RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – On Wednesday, 150 people packed a room in the Library of Virginia for a symposium hosted by VCU’s Office of Health Equity.
The event “Improving Birth Outcomes—Health Disparities and Black Birthing People” highlights a topic that tends to get swept under the rug: black maternal health.
“They can also be involved. Participants have a role to play as long as they have an understanding,” said Sheryl Garland, executive director of VCU’s Office of Health Equity.
A 2023 study by the National Institutes of Health found that black women are three times more likely to die during pregnancy than white women.
OBGYN Tashima Lambert Giles said that’s an alarming national statistic. However, it’s even more disturbing when it holds, if not more, right here in the Commonwealth.
“In certain counties, you can actually see numbers that are higher than that. We attribute that disparate care, not being able to have access to hospitals that have maternity care,” Lambert Giles said.
That creates what’s called a maternity desert, which is most common in Virginia’s rural communities.
“Those patients sometimes have to travel long times, long distances that’s really inhibited by their ability to do so by time to get off of work, by access to transportation,” she said.
Garland said while that disparity gap has become smaller over the years, it’s still highly prevalent. One of the reasons is because of decades of systematic racism.
“There’s still concerns about whether or not medical racism still exists, whether or not black women are being heard as they’re interfacing and interacting with their providers, whether or not there’s still some bias that exists within our healthcare system,” she said.
By giving people the chance to listen to experts and patients talk about black maternal health, they hope this can be the first step to ending injustice.
“The education is critical because if we are not aware, then we will continue with the same practices, utilizing the same systems and implementing the same policies,” Garland said.
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