This is a guest post by Jackie Roger, Ph.D. Candidate, UCSF Program in Bioinformatics (BI)

Towards the end of this past week, several of the readings and videos discussed the intersection of racism and OB-GYN. We learned about the medical experimentation on black women’s bodies (Linda Villarosa’s article in NYT), the mutilation and subsequent museum display of Sara Baartman’s genitalia (Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens’s talk on Youtube), and the black maternal health crisis (Dr. Susan R. Bailey article on the AMA site). These examples illustrate how the historical legacies of anti-black racism are embedded in present-day OB-GYN research and medicine. One component of this is disparities in the maternal mortality rate, which was the focus of Dr. Bailey’s piece.

She described two initiatives to reduce this disparity: the MOMMA Act to extend coverage for post-partum care and the Release the Pressure campaign to promote heart health and healthy blood pressure. The MOMMA Act seems like a good start, and could reduce both overall maternal mortalities and the racial disparities in maternal mortalities. The Release the Pressure campaign calls upon black people to take steps in their own lives to improve their heart health (since heart disease is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death). There are so many aspects of systemic anti-black racism within the medical system and beyond that directly contribute to increased risk of heart disease. A campaign that asks them to offset these things by “taking a few more steps a day” etc seems insulting. I think that truly addressing disparities in OB-GYN will require structural changes in the healthcare system.