Ethnicity affects pregnancy healthcare, research suggests

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 94 points – Ethnicity affects pregnancy healthcare, research suggests
bbc.com

Parents whose baby died before or shortly after birth believed their ethnicity led to worse care.

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Any black person could have told you this.

Well, yeah. The problem is folks don’t listen to us. They might listen to data.

Doubtful. They always know better than those stupid scientists.

In the case of unconscious bias, they probably brush off the data because they don't believe they are a part of the problem. It's those other doctors who are overtly racist that are the problem...

Aren't they both part of the problem? Does it matter if it's unconscious or conscious if either way they aren't getting the medical care they need?

Absolutely, they are both a part of the problem. However the former likely won't recognize they are a part of the problem because of the unconscious nature of their biases. So they won't ignore the data because they don't trust it, or whatever, but they won't recognize how their actions contribute to it.

I think it does…. When we are talking about systemic racism it’s important to note that it is not just white versus black.

For example I remember reading an article that black police officers are more harsh towards black citizens during traffic stops etc.

It’s not just white doctors deciding black folks feel less pain. It’s a systemic issue where we are all doing it too each other, often without even realizing it.

Most of the healthcare establishment is very aware of this already. Unfortunately, it does not penetrate the skulls of certain docs.

Nah, people will just twist the data like they always have. Like accusing black people of higher rates of crime and using arrest and conviction data when that are the outcome of a racist system.

It's criminal that so much of the medical profession has this ridiculous idea in their heads that black people are more impervious to pain than white people.

I am by training a theoretical scientist, but I spent a good chunk of my career working on problems in public health and healthcare.

Yes, every black person knows this, as do most health professionals, both in public health and medicine - the latter a lot less so, in my opinion and experience.

Here’s why this study matters:

  1. This is the British NHS, not US medicine (I know from other studies that we do much worse). Because the NHS is a cohesive healthcare system (despite what they’ve been voting to do lately over there), they have the duty and the ability as an organization to address it. The article mentions programs they’re undertaking and spending hundreds of millions of pounds on. Hopefully this is going to include things like mandatory training and following the data throughout the year with consequences for facilities that do not bring those numbers in line.
  2. If I was still in active research, I would for sure make use of this report in my own work. One of my major interests is how neurodevelopment and neuroanatomy affect and determine behavior. Those things are directly affected by things like prenatal and postnatal care, physical and emotional stress of the mother, nutrition, and so on. These things in turn affect everything in childhood and adulthood from likelihood to commit violent crimes to likelihood to complete higher education. These problems don’t begin and end at the hospital door, and by using this as one of several pieces of demonstrable and quantitative evidence, we can build off of it to further show the impact and importance of medical disparity. A significant part of my post history is me going into depth on this kind of issue and the implications for things like “criminal justice.”
  3. The same goes for what would be a followup paper on the neurological and then sociological impacts of systemic racism. Unfortunately, those papers are less likely to be used directly to affect policy but can themselves provide the basis for other studies.

We have so fucking far to go it’s daunting, but we wouldn’t have gotten to where we are if we do not keep pushing.