Trust in health care among Americans has declined in recent decades, and it’s worse among African Americans. African Americans are more likely than whites to say they don’t trust their physician. In a poll, conducted in October of 2020, 7 of 10 African Americans say they’re treated unfairly by the health care system and 55% percent say they distrust it.
Why?!
The medical establishment has a long history of mistreatment towards African Americans — from gruesome experiments on enslaved people to the forced sterilizations of Black women and the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study that withheld treatment from hundreds of Black men for decades to let doctors track the course of the disease.
Generations of racism and mistreatment at the hands of medical professionals have left many African Americans distrustful of the healthcare system.
Join me and my co host for the episode, Jessica Gray, as we unpack over 450 years of trauma and mistreatment at the hands of the American healthcare system while providing tips to navigate the system as a black person.