I KNOW MY BODY

Over the past year, while the world has been combating a global health care crisis with the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a simultaneous ongoing crisis for Black women: health care discrimination

- Ronny Maye

ACCORDING TO THE Equality Act of 2010, discrimination in health care is defined as unfair treatment by a healthcare provider based on characteristics such as age, disability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender or pregnancy. In the United States, this definition can be extended to include insurance, or the way a patient can or can not pay for their medical care and treatment.

Although doctors, nurses and other health care professionals take an oath to treat all patients fairly, health care discrimination does still take place and at higher instances for women and Black women, according to cardiac intensive care nurse, Brittany Lincoln*. She believes that discrimination in healthcare affects these groups more frequently because medicine is predominantly a white male-dominated and taught industry, leading to the presence of implicit bias.

Her views align with those of a student doctor, Melanie Rae*, who has witnessed discrimination both as a healthcare provider and patient. Rae explains that healthcare discrimination is the direct result of both implicit and overt biases, structural racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, that has been bred into the core curriculum, beginning in undergraduate premedical studies. Combined with factors such as perceived education levels, socioeconomic status and insurance coverage, Black women are routinely getting the short end of the stick from their physicians.