Anti-Racism Commitment
The Women’s+ Health Collective joins the devastation and outrage of our community and beyond in mourning the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, and countless others. Black Lives Matter. We stand with and in full support of Black people in our community and those everywhere who have suffered the dehumanizing effects of systemic racism and discrimination in our country.
As a new company, we are responsible for defining our values and acknowledging the roles we, as individuals and providers, have in our community. As medical providers and caretakers we care deeply about human rights and the lives of our patients, and we must acknowledge the roles we have played in the perpetuation of racism in our country. Our training is steeped in the preservation of the lives of our patients, particularly of our white patients. Disparity, injustice, racism and anti-Blackness have been built into our healthcare systems. The Women’s+ Health Collective was created to break down the barriers that we see as our patients work to receive the medical care they need. This must include actively addressing the barriers to care our Black community members face. And it must also mean actively fighting racism and promoting diversity of thought, experience and race within our own team. As medical providers, we must do better, and the Women’s+ Health Collective commits to doing the work necessary to do better.
In medicine, statistics, data, signs and symptoms of disease are taught based on white men, with the caveat that women and People of Color may respond differently. We are guilty of many things, not the least of which is having sat idly by while simply acknowledging racial injustices in medicine. Black mothers face the reality that they are still nearly 3 times more likely to die during childbirth in the United States than white mothers. Data shows staggering lower levels of healthcare delivered to Black people in the United States for cancer care, prenatal care, HIV, and preventative care. We must own responsibility for this. We must do better.
It is our responsibility to recognize the reasons racism exists and has formed the foundation of our country. We as a Collective acknowledge our inherent power and privilege as a predominantly white company and will work to be a hinge in the direction of humanity. We have claimed to be not racist without actively being antiracist. Moving forward we commit to consciously work to put our comfort last and be actively antiracist. We realize now there is an important difference.
It is imperative that we appreciate the beauty and the pain of growth and change and our actions need to be enduring.
Here are 3 ways we will start to implement enduring change amongst ourselves as a Collective:
1. We will process and discuss the history of race in our country, medical racism and institutionalized racism starting with Austin Channing Brown’s "I’m Still Here"- Discussion Guide.
2. We commit to hiring professionals trained in unconscious bias training and antiracism education to train and educate our staff.
3. We will be doing ongoing research into collaborative opportunities with Black owned businesses.
Now is the time for us to listen intently to those who have long been ignored and devalued, to be humbled by the history of 400 years of oppression and amplify those voices leading us to change. The implicit notion of power must be dismantled, first by acknowledgement, then by actions if we are to be part of the change.
Black Lives Matter.
Nisha McKenzie and the Women’s+ Health Collective team