Stacey Stewart of March of Dimes: 5 Things We Must Do To Improve the US Healthcare System

Families must have access to affordable coverage as well as culturally competent health care providers. Women of color should feel confident that providers understand their unique experiences and backgrounds and know that their concerns are being heard and addressed. For our part, we developed implicit bias training to improve patient-provider communications and treatment decisions, contributing to improved quality of care at a critical intervention point. The course provides an overview of implicit bias and structural racism, its impact on the maternal infant health crisis and strategies for providers to both mitigate racial bias in maternity care.

As a part of my interview series with leaders in healthcare, I had the pleasure to interview Stacey D. Stewart

Stacey D. Stewart is the President and CEO at March of Dimes, which promotes the health of mothers and babies through research, education and advocacy. She is the first African-American and second woman to lead the organization in its 83-year history and is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s strategy, vision and operations. Through her work with March of Dimes, Stacey is addressing the nation’s maternal health care crisis with innovative programming like the partnership with RB’s Enfa portfolio of brands through Better Starts for All, an on-the-ground, maternal health program targeting areas of great need to address the nation’s maternal healthcare crisis.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My path to March of Dimes wasn’t a traditional one, but the journey to get here has been a valuable one. I was an economics major at Georgetown, and I went to business school and concentrated in finance. I had every intent on…