In honor of Black Maternal Health Week, I welcome Dr. Jasmine Johnson (@mrsmommymd on Instagram). a Maternal Fetal Medicine Fellow with a focus on women’s health disparities.

Her research looks at the disparities that exist for Black women in pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Systemic Racism is a reality and healthcare plays a huge part of this.
Racism and bias can play a huge roll in the outcomes of Black mothers.

In this episode we discuss:
1. Why it’s important that we discuss systemic racism as it relates to healthcare.
2. Research in racism and pregnancy outcomes.
3. Breastfeeding statistics for Black women compared to non-Black women.
4. How systemic racism put Black women, especially Black pregnant women, at a disadvantage.
5. Why systemic racism effects us all.
6. What we can do to cause change.

00;00;09;03 – 00;00;28;20

Dr. Mona

Welcome to this week’s episode where I welcome Doctor Jasmine Johnson, who is a maternal fetal medicine fellow with a focus on women’s health disparities. She is on Instagram as Mrs. Mommy MD, which all attached to the show notes. And we’re talking about health disparities in black women in America. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jasmine. 

 

00;00;28;20 – 00;00;49;18

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Thank you so much for having me. Such an important topic. So thanks. 

 

Dr. Mona

It is a very important topic, and I was really excited to have you on, because I feel like people don’t really understand the reasons why and maybe what we can do as physicians in the medical community and also as a society to help actually cause change. So this is education, but it’s also a conversation on, well, where do we go from here?

 

00;00;49;23 – 00;01;11;03

Dr. Mona

And I know you do a lot of research in women’s health disparities. So I’m just so glad we could connect. So. 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Thank you so much for having me.

Me too. Me too. I have had so much to share. So excited. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah. So tell me more about your research and what you do as a maternal fetal medicine fellow. 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. So as a maternal fetal medicine doctor, I am a doctor who takes care of birthing people with pregnancy complications.

 

00;01;11;03 – 00;01;34;17

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

So that could be a high risk condition that someone brings to a pregnancy or develops during pregnancy, or a high risk condition that’s affecting their fetus or birth defects. Multiples, different, anomalies. We are the doctors that diagnosed those things, and a lot of times treat them. And so, that is kind of my clinical side. But then I also like to think of myself as a bit of a physician activist, kind of self-proclaimed.

 

00;01;34;19 – 00;01;58;08

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

But in my work as a fellow, I’ve been able to have a lot more dedicated research time. And so my research focus is particularly centered around the outcomes of black women, and particularly with high risk pregnancy. We think about pre-term birth outcomes, pain management. We have some studies about that. And also how implicit bias and racism in communities has this negative association on our birth outcomes as a nation.

 

00;01;58;08 – 00;02;17;10

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so, it’s uncomfortable to discuss. And it definitely can be a prickly subject, but it’s so important if we’re going to move the needle on this. 

 

Dr. Mona

Exactly. And so what drove you to do the research in, women’s health disparities? Did you just see that it was commonly happening and you felt like you wanted to get into the bottom of it, or what drove that passion for you?

 

00;02;17;10 – 00;02;33;27

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Well, a little bit of both. I think that this issue is very personal to me. I’m a black woman. I’m a black mother. I have a 12 year old son who will grow up and become a black man in America, and that has a lot of, things that we have to carry as parents in teaching him.

 

00;02;33;27 – 00;03;02;22

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

I have a daughter who become a black woman and choose to grow her family, potentially. And we know what the scary statistics are for black women in pregnancy. And so I’d say, you know, it’s something that I see in my clinical life, but also my personal experience and having to navigate the health system as a single black mother in college, with this unplanned pregnancy and all of the things that that meant, just based on what society felt and expectations that society had about black women and young black women who are unmarried.

 

00;03;02;25 – 00;03;24;12

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And also, you know, just wanting to make sure that my kids have a better future and that we’re not talking about these issues when they become adults. 

 

Dr Mona

And, you know, I you said it was a prickly subject. And I feel bad that it has to be a prickly subject because it shouldn’t be. It’s reality. And unfortunately, there are people who feel like systemic racism doesn’t exist when I agree also that it does.

 

00;03;24;15 – 00;03;42;20

Dr Mona

Why is it important that we discuss systemic racism as it relates to health care? Because of course, you can look at systemic racism as health care, the educational system, the social services system. There’s so many different aspects of systemic racism. But why is it important that we focus on the health care aspect? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. Well, you you hit the nail on the head.

 

00;03;42;20 – 00;04;08;03

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

You know, a health disparity is a symptom of a larger problem within the health care system. So like you said, a disparity in economic resources. We talk about the wealth gap. We talk about disparities in education, the achievement gap, imprisonment. We know that there’s the school to prison pipeline and so I’m a very visual person. And I think that when we think about health disparities, I heard this awesome analogy when I did this training through the Racial Equity Institute in Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

00;04;08;03 – 00;04;29;23

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

They, it’s the fish in the lake analogy. And when we think about health disparities, I think previously the conversation has been really centered on the individual and what they can do to overcome whatever the disparity is. And question, and this analogy says, if you’re walking past a lake in your neighborhood and you see one fish belly up dead in the lake, we think something’s wrong with the fish.

 

00;04;29;23 – 00;04;49;11

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

We just say, okay, something was wrong with that fish. But if you walk past the lake and half the lake, there’s it’s just full of dead fish. You start to question the lake and what’s in the lake. And I think that it’s important to talk about health disparities from the health care perspective. But I think that we’re short sighted when we just focus on the health care perspective, because this is a bigger systemic issue.

 

00;04;49;11 – 00;05;25;08

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And if we look at things in isolation, in these silos of education, health care, home ownership, we don’t see the bigger connection. And I think that that’s why it’s been so difficult to convince people that that racism and systemic racism exist, because we have been kind of labeling these things as separate issues. And so I’m hoping that as we continue these conversations, we of course, enlighten ourselves in the health care system, but we also start to connect the dots outside of when our patients come and meet us in the in the exam room, all of the things that they have to overcome just to be, well, just to achieve equal outcomes in, in

 

00;05;25;08 – 00;05;45;27

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

whatever that is. So, it’s important from a health disparities standpoint, but also just to make sure that we’re connecting it across different domains. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah. I mean, as a pediatrician, as you probably imagine, I see that happening so young, right? I mean, when you speak about the educational system, even how things are advertised for, food, right? In certain neighborhoods, I mean, this is a huge thing that I see.

 

00;05;45;27 – 00;06;03;20

Dr. Mona

I mean, I’m very fortunate to have a very diverse population where I practice in Florida, where it’s socioeconomically and also racially. But I see that within the variety of the patients that I see. And it’s so eye opening since I moved to this practice because I was like, wow, like, this is this is systemic racism in front of my eyes.

 

00;06;03;22 – 00;06;24;12

Dr. Mona

And this is just how things are. Just so, just so different based on socioeconomic level, the access to everything, like you’re saying, including quality health care. So the research that you do, tell me more about basic things that you’ve found in terms of research and racism, in terms of pregnancy outcomes. 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, I look a lot at pre-term birth.

 

00;06;24;12 – 00;06;48;13

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so pre-term birth is when someone delivers a baby less than 37 weeks of pregnancy. So the baby isn’t full term. And just kind of within the United States, pre-term birth rates for black women, are, you know, 3 to 3 times higher than that for white women. And, honestly, the highest out of any other racial, racial or ethnic group, particularly in studies that we’ve looked at.

 

00;06;48;15 – 00;07;13;01

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

During my fellowship at UNC, we, actually looked at a high socioeconomic status cohort. So when you talk about access and resources, one of the arguments against health disparities is that, well, these these populations that are vulnerable don’t have the resources, you know, they don’t have access to health care or food or, you know, insurance so that they can get into the clinics and in a appropriate time.

 

00;07;13;01 – 00;07;31;21

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so one way to debunk that myth is you can look at the data just in a high socioeconomic status cohort. So for our particular study where we looked at birth certificate data across the entire United States. So this is millions of pregnancies. We only singled out those, women who had greater than 16 years of education.

 

00;07;31;21 – 00;07;58;20

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

They weren’t on any government assistance, and they had private insurance. And even within this high socioeconomic status cohort, black women still had a significantly higher rate of pre-term birth at every gestational age that we kind of cut off for our results. And we were able to get a little bit more granular data on race. So race, race and of itself, there’s it’s a problematic variable in research because we have to rely on inaccuracies that sometimes race and ethnicity is reported.

 

00;07;58;24 – 00;08;18;11

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

But for this study, we were able to look at, those who self-identified as black, self-identified as white, and then self-identified as both black and white race. And there was actually this like graduated effect of increased pre-term birth rates. So white women had the lowest rate of pre-term birth. Women who identified as black and white had this like intermediate pre-term birth rate.

 

00;08;18;11 – 00;08;38;15

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And then black women across the board had the highest rate of pre-term birth, and so of course, there’s a lot that we can’t, know from birth certificate data. But what that tells me is that even with these protective factors that historically have been thought to, create good outcomes like having insurance, having education, black women don’t see that same protection.

 

00;08;38;15 – 00;09;01;08

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And that is has actually been proven in pre-eclampsia data. We see that in infant mortality rates. And so again, just uncovering the things that we previously thought protected communities of color further, I think underscores the fact that it’s not so much the individual all but the system and what it’s like to experience health care as a black person compared to a white person.

 

00;09;01;10 – 00;09;19;02

Dr. Mona

And what other levels do you see? Systemic racism? I mean, we talk about obviously in pregnancy outcomes and prematurity, but in terms of, you know, infants and children do, does your research focus on that? But are you focused mainly on the pregnancy? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

So I focus mainly on pregnancy. But you know, I do these these talks a lot and have these conversations.

 

00;09;19;02 – 00;09;43;12

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so, some other things that we have seen and in infant mortality data. So there is a study where they kind of did a similar thing where they use birth certificates across the United States, and they looked at, different levels of structural racism based on like racial inequality. So looking at, the difference in prison incarceration rates in black and white populations, unemployment rates, educational attainment.

 

00;09;43;12 – 00;10;16;05

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And they actually saw that across all the states in our country, increasing racial inequity and unemployment was associated with an increased rate of black infant mortality. And when they saw decreasing ratios in and equity in education, it was almost, a 10% reduction in black infant mortality rate. So what that tells me is, again, if we only focus on what’s happening in the hospitals, we’re missing so much because this shows us that there’s a relationship between communities and having access to education, having access to jobs, it actually impacts infant survival.

 

00;10;16;08 – 00;10;38;07

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so that is one study that I think is like a great example of how systemic racism impacts infants and children as well. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah. I mean, even looking at breastfeeding statistics, I mean, I’m attaching an article that if anyone’s interested, you can read. But they looked at data looking at black infants who were breastfed. And at three months, about 50% of infants were breastfed, compared to 72% in white infants.

 

00;10;38;07 – 00;10;55;27

Dr. Mona

And could be the lack of access to lactation consultant or services to help with breastfeeding. Is it also a systemic issue with support for the breastfeeding mom, which we know is vital? But it’s a combination, like you said. I mean, it’s definitely important that we are recognizing that and attacking it from all levels. I couldn’t agree more.

 

00;10;56;04 – 00;11;17;29

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah, yeah, I think breastfeeding is a great example of how multifactorial this can be, because you’re absolutely right. You know anyone who undertakes breastfeeding and I’ve done it from experience. Like you need support, you need jobs that allow you to take breaks to pump. You need, a support system at home so that you’re able to to nourish your child and all of those things.

 

00;11;17;29 – 00;11;42;23

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so, you know, that that is one issue. And then also absolutely lactation support. There was one study where they looked at, breastfeeding initiation and uptake, and comparing black and white patients and what they found is that even, when it comes to like those that have to get government assistance, black women were more likely to be offered formula by like social workers compared to white women.

 

00;11;42;23 – 00;12;05;11

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so, you know, these are things that are insidious because of course, offering someone formula is not harmful. But I think that if we’re disproportionately offering formula to communities of color that can explain a lot of the disparity is if they don’t realize there are other resources out there for them to continue breastfeeding. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah, exactly. Like one thing I’m working on with my hospitals is I rounded the newborn nursery, right?

 

00;12;05;11 – 00;12;19;22

Dr. Mona

And I get I take care of a very diverse population here, and I’ll talk to a lot of my, maybe Creole speaking, patients. Right. Or maybe there’s a language barrier. Even if there’s not, I’ll talk to them and we’ll, you know, using either a translation phone or if they speak English. And I ask if the lactation consultant came by.

 

00;12;19;22 – 00;12;34;22

Dr. Mona

And I know lactation consultants are busy, but sometimes I’m finding and and this is just an observation and maybe it’s just because I, you know, I take a passion for this. I’m noticing that a lot of my women or mothers of color tend to not have that access in the hospital. And then I say, well, did you want to talk to someone?

 

00;12;34;22 – 00;12;49;20

Dr. Mona

You know, because I think it’s important. And there’s an assumption there’s a lot of interruptions, whether it’s comes from that implicit bias that people have that you mentioned or wherever those assumptions are coming that women of color are going to formula feed their babies. And I think that is a huge not to say I formula for my baby.

 

00;12;49;20 – 00;13;06;04

Dr. Mona

So not to say that formula feeding is bad in any means, but we need to provide every mother, regardless of color, the resources to do breastfeeding, whether they choose to or not. It’s their decision. But if they don’t even have that option, I mean, what is that saying to them that hey, well, okay, well, you know, you just do what you want to do.

 

00;13;06;04 – 00;13;24;21

Dr. Mona

You don’t need the education every woman deserves that education for sure. No, it’s it’s it’s a huge problem. And I’m so glad that your research is involved in this. And I’m sure you’ll continue to do more research in this, and I can’t wait to talk to you more about what you find. And you know, what we can do in terms of like, we’ll get to this, but what we can do as a society and as a medical field.

 

00;13;24;21 – 00;13;47;26

Dr. Mona

But how does, you know, systemic racism put black women, especially black pregnant women, at a disadvantage, like just overall kind of summary. What does that do in terms of, their access or their outcomes? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. Well, there’s this hypothesis called weathering. And it is some research that has come out of the University of Michigan where they actually looks at the DNA of black women compared to white women.

 

00;13;47;26 – 00;14;07;17

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And what they found is that if you look at patients who are the same age, black women have higher signs of aging in their DNA. And they attributed this to reported discrimination and the effects of racism on their bodies. So there’s this, like, biologic effect. And then similar to some of the other data related to pre-term birth.

 

00;14;07;17 – 00;14;28;03

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

So neighborhood segregation, whether you have a community that is more diverse or less diverse, actually can impact pre-term birth rates. Whether your community, spends a lot of money on the carceral system or like imprisonment of of those within the community that has been associated with pre-term birth. I’ll share some of these studies with you if your listeners want to kind of dive into them.

 

00;14;28;03 – 00;14;50;14

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And one of the studies that we also did, during my fellowship, we looked at post cesarean delivery, pain management. So within our postpartum unit, we looked, you know, over a course of three years at all of the patients who had a scheduled cesarean delivery. So we expect, you know, your pain to be pretty similar. Right. And we were able to kind of single out those who should have had a straightforward delivery.

 

00;14;50;14 – 00;15;15;12

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And what we found in our pain data is that black women reported the most frequent, incidents of severe pain. So a pain score of seven or more, however, they received less pain assessments by staff and they received less pain medication and and and white women, although they reported less severe pain, received more opiate and non-opioid pain medication compared to everyone else.

 

00;15;15;12 – 00;15;36;26

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so again, when we think about implicit bias, this can make people uncomfortable, because obviously when we share those data, no one wants to say that they are giving differential treatment. But there’s something about how we’re delivering care that’s inequitable. And so we have to continue to track outcomes like that. We have to treat racial disparities as a quality metric.

 

00;15;36;27 – 00;15;58;17

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

You know, similar to how we talk about readmission rates and poor, you know, transfusion rates for obstetrical care and ICU admissions. We need to track this data by race and ethnicity, because if we don’t, it doesn’t tell the whole story. And I think that’s a perfect example, where someone may leave the hospital and be fine. And ultimately go on to have a normal postpartum course.

 

00;15;58;17 – 00;16;22;11

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

But if they were having pain and they weren’t listened to and their pain wasn’t treated adequately, I don’t think that that is considered a good outcome. And so there’s so much that we still need to unpack. 

 

Dr. Mona

Well, why I’ve heard that before. And of course, you are bringing that up to light. What do you think it is? Is it that we’re that the medical community or people who are interacting with that woman, they don’t believe that she’s having pain or that like, what is it that is prohibiting her from getting those meds if she needs it?

 

00;16;22;13 – 00;16;42;28

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. Similar to to all of these things. It’s such a loaded question because I think that there are so many stories of patients feeling that they are not listened to, particularly black women, when it comes to maternal mortality. Unfortunately, in a lot of these devastating cases, the families reports are that their partner wasn’t listened to or said something was wrong.

 

00;16;42;28 – 00;17;06;03

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And obviously that has a more devastating outcome than pain, being treated. But also, I think in some of the conversations I’ve had with different people, different stakeholders in the health care system, think about how we teach new doctors and nurses, and a lot of what we have been trained in, in medicine at least, is kind of like, you know, race based anecdotes.

 

00;17;06;09 – 00;17;30;13

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

So and so it was a 30 something year old African-American woman. And then with that information, you were then supposed to kind of deduce based on the clinical scenario, what’s going on. And I think that we have conditioned a lot of our workforce to use race to make assumption, and that is bias. One example, we had someone come to help us talk about postpartum hemorrhage, and he referenced our postpartum hemorrhage rates.

 

00;17;30;13 – 00;17;47;19

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And he said, you have a lot of African-American moms here because they bleed more. You know, I would like to think that he did not think that was a racist belief, but it was because there is nothing about me being a black woman that makes my blood not clot or makes me more, more likely to have a hemorrhage that has a biologic basis.

 

00;17;47;19 – 00;18;09;07

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

But instead black women are ignored and then their bleeding is higher. Or, you know, they they don’t get the same medications right away because there have been some historical teachings that there are differences, that are biologic in race. And what we know now is that race is a social construct. It was something that was assigned and were actually more similar across races and ethnicities than different.

 

00;18;09;10 – 00;18;29;10

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And so I think there’s the implicit and explicit bias. There are some providers out there who have racist beliefs, and it’s not just implicit bias, but I think a greater bang for our buck would be to go back to how we’re educating our people in our workforce on what we have done in the medical field to perpetuate these biases.

 

00;18;29;12 – 00;18;46;17

Dr. Mona

Oh, I agree, I mean, I, I’m not black, but I’m Indian. And after my son was born, I don’t know if you knew this, but I had a lot of complications. I’m a physician. I delivered in the hospital that I round at, and they dismiss my pain. And the pain ended up being a huge complication. And they actually said, you are anxious.

 

00;18;46;17 – 00;19;11;25

Dr. Mona

They kept telling me you’re anxious, you’re anxious, take these anxiety meds. And I said, I’m not anxious. My son’s manic. I understand, but I’m telling you, I’m not feeling good, you know? And I, I the what you’re describing opened my eyes to being on that other side. And what women of color, especially black women, go through, on a regular, repetitive basis, you know, after that happened for me is when I will say, honestly that I started researching more about this, not for me, but just for women of color in general.

 

00;19;11;25 – 00;19;29;12

Dr. Mona

And, I found a lot of there’s like a few Instagram accounts talking about, black women who’ve died in America. For Kara, moms is one of them. I started following them. And I learned more and more about this just because I was from being on the other side. And I’m grateful that I had a partner who was also a doctor.

 

00;19;29;13 – 00;19;44;25

Dr. Mona

We were able to make it through. But now my passion is, well, what can we do so that it’s similar to the breastfeeding education? No mother has to go through that. I mean, that is it’s not like you said, like when people reported, afterwards, like, you know, they weren’t heard or listened to or that they felt like something was wrong and they were dismissed.

 

00;19;44;25 – 00;20;03;00

Dr. Mona

I mean, that just oh, that just hurts my heart because it’s not right. I mean, as a medical community, we have to listen to our patients regardless of the color. I mean, it doesn’t matter if it’s pain is pain. Discomfort is discomfort, no matter who you are. 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. And I think that, you know, we take for granted how hierarchical the medical community is.

 

00;20;03;00 – 00;20;23;20

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And you were a physician who had to like, you know, repeatedly advocate for yourself. And it just it rips my heart out because I think about our patients who may be alone and not have anyone to help advocate for them who may be intimidated because, you know, hey, this is my doctor. I trust that they know what they’re talking about or that they would let me know if something was wrong.

 

00;20;23;20 – 00;20;41;18

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And just all of the people who may not feel empowered to speak up. And I think that, you know, it’s important for us to do the research and, and also empower our patients and each other to speak up when something isn’t right, and also to to not feel bad if you don’t feel comfortable with your doctor getting a different doctor.

 

00;20;41;18 – 00;20;57;26

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

I think that, you know, sometimes, sometimes people are like, oh my gosh, it’s so much trouble. Like I have to transfer records. But like for some people this is a life or death decision. And if you don’t feel like you trust your doctor and that your doctor is listening to you, it is 100% your right to find someone who is listening to you.

 

00;20;58;02 – 00;21;11;19

Dr. Mona

Agree. And that is one thing I try to advocate for on my Instagram with pediatrician stuff too. I’m like, guys like you may not get that doctor and doesn’t mean that that doctor is not a great doctor, but they may not just be the best doctor for you and your needs. I couldn’t agree more. This is such a great conversation.

 

00;21;11;19 – 00;21;27;10

Dr. Mona

I know you probably have so much more to unpack, but I think this is such a great kind of overview. And of course, there’s so much more we can get into. Why do you think this applies to all of us? You know, regardless of our race, we talk about systemic racism. There are probably many people listening that they may never experience systemic racism.

 

00;21;27;10 – 00;21;47;23

Dr. Mona

And that is in itself as a privilege. Why do you think that it matters to all of us? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

I think that, you know, not only within maternal and infant health, there has been research and cancer data. There’s research and just primary care data that when we enact programs and policies that help our most vulnerable populations, we all benefit.

 

00;21;47;23 – 00;22;09;13

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

You know, it’s not just going to impact the black community, because we start to focus on the fact that they are disproportionately, bearing the brunt of adverse outcomes. Take maternal mortality, for example. You know, black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy related conditions. But if we do things to help black women not die from pregnancy related conditions, everyone’s going to benefit.

 

00;22;09;13 – 00;22;29;18

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Everyone’s going to have better care. Everyone’s going to have more accountability when they go to deliver their child. And so I think it’s important because we all benefit from it, and we all deserve to live in a society where we’re able to achieve, you know. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah, I mean, it’s a community effort here. I mean, and looking at just the broad sense of community, not even just your local people who are in there.

 

00;22;29;18 – 00;22;44;00

Dr. Mona

I mean, your children will go on to interact with other children from other places. I mean, you know, I’m really big on getting out of our bubbles. You know, the bubbles that we grew up in. I mean, we know that our children are going to experience and interact with so many different people from what they knew in their childhood, and we should care.

 

00;22;44;00 – 00;23;00;07

Dr. Mona

I mean, this is important for everyone’s well-being. But what I had mentioned earlier was, you know what we can do now to impact change. I know it’s a loaded question, but if you had a dream, I mean, what would you say for, you know, on the physician medical level, but also for parents, you know, what we can do to help attach systemic racism?

 

00;23;00;07 – 00;23;22;16

Dr. Mona

Of course, it involves a lot of other legislature and, you know, governmental, involvement. But what what can we do to start? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah. So as physicians, I think we need to do exactly what we’re doing on this call right now. We need to call it what it is. It’s racism, and it’s not race. This isn’t, you know, black people having something wrong with them that’s causing them to have these adverse outcomes.

 

00;23;22;16 – 00;23;44;12

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

This is racism and and how it impacts, different communities. We need to look at our own biases. So if that means doing a formal training, starting a journal club within your hospital, it doesn’t have to be this big to do. But just get these conversations going so people start to think about how they have interacted with the patients and how they want to change education.

 

00;23;44;12 – 00;24;04;28

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

On the health disparities inequities. Similar to what I said about measuring data by race and ethnicity. You can’t fix what you can’t see. And so if we’re not tracking those outcomes by race and ethnicity, we’re not going to see the problem. And like you said, listening to patients. So like Charles Johnson story, I encourage all of you to go check out his information.

 

00;24;05;00 – 00;24;28;00

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Doctor Shalon Irving worked for the CDC. She actually did research on maternal mortality, and she died from complications from pre-eclampsia after she was repeatedly going to her postpartum visit telling them something was wrong. And she ended up having a stroke due to high blood pressure. And so her mother has become this fierce advocate on her behalf and all these families that have turned their pain into power.

 

00;24;28;03 – 00;24;54;03

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

There’s just there’s so many stories out there, unfortunately. But fortunately for the future of these issues, a lot more visibility. And as a parent, you know, I’m still learning, too. But I would say, like you said, exposing your yourself and your kids to point of views that are not similar to your own, diversifying your news, your social media feeds because it’s really easy to, to only see opinions that line up with yours.

 

00;24;54;05 – 00;25;28;16

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And also thinking about just our sphere of influence. So everything doesn’t have to be this like campaign or you giving a speech, but you know, your, your community, your church, your job, your vote. You know, it’s more critical than ever for us to actually be active in how we’re using our voice and speaking up when we see something isn’t right, because I think that what has harmed our society for so long is that although, you know, people thought, well, I’m not being actively racist, silence is complicit, you know, and so it just makes you a part of the problem.

 

00;25;28;16 – 00;25;51;16

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And we can’t be indifferent anymore. Again, just because lives are at stake at this point. You just can’t be quiet. 

 

Dr. Mona

Yeah. Oh, this is these are some great tips and some great ways that we can actually really cause change on hopefully a larger level. I mean, I hope our generation, you know, of doctors and, you know, just from what we’re understanding more that we can actually cause this change because we need it for our, our women and children.

 

00;25;51;16 – 00;26;09;16

Dr. Mona

And it’s just so important. You know, for me, I agree, like the diversity aspect is so important. But when we talk about diversity, I think people think like, oh, I’m just gonna learn about something and then forget it. It’s sustained diversity, acceptance and education. It’s truly wanting to incorporate the stuff into your child’s life, right? Diversify their toys, diversify the faces that they see.

 

00;26;09;16 – 00;26;26;10

Dr. Mona

If you know you live in a community that doesn’t have diversity, like I said, cartoons or toys or things like that to expose them and talk about differences and not say, oh, there’s no difference here. Yeah, her hair is different. She may look different, but that’s who she is. And that’s pretty awesome. I love talking about diversity.

 

00;26;26;10 – 00;26;40;26

Dr. Mona

You know, I think it’s so important. And like we talked about earlier, diversity in the doctors and lactation consultants and everyone that is going to be in the medical system. And it’s not even just for the patients, but it’s also so they can have voices, you know, like like I follow a lot of parenting accounts right on social media.

 

00;26;41;03 – 00;27;01;28

Dr. Mona

I’m considered a parenting account, and there isn’t a lot of diversity on social media in the parenting space. And I was talking to another friend about it and I said, you know, we really need more black lactation consultants. We really need more black pediatricians. And, you know, we need that diversity everywhere, but also on social media where people are going for their education.

 

00;27;02;00 – 00;27;21;17

Dr. Mona

And I just think, like you said, diversifying that social media feed, really just hearing the voices, because when you start to hear it, you really will understand this is a real issue and we need to do something about it. And I’m just so glad that we connected through social media, but also on this podcast, because I feel like we’re going to have continued conversations on what we can do from the MSM standpoint, but also the pediatric standpoint, you know?

 

00;27;21;19 – 00;27;40;03

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Yeah, totally. Totally, I love it. 

 

Dr, Mona

Well, you obviously gave so many amazing things and tips, but what would be your final message for everyone listening today? 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Well, honestly, this has been awesome and all of your questions have been amazing. But I think if I if I just had to drive home anything, we are more similar to than different.

 

00;27;40;03 – 00;28;03;05

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And I think that now more than ever, it’s so easy to get hung up on. Am I going to say the right thing? Am I going to do the right thing? And the most important thing is that you are educating yourself and you are trying and and that is so appreciated. As someone who is a black woman, I really, really, really it just means so much when my friends come to me, when when, you know, new friends come.

 

00;28;03;05 – 00;28;21;15

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And once I have these conversations because, I mean, it is so much more sincere than just, you know, posting a black square like everyone was doing last year, you know, and the same people that, you know, we’re posting on Black Square have not said anything since then. And so, you know, I think that the first step can be really intimidating when you’re educating yourself about disparities.

 

00;28;21;15 – 00;28;46;07

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

And we’re talking about systemic racism, but it means so much and it means so much to me for the future of my kids and my patients. And so I would say, you know, please reach out to anyone who has questions after this. And, and, and thank you so much for giving me a platform. 

 

Dr. Mona

Oh, of course, you know, this is something that I had wanted to do for so long, and I wanted to do it in a month that wasn’t for designated for this.

 

00;28;46;09 – 00;29;02;14

Dr. Mona

I’ve spoken a lot about this, and I, I love, you know, Black History Month and Women’s History Month. But the problem with that is that you’re putting people on a pedestal, and then you don’t really do the work afterwards, right? Like like I’ve said before in another podcast episode, there’s no white man acceptance month, right? Because they’re not in minority.

 

00;29;02;16 – 00;29;25;12

Dr. Mona

Right. So we have to remember that, that when it does come like that, like my son had a stroke. So, there was a stroke. Infant stroke awareness day and I was like, oh man, I don’t want my son to have a day. Like, of course, that’s great that we can spread awareness, but it seems weird being in a minority that my like our, our issues, our need to be put on a pedestal when they should be an issue that everyone is working on, you know, so I am so that we recorded this and that you, you took the time out of your day.

 

00;29;25;16 – 00;29;43;12

Dr. Mona

I’m going to attach your Instagram handle again. Mrs.. Mommy, MD so everyone can follow her. Obviously you do your life as a mother, but of course you are an advocate and it really means so much for me, to see that on social media, too, because, you know, that’s something that I think is so inspirational. So thank you, 

 

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

thank you, thank you so much.

 

00;29;43;19 – 00;30;02;03

Dr. Mona

And for everyone listening again, read my show notes. I’m attaching a few different articles so you can read, to educate yourselves more in terms of the things that we talked about, some articles that, Jasmine also sent for me too. So definitely read that and share this episode with anyone to educate ourselves more and promote diversity. Thanks again for coming on today.

 

00;30;02;05 – 00;30;19;10

Dr. Jasmine Johnson

Thank you. 

 

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review, share this episode with a friend, share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.