The Empowered Patient Podcast

Women's Health Equity Conversation with the CEO of Center for Black Women's Wellness

Despite spending more money per capita on maternal-child health efforts than any country worldwide, the United States (US) is the only high-resource nation with a steadily increasing mortality rate; and notable disparities by race and ethnicity. The brunt of this burden is bore by Black and Indigenous women—where the risk is 2-3 times higher than their non-Hispanic white counterparts to die from complications of pregnancy and birth. In 2020 alone, the US maternal mortality rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, with 861 deaths attributable to maternal causes such as hemorrhage and cardiovascular conditions. These statistics paint a grim picture of not only the increased risk faced by persons of color but the condition of our health system. The time to implement equitable solutions is now. Black mothers can’t wait. We had the honor of discussing these disturbing realities with Jemea Dorsey, the CEO of Center for Black Women's Wellness - nonprofit supporting communities in Atlanta, Georgia.

Couples Birth Plan and Surviving Eclampsia and Healing Postpartum Depression

We sat down with Dr. Nicole Rankins, MD, OB/GYN physician, and wife and husband, Dr. Kiara Williams, DPT, PT and Mitchel Williams. Wife, Dr. Kiara Williams, detailed her birthing journey and survival of eclampsia. We discussed the importance of having a birth plan and an advocate during the delivery day and postpartum. Mitchel Williams expressed his frustration as an advocate for his wife with the health system that almost put his wife at risk.  Dr. Nicole Rankins, MD is also available on all social platforms as drnicoleranks. Please find our patient and provider mobile apps on iOS and Android.  https://inovcares.com/

Women's Health: Preeclampsia, Infertility and Fibroids

Every woman deserves high-quality, affordable care. However, every year 500,000 women between ages 15 to 49 die from pregnancy-related complications. Worse still, two-thirds of these deaths are preventable. According to the CDC, pregnancy-related death occurs 3.3 times more often for African American women than white women. Studies have shown that a significant driver of this crisis is implicit bias. Racial disparity in healthcare costs us money, unnecessary suffering, and ultimately, lives lost. Far too often, women’s early symptoms and warning signs are dismissed, leading to unnecessary, costly, and potentially deadly complications that should have been easily preventable. These problems are wide-ranging, affecting far too many patients and costing us money and precious lives. Untreated chronic conditions drastically increase the risks of pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia, premature birth, and even death. As just one example among many, unmanaged diabetes increases the risk for premature birth, congenital disabilities, and even pregnancy loss. It’s the same story for nearly every untreated chronic condition, whether it is diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, or even just premature birth. The costs associated add up quickly. According to a study published by HHS, in 2009 the average medical expenses for a full-term baby’s first-year amount to only $3,325. That figure balloons up to a whopping $190,467 if the baby’s born preterm, before 28 weeks. These costs continue to rise throughout the baby’s early life. Again, just the annual societal, economic burden of pre-term delivery alone was estimated in 2005 to be a whopping 26 billion dollars. And that was back in 2005. Even that is only the monetary cost. The human cost is immeasurable.

Pandemic of Inequalities

Dr. Scott has held several prominent leadership positions in the Baltimore area. As a trained family medicine physician, Dr. Scott has extensive public health experience and has led innovative programs specifically designed to improve health outcomes while saving costs. Most recently, Dr. Scott served as the Medical Director of Population Health and Community Health Programs at Johns Hopkins HealthCare, LLC. In addition to her years of work and volunteer experience, Dr. Scott also reached the rank of Major, Medical Corps after having served for 10 years in the United States Army Reserve.

Food as Medicine

Building healthy habits and lifestyle you want can be daunting. So today we decided to bring two food experts to educate and inspire us to consider food as medicine by developing a healthy relationship with food. Shaun Chavis is the founder of LVNGbook, and Tambra Raye is founder of WANDA: Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics & Agriculture. Pre-Episode Questions:  1. Our conversation today is with two food experts. Shaun and Tambra. Welcome to the show, ladies.  2. Please share your backgrounds with our listeners?  3. How does one develop a healthy relationship with food?  4. How can we build healthy eating habits that transform our lifestyle and help us prevent or manage heart disease?  5. How do we use food as medicine to help beat chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, etc.?  6. What are tips for shopping for reasonable price healthy produce?  7. How do you cook for a single person and a family?  8. Shaun, you advocate for people to have a cookbook to develop healthy lifestyles. What do you mean by this?  9. Tambra, you advocate for children to have or be food sheroes. Can you elaborate on this and what you’re doing at WANDA and Nativsol?   10. If you had one billboard, what is one thing you would want people to remember you by?