates of im sure you get time as we get higher rates of hypertensive you have research that hes with that except innately broken about it and its the same if were all cynically the same in this thing that its farming this is the thing that were living inside of in this country and people come from africa from the continent that us they have better that than africanamericans or black people who live here for generations because once youve been here and living inside of this system that treats us differently based upon our skin color you have the health impacts. But. I mean it just resonated with me what she was saying as far as the you know the outcomes of women who are living in this country who would expect to be able to have the benefits of being in america and yet still you know africanamerican women who have been here their entire lives are having horrible disparities there to people who are coming here immigrating here. And theres this idea here that i want to bring up that based on what both of you are saying i want to get this you charles. Cat writes in that theres a lack of black doctors doctors disbelief of what their black patients tell them blacks get less pain medication than whites Healthcare System itself the maternal care desert in southeast d. C. Not too far away from us here in the studio all contribute to the statistics health care is racist in the u. S. So this is one persons view there but charles i wanted to pick up on this idea of the disbelieving of what black patients tell them because i know that that can then be internalized and then not wanting to seem pushy or like we know more than the doctor when were trying to talk about a problem talk to us about your thoughts on that and what it felt like to know there was something wrong and not feel like you could speak up absolutely and so appreciate you guys. Because ill be transparent one of the things i want to me is actually a big night tomorrow what could i have done what should i have done differently. And i ask myself well maybe if i had been more vocal maybe if i had been more active maybe if i had grabbed a doctor by the collar. Maybe if i had raised my voice maybe if i had made a scene maybe my wife would be here today but when i was in the moment and i was at the hospital advocating my wife my thought was that a black man i have to remain calm because if im seen as a threat and i get removed from the hospital whos going to be here advocating my wife and that really haunts me to be honest with you and its a did difficult thing to think about if i was caucasian probably would have felt that i had the latitude to make a scene of my life the air. But you know what you are advocating now and i think thats really important because we have spent a big chunk of this discussion talking about the issues in the problems but you also know the solutions briana you are one of the solutions explain. A Little Village which is an organization that is working with at risk primarily women of color how many black women we are located in order 7 of d. C. Which for those who are not local is one of the most at risk areas in d. C. And so what were doing is were really on the ground trying to make changes within our community. By providing not just maternity support but were also accessing their entire families supporting these families and identifying that the fact that a lot of our moms are having their outcomes not just solely based on their physical pregnancy but also the other factors that impact their lives Food InsecurityHomelessness Mental Health issues environmental stresses and so at moments also we train our workers to really address the whole woman all those issues that are affecting her in order to give her a better outcome im looking here at one of the post mama toto and looking here about building your home visitation skills you giving people that agency in order to be out to help other women who are expecting really and a lot of a lot of the women who are in our program who are working with these mothers were actually served as mothers prior to coming to our program and thats part of the beauty of this program is