Hello World… There’s an issue with Healthcare

I can confidently say that I have never had an appointment with a healthcare physician that left me feeling good. I feel as though most of my appointments are spent trying to prove that whatever is causing me pain or discomfort is based on more than just anxiety or some other minor issue, and having to advocate for specific treatment. I have heard a plethora of horror stories told by other women who say very similar things. I have some friends who avoid going to the doctor in fear that they won’t be taken seriously.

This is just one aspect of the larger issue of women’s treatment by the healthcare system. There are plenty of smaller-scale issues like women having to individually advocate for proper care, but a lot of times this can lead to incorrect treatment or delayed treatment that causes the issues to become bigger and more dangerous. It is an even larger problem among women of color. Half of white medical students surveyed by The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science believed in falsities like black people having thicker skin or experiencing pain differently than their white counterparts. This is especially dangerous in the world of childbirth, where black women are three times more likely to die or have complications than white women.

There were a few hospitals in Los Angeles that were taking advantage of the fact that a lot of their expectant mothers didn’t speak English very well. They had them sign paperwork that gave these hospitals permission to sterilize them during C-sections in order to prevent them from having any more children. Eventually this was settled in court, and hospitals are now more required to have translations of contracts and things of the sort, but the long lasting trauma that something like that can leave on communities of color is profound and isn’t going away any time soon.

I remember hearing somebody say that hospitals are to black women as police encounters are to black men. My intention through these papers this semester is to really dive into why this is, and explore the stories of these women and the effects it has on them. I want to discuss the politics of gendered and racial discrimination within healthcare, whether that be reprouctive or otherwise, and dig deeper into the ramifications that this has on our communities. This issue is something that is very close to home and I am looking forward to doing more research into this subject.

I am intrigued by the intersection of not only women and their healthcare treatment, but also that of women of color specifically, as I feel that a lot of the time those are the voices that are left unheard. The standard of medical care is based on white people, specifically white men and their symptoms, so a lot of treatments and issues show up differently in women of color. This paired with implicit biases and miseducation can be extremely dangerous and it is something I’d like to explore.