Tag Archives: racism

Playwright puts racism in health care on the stage

Harrison David Rivers

“Weathering,” a play that premiered last fall, takes on a public health crisis. The story centers on the grief that women carry after having a stillbirth, how they cope with it and why. But it also addresses the link between pervasive racism in health care and the concerning maternal and infant mortality rates in Black women that are much higher than those in their white counterparts. 

Harrison David Rivers, the playwright, said he was inspired to write a play that addressed the troubling trends after reading an article about the pregnancy and childbirth experiences of a young Black woman that was written by journalist and author Linda Villarosa. The play was commissioned by Penumbra Theatre, a stage company based in an African American neighborhood in St. Paul, Minn. that was August Wilson’s home theater for several years.

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Legacy of Tuskegee and other medical racism lives on today

Photo by Elvert Barnes via Flickr.

In two previous posts, I discussed the history of the U.S. Public Health Service study at Tuskegee, 50 years after it was revealed to the nation. I also shared the perspectives of a Black epidemiologist and a Black HIV primary care physician on what the study’s legacy means now.

In this post, I share the perspectives of two Black psychiatrists and a Black colorectal surgeon on how the study at Tuskegee reverberates through Black communities today.

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As racism rises, mental health of youth of color worsens

Photo by cottonbro via pexels.

Racism is a stressor for its victims, no matter their age, researchers began concluding several decades ago. Adding to that body of analysis are some new studies on specific impacts of racial discrimination and race-based hatred on Black and Asian young people. This research and related data can help journalists expand their coverage of how schools, clinicians and communities are tackling the fallout from racism.

Black youth living in areas deemed to have more anti-Black racism were less likely to benefit from cognitive-behavioral and other psychotherapies than their counterparts residing in communities where anti-Black racism is comparatively lower, according to a study analyzing five decades of psychotherapy research.

The study, published in June in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, involved people across 34 states and used “publicly available data on anti-Black racist attitudes to create a measure of state-level structural racism and analyzed randomized controlled trial data from youth psychotherapy studies of 2,182 mostly Black youth.” 

 “The extent to which racism or other prejudicial attitudes are endorsed in a given community — such as a neighborhood or a state — varies across the country,” lead researcher Maggi Price, a Boston University social work professor and director of its Affirm Lab, said in a press release. “Our study found that the level of racism in one’s community affects how well one does in mental health treatment.”  

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How to the tell the story of nurses of color experiencing racism at work

Nada Hassanein (Photo courtesy of Alicia Devine)

When Nada Hassanein read the press release about a survey that shed light on racism nurses of color are enduring in the workplace, she seized the opportunity to write a story to give real-world context to the findings. In telling the story, the environmental and health inequities reporter for USA Today, said she wanted to “weave [the survey results] into a kind of narrative about nurses’ experiences.”

In this “How I Did It,” Hassanein shares her reporting process for the story, talks about why leaning heavily on data may matter more for some stories over others, and offers tips for cultivating and building the trust that allows sources to open up about painful experiences.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

You get this press release and decide that there’s a bigger story here other than the survey. What was your next step? How did you find the sources for the story?

First, I asked the [National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing] if someone from the Commission — a nurse of color — would be willing to talk with me. And that nurse connected me with other nurses that are not part of the Commission.

How hard was it for nurses to be candid about their experiences?

The nurses I spoke with were quite open and candid about their experiences. I think they felt that someone was listening and, therefore, were willing to share their experiences.

How did you weave in context about the profession? 

I found demographic breakdowns of nursing staff or registered nurses in certain states to show how they are minorities or underrepresented. Being a health reporter, I see a lot of discussion about racism among physicians and residents but less so about nurses.

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Examining psychology, racism in wake of Charleston shooting

Photo: CDC Public Health Image Library/Amanda MillsAn African-American boy is seen walking with a teacher in Atlanta.

Photo: CDC Public Health Image Library/Amanda MillsAn African-American boy is seen walking with a teacher in Atlanta.

“Our anxiety and fear is palpable,” New York Times reporter Jenna Wortham wrote recently.

Racism’s Psychological Toll,” written for The New York Times Magazine, highlights the emotional distress that victims of racially motivated aggression can feel and raises questions about the possible link to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

The Q&A piece, along with several others, was part of the magazine’s look at racial violence in the wake of the June 17 shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine people dead. After the shooting, a website linked to the white gunman charged in the shooting surfaced with a racial manifesto and photos of him with a Confederate flag.

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