Why Don't More People Care About Black Maternal Deaths?

This article was published at RH Reality Check, written by Cynthia R. Greenlee, an Echoing Ida member talking about the failure within the United States to adequately address Black women's reproductive health needs. It's part of an ongoing series of perspectives on the Affordable Care Act. 

Echoing Ida is a Strong Families project that uplifts the voices of Black women in the reproductive and social justice movements. Our writers have been published in online media outlets as part of our campaign to provide historical, critical, and candid perspectives on health care just as the Affordable Care Act is rolling out. An excerpt:

In September, 19-year-old Ayaanah Gibson bled to death in her Benedict College dorm room after delivering a stillborn child. Gibson was within walking distance of the campus health center and a few miles from multiple health facilities in Columbia, South Carolina.

Gibson, a first-year student from Sacramento, had survived a battle with brain cancer to die alone a month into her college career. Her death is a cautionary tale about how seriously the United States needs to take its maternal mortality problem and, secondly, how barriers to adolescent sexual and reproductive health care can turn a common event —an apparent unplanned pregnancy—into a preventable tragedy.

What kept Ayaanah Gibson from getting life-saving care for herself and her child? We can only speculate. It’s unclear that Gibson was aware she was pregnant, whether she was in denial or concealing her condition for some reason.

Read Cynthia's full article here.

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Read more about the series here, and check back for additional articles from the series.

Join the #SexEdSaga Twitter Party on Friday Oct 18th because #SafeIsSexy

by Eddie Chao, Fiona Tang, Sidhartha Taruc, and Trang Vo of Forward Together Youth

Remember when we brought you 20 Condoms, that catchy safer sex jam that got you singing along to the tune of Macklemore’s Thrift Shop? Well, we’ve done it again! We’re gearing up to release our 2nd video THIS FRIDAY and want YOU to help us lead a conversation about safer sex by and for young people.

Social media is a way youth can spread information through a medium they’re experts in, which is why we are hosting, along with Advocates for Youth, a #SexEdSaga Twitter Party THIS FRIDAY, 10/18 @ 11am PST!

Our #SexEdSaga Twitter Party is an opportunity for young people to explore and use Twitter in order to bring visibility to youth-of-color led efforts around the need for comprehensive sex education that is relevant to ALL young people.

Youth in this generation have been using social media inside and out to spread their messages across the web. These tools, especially twitter, are essential to start as well as sustain a youth-led campaign. Our #SexEdSaga Twitter Party is the perfect opportunity for all young people to harness this 21st century skill and apply it to our organizing work.

Participating in this Twitter Party means helping us bring visibility to our campaign and gaining supporters who will see that we are youth being active in what we are passionate about. We want youth voices to be heard, and taken seriously, and we want to have fun while making it a reality.

The twitter party is open to anyone and is a way for others to help us lead the conversation! We’ll be talking about how to have “The Talk”, youth created media, and strategies for STI / HIV prevention from a youth perspective.

Join us on Friday by jumping on Twitter and using the #SexEdSaga hashtag. You can also follow along with #SafeIsSexy, because, well, it's true.

Continuing the Fight for Medicaid Expansion in Montana

By Sarah Howell

I sat down to write a piece on access to health care, but I can’t help but mention that we are well into week two of government shutdown with no end in sight. This government shutdown is an unnecessary and aggressive tactic in a war on the idea that government – any government – can be a force for good. We live in a time when so many families and communities are struggling and we need effective, proactive policy solutions. Instead, Congress has shut down the federal government because they refuse to pass a budget that invests in the programs and services our communities need. Congress deserves to hear from all of us: (202) 224-3121 or house.gov if you want to be in touch.

Earlier this year, Montana had the opportunity to expand our Medicaid program to provide affordable, quality health care to 70,000 low-income Montanans. Expanding Medicaid would provide an economic boost, creating jobs and bringing federal tax dollars back into the state. Expanding Medicaid would provide health care to 20,000 American Indians and 8,000 uninsured veterans. It would stop the closure of rural hospitals and clinics.

For Rachael, expanding Medicaid would mean getting treatment for her fibromyalgia – treatment she’s currently unable to get because she makes $80 a month over the current Medicaid eligibility limit. For Jennifer, it means getting care for herself and her three kids in her small hometown, instead of driving 90 miles round-trip to access a sliding scale clinic. For Brenda, expanding Medicaid means finally getting the surgery she needs for a neck injury she got in a car accident three years ago.

So it seems like a no-brainer, right? We should jump on this opportunity to make sure our family, neighbors, and community members can get access to health care. Sadly, that’s not how this story goes.

Despite significant statewide support for expansion, conservative out-of-touch leaders in our state legislature blocked efforts to pass a bill expanding Medicaid in Montana. They did so by refusing to allow the state house to vote on the bill. If we had seen a vote, we believe the bill would have passed. Throughout the session, reasonable legislators on both sides of the aisle came together to find a compromise. On the final day that Medicaid expansion was debated in the session, we lost a vote on whether to allow the bill to move to the floor by one vote – and that one vote was a Democrat who accidentally voted the wrong way because he wasn't paying attention. (Life lesson: pay attention when important stuff is happening!) We came very, very close to getting this done.

In Montana, working together is a fact of life. We all know each other and we have to work together to win. But in all my years of organizing, I've never seen a coalition as broad, diverse, and strong as the coalition that came together around Medicaid expansion. Health care providers, business owners, county commissioners, moms and dads, seniors, hospital administrators, farmers and ranchers, labor unions, low-income families – the list goes on. These folks made phone calls, wrote letters, drove hundreds of miles to the Capitol to testify (in snowy February no less!), talked to the press, and shared personal stories. It is nothing more than a shameful failure that conservative legislators ignored their constituents and community members and instead played politics with people’s health.

Fortunately, the story’s not over. (In fact, we think when it comes to organizing for change, the story’s never over!) All those people who poured their hearts, free time, and energy into the fight this spring are back at it. We are asking Governor Steve Bullock, an ally and supporter of Medicaid expansion, to call a special session of the legislature to finish the job left unfinished last April. If that doesn't work, we’ll consider going to the ballot with an initiative. We believe the stakes are simply too high to quit. We believe it is our responsibility as a state and as a nation to take care of our neighbors and community members, especially those most vulnerable and those going without. Access to health care is not a privilege or meant only for those that can afford it. We have the means, the opportunity, and the core values to provide health care to thousands of Montanans. Let’s do this.

Sarah joined Montana Women Vote as Co-Director in February of 2012. Before coming to MWV, she worked as a Field Organizer and Trainer at the Western States Center, a regional social justice non-profit, in Portland OR. She has organized in seven states across the country and has worked on issues ranging from HIV prevention policy and access to health care to LGBT equality and economic justice.

How Racial Impact Legislation is Working to Address Racism in Oregon

By Shannon Wight, Partnership for Safety and Justice

Five years ago I moved back to my hometown, Portland, Oregon. I had lived in New Orleans for the better part of the previous 15 years. The differences between the two cultures are vast. New Orleans is an older city and its history vibrates from every French Quarter building, Cajun meal, Delta blues song, and easy conversation in grocery store lines or at trolley stops. New Orleans is a majority African-American city.

Portland is newer, still struggling to find its identity, but proud of its progressive politics, its commitment to the environment, and its food that is both delicious and good for you. Portland is 90% Caucasian.

Still, New Orleans, seated squarely within the Deep South, is considered one of the many bastions of overt racism in the region. (Indeed, before moving to New Orleans, I had several white people warn me against the move "because it's so racist there!")

Despite many visits to Portland, when I left New Orleans and returned home, I experienced some culture shock. Maybe I could have anticipated that. But what I didn't expect was how much harder it is for people—white people—in Oregon to talk about race and racism than it is for people in the South. In fact, hardly anyone even says the word racism in Oregon. (We say "bias" or, simply, "I didn't mean it that way.")

Given the extreme difficulty Oregonians have in talking about race and racism and the devastating impact that both racism and silence about racism have on our criminal justice polices, it was exciting to be part of passing a piece of legislation that is explicitly, and solely, about race and "bias."

This year Oregon became the fourth state in the country, following Iowa, Connecticut, and Minnesota, to enact racial impact statement legislation. The now-signed-into-law bill will allow two legislators to make a request to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission to produce an estimate of whether or not a proposed law would disproportionately impact people of color.

This legislation makes sense to me for this reason: Every bill that goes through the legislature has to have a fiscal impact statement. These statements let us know if a bill is going to cost the state money, and if it will, experts estimate the approximate amount the state would need to spend to implement that law.

Similarly, racial impact statements will give legislators information about whether or not a specific piece of criminal justice or child welfare legislation will have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. We don't question the need to know if a bill is going to cost the state money. Shouldn't we also be willing to know if a law is (even unintentionally) biased?

Some people mistakenly believe that there is no bias in our legal system. People commit crimes, they are convicted, and the system simply reflects that reality. That just is not the case. One of the clearest examples of racial bias in our laws is the disparity in federal sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Although they are essentially the same drug, African Americans are disproportionately arrested for and convicted of possessing crack and are sentenced to a term 18 times longer than someone convicted of having powder cocaine. (Notably, the ratio is now 18:1; it used to be 100:1.) In another example, some crimes have increased penalties if they are committed close to a school. Because people of color tend to live in cities, they also live closer to schools, and therefore if they commit a crime in their neighborhood they can be subjected to a longer sentence because of where they live.

Laws like these don't just impact individuals. When black and brown people serve longer sentences, their children, families, and communities suffer as well.

Some have wondered if racial impact statements are meant to lessen appropriate accountability for crime. Of course not. In fact, the opposite is true. Racial impact statements are designed to help make accountability fair and impartial. Data has demonstrated that we have a problem with bias in our systems; racial impact statements have the potential to help address entrenched racial disparities.

Passing this law was no small feat. After multiple attempts over more than five years, Senator Chip Shields finally succeeded during the 2013 legislative session in making racial impact statements part of Oregon law. During the first attempts the bill didn't even make it out of committee, the first step in passing a bill. This session, Senator Jackie Winters and Representative Joe Gallegos (two of a very small handful of legislators of color) joined Shields in sponsoring the bill. Over the intervening years, Senator Shields set up a working group that included numerous social justice organizations including the Urban League, the Center for Intercultural Organizing, the Partnership for Safety and Justice (my organization), and others, who continued their support over the years. Shields also won the backing of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (whose lack of support had been a barrier in the past) by getting them the information they needed to understand how to produce racial impact statements.

Will racial impact statements actually change the disproportionate and racist impact of criminal justice policies in Oregon? It’s hard to tell. What we do know is that Oregon policymakers will have to start talking about race when they consider policies that might tear families apart and create unnecessary costs for the state. While conversation isn’t enough, it’s only by exposing the racism of our system that we can begin dismantling it.

 Shannon Wight is the Deputy Director for the Partnership for Safety and Justice. The Partnership for Safety and Justice unites those most affected by crime, violence, and the criminal justice system (survivors of crime, people convicted of crime, and the families of both) to advance approaches that redirect policies and resources from an over-reliance on incarceration, to effective strategies that reduce violence and recidivism, and increase personal and community safety.

Prior to joining the Partnership for Safety and Justice, Shannon served as Policy Director for Innocence Project New Orleans Shannon worked for the public defender’s office in Portland, Oregon before moving to the Deep South in 1994 to investigate death penalty cases in Louisiana. In 1997, she co-founded the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana.

The 3 Questions That Every American Should Ask About Obamacare

As part of the ongoing Echoing Ida series on health care reform, journalist Dani McClain interviewed Echoing Ida writer Malika Redmond, Exective Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW, for her PolicyMic article on the new health reform laws.

An excerpt of Malika's comments:

Look at a map of which states have decided to expand Medicaid by raising household income eligibility to 138% of the federal poverty level, and you’ll see the Southeast cordoned off like a big block of “no.” Legislatures and governors there have taken advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that this aspect of the ACA should be left up to state decision makers and can’t be mandated by the federal government. But many of these politicians are acting against the will of their constituents, as poll results released this summer revealed. 

Malika Redmond, executive director of SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW, is one such constituent. Last month, she stood outside the Georgia State Capitol along with representatives from the Atlanta chapter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and demanded that Republican Governor Nathan Deal reverse his position and agree to expand Medicaid.
Redmond’s reproductive justice work puts her in touch primarily with LGBTQ youth of color between the ages of 18 and 25 and with black women. She says these populations struggle to find secure jobs and that inconsistent income makes it hard to commit to a premium( or monthly payment on a health plan), even with the government subsidies that will be available under the new system. 

“What happens if you lose your job? What happens if you’re in a plan but now you can’t afford that plan? In a state like Georgia, it’s just too bad,” Redmond said. “Medicaid expansion is the only safety net. It’s the only piece that allows for the fact that people’s lives fluctuate, and sometimes they’re employed and sometimes they’re not." 

The one Southern governor who’s gone on record as sharing Redmond’s way of thinking is Democrat Steve Beshear of Kentucky, whose op-ed in The New York Times last week explained why his state will make Medicaid more widely available. If you’re interested in watching how things unfold in Southern states with obstructionist leadership, keep one eye on Kentucky as a point of comparison.

Read the full article here.

Echoing Ida is a Strong Families project that uplifts the voices of Black women in the reproductive and social justice movements. Our writers have been published in online media outlets as part of our campaign to provide historical, critical, and candid perspectives on health care just as the Affordable Care Act is rolling out.

Where the Safety Net Won’t Catch Us: How Obamacare Fails Black Women on Maternal Health

The third article in the Echoing Ida health care series is by Elizabeth Dawes Gay, published at RH Reality Check. Her article addresses the major challenges facing Black women when it comes to maternal health, and the ways in which the ACA may fall short in addressing them.

I am what I like to think of as a “young and fun” 20-something. I am a healthy young adult with a decent education and income, and I feel safe in my neighborhood. But the growing sense of my own mortality haunts me. Specifically, what haunts me is that I am a Black woman living in the United States, and I hope to create a family by giving birth some day. As a reproductive health advocate, and someone who is particularly interested in maternal health, I am all too aware of the weight of the evidence against me. When it comes to seamless and successful conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and recovery, the odds are not in my favor.

I am the product of a nation in which Black women—regardless of their income or education levels—are more likely than their white counterparts to experience poor pregnancy outcomes.

• Overall, the rate of maternal mortality among Black women is three times that of white women (28.4 per 100,000 live births and 10.5 per 100,000 live births, respectively).
• The rate of maternal mortality among Black women in New York City, at 79 per 100,000 live births, is worse than that of some of the most under-resourced countries.
• Black women are also more likely to give birth prematurely and to have infants with low or very low birth weight.
• Black women are two times more likely to suffer from severe maternal morbidity than their white counterparts.

Racial disparities in maternal health outcomes are intolerable; yet, they have been tolerated for decades. So while reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates celebrate the October 1 launch of open enrollment in the health insurance marketplace, I cannot help but reflect on how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) fails me and so many women just like me.

It’s fantastic that ACA will put access to health care in the hands of millions more people and provide important preventive services and products, such as contraception, at no cost to the person seeking care. The renewed commitment to preventive health services via the ACA is important and should be celebrated, but not overestimated. While improving access to prenatal health care and maternal health services, ACA ignores the social, economic, and psychological factors outside of the health system that affect health and pregnancy outcomes. These factors are known as social determinants of health.

Read Elizabeth's full article here.




Echoing Ida is a Strong Families project that uplifts the voices of Black women in the reproductive and social justice movements. Our writers have been published in online media outlets as part of our campaign to provide historical, critical, and candid perspectives on health care just as the Affordable Care Act is rolling out.  

Beyond Benefits and Body Parts: Obamacare and Black Trans Health

An article from the Echoing Ida series on health care was published at Ebony this week. It's coauthored by Renee Bracey Sherman and Kelly Eusaint Lewis, and addresses the question of whether the ACA will improve the situation for Black trans* people.

Starting today, open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will set in motion a trifecta of change. The ACA adds protections for many, expands coverage for services once considered rare, and ensures the vast majority of the population will receive affordable preventive care. With Black folks more likely to die from cancer, and higher rates of diabetes and heart disease, the preventive care made available in the ACA is crucial, but as gains are made for some, adequate health care is still a distant dream for many of the most vulnerable and misunderstood among us. Whether trying to get a basic doctor’s visit, mental health services, or HIV/AIDS related care, Black trans* people have an uphill and often dangerous battle.

The ACA deals with technical issues that have prevented many trans* individuals from obtaining insurance. It prevents insurance companies from turning away trans* health care seekers, dropping current clients from coverage because of their gender identity, and canceling trans* clients’ insurance due to paperwork mistakes, including misgendering a client or using a former name. This is great news, but for many, insurance is unaffordable and competent care is not available due to bias and inexperience.

Even when covered by a major health insurance company in the San Francisco Bay Area—the epicenter of cutting-edge trans* healthcare—it was difficult for Kelly Lewis to find competent care. "The doctor told me he didn’t feel comfortable prescribing shots, so he wanted to start me on the patches," Lewis was told by a doctor when seeking testosterone hormones. “I felt that this physician was more of a gatekeeper than a provider,” he continued. After requesting to change doctors, Lewis was asked by the office to stay because the doctor wanted to learn about transgender healthcare—on his body. While the provider’s intent to learn more about trans* health care appeared noble, no one should have to be treated as an experiment especially given the sordid history of experimentation on Black bodies in this country. The lack of education among providers and the ongoing stigma facing Black trans* people factor prominently in health disparities in the Black trans* community—the ACA does not specifically address healthcare discrimination based on gender identity or expression,** which is a prevalent experience.

Read the full article at EBONY.

Echoing Ida is a Strong Families project that uplifts the voices of Black women in the reproductive and social justice movements. Our writers have been published in online media outlets as part of our campaign to provide historical, critical, and candid perspectives on health care just as the Affordable Care Act is rolling out.  

One of New York’s 2.7 Million Uninsured Asks: Will I Finally Be Able to Afford Health Insurance?

This is the first piece published in the Echoing Ida health care series launched this week.

Echoing Ida is a Strong Families project that uplifts the voices of Black women in the reproductive and social justice movements. Our writers have been published in online media outlets as part of our campaign to provide historical, critical, and candid perspectives on health care just as the Affordable Care Act is rolling out.

The first article is published at RH Reality Check, written by Taja Lindley, an Echoing Ida member talking about her own experience as an uninsured person exploring the possibilities offered to her by the ACA.

I am one of nearly 2.7 million New Yorkers (approximately 16 percent of the state’s population) under age 65 who does not have health insurance coverage. Since January 2012, I’ve relied on healthy eating habits, home remedies, rest, and prayer: “Lord, please don’t let me get hit by a car when I ride my bike today. Allow for safe travels. Amen.”

I come from a family full of Black women who work as nurses and in other health-care professions, so visiting the doctor has been a habit and priority my entire life. That is, until it no longer fit into my budget. After paying for rent, ever-increasing public transportation in New York City, student loans, food, and utilities, not to mention my debt payments and household needs, there is barely enough left over to save, let alone pay for health insurance out-of-pocket.

For the past couple of years, the combination of unemployment insurance benefits, part-time jobs, and side gigs has made me ineligible for Medicaid and other state funded health-care programs. And during the moments when I relied on unemployment insurance alone, my income was still too high for me to qualify for subsidized health care. When the Affordable Care Act changed the rules so that young adults could be covered through their parent’s health insurance, I was employed at a full-time job with health benefits. My job ended soon after I turned 27, a year too old to qualify.

Read Taja's full article here. 

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Read more about the series here, and check back for additional articles from the series.  

Echoing Ida Dispels Myths and Gets Real About Health Care Reform

By Alicia M. Walters 

Echoing Ida writers L to R: Amber Phillips,
Elizabeth Dawes Gay, Cynthia Greenlee, Annika Leonard,
Shanelle Matthews, Jazmine Walker, Renee Bracey Sherman,
Malika Redmond, Jasmine Burnett,
Bianca Campbell, Alicia Walters, and Samantha Daley

Despite the shut down of the federal government, the Affordable Care Act, commonly and now affectionately known as ObamaCare, continues to roll out.  Yesterday, millions of uninsured and curious individuals began flooding www.healthcare.gov to find out whether they really could get health coverage, many for the first time in their lives. Like clockwork, those who would deny millions access to the care they need are attempting to do so by also denying pay to millions of federal workers and those who need access to programs like WIC and Head Start. For those of us involved in Echoing Ida—the Strong Families project that highlights Black women’s voices—these attempts to deny our basic human rights to health care, food, and education are nothing new. But with the onset of ObamaCare, for the first time, our communities have, as Echoing Ida writer Jasmine Burnett puts it, “a unique opportunity to bury the medical wrongs of the past that have had a negative impact on Black Americans.”

And yet, those of us with long histories of such medical mistreatment—who have endured the ridicule of the nation as we attempt to access public programs to sustain our families—have a sense that the potential for our health equity may come at a price. When the first Black president made a way (albeit an insurance-company driven one) for us to access care, it came with hateful protests many of us would like to forget. For those protesters and the political right, ensuring health care to millions of people by expanding Medicaid is an opportunity to roll out the welfare queen tropes of old. As an estimated 11 to 13 million Americans, many of whom are people of color, begin accessing care, what will those protestors have to say? What will pundits and officials say about who deserves health care?

Rather than wait for the nonsensical attacks to begin, Echoing Ida is launching a campaign to put forth historical, critical, and seldom heard views on the complexity of health care and its relationship to the Black community.

We are writing from and to our own communities: because we deserve to know the truth about our own health disparities.

We are writing to educate the public: sharing the historical barriers to health care and solutions to overcome them.

We are writing to counter stereotypes: for we have cared for ourselves, our families, and communities by any means necessary and through the richness and strength of our bonds.

Already, Elizabeth Dawes Gay has shared a critical aspect of Black women’s health where unfortunately, ObamaCare falls short. In Where the Safety Net Won’t Catch Us, she shares why the maternal mortality rate for Black women in the U.S. is worse than that of many under-resourced countries; that while ObamaCare expands access to prenatal care for all women, it does nothing to impact what's really causing maternal deaths: the stress of racism.

While most mainstream news outlets talk about health care in the Black community solely as an issue of Medicaid expansion, Echoing Ida writer Taja Lindley discusses her personal challenges and decisions around obtaining health care as the daughter of generations of nurses and health care professionals. She shares her journey navigating the health exchanges in New York not as one who is afraid to access care, but knowing she deserves to afford it.

Renee Bracey Sherman and co-author Kelly Eusaint Lewis were published today in Ebony’s online magazine with an educational piece about the challenges faced by Black trans* people, one of the most marginalized and misunderstood communities.

Echoing Ida is not stopping there. Look out for pieces from other writers on breast cancer disparities and the ACA; whether the navigators will fulfill on cultural competency in historically disenfranchised Black communities; how Black communities have cared for ourselves despite centuries without adequate health care; a young person’s journey through ObamaCare; and a moving piece on safe motherhood for Black women.

This campaign is about more than ObamaCare, the latest rhetoric, or political fight. Echoing Ida is focusing on health care because we have a collective opportunity to focus on the health promotion of our communities that have been long described as unhealthy and unworthy of assistance. As always, we will be critical, honest, and candid. We will move you to action and shed light on injustice. As Ida B. Wells did, so we will continue to do toward stronger families and healthier communities.

Alicia M. Walters is the coordinator and a participant in Echoing Ida. She is founder and principal consultant at Creative Justice Works where she works with organizations on communications, policy advocacy, and movement-building.