Representation matters

In the medical field, we need to foster equity of a diverse group of identities including race especially in leadership, and education. It is crucial for validation, belonging, and breaking stereotypes. For the next generations to seek medicine as a field they need visible role models

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, Angelae Clemens here, the host of the Can I Borrow Your Skin podcast. And today we are wrapping up April. And in April, we were talking about minority health because it is National Minority Health Month. And I've alluded to it pretty much all month, but today I'm gonna specifically talk frank and honest. Representation matters in the medical field. There are only 5.7% of all practicing physicians that are black or brown minority. And we make up 12% of the population in the US. And so we are not being represented very well. And that becomes a problem when you look at the fact that medicine as a whole is still being taught from a non-minority standpoint. And what does that mean? So if you are in medical school and they're talking about a person being synodic, uh not having enough oxygen, they'll tell you, oh, they'll turn blue. I'm black. Like my skin is dark brown. Well, not dark brown, it's more red brown. But anyway, I'm I'm dark. And so my skin isn't gonna turn blue. And so, well, what would a doctor who is uninformed look for in a person like me to see if I'm low on oxygen? Because I'm never turning blue. Well, if you don't know, you're gonna look at your the nail beds, those will turn blue if you start losing oxygen. Sometimes the eyes will go jaundice, sometimes they will actually get a blue tint to it. But those are things that most practicing physicians will not know because it's not taught. And so I really want to talk about why representation matters and what we can do as a community. And for those of you saying, well, that's just new, it's not. There was actually a study published um by UCLA that said that these percentages of representation of minorities and black minorities specifically has not changed between 1900 and 2018. So this is staggering. And it's not just a medical field, just because my family also has some lawyers in it. Shout out to my sister. There's also only 5% of practicing lawyers that are also of a Latino or Black uh background. So we are smart, but we're not getting out there into these fields. And the question is being begged, well, why not? And it has to do with a bunch of systematic factors that are compounding. And you know, there's so many reasons why you could say, well, we just don't want to do it. It's not that we don't want to do it, it's not that we're not smart enough to do it, we don't have the resources. You're looking at the economic disadvantages. My family, both my parents worked, they worked all of my childhood and a large part of my adult life to make sure that my siblings and I had opportunities. You know, there is insufficient educational support. Both my parents attended college, but that's not the norm for a lot of black families. And so you don't have that, you know, moment. I remember when I was younger and I'm in high school and I'm taking calculus. And if I got stuck on a problem, I could go to my dad. My mom was, my mom was the literal arts, my dad was was the the math tutor for me. And but I could go to them and I can ask for help and they could help me right at home. I didn't have to go to a program after school or to the library to get that kind of help. Um, and then you have the the historic and ongoing racism within the medical field itself. Like the um journal of, let me make sure I get this reference. Uh, it was actually Rail and Flores. They did a paper and the journal of the National Medical Association in September of 2007, where they actually talked about all the disparities between, you know, black and brown uh students and non-black and brown students, and then uh and then they separated out Asians as well, and talked about the different disparities and disadvantages that we have and why we're not entering the medical school. But we need to get there. And I know that being here in Michigan, a lot of people are pushed towards the engineering sciences. I mean, we have the big three here. This is where the automotive industry was founded, and so I understand that, but we also have you know large hospital systems here that have groundbreaking research. And for example, there is a type of uh EEG, so it's a type of scan that they can do on your brain. Where here in Michigan, we are one of 12 in the world that has this machine, and so when you're talking about groundbreaking science, that's groundbreaking science. Um, we have a stem cell core here in the state of Michigan as well. And there's only, last I knew there were only eight stem cell cores in the United States of America, but we have one here in Michigan. So we are doing groundbreaking science. We have groundbreaking medicine, but we don't have enough of us going into those fields. And by us, I mean minorities. Like we we have to represent. You cannot change a system from the outside. You can try, but unless you're sitting at those tables, it's going to be very, very difficult to be heard, to be seen. We need to have more input. We need to be the ones out here leading. And we can't do that if we're not in the room, if we're not at the table. Another thing that I really didn't cover this month, because I'm going to talk about it probably throughout the year, as I kick off this first year of my podcast, is going to be minority mental health as well. When you start looking at a lot of the economic and social disparities between minorities and non-minorities, one of the biggest impacts is going to be on our mental health. And it it also has a lot to do with the way we were fostered and raised. Like we commonly tell, you know, people in a minority, in a minority group, you know, buck up because you can't be out here being angry, being sad because it's a sign of weakness. And so you're taught to internalize a lot of your emotions, a lot of your feelings, a lot of the things that truly hurt you. And then you don't have a constructive way to release that later. And while I did not focus at all in minority health month on mental health, there I did talk about a little mental health last month. I talked a little bit about it in January. I'm gonna focus on it very hard in June and I believe in September as well. But I do want to put a little nugget out there that when I'm talking about minority health, I am also talking about mental health, though I did not focus on it a lot this month. So it is still very important. And with your physical health, your mental health is there too. Because if your brain is not doing what your brain needs to do, your body follows, and vice versa. If you are physically ill, then your brain becomes sluggish and it does not work the way that it needs to work as well. And so those two things work in tandem. So, one, we need to get our physical health up and running, and we need to participate in the systems because we're we need to stop dying of preventable diseases, we need to stop just dropping and not knowing what's going on. There are too many great issue out there who can help you, whether they are someone from your minority background or not. There are too many great people out there for us to not take advantage of the system, and we can't change the system from the outside. We can't sit around and just complain about it, and we can't change the system from outside the system. So if you've learned anything from me this month, hopefully you learned that minority health has the added stress of, you know, not being able to be seen. And if you have to sit there and convince someone that you're sick, I get it. You're not going to participate in the system. You're not going to do those things. I've been on both sides of that spectrum where I was a person helping someone who was not believed the first or the second or the third time, and this was their last chance or last resort, they were getting ready to give up. I've been there. And I've also been that person trying to convince someone, I'm not drug seeking, something is wrong. And when it was my brain. So when my brain isn't braining, and you're telling me I just want an opiate and I didn't even take opiates when I had surgeries. No, no, I'm definitely not drug seeking. Something is wrong with my brain. So it's very, very important that we as a community start participating in the healthcare system. Go back, I believe it's my first or second episode in April that tells you how to be able to do that. If finances are a hindrance to you, we need to participate. We need to get into the healthcare system and you know become, you know, not you don't necessarily have to say, okay, I guess I should be a doctor. You don't have to be a doctor, you don't have to be a nurse. There's so many other ways to be an advocate in the healthcare system. You know, behavioral health, there's lots of certificates and you know programs out there, you know, being a CNA, being, you know, an assistant of some sort is also a great way to participate in the healthcare system. But we need to be out here advocating for ourselves. And, you know, I'll just end the month saying, you know, I am proud of us for getting as far as we've gotten from getting over the humps of things like the Tuskegee uh syphilis studies and from things like Gila Lags and just all the different ways that we were disparaged and held down. We've made amazing strides in the last hundred or so years, but we need to go further. Thank you guys so much. Hopefully, you got something out of this month. Appreciate you. Like, subscribe.