For me ok and feeling the strain today its not a new 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 that some are tirelessly doing to reverse the trite american bill and this conversation is live on you tube where we welcome your questions and your comments for our guys well 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 woman 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 on set 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 and Public Health and provides accessible Perinatal Support Services and Las Vegas Nevada dr joy a career perry is founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative shes also cofounder of black mamas matter and an obstetrician gynecologist and in Atlanta Georgia Charles 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. Are happy. That is one handsome baby so that would have happened 3 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 i mean theyre soaking up all the pride of becoming a father the 2nd language and then just relaxing in rob 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 i broadly attention in the doctors in the staff of peter Sinai Medical Center and they came in they ran tax including. Blood work and a c. T. Scan was going to be that in. Long story short that they allowed here the condition to the teary a doctor for most 10 hours before they finally secure a back to surgery by family and advocate of the baby played with the staff at your son not going to take action and they kept on telling us well well just wait 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 cures are stopped immediately and there is nothing they can do to save. To save to what do you make. No. Child left to get them every time i hear it so i am always. Its really. Waiting for so long its going to work theres. Going to their right of way. And its over and over again and. Theres a lot of. Family members are not listening to. And theyre not about. That were 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 there 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 and healthy 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 a Certain Circumstance that theyre in 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 the 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 are really looking at the structural issues that are repeat it and all of 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 and it has its inherent within the system and thats what at the bottom line of it theres no other own balancing out all the other factors thats the bottom line so structural if you mind if i had a company way i could get out my top editor going with it absolutely i think it directly on the. Book it cures case unfortunately. 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 have been a Community Hospital and all would be mothers regardless of their Socio Economics economic status or background or question but the thing about keira story is she defied every single one of the merits 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 you were taught to say you know in times of mechanics you cant like unless structural issues that codicil 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 people that names and it does happen that will be i think about racism we have a history of legacy in United States and the close of battling people face the funniest skin color in the fire that we have a higher giving 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 it fairly ordinary that even if some of my famous audi a 3 to 4 times greater than 7 faces 8 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 is valuable for the human but in the sense that you would say knowledge some of the bleeding from the same data to show that those that didnt. I and to that point its not them the mothers you know job too. 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 the most unfair 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. 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. 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 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 to 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 were 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 either deliver your baby today. And the baby the baby had to have died inside of her yes ok so this is the options if 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 prenatal 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 that care i think the 2nd issue is a social safety net we dont have the social safety net the last people to get to the doctor you dont have when you get to the doctor you dont have some of the watcher children having Health Insurance is going to do it now access to care certainly an issue for minorities but another issue was the fact that minorities are typically caring for by the majority and so you have issues of implicit bias and so what happens oftentimes with implicit biases majority Health Care Providers when they look at minorities but relate to them what that would relate to them on their sister their brother their neighbor and so oftentimes theyre kind of flat footed when there is an emergency this developing and oftentimes they dont recognize that theres an emergency the needs to be addressed dont becomes an urgent life threatening situation so 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 oh no i cant tell the story when i was in school and it was in my mind that long ago and i think 1982000 i was taught that there were 3 very few mongoloid. That we still live in this country where weve been teaching them to medic face to face to our position so that allows them to continue to believe in a higher value because that would be. So really we continue thinking and you know particle 2003 and yet still we save a lot of medical writers who still receive many did and that means that when we say things like that spirits would make you those who work with big ears of course youre going to get worse because youre to get it here and then if you to make that history of metal even if it is saying its imbedded in how we provide here and embed it is that if if we ever want to be clear people are treated not just based upon a feeling but the act that we met sometimes there are market because they explicitly believe that we are different so that if it was in place then. In what way different than different meaning that we are not genetically the same excellence in and of itself our skin is secure we dont feel pain in the same way we must have higher rates of im sure you get higher rates of research. And then say if we are all cynically to say that this thing that is farming this is the thing that we are living in so if it is. Africa that usa has better. Than africanamericans or. Because once youve been here and living inside this system the streets differently based you have to help. Me out of. I mean it just resonated with me what she was saying as far as. 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 people who are coming here immigrating here. And theres this idea here that i want to bring up but based on what both of you are saying i want to get this you charles. 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 does or 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 that you guys brought this topic up because ill be transparent one of the things that haunts me is i still have been night thinking to myself what could i have done and what should i have done differently and i asked 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 Insecurity Homelessness 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 a new look in 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 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 its not just accessing you know people who are not accessible to this community or familiar with the community but also bring people out of the community to come back and serve so its the creation of services jenny here agrees that your work matters jennies as midwives can mitigate the inherent risks of breathing while black and bearing the disproportionate burden of risks during pregnancy birth and postpartum and another member of our community here brings up the black mommas Matter Organization dr joy monica says Community Engagement and participate work is essential see the Holistic Care of these worker. She lifts she listen here talk to us about that Holistic Care now we at the mater alliance created a market they were midwives the lawyers and o. B. G. Y. N. To create a paper we got the black people and it really had a Holistic Care for black mothers and what it looked like this but the places like im excited that it was a part of the paper as well as the person or there is if we feel it but it might ave marcel that is the birth center in Federal Reserve think about having access to a person or the midwife in the community theyre. Usually marginalized its important for us to have spaces that you. Know sort of in the data a way d of looking at having this comprehensive air that unless theres no longer or people access heir apparent as it may be in their insurance status and so the bill thats when the doctors were there earlier that we have a country that doesnt have all access well here we dont believe we dont have but its very clear that the countries that have Better Outcomes have all of those things so not only are black women dying and its going to be white women are going to because we dont have x. That while the social safety net that we going to be as wealthy as we are should have and we used racism of that excuse not to invest in charles i meant. That maybe didnt do enough but now you as a impacting so many more women for moms right here on my laptop can you explain what it is that you advocating for and how theyre doing it. Absolutely so this is an organization that we created to pay tribute to here and only cure the 10s of thousands of women that are impacted and have been impacted by this crisis so were doing a couple things 1st and foremost working diligently with the help of programs like yours to raise the awareness of course this is been americas dirty little secret that we have this crisis going on in that were working. Toward legislation and policies that will make america a better safer place for mothers and babies and lastly working. In cooperation to create programs that will better serve all families but particularly mothers of color and one of the things i wanted to say and i have to say is that. People like but specifically briana and dr joy are are my she wrote right and what you heard from them is talk about a lot of the expertise that organizations like mama tell it to bring to the table and that black mommas matter or might mean that they will but one of the things i want to be clear that they bring to the table the next thing is they bring compassion and whether or not its arena williams whether or not its keira dixon. The thing across the board that were finding at that somebody did not listen to these women and they didnt bring a level of compassion that is sorely lacking in our country and so for that im grateful. Legislation would be remiss in this conversation without talking about legislation that passed not too long ago preventing Maternal Death act of 2018 and see it on my screen here not very pretty but it happened dr your thoughts on this great weve been trying to get a bill passed but today its been 10 years that. Weve been trying to get workers to count the number of deaths in the United States we have not been accurately counted going to death and thats where you. Really do the dirty little secret and so this bill allows us to invest it in counseling mcconnell and then really having robots interviews with family members and others to see what really happened if you look inside that. Story this thing to charles about why this is the charles talked about the fact that in that moment in. That number that they could be going to deliberate will and theyre having a baby theres a number of medical benefits theyre going to ruin i am going to present having the baby its important to bear. Thank you doll to say much of. Sharing such a personal painful story really appreciate you being on the stream today. And the ending sentiment is this that weve seen several times from people online but song says its difficult to understand that this is happening in the usa me thank everybody. For camera for moms online also look at that streamed out. For more details about all of the organizations that may be out to help you if you want to make an improved session of Maternal Health thanks so much for taking. And thats because technological at the center. To live side by side. In its. Life ups challenges kenya up developers to help small scale farmers cultivate a new future but can mobile phones really be the seed of change its a starting point because its all over the board people talk about life outside Silicon Savannah on aljazeera. When the news breaks today the current government has lost trust the people they cant do anything because the producers are against it when people are to be hurt by supply work we represent the loss of films for a part of the brics its drawing from the conservatives aljazeera has teams on the ground it now hopes the meeting in paris will push politicians to create a competent and credible government to bring you more rewards when documentaries and life moves on air and online. What was the last thing the president said to you about impeachment when you last spoke to him for a Multicultural Society its not about you. Looking down with allegations that were all years ago how worried are you that the conditions are still ripe for another i think they are right join me mad about putting up from questions to my special guests and challenge them to some straight talking political debate here on aljazeera. You know. With every. Knowledge scale protests across india with pressure growing over a new susan ship law thats divided a nation. Watching aljazeera live from a headquarters in doha also coming up the uns investigator calls it a mockery of justice 5 men in saudi arabia sentenced to death over the murder of. China japan and south korea meet for talks aimed at strengthening security and increasing trade. And in the spirit of christmas volunteers in lebanon feed those 2
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