By Black Women, for Black Women: Data Collection and the Power of Storytelling
This blog post was authored by Terri-Ann Thompson, who is a Senior Research Scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health.
As Black History Month comes to a close and we look ahead to Women’s Herstory Month, we call attention to the unique experiences, trials, and triumphs of women worldwide — and celebrate the power of the Black woman’s story to educate and inspire change.
Between January 2018 and January 2020, Ibis Reproductive Health partnered with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective (SisterSong) to collect stories from Black women across a range of ages living in two southern states. We asked them to tell us about their experiences with sexual and reproductive health. In our listening sessions, we learned that it is not one thing but many things that impact the sexual and reproductive health experience.
Our study: Trust Black Women: Listen to us about our reproductive lives, used a community-based participatory research approach to expand the cache of reproductive health narratives of Black women. It centered the work of SisterSong’s Trust Black Women Partnership, which aims to eradicate stereotypes and uplift the stories and voices of Black women. And it prioritized Black leadership, from study design through to implementation, analysis, and dissemination. We are proud to have worked with Black leaders from Georgia and North Carolina on our Research Board as well as Black-led organizations to collect the stories.
Throughout the study, we found that the simple act of storytelling was cathartic to Black women who participated. But we also found that the stories resonated across our research team, our research board, and with every Black person who heard the story in presentations and discussions. In our effort for those stories to live on and to be shared widely, our team prepared three products.
In 2020, SisterSong created a Youtube video that shared themes that emerged from our listening sessions. Black actors highlighted concerns about discriminatory reproductive health policies and maternal health deserts. They shouted that Black bodies are beautiful, that sex can be wonderful, and rebuffed stereotypes about Black families and romantic relationships.
In 2022, the research team published an article: Racism Runs Through It: Examining the Sexual and Reproductive Health Experience of Black Women in the South. In this article, we highlighted the impact of racism on the Black reproductive and sexual health experience. We described Black women’s fear of delivering a child within the hospital and that some responded by forming support groups to arm each other with skills to navigate and advocate for better maternal care. Black women in our study were aware of the high maternal mortality rates in their community, 3–4 times higher for Black women, and shared their frustration with the lack of policies and programs to address this issue. Experiences of medical racism were not confined to the delivery room but showed up in experiences with prenatal care, cancer screening, and wellness checks.
In 2024, the research team published an article: Miseducation: Perspectives on Sexuality Education from Black Women in the US South. In states like Georgia, abstinence only education is still in force and alternate avenues for sex education are limited and mired in outdated expectations to remain chaste until marriage. When sex education is comprehensive, people are more likely to make informed decisions about sex as well as safer choices. As one Black woman shared: “I was so thankful for my health teacher, because probably, a lot of the stuff that she did in that classroom, she was not supposed to do. I would bet money that she was not supposed to show us on a banana how you put a condom on.” Lack of comprehensive sex education is set against a backdrop of 30% of women ages 15–44 in Georgia lacking access to a full range of contraceptive methods and a high number of restrictions on abortion care. Limited options for sex education and inadequate access to contraception and abortion care means some Black women are less able to determine the size, timing, and spacing of their families.
Our efforts to collect these stories were driven by a strong belief that Black stories are key to a meaningful reduction in the disparities observed in sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Black women’s stories should serve as our compass for policy change and changes in reproductive practice. We Trust Black Women when they share what they need.
We encourage you to visit our Trust Black Women project page to check out these products and others during Black History Month, Women’s Herstory Month, and every month that follows. Let’s keep these stories alive until we get the change needed to ensure everyone can access the sexual and reproductive health care they need to live healthy, fulfilled lives.
