When Dr. Khiara Bridges, revered lawyer and anthropologist, rose to the podium at the Yale School of Public Health on September 17th for “Pathologizing Black Birth”, she held her head high and told the story of Rhonda.
Rhonda, a mother of four, had just finished settling a lawsuit filed seven years earlier with the hospital that had delivered her twin sons. She lost one twin boy shortly after childbirth due to a Group B streptococcal infection that her physicians knew about but did not treat.
The doctors warned her that the other boy may develop hydroencephaly and would need to be institutionalized in the future. Despite this, he is now seven years old. Rhonda describes him as a “survivor” and full of joy.
Dr. Bridges told the crowd of 160 that she chose to begin with this anecdote because, “as an anthropologist, I like listening to and telling stories.” The personal significance of this painful recollection for Dr. Bridges and her work was clear as she spoke with a poised clarity and strength.
“Talking about numbers dulls outrage,” Dr. Bridges said, “Rhonda’s story puts a face to this overwhelming problem.” Rhonda is not alone. Mothers from marginalized backgrounds are rendered silent by a system that enforces institutional inequalities and health disparities.
Infant mortality for Black babies is two times that of white babies, and this gap has not narrowed in recent history. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for every 1,000 live births, 4.8 white infants die in the first year of life. For black babies, that number is 11.7.
“As a society, we need to reduce the effects of race and class on health,” Dr. Bridges remarked, acknowledging the widely reported fact that Black people still have poor health outcomes when controlling for class.
Dr. Bridges takes on two myths surrounding health disparities—genetics and culture—rejecting the idea that genetics and behavior contribute to racial disparities in health. In the realm of genetics, Dr. Bridges remarks that “those who believe this often cannot name the genetic variation, because such does not exist.”
As for culture, she then explains that this myth distracts from “the reality that people of color have been constrained in ways that only allow unhealthy behaviors.” Dr. Bridges also goes on to conclude that these tactics are a dangerous excuse not to address the real problems that belie these disparities. She cites lack of access to proper healthcare and housing and the unequal disbursements of unhealthy living experiences as core obstacles.
However, proper access to healthcare resources and facilities does not automatically transform the patient experience. In fact, the problem becomes compounded by harmful clinical encounters.
Kenn L. Harris, director of New Haven Healthy Start (NHHS) for The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, spearheaded a panel discussion entitled “Bridges to Dialogue” directly following the keynote. The panel included Dr. Bridges; Heather Reynolds, a distinguished alumnae and Associate Professor of Nursing in the Nurse-Midwifery Specialty Program at the Yale School of Nursing; Natasha Ray, Core Services Manager of New Haven Healthy Start; and Shakiba Smith, a mother enrolled in the New Haven Healthy Start Program.
New Haven Healthy Start, founded in 1997, is a federally-funded urban health initiative that focuses on infant mortality and the elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes and infant mortality. Their aim is to “strengthen the entire health system for women and babies through its care-coordination service model.”
Kenn L. Harris left much of the discussion open-ended, allowing the audience to participate. According to Harris, the larger question that must be asked is, “what can we do uniquely in our respective spaces to contribute to a collective effort in raising awareness about the inequities and injustices that exist in women’s reproductive health?”
One of the most productive things that can be done on an individual level is making an active effort to talk about this issue and support activist organizations that work to not only shine a light on this phenomenon but provide solutions. As for women and mothers of color, we need to believe them when they say they’ve been wronged by a medical system that has evolved without them in mind.
Within New Haven Healthy Start lies a foundation of women invested in creating real healthy change that impacts the experiences of each individual mother they work with. When describing how she personally became involved with New Haven Healthy Start, Ray remarked, “In 1998 and in 2018, I still want to be that woman for others that I didn’t have myself.”
For further information on reproductive justice see Dr. Bridges’ popular book, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2008), as well as her most recent work The Poverty of Privacy Rights (2017).
-Alexus Coney
