This Digital Health Platform Is Becoming A Safe Haven For Postpartum Black Women

The state of Black women and health care is dire, and we can’t look into the future without looking at the past. One of the most well-documented atrocities against Black women in health care belongs to the “Father of Gynecology,” J. Marion Sim, an Alabama surgeon who performed experimental operations on Black slave women between 1845 and 1849 without anesthesia because he didn’t believe Black people experienced pain like white people. It is a belief studies find is still held by many doctors today. This raises the question: In this present day and age, why do Black women still have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States, which is almost three times the rate for white women? Jade Kearney, co-founder and CEO of digital health platform She Matters, has some thoughts. “These statistics are at an all-time high because the health care industry refuses to acknowledge research that states systemic racism and lack of social services are the biggest factors,” she tells TZR. She notes that some health care providers have never had a conversation with a Black woman outside of their office. This isn’t all that hard to believe, given recent studies that found that U.S. neighborhoods...