“Are you pregnant? “No? Well, we will need you to pee in a cup for us anyway”. Why is it that when women go to the doctor’s office regarding any pain that they may have - the only solution it is ever met with is: pregnancy? The minute we hit a reproductive age and a woman goes into the doctor’s office for any symptoms (because any symptoms can really be a sign of pregnancy, let’s be real) we have to justify any amount of pain we may have. We are forced to explain it in a way that the physician, nurse, or any healthcare professional may understand - even if they themselves identify as women. This discrimination that has become embedded in the healthcare system, stems from clinical research that has primarily focused on men. These clinical studies that have been conducted have primarily focused on white men, this has created a lack of understanding for medical professionals who were never taught the medically significant differences between men and women, especially when it comes to the side effects of drugs. These barriers have prevented access to comprehensive healthcare, for members of both sexual and gender minority groups. While gender discrimination within the medical sphere is an important piece of this issue, understanding how racial discrimination has shaped the healthcare landscape is essential, even more so within the context of the United States of America.

Black women in the USA have been discriminated against for centuries especially when it comes to the healthcare system. Black people were turned away from hospitals during Jim Crow and there were very few hospitals that would treat Black people, but Johns Hopkins Hospital was one of them. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman, went to Johns Hopkins for vaginal bleeding. The doctor did a biopsy of her cells and later found she had cervical cancer. Her cells were shared with a cancer researcher without her consent. These cells contributed to the expansion of cancer research with the now-named HeLa cells. While this furthered cancer research; it also shows the racial inequities that are embedded in the US healthcare systems. Even after Henrietta Lacks passed away from cervical cancer - her family should have been notified or acknowledged in some manner, instead the scientific community reduced a Black woman to a bunch of cells. This is what the healthcare system continues to do: reduce human beings to their symptoms instead of focusing on the whole person.

Healthcare professionals continually ask us if we are pregnant, more often than not, and yet when people actually are pregnant and it is time to have the baby - they continue to disregard Black women’s pain. Professional tennis champion Serena Williams recently experienced this neglect of pain during her first childbirth. With a history of blood clots, the nurse continuously ignored requests for Heparin—a blood clot medication. The tennis player was forced to be her own advocate in order for adequte maternal health services. This does not change the fact that women who are in pain (or really anyone), should not have to advocate for themselves and should be treated equally to everyone who comes through the doors of the hospital. William’s story has a good ending, her family was able to go home with her beautiful baby. This is not true for so many other women who have faced racism and many forms of discrimination in the healthcare system, data from California shows that for every 100,000 births, 173 of the babies born to the richest white mothers die before their first birthday, whereas, 437 babies born to the richest Black mothers die. When considering socioeconomic class, 350 babies born to the poorest white mothers die and comparatively, 653 babies born to the poorest Black mothers die. It does not matter what your socioeconomic status is, as this is a systemic issue that is harming the Black community the most.

Time and time again, we hear so many stories about Black women dying while giving birth or due to the many complications that occur simply from a lack of understanding, or as a legacy of 19th-century beliefs that Black people have a higher pain tolerance than white people. The problem with this is that even if we change the narrative in the healthcare field, there are people who still believe that “black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s”. Medical professionals should be focused on treating individual people by incorporating a more holistic approach catered to patient-centered care.

We need a solution to bridge the gap and reduce the continuous failures that the healthcare industry has caused to so many families across this nation. Most board members at the nation’s top hospitals have no healthcare background. Less than 15 percent of board members overseeing the nation’s top hospitals have a professional background in healthcare, while more than half have a background in finance or business services. This is why the current healthcare system has been compared to a corporation on several occasions, and not a system of healers. We need people who are passionate about the work that they do and want to save as many lives as possible instead of prioritizing their profit margins. By putting people on the boards of these hospitals who are healthcare experts instead of hedge fund executives and other corporate individuals; we could most likely put an end to the health disparity in this country. Pain does not change based on the color of my skin regardless if I have a vagina or not.

Misgana Kurban is an Eritrean attending American University, as a graduate student in the School of International Service, for her Master’s Degree in Ethics, Peace, and Human Rights.