E6: Medical Misogynoir Pt. 1

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In January of 2020, Bloomberg CityLab published an article about a new study from Pittsburgh researchers naming the best and worst cities for black women. Among cities with at least 100,000 black women, Cleveland came in dead last in terms of livability. In this city with a nearly 50% black population, this news drops like a bomb, and reactions were mixed.

[Music Playing]

Do you think Cleveland is really the worst for black women? And what do you say?

Female:

“I say …

Female:

“It depends on the person they ask.”

Female:

“When I dropped it in one of my black girl group chats, the emojis were just eye rolls.”

Female:

“I'm not surprised, not even a little.”

Female:

“It’s heartbreaking and also embarrassing.”

Female:

“Is it like this everywhere? Is it me?”

Female:

“This city will make or break you.”

Female:

“City of black women that are looking around at their outcomes, their future, their past, and saying, this city makes me anxious.”

Female:

“If anybody's out there listening in Cleveland, please get out.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On Living For We, we talk to Cleveland's black women from all walks of life, from the CEO of one of our major healthcare systems to self-starting entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, students and mothers who've experienced loss.

We share stories from these women as change makers and architects of their own futures celebrating their victories, challenges and personal growth along the way.

So, is it really true what they say, is Cleveland deserving of the least livable title? And what can we do to make lasting improvements for black women in our city?

I'm Marlene Harris Taylor, and this is Living For We, a project of Connecting the Dots between Race and Health, from Ideastream Public Media.

You may remember when we visited the QueenIAM program in episode three. We met the 27-year-old founder, Dameyonna Willis and the young girls in her afterschool program. It took us a while to realize that one of the spunkiest girls was Dameyonna’s daughter, Kylie.

Kylie:

“I might live in Cleveland and then I might move to Chicago because once I was younger, like I think I was five. Yeah, I was five and I was dancing. And then I saw this lady, she saw me dancing to the music and she gave me a Sonic movie.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Kylie is vivacious and sassy, but she's been through a lot. And if Dameyonna had not been a fierce advocate during the earliest months of her life, Kylie might have turned out quite differently or she might not be here at all.

Dameyonna Willis:

I was a young mom, and she would sweat and like pants. And me being young, I'm thinking like, “Well, it's hot.” So, I would like cool her off or put cold compresses on her. And like I'm thinking, because it's the summertime, she was five months and very small and she couldn't finish her bottle. And I would take her back and forth to Metro. I would take her back and forth to different doctors and they'll say she has asthma.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

They thought at the time-

Dameyonna Willis:

Yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was asthma. And how many different doctors told you it was asthma?

Dameyonna Willis:

It was six different doctors told me it was asthma. I would go and they would send me home and then I would come back the same day because I'm like, “Something is wrong with this baby. Like she's panting.” I will watch her when she was asleep, you can see her chest moving up and down.

I would come back, and they'd probably be like, “She's back.” And they would keep me overnight for one night, same thing, checking her lungs, giving breathing machine. And I'm like, “Nothing is changing. It is the same thing.”

And I would kind of get offended when people would make comments about how small she was. And at that time, I'm just thinking like, “Well, I'm giving her the breathing machine, I'm putting a different medication they're telling me to do.”

And they would be just real passive aggressive. And they would ask me, “Are you using the things we're giving you? Are you doing the steps they were telling you to take?” And I'm like, “I am. Something is wrong with my baby.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, they were insinuating that you were not-

Dameyonna Willis:

Doing what I was supposed to be doing. I felt like they would speak these really large terms on purpose. I feel like they will be real big with the vocab and sometimes me honest, being intimidated and not knowing should I ask what that mean or should I just wait until it's on paper so I can research a little bit more. I didn't feel comfortable enough in that space to ask them what did this really mean?

So, I would take it upon myself after we get our discharge papers to go home and research the paper or research the things that they would put on there. After I left Metro and went to UH and there was a new graduate, it was a woman who mentioned to me, “I want to take a look at her heart.”

And I'm looking at her like, who heart? You want to look at my baby's heart? And so, she was like, they usually don't do walk-ins, but you can call, I'll give you a referral and you'll call. And I just looked at her and I said, “I'm not going nowhere. If you think something's wrong with my baby heart, now this is a new thing.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That was news to you.

Dameyonna Willis:

Yeah. That was like a heart.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Up until then it had been about the lungs.

Dameyonna Willis:

Her lungs, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I mean, at least she was trying to look at something different.

Dameyonna Willis:

Different. Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, I'm sure you were appreciative of that.

Dameyonna Willis:

She was like, “Well, they seem not to be busy today, you can go on up.” And so, we went up and we were there for about four hours. They did an EKG, they did an echo on her heart and the doctor came in and this doctor was a woman of color, and she came in and she said, “Your questions and what you thought was wrong with your baby, you didn't know what it was, but something is wrong.”

And she was explaining to me, and honestly Ms. Marlene, it was like, I didn't hear any of that because I was so caught up on one, you have to cut my little baby's chest open and go inside her heart.

And then two, I'm just like, “What is going on? I came in. This all just feels too real for me. And I don't know …

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And scary. I'm sure.

Dameyonna Willis:

And scary. Yes. And I'm like, once again, they see me as a mother, a single black mother. I'm just like, I am nervous, I am scared. And so, she was explaining to me that we are going to have to put her to sleep and we are going to have to go in because the left side, her left artery is not properly connected. So, her panting is because only one side of her heart is pumping correctly. It's something called ALCAPA.

And so, they was like, “We need to take the artery, it growing in the wrong place. We need to take it off where it is and put it where it's supposed to have grown.” You were going to take you up to … like you're going to the heart cardiologist-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

They admitted her immediately.

Dameyonna Willis:

Immediately.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wow.

Dameyonna Willis:

And so, I called my mom and was telling her, “I need you to bring clothes.” But this woman, I would say, Dr. Plummer was the first woman, first doctor that allowed me to feel seen. Some nurses were a little more rough than others and it was the white nurses, they-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

With a five-month-old baby?

Dameyonna Willis:

Putting in her … oh, that's not the right place. Pull it out. It was just like, I was panicking. But honestly, I was so caught up in, what if they won't treat my baby or if I'm not nice and kind, would they not be nice and kind to her?

But I stayed the whole time. So, we were in the hospital from August. We were released in October.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, what I'm hearing you say is you felt like you couldn't be a total advocate for your baby because you were afraid that they-

Dameyonna Willis:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

They might perceive you as coming off the wrong way.

Dameyonna Willis:

Being angry or being (lack of better word), ghetto. Being someone that I don't know what I'm talking about or being frantic or just not being able to control my emotions even though I was emotional.

So, when they took her for surgery, we were in the waiting room and it was like, okay, it's time for Kylie to go back. And she just looked at me and I looked at her and I said, “Okay mama, you got to go back.”

That honestly was the scariest, the scariest point of my life. This little baby just came in my life and just to hear and to see and to know that she's back, and they put her to sleep and everything. But I felt like she was alone. I felt like I needed to be there, and I felt like, “Oh man, did I do the right thing?”

I also felt very like, “Why me? Why my baby?” I wanted to know why; she was always such a high spirit baby. She was always a laugher. She was always full of joy.

Kylie:

“I’m over here everybody. Hello …

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Despite it all, Kylie made it and is here sharing her light with all of us. However, if she hadn't made it past her first birthday, Kylie would've been another tragic addition to Cleveland's abysmal infant mortality rates.

A child dying after they've taken their first breath and before they've reached their first birthday is what counts towards those infant mortality numbers.

According to First Year Cleveland, a nonprofit which studies the issue, in 2020, Cuyahoga County had one of the highest infant death rates in the country. And for every white baby that died before their first birthday, nearly six black babies died in Cleveland.

It's just one of the many factors that contributed to Cleveland's least livable title, but it's an especially disturbing reality, especially in a city with so-called world-class healthcare.

As we begin our two episodes on healthcare, it's a subject we need to tackle. What's some advice you would give to people who might be listening to this who are part of the system? The nurses, the doctors.

It's not unique to Metro, it's not unique to UH, it's part of the system. What would you say to them as the solutions so that other mothers like you don't have to go through this again?

Dameyonna Willis:

I would definitely tell them listen, listen without immediately having response, listen and being able to think of all the different solutions. Not just, oh, this is what it looks like. So, that's what it is. It maybe could be this or it maybe can be that.

And I would say also speak with people with genuine, I want to help you. You came here, and you entrusted in me to help you and I want to help you. And I want you to know that I'm going to do whatever I can do to help you.

And speaking to people with respect. It don't matter where you come from. If I caught the bus here, if I walked here, I deserve the same respect as a white woman coming in here with her baby. I deserve to be spoke to with respect and to be spoke with intention of genuine, I want to help you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The disrespect that black women face in our hospital systems was also pointed out by our next guest, Jazmin Long, CEO of Birthing Beautiful Communities, a Cleveland based community of doulas that provides support to pregnant women at the highest risk of infant mortality.

Jazmin Long:

African American women who have a master's level degree are more likely to lose their baby than white women who have no high school diploma. And it's because when we go into some of these systems, we're not treated with respect. We're spoken to with slang words. We're asked things such as, where’s your baby daddy? As a way from medical people to sometimes think that they're going to make a connection with you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Okay, so I'm going to go in here and connect with her. I'm going to be like, “What's up girl? Where's your baby daddy?”

Jazmin Long:

That's exactly what it is.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It sounds like a really corny 70’s sitcom or something.

Jazmin Long:

And you imagine yourself a professional black woman who has maybe just worked and took off to come to a doctor's appointment for a check-in without your husband, and you have somebody say that to you.

Now, you might not outwardly express your anger, but inside that's going to make you very upset. And so, those are the kind of toxic stressors that lead to just women internalizing those feelings and moving forward and not necessarily having a safe space to process.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Are you surprised at all that Cleveland ended up at the bottom of this list?

Jazmin Long:

Absolutely not. When I'm thinking about what a thriving city looks like, I'm thinking about moms and babies being able to thrive. Because if our babies are not well then our community is not well.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

My understanding is that we are improving, but it's still not where we want it to be.

Jazmin Long:

What we have to account for is that white women's infant mortality rates are getting better and thus they also have an impact on the research, and the numbers that we see. African American babies are still two to three times more likely to die in our communities than white babies.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And that's the number one question that people ask when they hear these terrible numbers. The first question is why?

Jazmin Long:

Toxic stress and medical racism. I think there are some people who really get it and who are okay with us saying … our organization, Birthing Beautiful Communities, we are a black led, black serving organization and we have to be unapologetic about that because the disparity does lie amongst black women and babies.

I would say following 2020, after the racial reckoning that we saw in this country, it became easier to have the conversation and for folks to really open their eyes. Okay, racism is real, and it is impacting several different facets of our community from healthcare to housing, to all of these social determinants of health.

And I think it is what has led to the community finally being able to receive that racism is what is causing black babies to die. And that racial bias in healthcare systems are what is causing moms to die.

We're having more sustained dialogue with hospital systems than we've ever had in our organization's history, I would say in the last two years. They recognize that they can't solve some of their own issues and that they need organizations that are community based to step in because they actually are getting to be ashamed of their numbers.

You have nurses who say, “I never offer black women donor breast milk because they're not going to take somebody else's milk anyway.” For the healthcare system to automatically say, we're not going to offer, just to have a person say, my personal opinion is this and I'm not going to offer it to this mother because this is my personal opinion, that's not hospital policy.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That policy position doesn't make it down to the individual when they're making those day-to-day decisions about how to treat moms.

Jazmin Long:

And that said, we can go to a healthcare system one day and have an incredible birth. They know Birthing Beautiful Communities; they know who we are. They're rolling out the red carpet.

And then you go to another healthcare system that may have a traveling nurse and who's never heard of BBC and she's being rude, dismissive, are you the cousin? Who are you? And then we step in and say, “No, we're doulas.” Really having to step in.

And that is that we have to show up such a high level of professionalism because they can never complain about us. We're there doing our job, we're advocating for women, we're helping them advocate for themselves.

There was a study that came out today actually, an article that I just read in the New York Times, that if you're African American, you are more likely to be drug tested after you give birth than white women.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And what is the reason for that?

Jazmin Long:

Because you're black, you must be on drugs. If you're black, they just automatically are going to drug test you and see if there's something and then use that as a way to get you in trouble and take your children away from you. It's actually insane.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It doesn't seem to make a lot of logical sense.

Jazmin Long:

Because racism doesn't, right?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Right, right. True.

Jazmin Long:

That's the way it shows up. And these things just illustrate that. And what I say is that if we improved outcomes for black women in healthcare settings, that would make things better for all women.

I think healthcare is no easy feat for any women, but we have seen through the research that black women go through the ringer with respect to how they're treated in healthcare systems.

[Music Playing]

Betty Halliburton:

It was probably the late 80s, which dates me a bit. I know …

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

This is Betty Halliburton, a freelance health reporter and producer here in Cleveland. She was brave enough to share a truly harrowing story she had at MetroHealth Hospital. And just a warning, her story involves an early term miscarriage.

Betty Halliburton:

Just lost a job, which also resulted in me ending my medical coverage. My significant other at the time and I, I was having a miscarriage. When I went to the restroom and saw the blood I needed to get to the hospital.

And as usual, the very first thing they say is your health insurance. And it was so dramatic for me, one that I was bleeding profusely. Number two, I was alone. He was out of town. And my parents live out of town.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh wow.

Betty Halliburton:

So, I was there by myself, and I went to ER, and they got me in a room eventually, but it was two hours sitting in a pool of blood. And if I'm tearing up a little bit, it's only because you don't have dignity when you can't even get somebody to help you wipe yourself.

It was almost like you're not important. Was it because I was a woman of color? I can't confirm that. I was someone that they could look, and they could take care of others. There was another woman having major migraines, another woman of color screaming at the top of her lungs and I'm bleeding out. She's screaming and neither one of us are being attended to.

And it was very upsetting and very traumatic because I kept, as they were going by, we'll get with you in a minute, wouldn't even give me eye contact. I said, “I need to wipe myself up.” And-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Who was going by?

Betty Halliburton:

People that were on staff in ER.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And you're calling out to them saying, I need help, I'm bleeding.

Betty Halliburton:

Right. Now, I wasn't screaming like her. She was like, “Help me, help me. Turn off the lights. I can't take it.”

I was just saying, “Ma'am, I mean, could you please just give me something to wipe myself?” Finally, they brought me some towels, but I didn't see a doctor for two hours.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, my God.

Betty Halliburton:

I just felt like I wasn't a priority that day.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Betty didn't have an advocate with her that day. And now years later, she continues to question her actions. Should she have been more forceful? She wonders. Should she have insisted on seeing a doctor sooner?

The truth is Betty is still carrying scars, but she was brave enough to talk about it because she hopes others can learn from her situation.

But why does it have to be a potentially fatal situation for black women in health emergencies, who don't have an advocate?

Jazmin from Birthing Beautiful Communities says she believes that hospitals know who their bad actors are, which members of their staff are biased and shortsighted because she herself has named names to hospital administrators.

But that doesn't change the fact that women, even those who are educated on health issues and know what they need, are uncomfortable pushing back on their doctors. So, sometimes they need an advocate.

Jazmin Long:

What I have determined in myself is that we can't change hearts and minds. And that's what we're going to be there to hold our client's hands all the steps of the way.

I will tell you what I run into sometimes. I run into a friend of mine who might be — my friends know to come to BBC. So, let's say I run into an associate who's pregnant and she says, “You know what? I don't want to take a doula away from somebody who might need it, so I'm not going to use your services.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In their thinking, in their minds, women of lesser means or lower income need the service more than they do.

Jazmin Long:

Exactly. So, we're already putting somebody ahead of ourselves. So, here we go already putting somebody ahead of ourselves and then they come back and say, “I had a really bad and traumatic birth.” And we're like, “No, that's why you are the ideal client. Come and get the services.” We need more women to feel okay with asking for help.

Then with respect to healthcare systems, because we already talked about right, those are the social determinants of health. But we know that this impacts African American women across the spectrum regardless of their socioeconomic status.

What I want to see is that healthcare systems are focusing on anti-racist trainings and that that's also happening in medical school because we still see some of the textbooks that are being used indicate that African Americans feel less pain than white people, to this day.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I cannot believe that that is still in textbooks. I've heard stories of that and I always thought, oh, well they were teaching that 30 years ago. But you're saying that's in textbooks today.

Jazmin Long:

That's happening right now, that's happening right now. And we need to ensure that these messages are not being promoted.

And that's how we actually work with healthcare systems in colleges and institutions around to go meet with students, to educate them about our population, so that if I say that my pain is a six, in their head, “Oh, she's a two, she's being dramatic, six is a two.”

If I told my provider that I was in a six, she would say, “You're in a 10.” She would know that I'm down paying my pain. Because we've been taught to downplay our pain.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Particularly women.

Jazmin Long:

Yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And black women. Push through.

Jazmin Long:

Yes. We keep going because like I said sometimes, we are the CEOs of our family and I don't have time to worry about my own self not feeling well because I got to worry about this one, that one and the other.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Our next guest, Judy Miles, is a local attorney and one of my besties. Judy found herself facing a major medical situation that turned very dangerous, very fast. And if her mother, a registered nurse, had not been there to advocate for Judy, she may not have survived.

Judy Miles:

My husband one evening he asked me, what were those dots on my foot? And I said, “Hmm, I don't know.” They looked like little pinpoint red dots. And I said, “I don't know, I don't know what those are.” I said, “Gosh, I hope that it isn't measles.”

And over the period of a few minutes, they multiplied, and they were then on my hands and my arms.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, my God.

Judy Miles:

And within an hour or so, they were on my neck and my torso. So, I called my mom who was a registered nurse and she said, “Honey, that doesn't sound good.”

So, then I called nurse on call at the hospital system I was going to at the time and she said, “That doesn't sound good. It could be leukemia or something like that.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The nurse said that?

Judy Miles:

The nurse said it. My mother said it too. She said, it's usually a sign that your body is not producing enough platelets which are responsible for clotting your blood.

But in my mind, I had a grant application due by that following Tuesday. So, I said, “Well, if it's leukemia, then that's not going to necessitate me going to the emergency room as both my mother and this nurse on call were encouraging.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

What? What?

Judy Miles:

I got to finish that grant application.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Judy Miles:

I kid you not. I kid you not. So, I wound up being admitted. Not before I went back, after that doctor's appointment, I had my husband take me back to my office, so I could get my laptop, so I could finish that application.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You’re like, “I’m not going into the hospital-

Judy Miles:

The grant application. Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Without my laptop.

Judy Miles:

Right. And then early the next morning I had a stroke. I had a seizure and a stroke and I remember it happening, but I don't remember anything else. Maybe four o'clock in the morning, I had to use the restroom and I got up and I was tethered to an IV, maybe with a saline solution or something.

And I can remember I dropped something, and it was almost as if my hand melted into the floor as I was trying to pick it up. And I couldn't tell where my hand ended and the floor began. If you've ever had laughing gas or nitrous oxide at a dentist's office, you're sort of aware and present, but then you're altered a bit. And then I don't remember anything else for several days.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, did you fall on the floor?

Judy Miles:

I fell on the floor, and somebody found me when they were doing a regular vitals check. A cardiologist was looking at, oh gosh, her heart rate is too fast.

But my mother at one point said, because everybody kept ordering treatments that were liquid, and she said her heart can't process that much liquid. Her blood's going to be diluted and all these, and I gained like 30 some pounds of fluid.

And the cardiologist apparently said, “Well, you're going to lose her if we don't, so we may as well try it because this is all we have to do.”

My mother then went to a nurse in charge and said, “I need to talk to you because they're going to kill my daughter.” And the nurse understood, and she said, well, let me call I don't know if it was a hematologist or somebody to get them to do these treatments over a longer period of time. And that made all the difference.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Thank God your mother was there, who is a nurse.

Judy Miles:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Do you think they listened to her?

Judy Miles:

They did not. That doctor did not listen to her. But the nurse that she went and got was listened to by a doctor in the hospital. After I had the stroke and I came to, everybody was saying, “Oh, Judy, we thought we lost you. We thought we lost you.” The doctors would come in and say, “You were about as close to death as any patient we've had.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

My friend Judy is alive today, partly because her mother was a fierce advocate for her. And we heard from all the guests about how some in the medical system didn't listen or at times didn't even respect them in these life and death situations.

And to be totally transparent, there were many other women who wanted to share their stories but were concerned they might face retaliation from their doctors or hospital systems.

ChiChi and Bethany, our researchers from Project Noir say they heard many stories from the black women who responded to their survey about how they were treated in medical settings, and it wasn't pretty. They say it's not just a problem of bad clinicians. They say our medical system needs an overhaul.

Bethany Studenic:

The feeling is valid that you feel like you need an advocate there.

ChiChi Nkemere:

More than an advocate, you need to lead with a title. Like my mother, the nurse is an educated woman, and therefore me being raised by an educated woman knows what I'm talking about.

Black women are consistently having to lead with their credentials. Even when you're in a space where you should just be leading with, I need proper bedside manner and care inside of a hospital because this is an intensive situation.

Bethany Studenic:

But what black women know is that when they walk through the doors, they're going to get the same attitude from doctors and practitioners. And that attitude is, I don't believe you. You should lose weight. I'm not running diagnostics. I only care about your sexual and reproductive health. I don't care about anything else.

So, understanding this goes much, much deeper than simply reproduction. Even that framing, frankly, is misogynoir in itself.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The people that we interviewed either had to have an advocate or be an advocate. This shouldn't be that way. You should be able to go to the hospital by yourself.

Bethany Studenic:

You're in an emergency. I've talked to quite a few black women who have moved here and do not have support systems. And their experiences here are even worse. You don't necessarily need that if you're a white man. When you walk in, they listen to you.

I have seen the difference in the way that myself and my husband are treated. And I'm not a black woman. We are routinely asked why don't black women, specifically, they ask, but it's all women, why don't they come in for preventative care? Why don't they come in for their mammograms? Why don't they come in for their pap smears?

We've all had horrible experiences. I have had personally very traumatizing experiences with doctors.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And here we had Dameyonna with a little five-month-old baby. But you don't believe her mother when her mother is telling you something is wrong. My baby is really laboring for breath, and you don't run tests.

ChiChi Nkemere:

This idea that the person that is responsible for caring for this five-month-old, when you're done running these tests, this person is going to take this baby home and raise them, and you don't want to listen to them. That is heartbreaking.

And more than that, again, this is the idea that even a black child, a black baby, a black woman who loves this child, you're thinking about them as another number.

Obviously Cleveland, we have an infant mortality crisis. We have a black women's maternal healthcare crisis. But in general, if you take a bird's eye view, the systems are misogynistic. This is a women's health issue, and we need white women, Asian women, Latina women backing black women behind this because the issue is misogyny.

The issue is if they feel like you are being hyperbolic, if they think that you are being ridiculous, these systems are truly going to start pathologizing you. And more than that, they're not going to believe women at all without having an advocate, without leading with your credentials. They're just not going to believe you.

[Music Playing]

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, next time we continue the conversation about healthcare and infant mortality in Cleveland with black women, doctors who are working to make change.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett, our resident psychologist and therapist will also be back to share her always stellar advice.

Thank you to everyone who continues to leave us voicemails about their experiences as black women in Cleveland. Here's a message from one of our listeners.

Female:

“I graduated with my masters in Global Public Health in 2022. I have a certificate in population health, but before I graduated I started to apply to jobs around the country. I'm from New Jersey and I was open to anything new.

I actually got an interview with the Cleveland Cavaliers and I'm telling you, I was so excited. I was like, this is perfect for me.

After I did the first interview, I waited and I did some research and I found exactly what you're researching in this study, I saw, and I immediately did not want the job anymore. I'm young, I'm 28, I didn't want to be in a city where I would not thrive.

I now work in DC. I'm a health educator. I'm a health coach and focused on increasing healthcare outcomes in the black population. I love my job. I love what I do. And DC’s actually one of the top cities for black women in America.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

If you're a black woman in Cleveland and want to share your thoughts with us directly, our hotline is open. Leave us a voicemail at 2162-238-312. That's 2162-238-312. And you may just hear yourself on the podcast.

Thanks for joining us. You can find more episodes of Living For We on ideastream.org/livingforwe and wherever you get your podcast. Leave us a review on Apple Podcast, letting us know what you think about Cleveland and what you're interested in hearing us talk about on the show.

Living For We is part of the Connecting the Dots between Race and Health Initiative, from Ideastream Public Media produced by Evergreen Podcasts and made possible by generous support from the Dr. Donald J. Goodman and Ruth Weber Goodman Philanthropic Fund of the Cleveland Foundation.

The Living For We Team includes myself, Marlene Harris-Taylor, host and executive producer Hannah Rae Leach, our lead producer, and Hey Fran Hey, as producer and creative director. ChiChi Nkemere and Bethany Studenic of Enlightened Solutions are our researchers, data analysts, and community partners.

We get production help from Stephanie Czekalinski, original music, including our theme song is by Cleveland artist, Afi Scruggs. Our mix engineer is Sean Rule-Hoffman. We'll see you soon.

Hide Transcript