Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / 'The Price of Exclusion' explores lasting impact of racial inequality in medicine

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'The Price of Exclusion' explores lasting impact of racial inequality in medicine · INSIGHT TODAY

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  Speaker 1: A century ago, black physicians built hospitals, clinics, and medical
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  Speaker 1: schools across the South, only to see them dismantled by policy,
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  Speaker 1: segregation and a single at the time influential report. Investigative
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  Speaker 1: journalist Nicole Carr traces that history through her own family
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  Speaker 1: and found the consequences are still being felt today. Jeff
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  Speaker 1: Bennett recently spoke with Carr about her book, The Price
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  Speaker 1: of Exclusion, The pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation.
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  Speaker 2: Nicole car Welcome to the News Hour.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. You opened this book.
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  Speaker 2: With the story of your great grandfather, doctor Lawrence Saint
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  Speaker 2: Clair Ferguson. How did his story draw you into this project?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I wasn't planning on writing a book. I
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  Speaker 4: was working in local television in Atlanta during the height
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  Speaker 4: of the pandemic, the COVID nineteen pandemic, and I got
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  Speaker 4: off air one evening. We had three kids, two in
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  Speaker 4: virtual school. I was four months postpartum, feeling the pressures
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  Speaker 4: of everything we were covering at the time, and I
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  Speaker 4: just had a moment one evening and asked myself, how
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  Speaker 4: did they get through this one hundred years ago? And
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  Speaker 4: I knew We had this ancestor who was a physician
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  Speaker 4: maybe during this time, but we didn't know a whole
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  Speaker 4: lot about him because of some family drama, some issues
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  Speaker 4: in the family. But we carried a name, and I
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  Speaker 4: wanted to find him. I wanted to know how he
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  Speaker 4: lived during this time. And I went to Howard University
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  Speaker 4: Archives to kick this off because he'd completed medical school
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  Speaker 4: there and I thought maybe they'd have some answers. They
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  Speaker 4: just digitized a new collection of archive material using a
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  Speaker 4: Melon Foundation fund, and one of the new assets was
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  Speaker 4: his medical school yearbook, The Morgue from nineteen twenty five.
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  Speaker 4: But I found out that he'd come to America from
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  Speaker 4: Jamaica during Red Summer after serving in the Great War
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  Speaker 4: and during the pandemic during the war, coming here during
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  Speaker 4: racial terror and strife, finishing pre med during the week
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  Speaker 4: of the Tulsa Race massacre, where one of the first
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  Speaker 4: casualties is a black physician, and finishing med school studies
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  Speaker 4: and going to a place to Harlem when they're trying
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  Speaker 4: to integrate the hospitals there. The same things happening one
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  Speaker 4: hundred years ago, with socioeconomic and health equity questions and
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  Speaker 4: this question of racial reckoning in America. We were going
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  Speaker 4: through the same thing here a century later, and so
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  Speaker 4: I just felt drawn to him.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you approached his story with your skills and
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  Speaker 2: background as an investigative journalist.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: The title of this book the Price of Exclusion? What
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  Speaker 2: is the price? And who is paying it today?
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  Speaker 3: I think we're all paying for it today.
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  Speaker 4: One of the things I remember, I remember being on
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  Speaker 4: a zoom press conference with the heads of the Black
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  Speaker 4: medical school the four that we have here in the US,
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  Speaker 4: and the American Medical Association at some point during this
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  Speaker 4: reporting in twenty twenty, apologized for the role it had
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  Speaker 4: played in shutting down black medical schools in the early
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  Speaker 4: twentieth century. We know this as the price we paid
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  Speaker 4: for the Flexner Report.
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  Speaker 3: So they commissioned this report.
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  Speaker 4: They're with the Carnegie Foundation, and they're evaluating these medical
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  Speaker 4: schools for efficiency effectiveness.
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  Speaker 3: And what we lose are all.
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  Speaker 4: The black medical schools except for Howard University's School and
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  Speaker 4: Maherry and we're left with those until late seventies, early
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  Speaker 4: eighties when more how School of med comes to be
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  Speaker 4: and then Charles.
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  Speaker 3: Drew later on.
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  Speaker 4: They were apologizing because we were feeling the effects of
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  Speaker 4: the shortage of black physicians. One hundred years later from
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  Speaker 4: shutting down these schools, to this day, the majority of
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  Speaker 4: our black physicians are still trained have black medical schools.
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  Speaker 4: Even with the few we have left, the majority our
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  Speaker 4: supply is from historically black institutions, and so it starts
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  Speaker 4: with that.
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  Speaker 3: It starts with that.
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  Speaker 2: And to your point, black folks make up fourteen percent
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  Speaker 2: of the population. Roughly, black physicians only about five percent
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  Speaker 2: cross Yeah, and that ratio has not changed for over
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  Speaker 2: a century. What accounts for.
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  Speaker 3: That the education.
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  Speaker 4: It's the education and not the ability, but the access
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  Speaker 4: to it, which is very important in this time, especially
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  Speaker 4: as we approach July one and what we see baked
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  Speaker 4: into the Big Beautiful Bill and the loan limits for
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  Speaker 4: professional schools. When you factor that into scholarship funds and
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  Speaker 4: endowments and things that are being challenged for racial discrimination.
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  Speaker 4: When you combine that with the racial wealth gap, when
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  Speaker 4: you combine that with how many institutions are training our doctors,
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  Speaker 4: we're effectively seeing the potential for these doors to be
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  Speaker 4: shut in a way that they were during what we
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  Speaker 4: recognized as a formalized Jim Crow America. And so we're
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  Speaker 4: not waiting to see black and white water fountains, or
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  Speaker 4: no people of this kind allowed in this school. No
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  Speaker 4: policy like that. But modern day policy can effectively take
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  Speaker 4: us back to the same ratios we were dealing with
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  Speaker 4: the fifty two one hundred years ago, and that's scary.
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  Speaker 2: Your reporting took you to places where hospitals have disappeared,
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  Speaker 2: where access to healthcare has become increasingly scarce. What did
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  Speaker 2: those communities reveal about the connection between healthcare access and representation.
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  Speaker 4: I really felt folks loss of hope when they could
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  Speaker 4: not access basic care. So the book opens up Hancock County, Georgia.
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  Speaker 4: The hospital has been the county hospital has been shuttered
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  Speaker 4: for decades. It's almost scary to walk on the property.
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  Speaker 4: It's overgrown with vines. There's this silence, this energy. It's like, okay,
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  Speaker 4: once we were getting somewhere, and now there's no Medicaid expansion.
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  Speaker 4: There's there's the doors are shut on the hospital. There's
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  Speaker 4: one black physician. She's a Spellman graduate. She's in her seventies.
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  Speaker 4: Doctor Patrice's Body that I talk about. Everybody is trying
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  Speaker 4: to get an appointment with doctor Body because she's culturally competent.
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  Speaker 4: She understands them she's come back to her hometown. She's,
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  Speaker 4: you know, we're dealing with generations. Her grandfather, father, and
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  Speaker 4: uncle ran the practice that she's still holding together all
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  Speaker 4: these decades later. A Maharry graduate who comes back home
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  Speaker 4: and she's dealing with the problems that we're always dealing with,
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  Speaker 4: high blood pressure, diabetes. She's trying to stabilize folks and
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  Speaker 4: a home hospital setting that.
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  Speaker 3: Her ancestors ran.
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  Speaker 4: And they can't get to a quality hospital quick enough
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  Speaker 4: when there's an emergency. You meet a woman who had
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  Speaker 4: a brain aneurysm, a brain bleed. She took an hour
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  Speaker 4: and a half to get her to Augusta, Georgia to
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  Speaker 4: get the care she needed. And the consequences of that,
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  Speaker 4: I mean, it manifests in her face in the.
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  Speaker 3: Way that she's able her mobility.
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  Speaker 4: But had they lived one hundred years ago, the hospital
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  Speaker 4: that was serving black folks was right around the corner.
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  Speaker 3: And so there's this question of what did we lose
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  Speaker 3: with the idea of integration.
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  Speaker 4: The policies with integration was meant for us to have
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  Speaker 4: access to the things that we needed.
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  Speaker 3: What was lost in integration and what are the.
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  Speaker 4: Effects of it all these decades later, what went wrong
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  Speaker 4: with policies, and that is I mean, that's something we're
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  Speaker 4: exploring here.
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  Speaker 2: The book is The Price of exclusion, pursuit of healthcare,
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  Speaker 2: and a segregated nation. A cool car, real pleasure to
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  Speaker 2: speak with you.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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