Navigating the Inequitable U.S. Healthcare System

Navigating the Inequitable U.S. Healthcare System explores the existing inequities within the U.S. healthcare system, their impacts on individuals and in particular Black women, who seek life-saving healthcare.

As a social scientist interested in examining the matter of health inequities, the author was particularly interested in documenting the impact of racial and ethnic inequities on the quest for critical health care in the context of a major health care crisis. More poignantly, as a healthcare consumer recently plunged into the marketplace for life-saving health care, the author systematically explored and documented the process of obtaining care as an African American woman against the backdrop of an emerging global pandemic. This book recounts some of these experiences by showing specific instances where the ogre of race intruded and influenced her access to life-saving care. She was particularly interested in documenting the process by which I was ultimately able to obtain care, and the way that I was treated within the medical establishment by its mostly well-intentioned physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel. Among other things, this book argues for increased formal and informal support structures within the healthcare system that are specifically focused on Black women’s survival, wellbeing and quality of life.