Diversity in Medicine

Dermatologic treatment of patients with skin of color offers specific challenges. Studies have reported structural, morphologic, and physiologic distinctions among different ethnic groups,¹ which may account for distinct clinical presentations of skin disease seen in patients with skin of color. Patients with skin of color are at increased risk for specific dermatologic conditions, such as postinflammatory hyperpigmentation, keloid development, and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia.^2,3 Furthermore, although skin cancer is less prevalent in patients with skin of color, it often presents at a more advanced stage and with a worse prognosis compared to white patients.⁴

Individuals with skin of color make up the majority of the world’s population and a rapidly expanding portion of the US population. By the year 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to an ethnic group that is currently a minority. By 2060, the population of citizens identifying with 2 or more races will increase by 226%, the Asian population is projected to grow by 128%, the Hispanic population will increase by 115%, and the black population will increase by 42%.⁵ The racial and ethnic composition of the United States is evolving, and dermatologic care must evolve accordingly to address patients’ unique concerns. It is essential for future dermatologists to be knowledgeable about dermatologic conditions presenting in patients of various ethnic backgrounds.

Prior studies have demonstrated the need for increased exposure, education, and training in diseases pertaining to skin of color in US dermatology residency programs.^6-8 The aim of this study was to assess if dermatologists in-training feel that their residency curriculum sufficiently educates them on the needs of patients with skin of color.

Methods

A 10-question anonymous survey was emailed to 109 dermatology residency programs to evaluate the attitudes of dermatology residents about their exposure to patients with skin of color and their skin-of-color curriculum. The study included individuals 18 years or older who were current residents in a dermatology program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Responses were measured on a 1 to 3 Likert scale, ranging from agree, neutral, and disagree. Data were analyzed using the Fisher exact test, and the statistical significance was set at P<.05.

Results

Forty-three dermatology residents completed the survey. Respondents self-selected their regions, with 8 (19%) from the Northeast (NE), 7 (16%) from the Southeast (SE), 12 (28%) from the Midwest (MW), 8 (19%) from the Southwest (SW), and 8 (18%) from the Northwest (NW)(Table 1). Overall, 31 (72%) respondents agreed that their practice treats a diverse patient population. Respondents who agreed most often were from the NE, SE, and SW. Less than two-thirds of respondents from the MW agreed, and only half of respondents from the NW agreed (Table 2). Although 37% of all respondents agreed that a dedicated multiethnic skin clinic is important for residents, 5 (63%) NE residents disagreed with this statement compared to 5 (42%) MW residents and 5 (63%) NW residents who agreed (P<.005). Overall, 39 (91%) respondents agreed that dedicated lectures on skin conditions in skin of color patients are important to gain competence in treating patients. Only 4 respondents were neutral to this question, 2 (17%) MW residents and 2 (25%) SW residents. When asked if reading textbook chapters on multiethnic skin is important to gain competence, 36 (83%) respondents agreed. Two respondents disagreed, 1 (13%) from the NE and 1 (8%) from the MW. Overall, 23% of respondents agreed that a rotation dedicated to skin of color is important to build competency. There was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.032) and between the NE and NW (P=.019). Furthermore, 19 (44%) respondents agreed that having a faculty member or departmental expert is important for residents to gain competence in treating conditions affecting skin of color. Again, there was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.003) and between the SE and MW (P=.009).

When asked the number of hours of lecture per month necessary to gain competence in conditions affecting patients with skin of color, 67% agreed that 1 to 5 hours was sufficient (Table 3). There were significant differences in the responses between the NE and SE (P=.024) and the SE and MW (P=.007). Of all respondents, 53% reported 1 to 5 months of clinical training are needed to gain competence in treating conditions affecting patients with skin of color, with significant differences in responses between the NE and MW (P<.001), the NE and SW (P=.019), and the SE and MW (P=.015)(Table 4).

Comment

Responses varied by practicing region. Less ethnically diverse regions, such as the MW and NW, were more likely to agree that dedicated clinics and rotations are important to gain competence compared to more ethnically diverse regions such as the NE, SE, and SW. Overall, more residents reported that dedicated lectures and textbook chapters were important to gain competency compared to dedicated clinics or rotations.

Although interactive lectures and textbook readings are important for obtaining a foundational understanding of dermatologic disease, they cannot substitute for clinical interactions and hands-on experience treating patients with skin of color.⁹ Not only do clinical interactions encourage independent reading and the study of encountered diagnoses, but intercommunication with patients may have a more profound and lasting impact on residents’ education.

Different regions of the United States have varying distributions of patients with skin of color, and dermatology residency program training reflects these disparities.⁶ In areas of less diversity, dermatology residents examine, diagnose, and treat substantially fewer patients with skin of color. The desire for more diverse training supports the prior findings of Nijhawan et al⁶ and is reflected in the responses we received in our study, whereby residents from the less ethnically diversified regions of the MW and NW were more likely to agree that clinics and rotations were necessary for training in preparation to sufficiently address the needs of patients with skin of color.

One way to compensate for the lack of ethnic diversity encountered in areas such as the MW and NW would be to develop educational programs featuring experts on skin of color.⁶ These specialists would not only train dermatology residents in areas of the country currently lacking ethnic diversity but also expand the expertise for treating patients with skin of color. Additionally, dedicated multiethnic skin clinics and externships devoted solely to treating patients with skin of color could be encouraged for residency training.⁶ Finally, community outreach through volunteer clinics may provide residents exposure to patients with skin of color seeking dermatologic care.¹⁰

This study was limited by the small number of respondents, but we were able to extract important trends and data from the collected responses. It is possible that respondents felt strongly about topics involving patients with skin of color, and the results were skewed to reflect individual bias. Additional limitations included not asking respondents for program names and population density (eg, urban, suburban, rural). Future studies should be directed toward analyzing how the diversity of the local population influences training in patients with skin of color, comparing program directors’ perceptions with residents’ perceptions on training in skin of color, and assessing patient perception of residents’ training in skin of color.

Conclusion

In the last decade it has become increasingly apparent that the US population is diversifying and that patients with skin of color will comprise a substantial proportion of the future population,^8,11 which emphasizes the need for dermatology residency programs to ensure that residents receive adequate training and exposure to patients with skin of color as well as the distinct skin diseases seen more commonly in these populations.¹²

Dermatologic treatment of patients with skin of color offers specific challenges. Studies have reported structural, morphologic, and physiologic distinctions among different ethnic groups,¹ which may account for distinct clinical presentations of skin disease seen in patients with skin of color. Patients with skin of color are at increased risk for specific dermatologic conditions, such as postinflammatory hyperpigmentation, keloid development, and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia.^2,3 Furthermore, although skin cancer is less prevalent in patients with skin of color, it often presents at a more advanced stage and with a worse prognosis compared to white patients.⁴

Individuals with skin of color make up the majority of the world’s population and a rapidly expanding portion of the US population. By the year 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to an ethnic group that is currently a minority. By 2060, the population of citizens identifying with 2 or more races will increase by 226%, the Asian population is projected to grow by 128%, the Hispanic population will increase by 115%, and the black population will increase by 42%.⁵ The racial and ethnic composition of the United States is evolving, and dermatologic care must evolve accordingly to address patients’ unique concerns. It is essential for future dermatologists to be knowledgeable about dermatologic conditions presenting in patients of various ethnic backgrounds.

Prior studies have demonstrated the need for increased exposure, education, and training in diseases pertaining to skin of color in US dermatology residency programs.^6-8 The aim of this study was to assess if dermatologists in-training feel that their residency curriculum sufficiently educates them on the needs of patients with skin of color.

Methods

A 10-question anonymous survey was emailed to 109 dermatology residency programs to evaluate the attitudes of dermatology residents about their exposure to patients with skin of color and their skin-of-color curriculum. The study included individuals 18 years or older who were current residents in a dermatology program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Responses were measured on a 1 to 3 Likert scale, ranging from agree, neutral, and disagree. Data were analyzed using the Fisher exact test, and the statistical significance was set at P<.05.

Results

Forty-three dermatology residents completed the survey. Respondents self-selected their regions, with 8 (19%) from the Northeast (NE), 7 (16%) from the Southeast (SE), 12 (28%) from the Midwest (MW), 8 (19%) from the Southwest (SW), and 8 (18%) from the Northwest (NW)(Table 1). Overall, 31 (72%) respondents agreed that their practice treats a diverse patient population. Respondents who agreed most often were from the NE, SE, and SW. Less than two-thirds of respondents from the MW agreed, and only half of respondents from the NW agreed (Table 2). Although 37% of all respondents agreed that a dedicated multiethnic skin clinic is important for residents, 5 (63%) NE residents disagreed with this statement compared to 5 (42%) MW residents and 5 (63%) NW residents who agreed (P<.005). Overall, 39 (91%) respondents agreed that dedicated lectures on skin conditions in skin of color patients are important to gain competence in treating patients. Only 4 respondents were neutral to this question, 2 (17%) MW residents and 2 (25%) SW residents. When asked if reading textbook chapters on multiethnic skin is important to gain competence, 36 (83%) respondents agreed. Two respondents disagreed, 1 (13%) from the NE and 1 (8%) from the MW. Overall, 23% of respondents agreed that a rotation dedicated to skin of color is important to build competency. There was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.032) and between the NE and NW (P=.019). Furthermore, 19 (44%) respondents agreed that having a faculty member or departmental expert is important for residents to gain competence in treating conditions affecting skin of color. Again, there was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.003) and between the SE and MW (P=.009).

When asked the number of hours of lecture per month necessary to gain competence in conditions affecting patients with skin of color, 67% agreed that 1 to 5 hours was sufficient (Table 3). There were significant differences in the responses between the NE and SE (P=.024) and the SE and MW (P=.007). Of all respondents, 53% reported 1 to 5 months of clinical training are needed to gain competence in treating conditions affecting patients with skin of color, with significant differences in responses between the NE and MW (P<.001), the NE and SW (P=.019), and the SE and MW (P=.015)(Table 4).

Comment

Responses varied by practicing region. Less ethnically diverse regions, such as the MW and NW, were more likely to agree that dedicated clinics and rotations are important to gain competence compared to more ethnically diverse regions such as the NE, SE, and SW. Overall, more residents reported that dedicated lectures and textbook chapters were important to gain competency compared to dedicated clinics or rotations.

Although interactive lectures and textbook readings are important for obtaining a foundational understanding of dermatologic disease, they cannot substitute for clinical interactions and hands-on experience treating patients with skin of color.⁹ Not only do clinical interactions encourage independent reading and the study of encountered diagnoses, but intercommunication with patients may have a more profound and lasting impact on residents’ education.

Different regions of the United States have varying distributions of patients with skin of color, and dermatology residency program training reflects these disparities.⁶ In areas of less diversity, dermatology residents examine, diagnose, and treat substantially fewer patients with skin of color. The desire for more diverse training supports the prior findings of Nijhawan et al⁶ and is reflected in the responses we received in our study, whereby residents from the less ethnically diversified regions of the MW and NW were more likely to agree that clinics and rotations were necessary for training in preparation to sufficiently address the needs of patients with skin of color.

One way to compensate for the lack of ethnic diversity encountered in areas such as the MW and NW would be to develop educational programs featuring experts on skin of color.⁶ These specialists would not only train dermatology residents in areas of the country currently lacking ethnic diversity but also expand the expertise for treating patients with skin of color. Additionally, dedicated multiethnic skin clinics and externships devoted solely to treating patients with skin of color could be encouraged for residency training.⁶ Finally, community outreach through volunteer clinics may provide residents exposure to patients with skin of color seeking dermatologic care.¹⁰

This study was limited by the small number of respondents, but we were able to extract important trends and data from the collected responses. It is possible that respondents felt strongly about topics involving patients with skin of color, and the results were skewed to reflect individual bias. Additional limitations included not asking respondents for program names and population density (eg, urban, suburban, rural). Future studies should be directed toward analyzing how the diversity of the local population influences training in patients with skin of color, comparing program directors’ perceptions with residents’ perceptions on training in skin of color, and assessing patient perception of residents’ training in skin of color.

Conclusion

In the last decade it has become increasingly apparent that the US population is diversifying and that patients with skin of color will comprise a substantial proportion of the future population,^8,11 which emphasizes the need for dermatology residency programs to ensure that residents receive adequate training and exposure to patients with skin of color as well as the distinct skin diseases seen more commonly in these populations.¹²

Dermatologic treatment of patients with skin of color offers specific challenges. Studies have reported structural, morphologic, and physiologic distinctions among different ethnic groups,¹ which may account for distinct clinical presentations of skin disease seen in patients with skin of color. Patients with skin of color are at increased risk for specific dermatologic conditions, such as postinflammatory hyperpigmentation, keloid development, and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia.^2,3 Furthermore, although skin cancer is less prevalent in patients with skin of color, it often presents at a more advanced stage and with a worse prognosis compared to white patients.⁴

Individuals with skin of color make up the majority of the world’s population and a rapidly expanding portion of the US population. By the year 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to an ethnic group that is currently a minority. By 2060, the population of citizens identifying with 2 or more races will increase by 226%, the Asian population is projected to grow by 128%, the Hispanic population will increase by 115%, and the black population will increase by 42%.⁵ The racial and ethnic composition of the United States is evolving, and dermatologic care must evolve accordingly to address patients’ unique concerns. It is essential for future dermatologists to be knowledgeable about dermatologic conditions presenting in patients of various ethnic backgrounds.

Prior studies have demonstrated the need for increased exposure, education, and training in diseases pertaining to skin of color in US dermatology residency programs.^6-8 The aim of this study was to assess if dermatologists in-training feel that their residency curriculum sufficiently educates them on the needs of patients with skin of color.

Methods

A 10-question anonymous survey was emailed to 109 dermatology residency programs to evaluate the attitudes of dermatology residents about their exposure to patients with skin of color and their skin-of-color curriculum. The study included individuals 18 years or older who were current residents in a dermatology program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Responses were measured on a 1 to 3 Likert scale, ranging from agree, neutral, and disagree. Data were analyzed using the Fisher exact test, and the statistical significance was set at P<.05.

Results

Forty-three dermatology residents completed the survey. Respondents self-selected their regions, with 8 (19%) from the Northeast (NE), 7 (16%) from the Southeast (SE), 12 (28%) from the Midwest (MW), 8 (19%) from the Southwest (SW), and 8 (18%) from the Northwest (NW)(Table 1). Overall, 31 (72%) respondents agreed that their practice treats a diverse patient population. Respondents who agreed most often were from the NE, SE, and SW. Less than two-thirds of respondents from the MW agreed, and only half of respondents from the NW agreed (Table 2). Although 37% of all respondents agreed that a dedicated multiethnic skin clinic is important for residents, 5 (63%) NE residents disagreed with this statement compared to 5 (42%) MW residents and 5 (63%) NW residents who agreed (P<.005). Overall, 39 (91%) respondents agreed that dedicated lectures on skin conditions in skin of color patients are important to gain competence in treating patients. Only 4 respondents were neutral to this question, 2 (17%) MW residents and 2 (25%) SW residents. When asked if reading textbook chapters on multiethnic skin is important to gain competence, 36 (83%) respondents agreed. Two respondents disagreed, 1 (13%) from the NE and 1 (8%) from the MW. Overall, 23% of respondents agreed that a rotation dedicated to skin of color is important to build competency. There was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.032) and between the NE and NW (P=.019). Furthermore, 19 (44%) respondents agreed that having a faculty member or departmental expert is important for residents to gain competence in treating conditions affecting skin of color. Again, there was a significant difference in responses between the NE and MW (P=.003) and between the SE and MW (P=.009).

When asked the number of hours of lecture per month necessary to gain competence in conditions affecting patients with skin of color, 67% agreed that 1 to 5 hours was sufficient (Table 3). There were significant differences in the responses between the NE and SE (P=.024) and the SE and MW (P=.007). Of all respondents, 53% reported 1 to 5 months of clinical training are needed to gain competence in treating conditions affecting patients with skin of color, with significant differences in responses between the NE and MW (P<.001), the NE and SW (P=.019), and the SE and MW (P=.015)(Table 4).

Comment

Responses varied by practicing region. Less ethnically diverse regions, such as the MW and NW, were more likely to agree that dedicated clinics and rotations are important to gain competence compared to more ethnically diverse regions such as the NE, SE, and SW. Overall, more residents reported that dedicated lectures and textbook chapters were important to gain competency compared to dedicated clinics or rotations.

Although interactive lectures and textbook readings are important for obtaining a foundational understanding of dermatologic disease, they cannot substitute for clinical interactions and hands-on experience treating patients with skin of color.⁹ Not only do clinical interactions encourage independent reading and the study of encountered diagnoses, but intercommunication with patients may have a more profound and lasting impact on residents’ education.

Different regions of the United States have varying distributions of patients with skin of color, and dermatology residency program training reflects these disparities.⁶ In areas of less diversity, dermatology residents examine, diagnose, and treat substantially fewer patients with skin of color. The desire for more diverse training supports the prior findings of Nijhawan et al⁶ and is reflected in the responses we received in our study, whereby residents from the less ethnically diversified regions of the MW and NW were more likely to agree that clinics and rotations were necessary for training in preparation to sufficiently address the needs of patients with skin of color.

One way to compensate for the lack of ethnic diversity encountered in areas such as the MW and NW would be to develop educational programs featuring experts on skin of color.⁶ These specialists would not only train dermatology residents in areas of the country currently lacking ethnic diversity but also expand the expertise for treating patients with skin of color. Additionally, dedicated multiethnic skin clinics and externships devoted solely to treating patients with skin of color could be encouraged for residency training.⁶ Finally, community outreach through volunteer clinics may provide residents exposure to patients with skin of color seeking dermatologic care.¹⁰

This study was limited by the small number of respondents, but we were able to extract important trends and data from the collected responses. It is possible that respondents felt strongly about topics involving patients with skin of color, and the results were skewed to reflect individual bias. Additional limitations included not asking respondents for program names and population density (eg, urban, suburban, rural). Future studies should be directed toward analyzing how the diversity of the local population influences training in patients with skin of color, comparing program directors’ perceptions with residents’ perceptions on training in skin of color, and assessing patient perception of residents’ training in skin of color.

Conclusion

In the last decade it has become increasingly apparent that the US population is diversifying and that patients with skin of color will comprise a substantial proportion of the future population,^8,11 which emphasizes the need for dermatology residency programs to ensure that residents receive adequate training and exposure to patients with skin of color as well as the distinct skin diseases seen more commonly in these populations.¹²

This is the second of a two-part article on the role of racism and bias in the U.S. maternal mortality crisis and part of an ongoing Ob.Gyn. News feature series on the crisis. Part one of the story explored existing data, societal factors, and patient experiences related to structural racism, overt racism, and implicit bias as factors contributing to racial disparities in maternal outcomes. Here we explore potential solutions for addressing the inequities as proposed by thought leaders and key stakeholders.



The emerging racial disparities in COVID-19 incidence and outcomes in the United States are on a collision course with long-standing racial disparities in U.S. maternal care and mortality.

Maternal health advocates are bracing for the impact, but in the spotlight that the pandemic is training on the inequities and the health system changes taking shape in its wake, some also see hope for a shift in at least one important driver of the racial health disparities: access to care.

Non-Hispanic black women are at least three times more likely than Hispanic women and non-Hispanic white women to experience pregnancy-related death, and indigenous women are more than twice as likely, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The added strain COVID-19 is putting on the system stands to further limit the access to care that many pregnant women of color experience and to exacerbate racial disparities, panelists agreed during a recent National Maternal Health Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network webinar entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Black, Brown, and Native Pregnant People.”

“The saying is that ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate,’ but it understands our biases, right? So, the virus takes advantage of the weaknesses in our system,” said panelist Joia A. Crear-Perry, MD, an ob.gyn. and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), a New Orleans–based research, training, and advocacy organization working to optimize black maternal and infant health.
 

Hope for solutions from the ashes of a pandemic

The weaknesses in the system that Dr. Crear-Perry spoke of are in many ways a product of structural racism as described in a conceptual report in The Lancet, titled “America: Equity and Equality in Health,” which dug into the entrenched and tangled historical roots of racist sociological and political factors that formed a foundation for health inequity over time.

Today, people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. The authors defined structural racism as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.” Today, largely as a result of these “reinforcing systems,” people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. At the same time, and for the same reasons, they are more likely to work in the service industry, be essential workers, and use mass transit, each of which increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19, Dr. Crear-Perry explained.

“It’s important for us to know that, for maternal mortality, it’s the same thing that happens,” she said. That means the focus on COVID-19–related disparities helps magnify and elevate the conversation regarding similar disparities in maternal outcomes.

It also means that some of the care delivery solutions embraced and facilitated amid the pandemic, such as extension of Medicaid coverage for up to a year after giving birth and broader use and insurance coverage of telemedicine, could finally gain traction; those are solutions long-sought by advocates like Dr. Crear-Perry and others as a means for alleviating racial disparities in maternal outcomes and addressing the maternal mortality crisis.

Therein lies the hope, she explained in an interview. “Some of the policies that we know would have been helpful prior to COVID-19 now are being seen as really important.”
 

Solution: Extending coverage

During a May 7 virtual Congressional hearing on “America’s Two Public Health Crises: The Impact of COVID-19 on Racial Inequities and Maternal Mortality in the U.S.,” cosponsored by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the March of Dimes, and the NBEC, Dr. Crear-Perry further explained the importance of extended coverage and care access.

Asked what Congress could do immediately to “ensure that the pandemic does not compound the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, including unacceptable rates among black women,” she didn’t hesitate.

“Well, it would be amazing if we could get Medicaid extended for 12 months post delivery,” she said. “As you can imagine right now, we have moms who are birthing in hospitals where they have to worry about, 2 months later, not having coverage for themselves.”

If that mom is exposed to COVID-19 and has no insurance coverage and a newborn at home, the likelihood that she will call a provider if she develops symptoms is low, Dr. Crear-Perry said. “This is a great opportunity for us to really rethink some of those policies that we know are barriers, that we have created for people to be able to thrive after they have a baby and during child birth.”

Current policies are centered around an arbitrary cutoff of about 6 weeks for postpartum care, but the CDC reports that a third of all postpartum deaths occur between 1 week and 12 months after birth.

“We need our policies to reflect the current knowledge and the science,” she said. “Just like babies have automatic insurance coverage for a year later, mothers should have the same.”

Medicaid finances nearly half of all births in the United States, according to a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation brief, which explained that federal law requires Medicaid coverage for only 60 days post partum for women who are eligible. Decisions regarding coverage after 60 days are determined by individual states; those that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act typically allow extended coverage – but only with reapplication at 60 days.

Many women in nonexpansion states become uninsured after pregnancy-related coverage ends, as do some in expansion states for whom reapplying is a hurdle too high to clear with a newborn baby to care for at home, Dr. Crear-Perry said.

Addressing these coverage gaps is key to improving access, and it is a core component of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March by Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus to “fill gaps in existing legislation to comprehensively address every dimension of the Black maternal health crisis in America.”

One bill in the package addresses extended coverage with a goal to “promote innovative payment models to incentivize high-quality maternity care and continuity of health insurance coverage from pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to 1 year post partum.” Another focuses on promoting alternative ways to access care, such as through telemedicine.

Solution: Expanding care access

“There is a need for the democratization of care,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “There is a need for people to have more ways to get care. This idea that the only way you can get prenatal care is you have to come to me at my office, has been a burden for working people for a long, long time.”

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates increased use of telemedicine, but building blocks to allow patients to use it effectively must be put in place, she said. That means expanding broadband access, providing patients with blood pressure cuffs and other tools for use remotely, and expanding reimbursement to include not just video, but also phone calls.

Heart Safe Motherhood, a University of Pennsylvania text-based intervention developed to address postpartum hypertension – a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality, and at the start of the program, the leading cause of 7-day readmissions among obstetric patients, demonstrated the value of such approaches to care.

The program involves remote blood pressure monitoring using a digital monitor provided to at-risk patients at discharge. Text-based monitoring reminders encourage patients to check their blood pressure twice daily for the first 7 days.

“In our randomized, controlled trial, we saw our ability to meet ACOG guidelines on postpartum blood monitoring leap from 0% to 82%, compared to in-person office visits and 7-day readmissions from hypertension drop from 3% to 0%,” an update at the program website states.

ACOG

Rebekah Gee, MD, an ob.gyn. and director of the Louisiana State University Health System in New Orleans, also noted the importance of finding ways to deliver care “that are outside the traditional norm.

“Telemedicine, home visiting ... I think there are a wide variety of ways,” she said, noting that these kind of approaches not only help circumvent roadblocks to care, such as lack of transportation, but also can feel more personal and approachable for some women.
 

Solution: Measuring, investing, diversifying, respecting

The aims of other bills in the Momnibus Act also mirror several solutions proposed by maternal health advocates interviewed for this article. Among them are:

• Development of improved data collection processes and quality measures to better understand the factors that contribute to the crisis overall and among special populations, and to inform solutions for addressing them.
• Investments in social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes, like housing, transportation, and nutrition.
• Commitment to the growth and diversification of the perinatal workforce to ensure that every mom receives maternity care and support from people she can trust to provide quality care and treat her with respect.

The latter is one that Dr. Gee, Dr. Crear-Perry, and others particularly emphasized.

“We need patient advocates like doulas, midwives and others who are better listeners and better able to advocate for patients,” Dr. Gee said. This would better allow for women’s desires in the childbirth experience to be addressed appropriately, she said, adding that this is something that “frankly, a lot of doctors do not have the time to do.”

That’s why the efforts to address maternal mortality have to focus on the health care system, not just on doctors’ behavior with respect to bias, she said.

Dr. Gee also said there is a need for culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications “that respect how people seek and understand information.” This varies by population, which is why it’s important to provide the same approach to care “no matter what the patient looks like,” while also understanding that different patients communicate in different ways.

A 2019 study published in Social Science & Medicine underscored how communication differences can affect outcomes; using a national sample of women who gave birth in U.S. hospitals, the authors found that those who had declined care for themselves or their infant during their childbirth hospitalization were more likely to report receiving poor treatment based on race or ethnicity. They concluded that, in the context of childbirth care, women – particularly black women – pay a penalty for what is perceived as uncooperative behavior.

This is another area where doulas and other patient advocates can help, Dr. Gee said.

Doulas have long been an integral part of the birthing process for many women, particularly women of color, and evidence suggests the supportive care they provide helps to improve outcomes. In fact, several states – including Oregon, Minnesota, and New York, among others – have expanded or have proposed expanding Medicaid coverage to include doula services for pregnant beneficiaries, a move cheered by doula associations and other maternal health advocates.

In many ways, it’s about “respectful maternity care,” which is something Dr. Crear-Perry has been working to promote through the NBEC in partnership with ACOG and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s also something the World Health Organization has promoted by establishing global standards for such care.

“We’re hoping to socialize that as a norm in United States ... to really see what it would look like to value what birthing people want and to see them as partners in their birth,” she said.

However, the 2019 Giving Voice to Mothers study demonstrating consistently higher rates of mistreatment during obstetrical care for women of color than for comparable white women shows that the United States is falling short of those standards. The national study of 2,700 women examined how race, ethnicity, and place of birth interact with the experience of receiving maternity care in the United States, and showed that 1 in 6 experienced one or more types of mistreatment – with consistently higher rates among women of color, even after adjusting for interactions between race and other maternal characteristics, Saraswathi Veda, MD, of the Birth Place Lab and professor of midwifery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported in Reproductive Health.
 

Solution: Listening, learning, reflecting, partnering

Timoria McQueen Saba, birth trauma survivor and maternal health advocate, has described experiencing instances of mistreatment throughout her obstetric care, and like Dr. Crear-Perry, she said trust and collaboration in care is imperative for improving outcomes.

“I think the most important thing you can do is really consider a patient a partner in the care you give them,” she said during a panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting. “You’re not experts in their lived experience ... center a patient’s voice or the voice of a patient’s family. Incorporate that into your learning.”

During a virtual workshop held May 19-20 by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Judette Louis, MD, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and president of the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, provided practical guidance for addressing racism and implicit bias in practice and in research to reduce disparities in outcomes.

In an interview, she summarized her key points, reiterating solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and Dr. Crear-Perry and addressed in the Momnibus Act, and also offering a few others:

First, put aside the notion that disparities are genetically driven. For a variety of reasons, that just doesn’t make sense. For one thing, not all blacks are African American.

“My family is from the Caribbean,” she said. “Is it really conceivable that we’re all so similar?”

Look also at the disparities among Native Americans, she said. “How can you take 500 distinct tribes that live across a wide geographic area and lump them into one group and assume that they are similar?”

The problem is racism, not race. “When you keep saying ‘it’s about race, it’s about race, it’s about race’ – that sends a message to the person who is of that race that there is something inherently broken about [them],” she said.

Recognize that the roots of the problem run deep. Learn about and support efforts to address the underlying structural factors that contribute to the problem, Dr. Louis emphasized, and recognize your own bias. “We all have it. The key is to recognize [biases] and mitigate them when taking care of patients.”

That’s easier said than done, at least judging by one survey of maternal-fetal medicine specialists in which 84% of respondents agreed that disparities impact practice, but only 29% agreed their own personal biases affect how they care for patients, she noted.

Tools are available to help individuals identify implicit bias, and training programs for health care providers can help, as well, she said. Implicit bias tests and training programs that help to identify and address bias and racism on individual and organizational levels are increasingly available through academic centers, health systems, and advocacy organizations.

Hope for solutions: Progress and promise

Like Dr. Crear-Perry, Dr. Louis sees hope for reducing disparities and improving maternal outcomes.

In another survey of SMFM members to identify the practice issues most important to them, racial disparities ranked in the top three.

“It says a lot that our [maternal-fetal medicine specialists] really see this as a problem and they want it fixed,” she said. “And I think it says that a lot of people need to work on this, not just us.”

Indeed, many are engaged in that work. Veronica Gillispie, MD, medical director of the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative and Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, has been instrumental in recent initiatives to improve maternal outcomes in Louisiana, and she too said she feels optimistic.

“I am hopeful and I do see signs of hope,” she said in an interview.

Teams that she works with and trains seem invested, institutions are increasingly implementing faculty training on racism and bias, and Oschner Health, where Dr. Gillispie practices as an ob.gyn., appointed its first chief diversity officer in February.

Medical students she works with are attuned to the issues of racism, bias, and disparities, and they show a desire to enact change, she said. “They already get it, and they are working to make it better.”

Dr. Crear-Perry also predicts practice-changing results from studies looking at the delivery of obstetrical care and the role of supportive care, and she pointed out another aspect of the COVID-19 crisis that provides an important lesson for health care providers who care for birthing people: the scarcity of personal protective equipment amid the pandemic.

“My friends who are ob.gyns., who are now not getting access to the things they need to stay safe to practice medicine and who are feeling very marginalized at this moment, feeling not valued – that’s how birthing people [of color] feel,” she said. “I’m hoping that builds a sense of empathy.

”I’m hoping at the end of this crisis, that those ob.gyns. will think of patients as allies in fighting for more access to health for everybody and for more resources to do their work,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “We’re all in this together.”

sworcester@mdedge.com

This is the second of a two-part article on the role of racism and bias in the U.S. maternal mortality crisis and part of an ongoing Ob.Gyn. News feature series on the crisis. Part one of the story explored existing data, societal factors, and patient experiences related to structural racism, overt racism, and implicit bias as factors contributing to racial disparities in maternal outcomes. Here we explore potential solutions for addressing the inequities as proposed by thought leaders and key stakeholders.



The emerging racial disparities in COVID-19 incidence and outcomes in the United States are on a collision course with long-standing racial disparities in U.S. maternal care and mortality.

Maternal health advocates are bracing for the impact, but in the spotlight that the pandemic is training on the inequities and the health system changes taking shape in its wake, some also see hope for a shift in at least one important driver of the racial health disparities: access to care.

Non-Hispanic black women are at least three times more likely than Hispanic women and non-Hispanic white women to experience pregnancy-related death, and indigenous women are more than twice as likely, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The added strain COVID-19 is putting on the system stands to further limit the access to care that many pregnant women of color experience and to exacerbate racial disparities, panelists agreed during a recent National Maternal Health Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network webinar entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Black, Brown, and Native Pregnant People.”

“The saying is that ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate,’ but it understands our biases, right? So, the virus takes advantage of the weaknesses in our system,” said panelist Joia A. Crear-Perry, MD, an ob.gyn. and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), a New Orleans–based research, training, and advocacy organization working to optimize black maternal and infant health.
 

Hope for solutions from the ashes of a pandemic

The weaknesses in the system that Dr. Crear-Perry spoke of are in many ways a product of structural racism as described in a conceptual report in The Lancet, titled “America: Equity and Equality in Health,” which dug into the entrenched and tangled historical roots of racist sociological and political factors that formed a foundation for health inequity over time.

Today, people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. The authors defined structural racism as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.” Today, largely as a result of these “reinforcing systems,” people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. At the same time, and for the same reasons, they are more likely to work in the service industry, be essential workers, and use mass transit, each of which increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19, Dr. Crear-Perry explained.

“It’s important for us to know that, for maternal mortality, it’s the same thing that happens,” she said. That means the focus on COVID-19–related disparities helps magnify and elevate the conversation regarding similar disparities in maternal outcomes.

It also means that some of the care delivery solutions embraced and facilitated amid the pandemic, such as extension of Medicaid coverage for up to a year after giving birth and broader use and insurance coverage of telemedicine, could finally gain traction; those are solutions long-sought by advocates like Dr. Crear-Perry and others as a means for alleviating racial disparities in maternal outcomes and addressing the maternal mortality crisis.

Therein lies the hope, she explained in an interview. “Some of the policies that we know would have been helpful prior to COVID-19 now are being seen as really important.”
 

Solution: Extending coverage

During a May 7 virtual Congressional hearing on “America’s Two Public Health Crises: The Impact of COVID-19 on Racial Inequities and Maternal Mortality in the U.S.,” cosponsored by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the March of Dimes, and the NBEC, Dr. Crear-Perry further explained the importance of extended coverage and care access.

Asked what Congress could do immediately to “ensure that the pandemic does not compound the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, including unacceptable rates among black women,” she didn’t hesitate.

“Well, it would be amazing if we could get Medicaid extended for 12 months post delivery,” she said. “As you can imagine right now, we have moms who are birthing in hospitals where they have to worry about, 2 months later, not having coverage for themselves.”

If that mom is exposed to COVID-19 and has no insurance coverage and a newborn at home, the likelihood that she will call a provider if she develops symptoms is low, Dr. Crear-Perry said. “This is a great opportunity for us to really rethink some of those policies that we know are barriers, that we have created for people to be able to thrive after they have a baby and during child birth.”

Current policies are centered around an arbitrary cutoff of about 6 weeks for postpartum care, but the CDC reports that a third of all postpartum deaths occur between 1 week and 12 months after birth.

“We need our policies to reflect the current knowledge and the science,” she said. “Just like babies have automatic insurance coverage for a year later, mothers should have the same.”

Medicaid finances nearly half of all births in the United States, according to a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation brief, which explained that federal law requires Medicaid coverage for only 60 days post partum for women who are eligible. Decisions regarding coverage after 60 days are determined by individual states; those that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act typically allow extended coverage – but only with reapplication at 60 days.

Many women in nonexpansion states become uninsured after pregnancy-related coverage ends, as do some in expansion states for whom reapplying is a hurdle too high to clear with a newborn baby to care for at home, Dr. Crear-Perry said.

Addressing these coverage gaps is key to improving access, and it is a core component of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March by Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus to “fill gaps in existing legislation to comprehensively address every dimension of the Black maternal health crisis in America.”

One bill in the package addresses extended coverage with a goal to “promote innovative payment models to incentivize high-quality maternity care and continuity of health insurance coverage from pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to 1 year post partum.” Another focuses on promoting alternative ways to access care, such as through telemedicine.

Solution: Expanding care access

“There is a need for the democratization of care,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “There is a need for people to have more ways to get care. This idea that the only way you can get prenatal care is you have to come to me at my office, has been a burden for working people for a long, long time.”

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates increased use of telemedicine, but building blocks to allow patients to use it effectively must be put in place, she said. That means expanding broadband access, providing patients with blood pressure cuffs and other tools for use remotely, and expanding reimbursement to include not just video, but also phone calls.

Heart Safe Motherhood, a University of Pennsylvania text-based intervention developed to address postpartum hypertension – a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality, and at the start of the program, the leading cause of 7-day readmissions among obstetric patients, demonstrated the value of such approaches to care.

The program involves remote blood pressure monitoring using a digital monitor provided to at-risk patients at discharge. Text-based monitoring reminders encourage patients to check their blood pressure twice daily for the first 7 days.

“In our randomized, controlled trial, we saw our ability to meet ACOG guidelines on postpartum blood monitoring leap from 0% to 82%, compared to in-person office visits and 7-day readmissions from hypertension drop from 3% to 0%,” an update at the program website states.

ACOG

Rebekah Gee, MD, an ob.gyn. and director of the Louisiana State University Health System in New Orleans, also noted the importance of finding ways to deliver care “that are outside the traditional norm.

“Telemedicine, home visiting ... I think there are a wide variety of ways,” she said, noting that these kind of approaches not only help circumvent roadblocks to care, such as lack of transportation, but also can feel more personal and approachable for some women.
 

Solution: Measuring, investing, diversifying, respecting

The aims of other bills in the Momnibus Act also mirror several solutions proposed by maternal health advocates interviewed for this article. Among them are:

• Development of improved data collection processes and quality measures to better understand the factors that contribute to the crisis overall and among special populations, and to inform solutions for addressing them.
• Investments in social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes, like housing, transportation, and nutrition.
• Commitment to the growth and diversification of the perinatal workforce to ensure that every mom receives maternity care and support from people she can trust to provide quality care and treat her with respect.

The latter is one that Dr. Gee, Dr. Crear-Perry, and others particularly emphasized.

“We need patient advocates like doulas, midwives and others who are better listeners and better able to advocate for patients,” Dr. Gee said. This would better allow for women’s desires in the childbirth experience to be addressed appropriately, she said, adding that this is something that “frankly, a lot of doctors do not have the time to do.”

That’s why the efforts to address maternal mortality have to focus on the health care system, not just on doctors’ behavior with respect to bias, she said.

Dr. Gee also said there is a need for culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications “that respect how people seek and understand information.” This varies by population, which is why it’s important to provide the same approach to care “no matter what the patient looks like,” while also understanding that different patients communicate in different ways.

A 2019 study published in Social Science & Medicine underscored how communication differences can affect outcomes; using a national sample of women who gave birth in U.S. hospitals, the authors found that those who had declined care for themselves or their infant during their childbirth hospitalization were more likely to report receiving poor treatment based on race or ethnicity. They concluded that, in the context of childbirth care, women – particularly black women – pay a penalty for what is perceived as uncooperative behavior.

This is another area where doulas and other patient advocates can help, Dr. Gee said.

Doulas have long been an integral part of the birthing process for many women, particularly women of color, and evidence suggests the supportive care they provide helps to improve outcomes. In fact, several states – including Oregon, Minnesota, and New York, among others – have expanded or have proposed expanding Medicaid coverage to include doula services for pregnant beneficiaries, a move cheered by doula associations and other maternal health advocates.

In many ways, it’s about “respectful maternity care,” which is something Dr. Crear-Perry has been working to promote through the NBEC in partnership with ACOG and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s also something the World Health Organization has promoted by establishing global standards for such care.

“We’re hoping to socialize that as a norm in United States ... to really see what it would look like to value what birthing people want and to see them as partners in their birth,” she said.

However, the 2019 Giving Voice to Mothers study demonstrating consistently higher rates of mistreatment during obstetrical care for women of color than for comparable white women shows that the United States is falling short of those standards. The national study of 2,700 women examined how race, ethnicity, and place of birth interact with the experience of receiving maternity care in the United States, and showed that 1 in 6 experienced one or more types of mistreatment – with consistently higher rates among women of color, even after adjusting for interactions between race and other maternal characteristics, Saraswathi Veda, MD, of the Birth Place Lab and professor of midwifery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported in Reproductive Health.
 

Solution: Listening, learning, reflecting, partnering

Timoria McQueen Saba, birth trauma survivor and maternal health advocate, has described experiencing instances of mistreatment throughout her obstetric care, and like Dr. Crear-Perry, she said trust and collaboration in care is imperative for improving outcomes.

“I think the most important thing you can do is really consider a patient a partner in the care you give them,” she said during a panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting. “You’re not experts in their lived experience ... center a patient’s voice or the voice of a patient’s family. Incorporate that into your learning.”

During a virtual workshop held May 19-20 by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Judette Louis, MD, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and president of the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, provided practical guidance for addressing racism and implicit bias in practice and in research to reduce disparities in outcomes.

In an interview, she summarized her key points, reiterating solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and Dr. Crear-Perry and addressed in the Momnibus Act, and also offering a few others:

First, put aside the notion that disparities are genetically driven. For a variety of reasons, that just doesn’t make sense. For one thing, not all blacks are African American.

“My family is from the Caribbean,” she said. “Is it really conceivable that we’re all so similar?”

Look also at the disparities among Native Americans, she said. “How can you take 500 distinct tribes that live across a wide geographic area and lump them into one group and assume that they are similar?”

The problem is racism, not race. “When you keep saying ‘it’s about race, it’s about race, it’s about race’ – that sends a message to the person who is of that race that there is something inherently broken about [them],” she said.

Recognize that the roots of the problem run deep. Learn about and support efforts to address the underlying structural factors that contribute to the problem, Dr. Louis emphasized, and recognize your own bias. “We all have it. The key is to recognize [biases] and mitigate them when taking care of patients.”

That’s easier said than done, at least judging by one survey of maternal-fetal medicine specialists in which 84% of respondents agreed that disparities impact practice, but only 29% agreed their own personal biases affect how they care for patients, she noted.

Tools are available to help individuals identify implicit bias, and training programs for health care providers can help, as well, she said. Implicit bias tests and training programs that help to identify and address bias and racism on individual and organizational levels are increasingly available through academic centers, health systems, and advocacy organizations.

Hope for solutions: Progress and promise

Like Dr. Crear-Perry, Dr. Louis sees hope for reducing disparities and improving maternal outcomes.

In another survey of SMFM members to identify the practice issues most important to them, racial disparities ranked in the top three.

“It says a lot that our [maternal-fetal medicine specialists] really see this as a problem and they want it fixed,” she said. “And I think it says that a lot of people need to work on this, not just us.”

Indeed, many are engaged in that work. Veronica Gillispie, MD, medical director of the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative and Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, has been instrumental in recent initiatives to improve maternal outcomes in Louisiana, and she too said she feels optimistic.

“I am hopeful and I do see signs of hope,” she said in an interview.

Teams that she works with and trains seem invested, institutions are increasingly implementing faculty training on racism and bias, and Oschner Health, where Dr. Gillispie practices as an ob.gyn., appointed its first chief diversity officer in February.

Medical students she works with are attuned to the issues of racism, bias, and disparities, and they show a desire to enact change, she said. “They already get it, and they are working to make it better.”

Dr. Crear-Perry also predicts practice-changing results from studies looking at the delivery of obstetrical care and the role of supportive care, and she pointed out another aspect of the COVID-19 crisis that provides an important lesson for health care providers who care for birthing people: the scarcity of personal protective equipment amid the pandemic.

“My friends who are ob.gyns., who are now not getting access to the things they need to stay safe to practice medicine and who are feeling very marginalized at this moment, feeling not valued – that’s how birthing people [of color] feel,” she said. “I’m hoping that builds a sense of empathy.

”I’m hoping at the end of this crisis, that those ob.gyns. will think of patients as allies in fighting for more access to health for everybody and for more resources to do their work,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “We’re all in this together.”

sworcester@mdedge.com

This is the second of a two-part article on the role of racism and bias in the U.S. maternal mortality crisis and part of an ongoing Ob.Gyn. News feature series on the crisis. Part one of the story explored existing data, societal factors, and patient experiences related to structural racism, overt racism, and implicit bias as factors contributing to racial disparities in maternal outcomes. Here we explore potential solutions for addressing the inequities as proposed by thought leaders and key stakeholders.



The emerging racial disparities in COVID-19 incidence and outcomes in the United States are on a collision course with long-standing racial disparities in U.S. maternal care and mortality.

Maternal health advocates are bracing for the impact, but in the spotlight that the pandemic is training on the inequities and the health system changes taking shape in its wake, some also see hope for a shift in at least one important driver of the racial health disparities: access to care.

Non-Hispanic black women are at least three times more likely than Hispanic women and non-Hispanic white women to experience pregnancy-related death, and indigenous women are more than twice as likely, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The added strain COVID-19 is putting on the system stands to further limit the access to care that many pregnant women of color experience and to exacerbate racial disparities, panelists agreed during a recent National Maternal Health Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network webinar entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Black, Brown, and Native Pregnant People.”

“The saying is that ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate,’ but it understands our biases, right? So, the virus takes advantage of the weaknesses in our system,” said panelist Joia A. Crear-Perry, MD, an ob.gyn. and founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), a New Orleans–based research, training, and advocacy organization working to optimize black maternal and infant health.
 

Hope for solutions from the ashes of a pandemic

The weaknesses in the system that Dr. Crear-Perry spoke of are in many ways a product of structural racism as described in a conceptual report in The Lancet, titled “America: Equity and Equality in Health,” which dug into the entrenched and tangled historical roots of racist sociological and political factors that formed a foundation for health inequity over time.

Today, people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. The authors defined structural racism as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.” Today, largely as a result of these “reinforcing systems,” people of color remain more likely to be excluded from access to health insurance and adequate health care. At the same time, and for the same reasons, they are more likely to work in the service industry, be essential workers, and use mass transit, each of which increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19, Dr. Crear-Perry explained.

“It’s important for us to know that, for maternal mortality, it’s the same thing that happens,” she said. That means the focus on COVID-19–related disparities helps magnify and elevate the conversation regarding similar disparities in maternal outcomes.

It also means that some of the care delivery solutions embraced and facilitated amid the pandemic, such as extension of Medicaid coverage for up to a year after giving birth and broader use and insurance coverage of telemedicine, could finally gain traction; those are solutions long-sought by advocates like Dr. Crear-Perry and others as a means for alleviating racial disparities in maternal outcomes and addressing the maternal mortality crisis.

Therein lies the hope, she explained in an interview. “Some of the policies that we know would have been helpful prior to COVID-19 now are being seen as really important.”
 

Solution: Extending coverage

During a May 7 virtual Congressional hearing on “America’s Two Public Health Crises: The Impact of COVID-19 on Racial Inequities and Maternal Mortality in the U.S.,” cosponsored by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the March of Dimes, and the NBEC, Dr. Crear-Perry further explained the importance of extended coverage and care access.

Asked what Congress could do immediately to “ensure that the pandemic does not compound the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, including unacceptable rates among black women,” she didn’t hesitate.

“Well, it would be amazing if we could get Medicaid extended for 12 months post delivery,” she said. “As you can imagine right now, we have moms who are birthing in hospitals where they have to worry about, 2 months later, not having coverage for themselves.”

If that mom is exposed to COVID-19 and has no insurance coverage and a newborn at home, the likelihood that she will call a provider if she develops symptoms is low, Dr. Crear-Perry said. “This is a great opportunity for us to really rethink some of those policies that we know are barriers, that we have created for people to be able to thrive after they have a baby and during child birth.”

Current policies are centered around an arbitrary cutoff of about 6 weeks for postpartum care, but the CDC reports that a third of all postpartum deaths occur between 1 week and 12 months after birth.

“We need our policies to reflect the current knowledge and the science,” she said. “Just like babies have automatic insurance coverage for a year later, mothers should have the same.”

Medicaid finances nearly half of all births in the United States, according to a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation brief, which explained that federal law requires Medicaid coverage for only 60 days post partum for women who are eligible. Decisions regarding coverage after 60 days are determined by individual states; those that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act typically allow extended coverage – but only with reapplication at 60 days.

Many women in nonexpansion states become uninsured after pregnancy-related coverage ends, as do some in expansion states for whom reapplying is a hurdle too high to clear with a newborn baby to care for at home, Dr. Crear-Perry said.

Addressing these coverage gaps is key to improving access, and it is a core component of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March by Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus to “fill gaps in existing legislation to comprehensively address every dimension of the Black maternal health crisis in America.”

One bill in the package addresses extended coverage with a goal to “promote innovative payment models to incentivize high-quality maternity care and continuity of health insurance coverage from pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to 1 year post partum.” Another focuses on promoting alternative ways to access care, such as through telemedicine.

Solution: Expanding care access

“There is a need for the democratization of care,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “There is a need for people to have more ways to get care. This idea that the only way you can get prenatal care is you have to come to me at my office, has been a burden for working people for a long, long time.”

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates increased use of telemedicine, but building blocks to allow patients to use it effectively must be put in place, she said. That means expanding broadband access, providing patients with blood pressure cuffs and other tools for use remotely, and expanding reimbursement to include not just video, but also phone calls.

Heart Safe Motherhood, a University of Pennsylvania text-based intervention developed to address postpartum hypertension – a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality, and at the start of the program, the leading cause of 7-day readmissions among obstetric patients, demonstrated the value of such approaches to care.

The program involves remote blood pressure monitoring using a digital monitor provided to at-risk patients at discharge. Text-based monitoring reminders encourage patients to check their blood pressure twice daily for the first 7 days.

“In our randomized, controlled trial, we saw our ability to meet ACOG guidelines on postpartum blood monitoring leap from 0% to 82%, compared to in-person office visits and 7-day readmissions from hypertension drop from 3% to 0%,” an update at the program website states.

ACOG

Rebekah Gee, MD, an ob.gyn. and director of the Louisiana State University Health System in New Orleans, also noted the importance of finding ways to deliver care “that are outside the traditional norm.

“Telemedicine, home visiting ... I think there are a wide variety of ways,” she said, noting that these kind of approaches not only help circumvent roadblocks to care, such as lack of transportation, but also can feel more personal and approachable for some women.
 

Solution: Measuring, investing, diversifying, respecting

The aims of other bills in the Momnibus Act also mirror several solutions proposed by maternal health advocates interviewed for this article. Among them are:

• Development of improved data collection processes and quality measures to better understand the factors that contribute to the crisis overall and among special populations, and to inform solutions for addressing them.
• Investments in social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes, like housing, transportation, and nutrition.
• Commitment to the growth and diversification of the perinatal workforce to ensure that every mom receives maternity care and support from people she can trust to provide quality care and treat her with respect.

The latter is one that Dr. Gee, Dr. Crear-Perry, and others particularly emphasized.

“We need patient advocates like doulas, midwives and others who are better listeners and better able to advocate for patients,” Dr. Gee said. This would better allow for women’s desires in the childbirth experience to be addressed appropriately, she said, adding that this is something that “frankly, a lot of doctors do not have the time to do.”

That’s why the efforts to address maternal mortality have to focus on the health care system, not just on doctors’ behavior with respect to bias, she said.

Dr. Gee also said there is a need for culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications “that respect how people seek and understand information.” This varies by population, which is why it’s important to provide the same approach to care “no matter what the patient looks like,” while also understanding that different patients communicate in different ways.

A 2019 study published in Social Science & Medicine underscored how communication differences can affect outcomes; using a national sample of women who gave birth in U.S. hospitals, the authors found that those who had declined care for themselves or their infant during their childbirth hospitalization were more likely to report receiving poor treatment based on race or ethnicity. They concluded that, in the context of childbirth care, women – particularly black women – pay a penalty for what is perceived as uncooperative behavior.

This is another area where doulas and other patient advocates can help, Dr. Gee said.

Doulas have long been an integral part of the birthing process for many women, particularly women of color, and evidence suggests the supportive care they provide helps to improve outcomes. In fact, several states – including Oregon, Minnesota, and New York, among others – have expanded or have proposed expanding Medicaid coverage to include doula services for pregnant beneficiaries, a move cheered by doula associations and other maternal health advocates.

In many ways, it’s about “respectful maternity care,” which is something Dr. Crear-Perry has been working to promote through the NBEC in partnership with ACOG and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s also something the World Health Organization has promoted by establishing global standards for such care.

“We’re hoping to socialize that as a norm in United States ... to really see what it would look like to value what birthing people want and to see them as partners in their birth,” she said.

However, the 2019 Giving Voice to Mothers study demonstrating consistently higher rates of mistreatment during obstetrical care for women of color than for comparable white women shows that the United States is falling short of those standards. The national study of 2,700 women examined how race, ethnicity, and place of birth interact with the experience of receiving maternity care in the United States, and showed that 1 in 6 experienced one or more types of mistreatment – with consistently higher rates among women of color, even after adjusting for interactions between race and other maternal characteristics, Saraswathi Veda, MD, of the Birth Place Lab and professor of midwifery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported in Reproductive Health.
 

Solution: Listening, learning, reflecting, partnering

Timoria McQueen Saba, birth trauma survivor and maternal health advocate, has described experiencing instances of mistreatment throughout her obstetric care, and like Dr. Crear-Perry, she said trust and collaboration in care is imperative for improving outcomes.

“I think the most important thing you can do is really consider a patient a partner in the care you give them,” she said during a panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting. “You’re not experts in their lived experience ... center a patient’s voice or the voice of a patient’s family. Incorporate that into your learning.”

During a virtual workshop held May 19-20 by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Judette Louis, MD, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and president of the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, provided practical guidance for addressing racism and implicit bias in practice and in research to reduce disparities in outcomes.

In an interview, she summarized her key points, reiterating solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and Dr. Crear-Perry and addressed in the Momnibus Act, and also offering a few others:

First, put aside the notion that disparities are genetically driven. For a variety of reasons, that just doesn’t make sense. For one thing, not all blacks are African American.

“My family is from the Caribbean,” she said. “Is it really conceivable that we’re all so similar?”

Look also at the disparities among Native Americans, she said. “How can you take 500 distinct tribes that live across a wide geographic area and lump them into one group and assume that they are similar?”

The problem is racism, not race. “When you keep saying ‘it’s about race, it’s about race, it’s about race’ – that sends a message to the person who is of that race that there is something inherently broken about [them],” she said.

Recognize that the roots of the problem run deep. Learn about and support efforts to address the underlying structural factors that contribute to the problem, Dr. Louis emphasized, and recognize your own bias. “We all have it. The key is to recognize [biases] and mitigate them when taking care of patients.”

That’s easier said than done, at least judging by one survey of maternal-fetal medicine specialists in which 84% of respondents agreed that disparities impact practice, but only 29% agreed their own personal biases affect how they care for patients, she noted.

Tools are available to help individuals identify implicit bias, and training programs for health care providers can help, as well, she said. Implicit bias tests and training programs that help to identify and address bias and racism on individual and organizational levels are increasingly available through academic centers, health systems, and advocacy organizations.

Hope for solutions: Progress and promise

Like Dr. Crear-Perry, Dr. Louis sees hope for reducing disparities and improving maternal outcomes.

In another survey of SMFM members to identify the practice issues most important to them, racial disparities ranked in the top three.

“It says a lot that our [maternal-fetal medicine specialists] really see this as a problem and they want it fixed,” she said. “And I think it says that a lot of people need to work on this, not just us.”

Indeed, many are engaged in that work. Veronica Gillispie, MD, medical director of the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative and Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, has been instrumental in recent initiatives to improve maternal outcomes in Louisiana, and she too said she feels optimistic.

“I am hopeful and I do see signs of hope,” she said in an interview.

Teams that she works with and trains seem invested, institutions are increasingly implementing faculty training on racism and bias, and Oschner Health, where Dr. Gillispie practices as an ob.gyn., appointed its first chief diversity officer in February.

Medical students she works with are attuned to the issues of racism, bias, and disparities, and they show a desire to enact change, she said. “They already get it, and they are working to make it better.”

Dr. Crear-Perry also predicts practice-changing results from studies looking at the delivery of obstetrical care and the role of supportive care, and she pointed out another aspect of the COVID-19 crisis that provides an important lesson for health care providers who care for birthing people: the scarcity of personal protective equipment amid the pandemic.

“My friends who are ob.gyns., who are now not getting access to the things they need to stay safe to practice medicine and who are feeling very marginalized at this moment, feeling not valued – that’s how birthing people [of color] feel,” she said. “I’m hoping that builds a sense of empathy.

”I’m hoping at the end of this crisis, that those ob.gyns. will think of patients as allies in fighting for more access to health for everybody and for more resources to do their work,” Dr. Crear-Perry said. “We’re all in this together.”

sworcester@mdedge.com

The Navajo people have dealt with adversity that has tested our strength and resilience since our creation. In Navajo culture, the Holy People or gods challenged us with Naayee (monsters). We endured and learned from each Naayee, hunger, and death to name a few adversities. The COVID-19 pandemic, or “Big Cough” (Dikos Nitsaa’igii -19 in Navajo language) is a monster confronting the Navajo today. It has had significant impact on our nation and people.

The Navajo have the most cases of the COVID-19 virus of any tribe in the United States, and numbers as of May 31, 2020, are 5,348, with 246 confirmed deaths.¹ The Navajo Nation, which once lagged behind New York, has reported the largest per-capita infection rate in the United States.

These devastating numbers, which might be leveling off, are associated with Navajo people having higher-than-average numbers of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. This is compounded with 30%-40% of homes having no electricity or running water, and a poverty rate of about 38%.²

Geographical and cultural factors also contribute to the inability to gain a foothold in mitigating the number of cases. The Navajo Nation is the largest tribe in the United States, covering 27,000 square miles over an arid, red rock expanse with canyons and mountains. The population is over 250,000,³ and Navajo have traditionally lived in matrilineal clan units throughout the reservation, the size of West Virginia. The family traditional dwelling, called a “hogan,” often is clustered together. Multiple generations live together in these units. The COVID-19 virus inflicted many Navajo and rapidly spread to the elderly in these close-proximity living quarters.

Most Navajo live away from services and grocery stores and travel back and forth for food and water, which contributes to the virus rapidly being transmitted among the community members. Education aimed at curbing travel and spread of the virus was issued with curfews, commands to stay at home and keep social distance, and protect elders. The Navajo leadership and traditional medicine people, meanwhile, advised the people to follow their cultural values by caring for family and community members and providing a safe environment.
 

Resources are spread out

There are only 13 stores in this expansive reservation,⁴ so tribal members rely on traveling to border towns, such as Farmington and Gallup, N.M., Families usually travel to these towns on weekends to replenish food and supplies. There has been a cluster of cases in Gallup, N.M., so to reduce the numbers, the town shut itself off from outsiders – including the Navajo people coming to buy food, do laundry, and get water and feed for livestock. This has affected and stressed the Navajo further in attempting to access necessities.

Access to health care is already challenging because of lack of transportation and distance. This has made it more difficult to access COVID-19 testing and more challenging to get the results back. The Indian Health Service has been the designated health care system for the Navajo since 1955. The Treaty of Bosque Redondo, signed by the Navajo in 1868, included the provision of health care, as well as education in exchange for tracts of land, that included the Navajo homeland or Dinetah.⁵

The Indian Health Service provides care with hospitals and clinics throughout the reservation. Some of the IHS facilities have been taken over by the Navajo, so there are four Navajo tribally controlled hospitals, along with one private hospital. Coordination of care for a pandemic is, therefore, more challenging to coordinate. This contributes to problems with coordination of the health care, establishing alternate care sites, accessing personal protective equipment, and providing testing sites. The Navajo Nation Council is working hard to equitably distribute the $600 million from the CARES Act.⁶

Dealing with the pandemic is compromised by chronic underfunding from the U.S. government. The treaty obligation of the U.S. government is to provide health care to all federally recognized Native Americans. The IHS, which has been designated to provide that care for a tribal person, gets one-third the Medicare dollars for health care provided for a person in the general population.⁷ Health factors have led to the public health issues of poorly controlled diabetes, obesity, and coronary artery disease, which is related to this underfunding and the high rate of COVID-19 cases. Parts of the reservation are also exposed to high levels of pollution from oil and gas wells from the coal-fueled power plants. Those exposed to these high levels of pollutions have a higher than average number of cases of COVID-19, higher than in areas where the pollution is markedly lower.⁸

The Navajo are having to rely on the strength and resilience of traditional Navajo culture and philosophy to confront this monster, Dikos Nitsaa’igii’ 19. We have relied on Western medicine and its limited resources but now need to empower the strength from our traditional ways of knowing. We have used this knowledge in times of adversity for hundreds of years. The Navajo elders and medicine people have reminded us we have dealt with monsters and know how to endure hardship and be resilient. This helps to ameliorate mental health conditions, but there are still issues that remain challenging.

Those having the virus go through times of shortness of breath, which produces anxiety and panic. The risk of death adds further stress, and for a family-oriented culture, the need to isolate from family adds further stress. For the elderly and young people with more serious disease having to go to the hospital alone without family, often far from home, is so challenging. Connecting family by phone or social media with those stricken is essential to decrease anxiety and isolation. Those infected with the virus can learn breathing exercises, which can help the damage from the virus and decrease emotional activation and triggers. Specific breathing techniques can be taught by medical providers. An effective breathing technique to reduce anxiety is coherent breathing, which is done by inhaling 6 seconds and exhaling for 6 seconds without holding your breath. Behavioral health practitioners are available in the tribal and IHS mental health clinics to refer patients to therapy support to manage anxiety and are available by telemedicine. Many of these programs are offering social media informational sessions for the Navajo community. Navajo people often access traditional healing for protection prayers and ceremonies. Some of the tribal and IHS programs provide traditional counselors to talk to. The Navajo access healing that focuses on restoring balance to the body, mind, and spirit.

Taking action against the virus by social distancing, hand washing, and wearing masks can go a long way in reducing anxiety and fear about getting the virus. Resources to help the Navajo Nation are coming from all over the world, from as far as Ireland,⁹ Doctors Without Borders, ¹⁰ and University of San Francisco.¹¹

Two resources that provide relief on the reservation are the Navajo Relief Fund and United Natives.
 

References

1. Navaho Times. 2020 May 27.

2. Ingalls A et al. BMC Obes. 2019 May 6. doi: 10.1186/s40608-019-0233-9.

3. U.S. Census 2010, as reported by discovernavajo.com.

4. Gould C et al. “Addressing food insecurity on the Navajo reservation through sustainable greenhouses.” 2018 Aug.

5. Native Knowledge 360. Smithsonian Institution. “Bosque Redondo.”

6. Personal communication, Carl Roessel Slater, Navajo Nation Council delegate.

7. IHS Profile Fact Sheet.

8. Wu X et al. medRxiv. 2020 Apr 27.

9. Carroll R. ”Irish support for Native American COVID-19 relief highlights historic bond.” The Guardian. 2020 May 9.

10. Capatides C. “Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to the Navajo Nation” CBS News. 2020 May 11.

11. Weiler N. “UCSF sends second wave of health workers to Navajo Nation.” UCSF.edu. 2020 May 21.
 

Dr. Roessel is a Navajo board-certified psychiatrist practicing in Santa Fe, N.M., working with the local indigenous population. She has special expertise in cultural psychiatry; her childhood was spent growing up in the Navajo Nation with her grandfather, who was a Navajo medicine man. Her psychiatric practice focuses on integrating indigenous knowledge and principles. Dr. Roessel is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She has no disclosures.

The Navajo people have dealt with adversity that has tested our strength and resilience since our creation. In Navajo culture, the Holy People or gods challenged us with Naayee (monsters). We endured and learned from each Naayee, hunger, and death to name a few adversities. The COVID-19 pandemic, or “Big Cough” (Dikos Nitsaa’igii -19 in Navajo language) is a monster confronting the Navajo today. It has had significant impact on our nation and people.

The Navajo have the most cases of the COVID-19 virus of any tribe in the United States, and numbers as of May 31, 2020, are 5,348, with 246 confirmed deaths.¹ The Navajo Nation, which once lagged behind New York, has reported the largest per-capita infection rate in the United States.

These devastating numbers, which might be leveling off, are associated with Navajo people having higher-than-average numbers of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. This is compounded with 30%-40% of homes having no electricity or running water, and a poverty rate of about 38%.²

Geographical and cultural factors also contribute to the inability to gain a foothold in mitigating the number of cases. The Navajo Nation is the largest tribe in the United States, covering 27,000 square miles over an arid, red rock expanse with canyons and mountains. The population is over 250,000,³ and Navajo have traditionally lived in matrilineal clan units throughout the reservation, the size of West Virginia. The family traditional dwelling, called a “hogan,” often is clustered together. Multiple generations live together in these units. The COVID-19 virus inflicted many Navajo and rapidly spread to the elderly in these close-proximity living quarters.

Most Navajo live away from services and grocery stores and travel back and forth for food and water, which contributes to the virus rapidly being transmitted among the community members. Education aimed at curbing travel and spread of the virus was issued with curfews, commands to stay at home and keep social distance, and protect elders. The Navajo leadership and traditional medicine people, meanwhile, advised the people to follow their cultural values by caring for family and community members and providing a safe environment.
 

Resources are spread out

There are only 13 stores in this expansive reservation,⁴ so tribal members rely on traveling to border towns, such as Farmington and Gallup, N.M., Families usually travel to these towns on weekends to replenish food and supplies. There has been a cluster of cases in Gallup, N.M., so to reduce the numbers, the town shut itself off from outsiders – including the Navajo people coming to buy food, do laundry, and get water and feed for livestock. This has affected and stressed the Navajo further in attempting to access necessities.

Access to health care is already challenging because of lack of transportation and distance. This has made it more difficult to access COVID-19 testing and more challenging to get the results back. The Indian Health Service has been the designated health care system for the Navajo since 1955. The Treaty of Bosque Redondo, signed by the Navajo in 1868, included the provision of health care, as well as education in exchange for tracts of land, that included the Navajo homeland or Dinetah.⁵

The Indian Health Service provides care with hospitals and clinics throughout the reservation. Some of the IHS facilities have been taken over by the Navajo, so there are four Navajo tribally controlled hospitals, along with one private hospital. Coordination of care for a pandemic is, therefore, more challenging to coordinate. This contributes to problems with coordination of the health care, establishing alternate care sites, accessing personal protective equipment, and providing testing sites. The Navajo Nation Council is working hard to equitably distribute the $600 million from the CARES Act.⁶

Dealing with the pandemic is compromised by chronic underfunding from the U.S. government. The treaty obligation of the U.S. government is to provide health care to all federally recognized Native Americans. The IHS, which has been designated to provide that care for a tribal person, gets one-third the Medicare dollars for health care provided for a person in the general population.⁷ Health factors have led to the public health issues of poorly controlled diabetes, obesity, and coronary artery disease, which is related to this underfunding and the high rate of COVID-19 cases. Parts of the reservation are also exposed to high levels of pollution from oil and gas wells from the coal-fueled power plants. Those exposed to these high levels of pollutions have a higher than average number of cases of COVID-19, higher than in areas where the pollution is markedly lower.⁸

The Navajo are having to rely on the strength and resilience of traditional Navajo culture and philosophy to confront this monster, Dikos Nitsaa’igii’ 19. We have relied on Western medicine and its limited resources but now need to empower the strength from our traditional ways of knowing. We have used this knowledge in times of adversity for hundreds of years. The Navajo elders and medicine people have reminded us we have dealt with monsters and know how to endure hardship and be resilient. This helps to ameliorate mental health conditions, but there are still issues that remain challenging.

Those having the virus go through times of shortness of breath, which produces anxiety and panic. The risk of death adds further stress, and for a family-oriented culture, the need to isolate from family adds further stress. For the elderly and young people with more serious disease having to go to the hospital alone without family, often far from home, is so challenging. Connecting family by phone or social media with those stricken is essential to decrease anxiety and isolation. Those infected with the virus can learn breathing exercises, which can help the damage from the virus and decrease emotional activation and triggers. Specific breathing techniques can be taught by medical providers. An effective breathing technique to reduce anxiety is coherent breathing, which is done by inhaling 6 seconds and exhaling for 6 seconds without holding your breath. Behavioral health practitioners are available in the tribal and IHS mental health clinics to refer patients to therapy support to manage anxiety and are available by telemedicine. Many of these programs are offering social media informational sessions for the Navajo community. Navajo people often access traditional healing for protection prayers and ceremonies. Some of the tribal and IHS programs provide traditional counselors to talk to. The Navajo access healing that focuses on restoring balance to the body, mind, and spirit.

Taking action against the virus by social distancing, hand washing, and wearing masks can go a long way in reducing anxiety and fear about getting the virus. Resources to help the Navajo Nation are coming from all over the world, from as far as Ireland,⁹ Doctors Without Borders, ¹⁰ and University of San Francisco.¹¹

Two resources that provide relief on the reservation are the Navajo Relief Fund and United Natives.
 

References

1. Navaho Times. 2020 May 27.

2. Ingalls A et al. BMC Obes. 2019 May 6. doi: 10.1186/s40608-019-0233-9.

3. U.S. Census 2010, as reported by discovernavajo.com.

4. Gould C et al. “Addressing food insecurity on the Navajo reservation through sustainable greenhouses.” 2018 Aug.

5. Native Knowledge 360. Smithsonian Institution. “Bosque Redondo.”

6. Personal communication, Carl Roessel Slater, Navajo Nation Council delegate.

7. IHS Profile Fact Sheet.

8. Wu X et al. medRxiv. 2020 Apr 27.

9. Carroll R. ”Irish support for Native American COVID-19 relief highlights historic bond.” The Guardian. 2020 May 9.

10. Capatides C. “Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to the Navajo Nation” CBS News. 2020 May 11.

11. Weiler N. “UCSF sends second wave of health workers to Navajo Nation.” UCSF.edu. 2020 May 21.
 

Dr. Roessel is a Navajo board-certified psychiatrist practicing in Santa Fe, N.M., working with the local indigenous population. She has special expertise in cultural psychiatry; her childhood was spent growing up in the Navajo Nation with her grandfather, who was a Navajo medicine man. Her psychiatric practice focuses on integrating indigenous knowledge and principles. Dr. Roessel is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She has no disclosures.

The Navajo people have dealt with adversity that has tested our strength and resilience since our creation. In Navajo culture, the Holy People or gods challenged us with Naayee (monsters). We endured and learned from each Naayee, hunger, and death to name a few adversities. The COVID-19 pandemic, or “Big Cough” (Dikos Nitsaa’igii -19 in Navajo language) is a monster confronting the Navajo today. It has had significant impact on our nation and people.

The Navajo have the most cases of the COVID-19 virus of any tribe in the United States, and numbers as of May 31, 2020, are 5,348, with 246 confirmed deaths.¹ The Navajo Nation, which once lagged behind New York, has reported the largest per-capita infection rate in the United States.

These devastating numbers, which might be leveling off, are associated with Navajo people having higher-than-average numbers of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. This is compounded with 30%-40% of homes having no electricity or running water, and a poverty rate of about 38%.²

Geographical and cultural factors also contribute to the inability to gain a foothold in mitigating the number of cases. The Navajo Nation is the largest tribe in the United States, covering 27,000 square miles over an arid, red rock expanse with canyons and mountains. The population is over 250,000,³ and Navajo have traditionally lived in matrilineal clan units throughout the reservation, the size of West Virginia. The family traditional dwelling, called a “hogan,” often is clustered together. Multiple generations live together in these units. The COVID-19 virus inflicted many Navajo and rapidly spread to the elderly in these close-proximity living quarters.

Most Navajo live away from services and grocery stores and travel back and forth for food and water, which contributes to the virus rapidly being transmitted among the community members. Education aimed at curbing travel and spread of the virus was issued with curfews, commands to stay at home and keep social distance, and protect elders. The Navajo leadership and traditional medicine people, meanwhile, advised the people to follow their cultural values by caring for family and community members and providing a safe environment.
 

Resources are spread out

There are only 13 stores in this expansive reservation,⁴ so tribal members rely on traveling to border towns, such as Farmington and Gallup, N.M., Families usually travel to these towns on weekends to replenish food and supplies. There has been a cluster of cases in Gallup, N.M., so to reduce the numbers, the town shut itself off from outsiders – including the Navajo people coming to buy food, do laundry, and get water and feed for livestock. This has affected and stressed the Navajo further in attempting to access necessities.

Access to health care is already challenging because of lack of transportation and distance. This has made it more difficult to access COVID-19 testing and more challenging to get the results back. The Indian Health Service has been the designated health care system for the Navajo since 1955. The Treaty of Bosque Redondo, signed by the Navajo in 1868, included the provision of health care, as well as education in exchange for tracts of land, that included the Navajo homeland or Dinetah.⁵

The Indian Health Service provides care with hospitals and clinics throughout the reservation. Some of the IHS facilities have been taken over by the Navajo, so there are four Navajo tribally controlled hospitals, along with one private hospital. Coordination of care for a pandemic is, therefore, more challenging to coordinate. This contributes to problems with coordination of the health care, establishing alternate care sites, accessing personal protective equipment, and providing testing sites. The Navajo Nation Council is working hard to equitably distribute the $600 million from the CARES Act.⁶

Dealing with the pandemic is compromised by chronic underfunding from the U.S. government. The treaty obligation of the U.S. government is to provide health care to all federally recognized Native Americans. The IHS, which has been designated to provide that care for a tribal person, gets one-third the Medicare dollars for health care provided for a person in the general population.⁷ Health factors have led to the public health issues of poorly controlled diabetes, obesity, and coronary artery disease, which is related to this underfunding and the high rate of COVID-19 cases. Parts of the reservation are also exposed to high levels of pollution from oil and gas wells from the coal-fueled power plants. Those exposed to these high levels of pollutions have a higher than average number of cases of COVID-19, higher than in areas where the pollution is markedly lower.⁸

The Navajo are having to rely on the strength and resilience of traditional Navajo culture and philosophy to confront this monster, Dikos Nitsaa’igii’ 19. We have relied on Western medicine and its limited resources but now need to empower the strength from our traditional ways of knowing. We have used this knowledge in times of adversity for hundreds of years. The Navajo elders and medicine people have reminded us we have dealt with monsters and know how to endure hardship and be resilient. This helps to ameliorate mental health conditions, but there are still issues that remain challenging.

Those having the virus go through times of shortness of breath, which produces anxiety and panic. The risk of death adds further stress, and for a family-oriented culture, the need to isolate from family adds further stress. For the elderly and young people with more serious disease having to go to the hospital alone without family, often far from home, is so challenging. Connecting family by phone or social media with those stricken is essential to decrease anxiety and isolation. Those infected with the virus can learn breathing exercises, which can help the damage from the virus and decrease emotional activation and triggers. Specific breathing techniques can be taught by medical providers. An effective breathing technique to reduce anxiety is coherent breathing, which is done by inhaling 6 seconds and exhaling for 6 seconds without holding your breath. Behavioral health practitioners are available in the tribal and IHS mental health clinics to refer patients to therapy support to manage anxiety and are available by telemedicine. Many of these programs are offering social media informational sessions for the Navajo community. Navajo people often access traditional healing for protection prayers and ceremonies. Some of the tribal and IHS programs provide traditional counselors to talk to. The Navajo access healing that focuses on restoring balance to the body, mind, and spirit.

Taking action against the virus by social distancing, hand washing, and wearing masks can go a long way in reducing anxiety and fear about getting the virus. Resources to help the Navajo Nation are coming from all over the world, from as far as Ireland,⁹ Doctors Without Borders, ¹⁰ and University of San Francisco.¹¹

Two resources that provide relief on the reservation are the Navajo Relief Fund and United Natives.
 

References

1. Navaho Times. 2020 May 27.

2. Ingalls A et al. BMC Obes. 2019 May 6. doi: 10.1186/s40608-019-0233-9.

3. U.S. Census 2010, as reported by discovernavajo.com.

4. Gould C et al. “Addressing food insecurity on the Navajo reservation through sustainable greenhouses.” 2018 Aug.

5. Native Knowledge 360. Smithsonian Institution. “Bosque Redondo.”

6. Personal communication, Carl Roessel Slater, Navajo Nation Council delegate.

7. IHS Profile Fact Sheet.

8. Wu X et al. medRxiv. 2020 Apr 27.

9. Carroll R. ”Irish support for Native American COVID-19 relief highlights historic bond.” The Guardian. 2020 May 9.

10. Capatides C. “Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to the Navajo Nation” CBS News. 2020 May 11.

11. Weiler N. “UCSF sends second wave of health workers to Navajo Nation.” UCSF.edu. 2020 May 21.
 

Dr. Roessel is a Navajo board-certified psychiatrist practicing in Santa Fe, N.M., working with the local indigenous population. She has special expertise in cultural psychiatry; her childhood was spent growing up in the Navajo Nation with her grandfather, who was a Navajo medicine man. Her psychiatric practice focuses on integrating indigenous knowledge and principles. Dr. Roessel is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She has no disclosures.

Pamela Montano, MD, recalls the recent case of a patient with bipolar II disorder who was improving after treatment with medication and therapy when her life was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtesy Dr. Pamela Montano

The patient, who is Puerto Rican, lost two cousins to the virus, two of her brothers fell ill, and her sister became sick with coronavirus, said Dr. Montano, director of the Latino Bicultural Clinic at Gouverneur Health in New York. The patient was then left to care for her sister’s toddlers along with the patient’s own children, one of whom has special needs.

“After this happened, it increased her anxiety,” Dr. Montano said in an interview. “She’s not sleeping, and she started having panic attacks. My main concern was how to help her cope.”

Across the country, clinicians who treat mental illness and behavioral disorders in Latino patients are facing similar experiences and challenges associated with COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic response. Current data suggest a disproportionate burden of illness and death from the novel coronavirus among racial and ethnic groups, particularly black and Hispanic patients. The disparities are likely attributable to economic and social conditions more common among such populations, compared with non-Hispanic whites, in addition to isolation from resources, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A recent New York City Department of Health study based on data that were available in late April found that deaths from COVID-19 were substantially higher for black and Hispanic/Latino patients than for white and Asian patients. The death rate per 100,000 population was 209.4 for blacks, 195.3 for Hispanics/Latinos, 107.7 for whites, and 90.8 for Asians.

“The COVID pandemic has highlighted the structural inequities that affect the Latino population [both] immigrant and nonimmigrant,” said Dr. Montano, a board member of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry and the officer of infrastructure and advocacy for the Hispanic Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association. “This includes income inequality, poor nutrition, history of trauma and discrimination, employment issues, quality education, access to technology, and overall access to appropriate cultural linguistic health care.”
 

Navigating challenges

For mental health professionals treating Latino patients, COVID-19 and the pandemic response have generated a range of treatment obstacles.

The transition to telehealth for example, has not been easy for some patients, said Jacqueline Posada, MD, consultation-liaison psychiatry fellow at the Inova Fairfax Hospital–George Washington University program in Falls Church, Va., and an APA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration minority fellow. Some patients lack Internet services, others forget virtual visits, and some do not have working phones, she said.

“I’ve had to be very flexible,” she said in an interview. “Ideally, I’d love to see everybody via video chat, but a lot of people either don’t have a stable Internet connection or Internet, so I meet the patient where they are. Whatever they have available, that’s what I’m going to use. If they don’t answer on the first call, I will call again at least three to five times in the first 15 minutes to make sure I’m giving them an opportunity to pick up the phone.”

In addition, Dr. Posada has encountered disconnected phones when calling patients for appointments. In such cases, Dr. Posada contacts the patient’s primary care physician to relay medication recommendations in case the patient resurfaces at the clinic.

In other instances, patients are not familiar with video technology, or they must travel to a friend or neighbor’s house to access the technology, said Hector Colón-Rivera, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and medical director of the Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha Behavioral Health Program, a nonprofit organization based in the Philadelphia area. Telehealth visits frequently include appearances by children, family members, barking dogs, and other distractions, said Dr. Colón-Rivera, president of the APA Hispanic Caucus.

“We’re seeing things that we didn’t used to see when they came to our office – for good or for bad,” said Dr. Colón-Rivera, an attending telemedicine physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “It could be a good chance to meet our patient in a different way. Of course, it creates different stressors. If you have five kids on top of you and you’re the only one at home, it’s hard to do therapy.”

Psychiatrists are also seeing prior health conditions in patients exacerbated by COVID-19 fears and new health problems arising from the current pandemic environment. Dr. Posada recalls a patient whom she successfully treated for premenstrual dysphoric disorder who recently descended into severe clinical depression. The patient, from Colombia, was attending school in the United States on a student visa and supporting herself through child care jobs.

“So much of her depression was based on her social circumstance,” Dr. Posada said. “She had lost her job, her sister had lost her job so they were scraping by on her sister’s husband’s income, and the thing that brought her joy, which was going to school and studying so she could make a different life for herself than what her parents had in Colombia, also seemed like it was out of reach.”

Dr. Colón-Rivera recently received a call from a hospital where one of his patients was admitted after becoming delusional and psychotic. The patient was correctly taking medication prescribed by Dr. Colón-Rivera, but her diabetes had become uncontrolled because she was unable to reach her primary care doctor and couldn’t access the pharmacy. Her blood sugar level became elevated, leading to the delusions.

“A patient that was perfectly stable now is unstable,” he said. “Her diet has not been good enough through the pandemic, exacerbating her diabetes. She was admitted to the hospital for delirium. Patients are suffering from changes in their daily structure affecting not only their mental health, but their health in general.”

Compounding of traumas

For many Latino patients, the adverse impacts of the pandemic comes on top of multiple prior traumas, such as violence exposures, discrimination, and economic issues, said Lisa Fortuna, MD, MPH, MDiv, chief of psychiatry and vice chair at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. A 2017 analysis found that nearly four in five Latino youth face at least one traumatic childhood experience, like poverty or abuse, and that about 29% of Latino youth experience four or more of these traumas.

Immigrants in particular, may have faced trauma in their home country and/or immigration trauma, Dr. Fortuna added. A 2013 study on immigrant Latino adolescents for example, found that 29% of foreign-born adolescents and 34% of foreign-born parents experienced trauma during the migration process (Int Migr Rev. 2013 Dec;47(4):10).

“All of these things are cumulative,” Dr. Fortuna said. “Then when you’re hit with a pandemic, all of the disparities that you already have and all the stress that you already have are compounded. This is for the kids, too, who have been exposed to a lot of stressors and now maybe have family members that have been ill or have died. All of these things definitely put people at risk for increased depression [and] the worsening of any preexisting posttraumatic stress disorder. We’ve seen this in previous disasters, and I expect that’s what we’re going to see more of with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At the same time, a central cultural value of many Latinos is family unity, Dr. Montano said, a foundation that is now being strained by social distancing and severed connections.

“This has separated many families,” she said. “There has been a lot of loneliness and grief.”

Mistrust and fear toward the government, public agencies, and even the health system itself act as further hurdles for some Latinos in the face of COVID-19. In areas with large immigrant populations such as San Francisco, Dr. Fortuna noted, it’s not uncommon for undocumented patients to avoid accessing medical care and social services, or visiting emergency departments for needed care for fear of drawing attention to themselves or possible detainment.

“The fact that so many people showed up at our hospital so ill and ended up in the ICU – that could be a combination of factors. Because the population has high rates of diabetes and hypertension, that might have put people at increased risk for severe illness,” she said. “But some people may have been holding out for care because they wanted to avoid being in places out of fear of immigration scrutiny.”
 

Overcoming language barriers

Compounding the challenging pandemic landscape for Latino patients is the fact that many state resources about COVID-19 have not been translated to Spanish, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. He was troubled recently when he went to several state websites and found limited to no information in Spanish about the coronavirus. Some data about COVID-19 from the federal government were not translated to Spanish until officials received pushback, he added. Even now, press releases and other information disseminated by the federal government about the virus appear to be translated by an automated service – and lack sense and context.

The state agencies in Pennsylvania have been alerted to the absence of Spanish information, but change has been slow, he noted.

“In Philadelphia, 23% speaks a language other than English,” he said. “So we missed a lot of critical information that could have helped to avoid spreading the illness and access support.”

Dr. Fortuna said that California has done better with providing COVID-19–related information in Spanish, compared with some other states, but misinformation about the virus and lingering myths have still been a problem among the Latino community. The University of California, San Francisco, recently launched a Latino Task Force resource website for the Latino community that includes information in English, Spanish, and Yucatec Maya about COVID-19, health and wellness tips, and resources for various assistance needs.

The concerning lack of COVID-19 information translated to Spanish led Dr. Montano to start a Facebook page in Spanish about mental health tips and guidance for managing COVID-19–related issues. She and her team of clinicians share information, videos, relaxation exercises, and community resources on the page, among other posts. “There is also general info and recommendations about COVID-19 that I think can be useful for the community,” she said. “The idea is that patients, the general community, and providers can have share information, hope messages, and ask questions in Spanish.”

Feeling ‘helpless’

A central part of caring for Latino patients during the COVID-19 crisis has been referring them to outside agencies and social services, psychiatrists say. But finding the right resources amid a pandemic and ensuring that patients connect with the correct aid has been an uphill battle.

“We sometimes feel like our hands are tied,” Dr. Colón-Rivera said. “Sometimes, we need to call a place to bring food. Some of the state agencies and nonprofits don’t have delivery systems, so the patient has to go pick up for food or medication. Some of our patients don’t want to go outside. Some do not have cars.”

As a clinician, it can be easy to feel helpless when trying to navigate new challenges posed by the pandemic in addition to other longstanding barriers, Dr. Posada said.

“Already, mental health disorders are so influenced by social situations like poverty, job insecurity, or family issues, and now it just seems those obstacles are even more insurmountable,” she said. “At the end of the day, I can feel like: ‘Did I make a difference?’ That’s a big struggle.”

Dr. Montano’s team, which includes psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, have come to rely on virtual debriefings to vent, express frustrations, and support one another, she said. She also recently joined a virtual mind-body skills group as a participant.

“I recognize the importance of getting additional support and ways to alleviate burnout,” she said. “We need to take care of ourselves or we won’t be able to help others.”

Focusing on resilience during the current crisis can be beneficial for both patients and providers in coping and drawing strength, Dr. Posada said.

“When it comes to fostering resilience during times of hardship, I think it’s most helpful to reflect on what skills or attributes have helped during past crises and apply those now – whether it’s turning to comfort from close relationships, looking to religion and spirituality, practicing self-care like rest or exercise, or really tapping into one’s purpose and reason for practicing psychiatry and being a physician,” she said. “The same advice goes for clinicians: We’ve all been through hard times in the past, it’s part of the human condition and we’ve also witnessed a lot of suffering in our patients, so now is the time to practice those skills that have gotten us through hard times in the past.”
 

Learning lessons from COVID-19

Despite the challenges with moving to telehealth, Dr. Fortuna said the tool has proved beneficial overall for mental health care. For Dr. Fortuna’s team for example, telehealth by phone has decreased the no-show rate, compared with clinic visits, and improved care access.

“We need to figure out how to maintain that,” she said. “If we can build ways for equity and access to Internet, especially equipment, I think that’s going to help.”

In addition, more data are needed about the ways in which COVID-19 is affecting Latino patients, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. Mortality statistics have been published, but information is needed about the rates of infection and manifestation of illness.

Most importantly, the COVID-19 crisis has emphasized the critical need to address and improve the underlying inequity issues among Latino patients, psychiatrists say.

“We really need to think about how there can be partnerships, in terms of community-based Latino business and leaders, multisector resources, trying to think about how we can improve conditions both work and safety for Latinos,” Dr. Fortuna said. “How can schools get support in integrating mental health and support for families, especially now after COVID-19? And really looking at some of these underlying inequities that are the underpinnings of why people were at risk for the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

agallegos@mdedge.com

Pamela Montano, MD, recalls the recent case of a patient with bipolar II disorder who was improving after treatment with medication and therapy when her life was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtesy Dr. Pamela Montano

The patient, who is Puerto Rican, lost two cousins to the virus, two of her brothers fell ill, and her sister became sick with coronavirus, said Dr. Montano, director of the Latino Bicultural Clinic at Gouverneur Health in New York. The patient was then left to care for her sister’s toddlers along with the patient’s own children, one of whom has special needs.

“After this happened, it increased her anxiety,” Dr. Montano said in an interview. “She’s not sleeping, and she started having panic attacks. My main concern was how to help her cope.”

Across the country, clinicians who treat mental illness and behavioral disorders in Latino patients are facing similar experiences and challenges associated with COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic response. Current data suggest a disproportionate burden of illness and death from the novel coronavirus among racial and ethnic groups, particularly black and Hispanic patients. The disparities are likely attributable to economic and social conditions more common among such populations, compared with non-Hispanic whites, in addition to isolation from resources, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A recent New York City Department of Health study based on data that were available in late April found that deaths from COVID-19 were substantially higher for black and Hispanic/Latino patients than for white and Asian patients. The death rate per 100,000 population was 209.4 for blacks, 195.3 for Hispanics/Latinos, 107.7 for whites, and 90.8 for Asians.

“The COVID pandemic has highlighted the structural inequities that affect the Latino population [both] immigrant and nonimmigrant,” said Dr. Montano, a board member of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry and the officer of infrastructure and advocacy for the Hispanic Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association. “This includes income inequality, poor nutrition, history of trauma and discrimination, employment issues, quality education, access to technology, and overall access to appropriate cultural linguistic health care.”
 

Navigating challenges

For mental health professionals treating Latino patients, COVID-19 and the pandemic response have generated a range of treatment obstacles.

The transition to telehealth for example, has not been easy for some patients, said Jacqueline Posada, MD, consultation-liaison psychiatry fellow at the Inova Fairfax Hospital–George Washington University program in Falls Church, Va., and an APA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration minority fellow. Some patients lack Internet services, others forget virtual visits, and some do not have working phones, she said.

“I’ve had to be very flexible,” she said in an interview. “Ideally, I’d love to see everybody via video chat, but a lot of people either don’t have a stable Internet connection or Internet, so I meet the patient where they are. Whatever they have available, that’s what I’m going to use. If they don’t answer on the first call, I will call again at least three to five times in the first 15 minutes to make sure I’m giving them an opportunity to pick up the phone.”

In addition, Dr. Posada has encountered disconnected phones when calling patients for appointments. In such cases, Dr. Posada contacts the patient’s primary care physician to relay medication recommendations in case the patient resurfaces at the clinic.

In other instances, patients are not familiar with video technology, or they must travel to a friend or neighbor’s house to access the technology, said Hector Colón-Rivera, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and medical director of the Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha Behavioral Health Program, a nonprofit organization based in the Philadelphia area. Telehealth visits frequently include appearances by children, family members, barking dogs, and other distractions, said Dr. Colón-Rivera, president of the APA Hispanic Caucus.

“We’re seeing things that we didn’t used to see when they came to our office – for good or for bad,” said Dr. Colón-Rivera, an attending telemedicine physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “It could be a good chance to meet our patient in a different way. Of course, it creates different stressors. If you have five kids on top of you and you’re the only one at home, it’s hard to do therapy.”

Psychiatrists are also seeing prior health conditions in patients exacerbated by COVID-19 fears and new health problems arising from the current pandemic environment. Dr. Posada recalls a patient whom she successfully treated for premenstrual dysphoric disorder who recently descended into severe clinical depression. The patient, from Colombia, was attending school in the United States on a student visa and supporting herself through child care jobs.

“So much of her depression was based on her social circumstance,” Dr. Posada said. “She had lost her job, her sister had lost her job so they were scraping by on her sister’s husband’s income, and the thing that brought her joy, which was going to school and studying so she could make a different life for herself than what her parents had in Colombia, also seemed like it was out of reach.”

Dr. Colón-Rivera recently received a call from a hospital where one of his patients was admitted after becoming delusional and psychotic. The patient was correctly taking medication prescribed by Dr. Colón-Rivera, but her diabetes had become uncontrolled because she was unable to reach her primary care doctor and couldn’t access the pharmacy. Her blood sugar level became elevated, leading to the delusions.

“A patient that was perfectly stable now is unstable,” he said. “Her diet has not been good enough through the pandemic, exacerbating her diabetes. She was admitted to the hospital for delirium. Patients are suffering from changes in their daily structure affecting not only their mental health, but their health in general.”

Compounding of traumas

For many Latino patients, the adverse impacts of the pandemic comes on top of multiple prior traumas, such as violence exposures, discrimination, and economic issues, said Lisa Fortuna, MD, MPH, MDiv, chief of psychiatry and vice chair at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. A 2017 analysis found that nearly four in five Latino youth face at least one traumatic childhood experience, like poverty or abuse, and that about 29% of Latino youth experience four or more of these traumas.

Immigrants in particular, may have faced trauma in their home country and/or immigration trauma, Dr. Fortuna added. A 2013 study on immigrant Latino adolescents for example, found that 29% of foreign-born adolescents and 34% of foreign-born parents experienced trauma during the migration process (Int Migr Rev. 2013 Dec;47(4):10).

“All of these things are cumulative,” Dr. Fortuna said. “Then when you’re hit with a pandemic, all of the disparities that you already have and all the stress that you already have are compounded. This is for the kids, too, who have been exposed to a lot of stressors and now maybe have family members that have been ill or have died. All of these things definitely put people at risk for increased depression [and] the worsening of any preexisting posttraumatic stress disorder. We’ve seen this in previous disasters, and I expect that’s what we’re going to see more of with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At the same time, a central cultural value of many Latinos is family unity, Dr. Montano said, a foundation that is now being strained by social distancing and severed connections.

“This has separated many families,” she said. “There has been a lot of loneliness and grief.”

Mistrust and fear toward the government, public agencies, and even the health system itself act as further hurdles for some Latinos in the face of COVID-19. In areas with large immigrant populations such as San Francisco, Dr. Fortuna noted, it’s not uncommon for undocumented patients to avoid accessing medical care and social services, or visiting emergency departments for needed care for fear of drawing attention to themselves or possible detainment.

“The fact that so many people showed up at our hospital so ill and ended up in the ICU – that could be a combination of factors. Because the population has high rates of diabetes and hypertension, that might have put people at increased risk for severe illness,” she said. “But some people may have been holding out for care because they wanted to avoid being in places out of fear of immigration scrutiny.”
 

Overcoming language barriers

Compounding the challenging pandemic landscape for Latino patients is the fact that many state resources about COVID-19 have not been translated to Spanish, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. He was troubled recently when he went to several state websites and found limited to no information in Spanish about the coronavirus. Some data about COVID-19 from the federal government were not translated to Spanish until officials received pushback, he added. Even now, press releases and other information disseminated by the federal government about the virus appear to be translated by an automated service – and lack sense and context.

The state agencies in Pennsylvania have been alerted to the absence of Spanish information, but change has been slow, he noted.

“In Philadelphia, 23% speaks a language other than English,” he said. “So we missed a lot of critical information that could have helped to avoid spreading the illness and access support.”

Dr. Fortuna said that California has done better with providing COVID-19–related information in Spanish, compared with some other states, but misinformation about the virus and lingering myths have still been a problem among the Latino community. The University of California, San Francisco, recently launched a Latino Task Force resource website for the Latino community that includes information in English, Spanish, and Yucatec Maya about COVID-19, health and wellness tips, and resources for various assistance needs.

The concerning lack of COVID-19 information translated to Spanish led Dr. Montano to start a Facebook page in Spanish about mental health tips and guidance for managing COVID-19–related issues. She and her team of clinicians share information, videos, relaxation exercises, and community resources on the page, among other posts. “There is also general info and recommendations about COVID-19 that I think can be useful for the community,” she said. “The idea is that patients, the general community, and providers can have share information, hope messages, and ask questions in Spanish.”

Feeling ‘helpless’

A central part of caring for Latino patients during the COVID-19 crisis has been referring them to outside agencies and social services, psychiatrists say. But finding the right resources amid a pandemic and ensuring that patients connect with the correct aid has been an uphill battle.

“We sometimes feel like our hands are tied,” Dr. Colón-Rivera said. “Sometimes, we need to call a place to bring food. Some of the state agencies and nonprofits don’t have delivery systems, so the patient has to go pick up for food or medication. Some of our patients don’t want to go outside. Some do not have cars.”

As a clinician, it can be easy to feel helpless when trying to navigate new challenges posed by the pandemic in addition to other longstanding barriers, Dr. Posada said.

“Already, mental health disorders are so influenced by social situations like poverty, job insecurity, or family issues, and now it just seems those obstacles are even more insurmountable,” she said. “At the end of the day, I can feel like: ‘Did I make a difference?’ That’s a big struggle.”

Dr. Montano’s team, which includes psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, have come to rely on virtual debriefings to vent, express frustrations, and support one another, she said. She also recently joined a virtual mind-body skills group as a participant.

“I recognize the importance of getting additional support and ways to alleviate burnout,” she said. “We need to take care of ourselves or we won’t be able to help others.”

Focusing on resilience during the current crisis can be beneficial for both patients and providers in coping and drawing strength, Dr. Posada said.

“When it comes to fostering resilience during times of hardship, I think it’s most helpful to reflect on what skills or attributes have helped during past crises and apply those now – whether it’s turning to comfort from close relationships, looking to religion and spirituality, practicing self-care like rest or exercise, or really tapping into one’s purpose and reason for practicing psychiatry and being a physician,” she said. “The same advice goes for clinicians: We’ve all been through hard times in the past, it’s part of the human condition and we’ve also witnessed a lot of suffering in our patients, so now is the time to practice those skills that have gotten us through hard times in the past.”
 

Learning lessons from COVID-19

Despite the challenges with moving to telehealth, Dr. Fortuna said the tool has proved beneficial overall for mental health care. For Dr. Fortuna’s team for example, telehealth by phone has decreased the no-show rate, compared with clinic visits, and improved care access.

“We need to figure out how to maintain that,” she said. “If we can build ways for equity and access to Internet, especially equipment, I think that’s going to help.”

In addition, more data are needed about the ways in which COVID-19 is affecting Latino patients, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. Mortality statistics have been published, but information is needed about the rates of infection and manifestation of illness.

Most importantly, the COVID-19 crisis has emphasized the critical need to address and improve the underlying inequity issues among Latino patients, psychiatrists say.

“We really need to think about how there can be partnerships, in terms of community-based Latino business and leaders, multisector resources, trying to think about how we can improve conditions both work and safety for Latinos,” Dr. Fortuna said. “How can schools get support in integrating mental health and support for families, especially now after COVID-19? And really looking at some of these underlying inequities that are the underpinnings of why people were at risk for the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

agallegos@mdedge.com

Pamela Montano, MD, recalls the recent case of a patient with bipolar II disorder who was improving after treatment with medication and therapy when her life was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtesy Dr. Pamela Montano

The patient, who is Puerto Rican, lost two cousins to the virus, two of her brothers fell ill, and her sister became sick with coronavirus, said Dr. Montano, director of the Latino Bicultural Clinic at Gouverneur Health in New York. The patient was then left to care for her sister’s toddlers along with the patient’s own children, one of whom has special needs.

“After this happened, it increased her anxiety,” Dr. Montano said in an interview. “She’s not sleeping, and she started having panic attacks. My main concern was how to help her cope.”

Across the country, clinicians who treat mental illness and behavioral disorders in Latino patients are facing similar experiences and challenges associated with COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic response. Current data suggest a disproportionate burden of illness and death from the novel coronavirus among racial and ethnic groups, particularly black and Hispanic patients. The disparities are likely attributable to economic and social conditions more common among such populations, compared with non-Hispanic whites, in addition to isolation from resources, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A recent New York City Department of Health study based on data that were available in late April found that deaths from COVID-19 were substantially higher for black and Hispanic/Latino patients than for white and Asian patients. The death rate per 100,000 population was 209.4 for blacks, 195.3 for Hispanics/Latinos, 107.7 for whites, and 90.8 for Asians.

“The COVID pandemic has highlighted the structural inequities that affect the Latino population [both] immigrant and nonimmigrant,” said Dr. Montano, a board member of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry and the officer of infrastructure and advocacy for the Hispanic Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association. “This includes income inequality, poor nutrition, history of trauma and discrimination, employment issues, quality education, access to technology, and overall access to appropriate cultural linguistic health care.”
 

Navigating challenges

For mental health professionals treating Latino patients, COVID-19 and the pandemic response have generated a range of treatment obstacles.

The transition to telehealth for example, has not been easy for some patients, said Jacqueline Posada, MD, consultation-liaison psychiatry fellow at the Inova Fairfax Hospital–George Washington University program in Falls Church, Va., and an APA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration minority fellow. Some patients lack Internet services, others forget virtual visits, and some do not have working phones, she said.

“I’ve had to be very flexible,” she said in an interview. “Ideally, I’d love to see everybody via video chat, but a lot of people either don’t have a stable Internet connection or Internet, so I meet the patient where they are. Whatever they have available, that’s what I’m going to use. If they don’t answer on the first call, I will call again at least three to five times in the first 15 minutes to make sure I’m giving them an opportunity to pick up the phone.”

In addition, Dr. Posada has encountered disconnected phones when calling patients for appointments. In such cases, Dr. Posada contacts the patient’s primary care physician to relay medication recommendations in case the patient resurfaces at the clinic.

In other instances, patients are not familiar with video technology, or they must travel to a friend or neighbor’s house to access the technology, said Hector Colón-Rivera, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and medical director of the Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha Behavioral Health Program, a nonprofit organization based in the Philadelphia area. Telehealth visits frequently include appearances by children, family members, barking dogs, and other distractions, said Dr. Colón-Rivera, president of the APA Hispanic Caucus.

“We’re seeing things that we didn’t used to see when they came to our office – for good or for bad,” said Dr. Colón-Rivera, an attending telemedicine physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “It could be a good chance to meet our patient in a different way. Of course, it creates different stressors. If you have five kids on top of you and you’re the only one at home, it’s hard to do therapy.”

Psychiatrists are also seeing prior health conditions in patients exacerbated by COVID-19 fears and new health problems arising from the current pandemic environment. Dr. Posada recalls a patient whom she successfully treated for premenstrual dysphoric disorder who recently descended into severe clinical depression. The patient, from Colombia, was attending school in the United States on a student visa and supporting herself through child care jobs.

“So much of her depression was based on her social circumstance,” Dr. Posada said. “She had lost her job, her sister had lost her job so they were scraping by on her sister’s husband’s income, and the thing that brought her joy, which was going to school and studying so she could make a different life for herself than what her parents had in Colombia, also seemed like it was out of reach.”

Dr. Colón-Rivera recently received a call from a hospital where one of his patients was admitted after becoming delusional and psychotic. The patient was correctly taking medication prescribed by Dr. Colón-Rivera, but her diabetes had become uncontrolled because she was unable to reach her primary care doctor and couldn’t access the pharmacy. Her blood sugar level became elevated, leading to the delusions.

“A patient that was perfectly stable now is unstable,” he said. “Her diet has not been good enough through the pandemic, exacerbating her diabetes. She was admitted to the hospital for delirium. Patients are suffering from changes in their daily structure affecting not only their mental health, but their health in general.”

Compounding of traumas

For many Latino patients, the adverse impacts of the pandemic comes on top of multiple prior traumas, such as violence exposures, discrimination, and economic issues, said Lisa Fortuna, MD, MPH, MDiv, chief of psychiatry and vice chair at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. A 2017 analysis found that nearly four in five Latino youth face at least one traumatic childhood experience, like poverty or abuse, and that about 29% of Latino youth experience four or more of these traumas.

Immigrants in particular, may have faced trauma in their home country and/or immigration trauma, Dr. Fortuna added. A 2013 study on immigrant Latino adolescents for example, found that 29% of foreign-born adolescents and 34% of foreign-born parents experienced trauma during the migration process (Int Migr Rev. 2013 Dec;47(4):10).

“All of these things are cumulative,” Dr. Fortuna said. “Then when you’re hit with a pandemic, all of the disparities that you already have and all the stress that you already have are compounded. This is for the kids, too, who have been exposed to a lot of stressors and now maybe have family members that have been ill or have died. All of these things definitely put people at risk for increased depression [and] the worsening of any preexisting posttraumatic stress disorder. We’ve seen this in previous disasters, and I expect that’s what we’re going to see more of with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At the same time, a central cultural value of many Latinos is family unity, Dr. Montano said, a foundation that is now being strained by social distancing and severed connections.

“This has separated many families,” she said. “There has been a lot of loneliness and grief.”

Mistrust and fear toward the government, public agencies, and even the health system itself act as further hurdles for some Latinos in the face of COVID-19. In areas with large immigrant populations such as San Francisco, Dr. Fortuna noted, it’s not uncommon for undocumented patients to avoid accessing medical care and social services, or visiting emergency departments for needed care for fear of drawing attention to themselves or possible detainment.

“The fact that so many people showed up at our hospital so ill and ended up in the ICU – that could be a combination of factors. Because the population has high rates of diabetes and hypertension, that might have put people at increased risk for severe illness,” she said. “But some people may have been holding out for care because they wanted to avoid being in places out of fear of immigration scrutiny.”
 

Overcoming language barriers

Compounding the challenging pandemic landscape for Latino patients is the fact that many state resources about COVID-19 have not been translated to Spanish, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. He was troubled recently when he went to several state websites and found limited to no information in Spanish about the coronavirus. Some data about COVID-19 from the federal government were not translated to Spanish until officials received pushback, he added. Even now, press releases and other information disseminated by the federal government about the virus appear to be translated by an automated service – and lack sense and context.

The state agencies in Pennsylvania have been alerted to the absence of Spanish information, but change has been slow, he noted.

“In Philadelphia, 23% speaks a language other than English,” he said. “So we missed a lot of critical information that could have helped to avoid spreading the illness and access support.”

Dr. Fortuna said that California has done better with providing COVID-19–related information in Spanish, compared with some other states, but misinformation about the virus and lingering myths have still been a problem among the Latino community. The University of California, San Francisco, recently launched a Latino Task Force resource website for the Latino community that includes information in English, Spanish, and Yucatec Maya about COVID-19, health and wellness tips, and resources for various assistance needs.

The concerning lack of COVID-19 information translated to Spanish led Dr. Montano to start a Facebook page in Spanish about mental health tips and guidance for managing COVID-19–related issues. She and her team of clinicians share information, videos, relaxation exercises, and community resources on the page, among other posts. “There is also general info and recommendations about COVID-19 that I think can be useful for the community,” she said. “The idea is that patients, the general community, and providers can have share information, hope messages, and ask questions in Spanish.”

Feeling ‘helpless’

A central part of caring for Latino patients during the COVID-19 crisis has been referring them to outside agencies and social services, psychiatrists say. But finding the right resources amid a pandemic and ensuring that patients connect with the correct aid has been an uphill battle.

“We sometimes feel like our hands are tied,” Dr. Colón-Rivera said. “Sometimes, we need to call a place to bring food. Some of the state agencies and nonprofits don’t have delivery systems, so the patient has to go pick up for food or medication. Some of our patients don’t want to go outside. Some do not have cars.”

As a clinician, it can be easy to feel helpless when trying to navigate new challenges posed by the pandemic in addition to other longstanding barriers, Dr. Posada said.

“Already, mental health disorders are so influenced by social situations like poverty, job insecurity, or family issues, and now it just seems those obstacles are even more insurmountable,” she said. “At the end of the day, I can feel like: ‘Did I make a difference?’ That’s a big struggle.”

Dr. Montano’s team, which includes psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, have come to rely on virtual debriefings to vent, express frustrations, and support one another, she said. She also recently joined a virtual mind-body skills group as a participant.

“I recognize the importance of getting additional support and ways to alleviate burnout,” she said. “We need to take care of ourselves or we won’t be able to help others.”

Focusing on resilience during the current crisis can be beneficial for both patients and providers in coping and drawing strength, Dr. Posada said.

“When it comes to fostering resilience during times of hardship, I think it’s most helpful to reflect on what skills or attributes have helped during past crises and apply those now – whether it’s turning to comfort from close relationships, looking to religion and spirituality, practicing self-care like rest or exercise, or really tapping into one’s purpose and reason for practicing psychiatry and being a physician,” she said. “The same advice goes for clinicians: We’ve all been through hard times in the past, it’s part of the human condition and we’ve also witnessed a lot of suffering in our patients, so now is the time to practice those skills that have gotten us through hard times in the past.”
 

Learning lessons from COVID-19

Despite the challenges with moving to telehealth, Dr. Fortuna said the tool has proved beneficial overall for mental health care. For Dr. Fortuna’s team for example, telehealth by phone has decreased the no-show rate, compared with clinic visits, and improved care access.

“We need to figure out how to maintain that,” she said. “If we can build ways for equity and access to Internet, especially equipment, I think that’s going to help.”

In addition, more data are needed about the ways in which COVID-19 is affecting Latino patients, Dr. Colón-Rivera said. Mortality statistics have been published, but information is needed about the rates of infection and manifestation of illness.

Most importantly, the COVID-19 crisis has emphasized the critical need to address and improve the underlying inequity issues among Latino patients, psychiatrists say.

“We really need to think about how there can be partnerships, in terms of community-based Latino business and leaders, multisector resources, trying to think about how we can improve conditions both work and safety for Latinos,” Dr. Fortuna said. “How can schools get support in integrating mental health and support for families, especially now after COVID-19? And really looking at some of these underlying inequities that are the underpinnings of why people were at risk for the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

agallegos@mdedge.com

To the Editor:

Ongoing concern about the high costs of dermatology residency interviews has led to several cost-saving proposals, as presented by Hussain¹ in the Cutis article, “Reducing the Cost of Dermatology Residency Applications: An Applicant’s Perspective.” Additional strategies to reduce applicant costs include eliminating travel costs through video or telephone interviews, interviewing students who are visiting during their away rotation, and developing and implementing a mechanism to exempt students from participating in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP).² A potential mechanism for the latter suggestion could be a binding early decision program for dermatology residency. Binding early decision has been successfully employed by medical schools for many years.³ Under this model for dermatology residency, applicants may apply to 1 dermatology residency program by the early deadline and the program would have the option of accepting as many of the early-decision applicants as the number of residency positions in their program permits, allowing nonadmitted and nonparticipating applicants time to apply through the usual ERAS/NRMP cycle. There are several potential advantages to this model that would decrease the number of applicants applying to all the available dermatology residency programs each cycle.

First, because applicants would be limited to 1 application to participate in the early decision program, they must realistically consider the strength of their application and weigh their chances for acceptance to that program. Programs could facilitate the process by becoming more transparent about the type of applicants that have previously matched in their program.² If an early-decision applicant successfully matches, that applicant would be prohibited from applying to additional dermatology residency programs through ERAS and NRMP during that application cycle.

Second, early-decision actions by programs—probably by August 1, a time when most third-year medical students have completed their academic year—would be determined before ERAS releases applications to residency programs. This timeline would remove successful applicants in the early decision program from going to additional interviews and incurring the associated travel costs.

Third, early decision could be potentially beneficial to applicants who are tied to a specific geographic region for training and to programs with specific program needs, such as expertise in specific areas of dermatology research or areas of clinical need (eg, adding a dermatopathologist, plastic surgeon, internist, or a pediatrician to the residency program who now wants dermatology training) or other program needs.

Fourth, application costs could potentially be lower for early-decision applicants than through the present application process if participating institutions waived application fees. Applicants would still be responsible for submitting requested academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, and travel expenses if an on-site interview is requested by the program.

Finally, highly desirable applicants who are offered a position through early decision would result in more opportunities for other applicants to interview for the remaining available residency positions through ERAS/NRMP.

Downsides to early decision for dermatology residency include the inability of applicants to compare programs to one another through their personal experiences, such as prior rotations or interviews, and for programs to compare applicants though the interview process and away rotations. In addition, US Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 scores and Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society status and other academic honors may not be available to programs to consider at the time of early decision. Cooperation would be needed with ERAS and NRMP to create an early decision program for dermatology residency.

One other potential consequence of the early match could involve instances of strained relationships between research fellows and their sponsoring institution or dermatology program. Research fellows often match at their research institution, and failing to early match could potentially sour the relationship between the applicant and the program, thus leading to a less productive year. However, many programs participating in an early match will probably have additional residency positions remaining in the traditional match that would be still available to the fellows.

The concept of an early-binding residency match process has the potential to save both time and money for programs and applicants. Although an early-match process would have many positive effects, there also would be inherent downsides that accompany such a system. Nonetheless, an early-match process in dermatology has the prospect of efficiently pairing applicants and programs that feel strongly about each other while simplifying the match process and reducing costs for all parties involved.

References

1. Hussain AN. Reducing the cost of dermatology residency applications: an applicant’s perspective. Cutis. 2019;104:352-353.

2. Weisert E, Phan M. Thoughts on reducing the cost for dermatology residency applications. DIG@UTMB blog. http://digutmb.blogspot.com/2019/12/thoughts-on-reducing-cost-for.html. Published December 23, 2019. Accessed April 17, 2020.

3. Early decision program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/early-decision-program/. Accessed April 8, 2020.

Author’s Response

The early decision option for dermatology residency applications would be a welcomed addition to the process but may be complicated by 2 recent events: the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the change of US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 score reporting to a pass/fail system.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused remarkable economic distress and likely affects medical students more acutely given their high levels of debt. As Ryan and Wagner observed, one advantage of the early-decision option would be financial relief for certain students. If applicants successfully match during the early-decision phase, they will not need to apply to any additional dermatology programs and also can target their preliminary-year applications to the geographic region where they have already matched.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic may further reduce early applicants’ ability to visit programs in person. Various medical schools have curtailed away rotations, and programs may opt for virtual interviews in accordance with social distancing guidelines.¹ Thus, early applicants will have even fewer opportunities to compare programs before they must make a binding decision about their residency placement. Although away rotations and interview travel are some of the largest drivers of application cost,² reducing costs in this way might shortchange both students and programs.

Arguably, the change in USMLE Step 1 score reporting beginning in 2022 may impact residency selection for a longer period of time than the COVID-19 pandemic. Program directors cited USMLE Step 1 scores as one of the main factors determining which applicants may be invited to interview.³ The lack of numerical USMLE Step 1 scores may encourage programs to place more weight on other metrics such as USMLE Step 2 CK scores or Alpha Omega Alpha membership.⁴ However, as Ryan and Wagner point out, such metrics may not be available in time for early-decision applicants.

As such, future program directors will have precious little information to screen early-decision applicants and may need to conduct holistic application review. This would require increased time and manpower compared to screening based on traditional metrics but may lead to a better “fit” for an applicant with a residency.

In general, implementation of any early decision program would benefit dermatology applicants as a group by removing elite candidates from the applicant pool. According to National Resident Matching Program data, just 3% of dermatology applicants account for more than 12% of overall interviews.⁵ In other words, a small group of the strongest applicants receives a lion’s share of interviews, crowding out many other candidates. Removing these top-tier applicants likely would provide remaining applicants with a higher return on investment per application, and students may choose to save money by applying to fewer programs.

Adopting early-decision options within the dermatology match may be complicated given the COVID-19 pandemic and USMLE score changes but may spur positive changes in the process while also reducing the financial burden on applicants.

Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP

From Northwell Health, Manhasset, New York.

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Correspondence: Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP (aamir.nav.hussain@gmail.com).

References

1. Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the VSLO program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/attending-medical-school/article/coronavirus-covid-19-and-vslo-program/. Accessed April 17, 2020.

2. Mansouri B, Walker GD, Mitchell J, et al. The cost of applying to dermatology residency: 2014 data estimates. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2016;74:754-756.

3. National Resident Matching Program, Data Release and Research Committee. Results of the 2018 NRMP Program Director Survey. Washington, DC: National Resident Matching Program; 2018. https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf. Published June 2018. Accessed April 17, 2020.

4. Crane MA, Chang HA, Azamfirei R. Medical education takes a step in the right direction: where does that leave students? [published online March 6, 2020]. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.2950.

5. Lee AH, Young P, Liao R, et al. I dream of Gini: quantifying inequality in otolaryngology residency interviews. Laryngoscope. 2019;129:627-633.

To the Editor:

Ongoing concern about the high costs of dermatology residency interviews has led to several cost-saving proposals, as presented by Hussain¹ in the Cutis article, “Reducing the Cost of Dermatology Residency Applications: An Applicant’s Perspective.” Additional strategies to reduce applicant costs include eliminating travel costs through video or telephone interviews, interviewing students who are visiting during their away rotation, and developing and implementing a mechanism to exempt students from participating in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP).² A potential mechanism for the latter suggestion could be a binding early decision program for dermatology residency. Binding early decision has been successfully employed by medical schools for many years.³ Under this model for dermatology residency, applicants may apply to 1 dermatology residency program by the early deadline and the program would have the option of accepting as many of the early-decision applicants as the number of residency positions in their program permits, allowing nonadmitted and nonparticipating applicants time to apply through the usual ERAS/NRMP cycle. There are several potential advantages to this model that would decrease the number of applicants applying to all the available dermatology residency programs each cycle.

First, because applicants would be limited to 1 application to participate in the early decision program, they must realistically consider the strength of their application and weigh their chances for acceptance to that program. Programs could facilitate the process by becoming more transparent about the type of applicants that have previously matched in their program.² If an early-decision applicant successfully matches, that applicant would be prohibited from applying to additional dermatology residency programs through ERAS and NRMP during that application cycle.

Second, early-decision actions by programs—probably by August 1, a time when most third-year medical students have completed their academic year—would be determined before ERAS releases applications to residency programs. This timeline would remove successful applicants in the early decision program from going to additional interviews and incurring the associated travel costs.

Third, early decision could be potentially beneficial to applicants who are tied to a specific geographic region for training and to programs with specific program needs, such as expertise in specific areas of dermatology research or areas of clinical need (eg, adding a dermatopathologist, plastic surgeon, internist, or a pediatrician to the residency program who now wants dermatology training) or other program needs.

Fourth, application costs could potentially be lower for early-decision applicants than through the present application process if participating institutions waived application fees. Applicants would still be responsible for submitting requested academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, and travel expenses if an on-site interview is requested by the program.

Finally, highly desirable applicants who are offered a position through early decision would result in more opportunities for other applicants to interview for the remaining available residency positions through ERAS/NRMP.

Downsides to early decision for dermatology residency include the inability of applicants to compare programs to one another through their personal experiences, such as prior rotations or interviews, and for programs to compare applicants though the interview process and away rotations. In addition, US Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 scores and Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society status and other academic honors may not be available to programs to consider at the time of early decision. Cooperation would be needed with ERAS and NRMP to create an early decision program for dermatology residency.

One other potential consequence of the early match could involve instances of strained relationships between research fellows and their sponsoring institution or dermatology program. Research fellows often match at their research institution, and failing to early match could potentially sour the relationship between the applicant and the program, thus leading to a less productive year. However, many programs participating in an early match will probably have additional residency positions remaining in the traditional match that would be still available to the fellows.

The concept of an early-binding residency match process has the potential to save both time and money for programs and applicants. Although an early-match process would have many positive effects, there also would be inherent downsides that accompany such a system. Nonetheless, an early-match process in dermatology has the prospect of efficiently pairing applicants and programs that feel strongly about each other while simplifying the match process and reducing costs for all parties involved.

References

1. Hussain AN. Reducing the cost of dermatology residency applications: an applicant’s perspective. Cutis. 2019;104:352-353.

2. Weisert E, Phan M. Thoughts on reducing the cost for dermatology residency applications. DIG@UTMB blog. http://digutmb.blogspot.com/2019/12/thoughts-on-reducing-cost-for.html. Published December 23, 2019. Accessed April 17, 2020.

3. Early decision program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/early-decision-program/. Accessed April 8, 2020.

Author’s Response

The early decision option for dermatology residency applications would be a welcomed addition to the process but may be complicated by 2 recent events: the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the change of US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 score reporting to a pass/fail system.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused remarkable economic distress and likely affects medical students more acutely given their high levels of debt. As Ryan and Wagner observed, one advantage of the early-decision option would be financial relief for certain students. If applicants successfully match during the early-decision phase, they will not need to apply to any additional dermatology programs and also can target their preliminary-year applications to the geographic region where they have already matched.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic may further reduce early applicants’ ability to visit programs in person. Various medical schools have curtailed away rotations, and programs may opt for virtual interviews in accordance with social distancing guidelines.¹ Thus, early applicants will have even fewer opportunities to compare programs before they must make a binding decision about their residency placement. Although away rotations and interview travel are some of the largest drivers of application cost,² reducing costs in this way might shortchange both students and programs.

Arguably, the change in USMLE Step 1 score reporting beginning in 2022 may impact residency selection for a longer period of time than the COVID-19 pandemic. Program directors cited USMLE Step 1 scores as one of the main factors determining which applicants may be invited to interview.³ The lack of numerical USMLE Step 1 scores may encourage programs to place more weight on other metrics such as USMLE Step 2 CK scores or Alpha Omega Alpha membership.⁴ However, as Ryan and Wagner point out, such metrics may not be available in time for early-decision applicants.

As such, future program directors will have precious little information to screen early-decision applicants and may need to conduct holistic application review. This would require increased time and manpower compared to screening based on traditional metrics but may lead to a better “fit” for an applicant with a residency.

In general, implementation of any early decision program would benefit dermatology applicants as a group by removing elite candidates from the applicant pool. According to National Resident Matching Program data, just 3% of dermatology applicants account for more than 12% of overall interviews.⁵ In other words, a small group of the strongest applicants receives a lion’s share of interviews, crowding out many other candidates. Removing these top-tier applicants likely would provide remaining applicants with a higher return on investment per application, and students may choose to save money by applying to fewer programs.

Adopting early-decision options within the dermatology match may be complicated given the COVID-19 pandemic and USMLE score changes but may spur positive changes in the process while also reducing the financial burden on applicants.

Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP

From Northwell Health, Manhasset, New York.

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Correspondence: Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP (aamir.nav.hussain@gmail.com).

References

1. Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the VSLO program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/attending-medical-school/article/coronavirus-covid-19-and-vslo-program/. Accessed April 17, 2020.

2. Mansouri B, Walker GD, Mitchell J, et al. The cost of applying to dermatology residency: 2014 data estimates. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2016;74:754-756.

3. National Resident Matching Program, Data Release and Research Committee. Results of the 2018 NRMP Program Director Survey. Washington, DC: National Resident Matching Program; 2018. https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf. Published June 2018. Accessed April 17, 2020.

4. Crane MA, Chang HA, Azamfirei R. Medical education takes a step in the right direction: where does that leave students? [published online March 6, 2020]. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.2950.

5. Lee AH, Young P, Liao R, et al. I dream of Gini: quantifying inequality in otolaryngology residency interviews. Laryngoscope. 2019;129:627-633.

To the Editor:

Ongoing concern about the high costs of dermatology residency interviews has led to several cost-saving proposals, as presented by Hussain¹ in the Cutis article, “Reducing the Cost of Dermatology Residency Applications: An Applicant’s Perspective.” Additional strategies to reduce applicant costs include eliminating travel costs through video or telephone interviews, interviewing students who are visiting during their away rotation, and developing and implementing a mechanism to exempt students from participating in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP).² A potential mechanism for the latter suggestion could be a binding early decision program for dermatology residency. Binding early decision has been successfully employed by medical schools for many years.³ Under this model for dermatology residency, applicants may apply to 1 dermatology residency program by the early deadline and the program would have the option of accepting as many of the early-decision applicants as the number of residency positions in their program permits, allowing nonadmitted and nonparticipating applicants time to apply through the usual ERAS/NRMP cycle. There are several potential advantages to this model that would decrease the number of applicants applying to all the available dermatology residency programs each cycle.

First, because applicants would be limited to 1 application to participate in the early decision program, they must realistically consider the strength of their application and weigh their chances for acceptance to that program. Programs could facilitate the process by becoming more transparent about the type of applicants that have previously matched in their program.² If an early-decision applicant successfully matches, that applicant would be prohibited from applying to additional dermatology residency programs through ERAS and NRMP during that application cycle.

Second, early-decision actions by programs—probably by August 1, a time when most third-year medical students have completed their academic year—would be determined before ERAS releases applications to residency programs. This timeline would remove successful applicants in the early decision program from going to additional interviews and incurring the associated travel costs.

Third, early decision could be potentially beneficial to applicants who are tied to a specific geographic region for training and to programs with specific program needs, such as expertise in specific areas of dermatology research or areas of clinical need (eg, adding a dermatopathologist, plastic surgeon, internist, or a pediatrician to the residency program who now wants dermatology training) or other program needs.

Fourth, application costs could potentially be lower for early-decision applicants than through the present application process if participating institutions waived application fees. Applicants would still be responsible for submitting requested academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, and travel expenses if an on-site interview is requested by the program.

Finally, highly desirable applicants who are offered a position through early decision would result in more opportunities for other applicants to interview for the remaining available residency positions through ERAS/NRMP.

Downsides to early decision for dermatology residency include the inability of applicants to compare programs to one another through their personal experiences, such as prior rotations or interviews, and for programs to compare applicants though the interview process and away rotations. In addition, US Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 scores and Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society status and other academic honors may not be available to programs to consider at the time of early decision. Cooperation would be needed with ERAS and NRMP to create an early decision program for dermatology residency.

One other potential consequence of the early match could involve instances of strained relationships between research fellows and their sponsoring institution or dermatology program. Research fellows often match at their research institution, and failing to early match could potentially sour the relationship between the applicant and the program, thus leading to a less productive year. However, many programs participating in an early match will probably have additional residency positions remaining in the traditional match that would be still available to the fellows.

The concept of an early-binding residency match process has the potential to save both time and money for programs and applicants. Although an early-match process would have many positive effects, there also would be inherent downsides that accompany such a system. Nonetheless, an early-match process in dermatology has the prospect of efficiently pairing applicants and programs that feel strongly about each other while simplifying the match process and reducing costs for all parties involved.

References

1. Hussain AN. Reducing the cost of dermatology residency applications: an applicant’s perspective. Cutis. 2019;104:352-353.

2. Weisert E, Phan M. Thoughts on reducing the cost for dermatology residency applications. DIG@UTMB blog. http://digutmb.blogspot.com/2019/12/thoughts-on-reducing-cost-for.html. Published December 23, 2019. Accessed April 17, 2020.

3. Early decision program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/early-decision-program/. Accessed April 8, 2020.

Author’s Response

The early decision option for dermatology residency applications would be a welcomed addition to the process but may be complicated by 2 recent events: the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the change of US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 score reporting to a pass/fail system.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused remarkable economic distress and likely affects medical students more acutely given their high levels of debt. As Ryan and Wagner observed, one advantage of the early-decision option would be financial relief for certain students. If applicants successfully match during the early-decision phase, they will not need to apply to any additional dermatology programs and also can target their preliminary-year applications to the geographic region where they have already matched.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic may further reduce early applicants’ ability to visit programs in person. Various medical schools have curtailed away rotations, and programs may opt for virtual interviews in accordance with social distancing guidelines.¹ Thus, early applicants will have even fewer opportunities to compare programs before they must make a binding decision about their residency placement. Although away rotations and interview travel are some of the largest drivers of application cost,² reducing costs in this way might shortchange both students and programs.

Arguably, the change in USMLE Step 1 score reporting beginning in 2022 may impact residency selection for a longer period of time than the COVID-19 pandemic. Program directors cited USMLE Step 1 scores as one of the main factors determining which applicants may be invited to interview.³ The lack of numerical USMLE Step 1 scores may encourage programs to place more weight on other metrics such as USMLE Step 2 CK scores or Alpha Omega Alpha membership.⁴ However, as Ryan and Wagner point out, such metrics may not be available in time for early-decision applicants.

As such, future program directors will have precious little information to screen early-decision applicants and may need to conduct holistic application review. This would require increased time and manpower compared to screening based on traditional metrics but may lead to a better “fit” for an applicant with a residency.

In general, implementation of any early decision program would benefit dermatology applicants as a group by removing elite candidates from the applicant pool. According to National Resident Matching Program data, just 3% of dermatology applicants account for more than 12% of overall interviews.⁵ In other words, a small group of the strongest applicants receives a lion’s share of interviews, crowding out many other candidates. Removing these top-tier applicants likely would provide remaining applicants with a higher return on investment per application, and students may choose to save money by applying to fewer programs.

Adopting early-decision options within the dermatology match may be complicated given the COVID-19 pandemic and USMLE score changes but may spur positive changes in the process while also reducing the financial burden on applicants.

Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP

From Northwell Health, Manhasset, New York.

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Correspondence: Aamir N. Hussain, MD, MAPP (aamir.nav.hussain@gmail.com).

References

1. Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the VSLO program. Association of American Medical Colleges website. https://students-residents.aamc.org/attending-medical-school/article/coronavirus-covid-19-and-vslo-program/. Accessed April 17, 2020.

2. Mansouri B, Walker GD, Mitchell J, et al. The cost of applying to dermatology residency: 2014 data estimates. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2016;74:754-756.

3. National Resident Matching Program, Data Release and Research Committee. Results of the 2018 NRMP Program Director Survey. Washington, DC: National Resident Matching Program; 2018. https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf. Published June 2018. Accessed April 17, 2020.

4. Crane MA, Chang HA, Azamfirei R. Medical education takes a step in the right direction: where does that leave students? [published online March 6, 2020]. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.2950.

5. Lee AH, Young P, Liao R, et al. I dream of Gini: quantifying inequality in otolaryngology residency interviews. Laryngoscope. 2019;129:627-633.

April 11-17 marked the third annual national Black Maternal Health Week, an event launched in 2017 by the Atlanta-based Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA), in part to “deepen the national conversation about black maternal health.”

Around the same time, emerging data showing higher mortality rates among black patients versus patients of other races with COVID-19 opened similar dialogue fraught with questions about what might explain the disturbing health disparities.

ACOG

Facing hard numbers, harder conversations

The U.S. maternal mortality rate in 2018 was 17 per 100,000 live births – the highest of any similarly wealthy industrialized nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported in January. That’s a striking statistic in its own right. Perhaps more striking is the breakdown by race.

Hispanic women had the lowest maternal mortality rate at 12 per 100,000 live births, followed by non-Hispanic white women at 15.

The rate for non-Hispanic black women was 37 per 100,000 live births.

Numerous factors contribute to these disparities. Among those listed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ chief executive officer Maureen G. Phipps, MD, in a press statement on the NCHS data, are care access issues, lack of standardization of care, bias, and racism. All of these must be addressed if the disparities in maternal and other areas of care are to be eliminated, according to Dr. Phipps.

“The NCHS data confirmed what we have known from other data sources: The rate of maternal deaths for non-Hispanic black women is substantially higher than the rates for non-Hispanic white women,” she wrote. “Continued efforts to improve the standardization of data and review processes related to U.S. maternal mortality are a necessary step to achieving the goal of eliminating disparities and preventable maternal mortality.”

However, such efforts frequently encounter roadblocks constructed by the reluctance among “many academics, policy makers, scientists, elected officials, journalists, and others responsible for defining and responding to the public discourse” to identify racism as a root cause of health disparities, according to Zinzi D. Bailey, ScD, former director of research and evaluation for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and colleagues.

In the third of a three-part conceptual report in The Lancet, entitled America: Equity and Equality in Health, Dr. Bailey and colleagues argued that advancing health equity requires a focus on structural racism – which they defined as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination via mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (e.g., in housing, education, employment, earning, benefits, credit, media, healthcare, and criminal justice, etc.) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources.”

In their series, the authors peeled back layer upon layer of sociological and political contributors to structural racism throughout history, revealing how each laid a foundation for health inequity over time. They particularly home in on health care quality and access.

“Interpersonal racism, bias, and discrimination in healthcare settings can directly affect health through poor health care,” they wrote, noting that “almost 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine report entitled Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, documented systematic and pervasive bias in the treatment of people of color resulting in substandard care.”

That report concluded that “bias, stereotyping, prejudice, and clinical uncertainty on the part of healthcare providers” likely play a role in the continuation of health disparities. More recent data – including the NCHS maternal mortality data – show an ongoing crisis.

A study of 210 experienced primary care providers and 190 community members in the Denver area, for example, found substantial evidence of implicit bias against both Latino and African American patients. The authors defined implicit bias as “unintentional and even unconscious” negative evaluation of one group and its members relative to another that is expressed implicitly, such as through negative nonverbal behavior.

“Activated by situational cues (e.g., a person’s skin color), implicit bias can quickly and unknowingly exert its influence on perception, memory, and behavior,” they wrote.

In their study, Implicit Association Test and self-report measures of bias showed similar rates of implicit bias among the providers and community members, with only a slight weakening of ethnic/racial bias among providers after adjustment for background characteristics, which suggests “a wider societal problem,” they said.

A specific example of how implicit bias can manifest was described in a 2016 report addressing the well-documented under-treatment of pain among black versus white patients. Kelly M. Hoffman, PhD, and colleagues demonstrated that a substantial number of individuals with at least some medical training endorse false beliefs regarding biological differences between black and white patients. For example, 25% of 28 white residents surveyed agreed black individuals have thicker skin, and 4% believed black individuals have faster blood coagulation and less sensitivity in their nerve endings.

Those who more strongly endorsed such erroneous beliefs were more likely to underestimate and undertreat pain among black patients, the authors found.

Another study, which underscored the insidiousness of structural racism, was reported in Science. The authors identified significant racial bias in an algorithm widely used by health systems, insurers, and practitioners to allocate health care resources for patients with complex health needs. The algorithm, which affects millions of patients, uses predictions of future health care costs rather than future illness to determine who should receive extra medical care.

The problem is that unequal care access for black patients skews lower the foundational cost data used for making those predictions. Correcting the algorithm would increase the percentage of black patients receiving additional medical help from 17.7% to 46.5%, the authors concluded.

This evidence of persistent racism and bias in medicine, however, doesn’t mean progress is lacking.

ACOG has partnered with numerous other organizations to promote awareness and change, including through legislation. A recent win was the enactment of the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2018, a bipartisan bill designed to promote and support maternal mortality review committees in every state. A major focus of BMMA’s Black Maternal Health Week was the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March to comprehensively address the crisis.

But efforts like these, whether they aim to elucidate the contributors to health disparities or to directly target structural and overt racism and root out implicit bias in medical care, are nothing new. As Dr. Bailey and colleagues noted, a challenge is getting the message across because efforts to avoid tough conversations around these topics are nothing new, either.

Dr. Gee attested to that during a maternal mortality panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke about the resistance she encountered in 2016 when she was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Health Department and worked to make racism and bias a foundational part of the discussion on improving maternal and fetal outcomes.

She established the first Office of Health Equity in the state – and the first in the nation to not only require measurement outcomes by race but also explicitly address racial bias at the outset. The goal wasn’t just to talk about it but to “plan for addressing equity in every single aspect of what we do with ... our case equity action teams.”

“At our first maternal mortality quality meetings we insisted on focusing on equity at the very outset, and we had people that left when we started talking about racism,” she said, noting that others said it was “too political” to discuss during an election year or that equity was something to address later.

“We said no. We insisted on it, and I think that was very important because all ships don’t rise with the tide, not with health disparities,” she said, recounting an earlier experience when she led the Louisiana Birth Outcomes Initiative: “I asked to have a brown-bag focused on racism at the department so we could talk about the impact of implicit bias on decision making, and I was told that I was a Yankee who didn’t understand the South and that racism didn’t really exist here, and what did I know about it – and I couldn’t have the brown-bag.”

That was in 2011.

Fast-forward to April 24, 2020. As Dr. Gee shared her perspective on addressing racism and bias in medicine, she was preparing for a call regarding the racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes – the first health equity action sanctioned by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (D).

“I think we really set the stage for these discussions,” she said.
 

Addressing equity to enact change

The efforts in Louisiana also set the stage for better maternal outcomes. At the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke as part of the President’s Panel, Dr. Gee said Louisiana had the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. The NCHC data released in January, however, suggest that may no longer be the case.

Inconsistencies in how the latest and prior data were reported, including in how maternal mortality was defined, make direct comparison impossible. But in the latest report, Louisiana ranked seventh among states with available data.

“Ninety percent of the deliveries in the state happen at hospitals that we worked with,” Dr. Gee said, highlighting the reach of the efforts to improve outcomes there.

She also described a recent case involving an anemic patient whose bleeding risk was identified early thanks to the programs put in place. That enabled early preparation in the event of complications.

The patient experienced a massive hemorrhage, but the preparation, including having units of blood on hand in case of such an emergency, saved her life.

“So we clearly have not just data, but individual stories of people whose lives have been saved by this work,” she said.

More tangible data on maternal morbidity further show that the efforts in the state are making a difference, Dr. Gillispie said, citing preliminary outcomes data from the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review launched in 2018.

“We started with an initial goal of reducing severe maternal morbidity related to hypertension and hemorrhage by 20%, as well as reducing the black/white disparity gap by Mother’s Day 2020,” she said.

Final analyses have been delayed because of COVID-19, but early assessments showed a reduction in the disparity gap, she said, again highlighting the importance of focusing on equity.

“Definitely from the standpoint of the Quality Collaborative side ... we’ve been working with our facilities to make them aware of what implicit bias is, helping them to also do the Harvard Implicit Bias Test so they can figure out what their own biases are, start working to acknowledge them and address them, and start working to fight against letting that bias change how they treat individuals,” Dr. Gillispie said.

The work started through these initiatives will continue because there is much left to be done, she said.

Indeed, the surprised reactions in recent weeks to the reports of disparities in COVID-19 outcomes further underscore that reality, and the maternal mortality statistics – with use of the voices of those directly affected by structural and overt racism and bias in maternal care as a megaphone – speak for themselves.

Hearing implicit bias from patients’ perspective

Just ask Timoria McQueen Saba, a black woman who nearly died from a postpartum hemorrhage in 2010. At ACOG 2019, she spoke about how she had to switch ob.gyns. three times during her first pregnancy because she felt she had not received quality care – one doctor neglected to tell her she had placenta previa. She also experienced excessive wait times at prenatal appointments and had been on the receiving end of microaggressions and degrading questions such as “Are you still married?” and “Is your husband your baby’s father?” – and these are all things her white friends who recommended those physicians never experienced, she said.

“The health care system has just sometimes beaten people down so much, just like the world has – people of color, especially – to where you’re dismissed, your concerns are invalidated,” she said. “Some doctors don’t even think black people feel pain [or that] our pain is less.”

Mrs. Saba also spoke about how her health care “improved a billion percent” when her white husband accompanied her to appointments.

Just ask Charles S. Johnson IV, whose wife Kira Dixon Johnson died in 2016 during surgery for postpartum bleeding complications – after he and other family members spent 10 hours pleading for help for her.

Speaking at the ACOG panel discussion with Mrs. Saba, Mr. Johnson described “a clear disconnect” between the medical staff at the hospital and the way they viewed and valued Kira. He shared his frustration in wanting to advocate for his wife, but knowing that, as an African American male, he risked being seen as a threat and removed from the hospital if he didn’t stay calm, if he “tapped into those natural instincts as a man and a husband who wants to just protect his family.”

He fought back emotions, struggling to get the words out, saying that’s what haunts him and keeps him up at night – wondering if he should have “fought harder, grabbed the doctor by the collar, raised his voice, slammed on the counter.

“Maybe they would have done something,” he said.

Such experiences cross all socioeconomic boundaries. Ask U.S. Track and Field Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, who testified at a U.S. House Ways and Means Committee hearing on May 16, 2019 after developing severe preeclampsia that threatened her life and that of her baby. Ask tennis champion Serena Williams, who demanded assessment for pulmonary embolism following the birth of her child; she knew the signs, but her health care providers initially dismissed her concerns.

Their experiences aren’t just anecdotal. Data consistently show how racism and bias affect patient treatment and outcomes. Dr. Gee, for example, shared findings from a retrospective assessment of 47 confirmed pregnancy-related deaths in Louisiana between 2011 and 2016 that looked specifically at whether the deaths could potentially have been prevented if blood was given sooner, cardiomyopathy was recognized sooner, hypertension was treated on time, or other changes were made to care.

The answer was “Yes” in 9% of cases involving white patients – and in 59% of cases involving black patients (odds ratio, 14.6).

The study, reported in February in Obstetrics & Gynecology, showed that 27 of the deaths (58%) occurred at level III or IV birth facilities and that those deaths were not less likely than those at level I or II facilities to be categorized as preventable (OR, 2.0).

Findings from the Giving Voice to Mothers study, published in Reproductive Health in 2019, showed how mistreatment during childbirth might contribute to such outcomes.

In an online cross-sectional survey of more than 2,100 U.S. women, one in six reported at least one type of mistreatment, such as loss of autonomy, being yelled at or threatened, being ignored or having requests for help ignored, Saraswathi Vedam, SciD, of the Birth Place Lab at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported.

Race was among the factors associated with likelihood of mistreatment, and the rates of mistreatment for women of color were consistently higher – even when looking at interactions between race and other characteristics, such as socioeconomic status (SES). For example, 27.2% of women of color with low SES, compared with 18.7% of white women with low SES, reported mistreatment. Having a partner who was black, regardless of maternal race, was also associated with an increased rate of mistreatment, the authors found.

“I often get the question, ‘Do you think Kira would be alive if she was white,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. “The first way I respond to that question is [by saying that] the simple fact that you have to ask me is a problem.

“When this first happened, I was in so much pain that I couldn’t process the fact that something so egregious and outrageous happened to my wife because of the color of her skin, but as I began to process and really think about it and unpack this scenario, I have to be really frank ... do I think that she would have sat there for 10 hours while we begged and pleaded? Absolutely not.”

He stressed that his words aren’t “an indictment of the profession.”

“This is not an indictment saying that all people are racist or prejudiced,” he said. “But here’s the reality: If you are in this profession, if you are responsible for the well-being of patients and their families, and you are not able to see them in the same way that you see your mother, your wife, your sister, you have two options – you need to find something else to do or you need to take steps to get better.”
 

Fixing systems, finding solutions

Dr. Gee acknowledged the work that physicians need to do to help improve outcomes.

“The average time we give a patient to talk is 11 seconds before we interrupt them,” she said, as one example. “We have to recognize that.”

But efforts to improve outcomes shouldn’t just focus on changing physician behavior, she said.

“We really need to focus, as has the U.K. – very effectively – on using midwives, doulas, other health care professionals as complements to physicians to make sure that we have women-centered birth experiences.

“So, instead of just blaming the doctors, I think we need to change the system,” Dr. Gee emphasized.

The disruptions in health systems caused by COVID-19 present a unique opportunity to do that, she said. There is now an opportunity to build them back.

“We have a chance to build the systems back, and when we do so, we ought to build them back correcting for implicit bias and some of the systemic issues that lead to poor outcomes for people of color in our country,” she said.

Solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and others include more diversity in the workforce, more inclusion of patient advocates in maternal care, development of culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications, measurement by race (and action on the outcomes), standardization of care, and development of new ways to improve care access.


We will focus more specifically on these solutions in Part 2 of this article in our maternal mortality series. Previous articles in the series are available at mdedge.com/obgyn/maternal-mortality.

sworcester@mdedge.com

April 11-17 marked the third annual national Black Maternal Health Week, an event launched in 2017 by the Atlanta-based Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA), in part to “deepen the national conversation about black maternal health.”

Around the same time, emerging data showing higher mortality rates among black patients versus patients of other races with COVID-19 opened similar dialogue fraught with questions about what might explain the disturbing health disparities.

ACOG

Facing hard numbers, harder conversations

The U.S. maternal mortality rate in 2018 was 17 per 100,000 live births – the highest of any similarly wealthy industrialized nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported in January. That’s a striking statistic in its own right. Perhaps more striking is the breakdown by race.

Hispanic women had the lowest maternal mortality rate at 12 per 100,000 live births, followed by non-Hispanic white women at 15.

The rate for non-Hispanic black women was 37 per 100,000 live births.

Numerous factors contribute to these disparities. Among those listed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ chief executive officer Maureen G. Phipps, MD, in a press statement on the NCHS data, are care access issues, lack of standardization of care, bias, and racism. All of these must be addressed if the disparities in maternal and other areas of care are to be eliminated, according to Dr. Phipps.

“The NCHS data confirmed what we have known from other data sources: The rate of maternal deaths for non-Hispanic black women is substantially higher than the rates for non-Hispanic white women,” she wrote. “Continued efforts to improve the standardization of data and review processes related to U.S. maternal mortality are a necessary step to achieving the goal of eliminating disparities and preventable maternal mortality.”

However, such efforts frequently encounter roadblocks constructed by the reluctance among “many academics, policy makers, scientists, elected officials, journalists, and others responsible for defining and responding to the public discourse” to identify racism as a root cause of health disparities, according to Zinzi D. Bailey, ScD, former director of research and evaluation for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and colleagues.

In the third of a three-part conceptual report in The Lancet, entitled America: Equity and Equality in Health, Dr. Bailey and colleagues argued that advancing health equity requires a focus on structural racism – which they defined as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination via mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (e.g., in housing, education, employment, earning, benefits, credit, media, healthcare, and criminal justice, etc.) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources.”

In their series, the authors peeled back layer upon layer of sociological and political contributors to structural racism throughout history, revealing how each laid a foundation for health inequity over time. They particularly home in on health care quality and access.

“Interpersonal racism, bias, and discrimination in healthcare settings can directly affect health through poor health care,” they wrote, noting that “almost 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine report entitled Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, documented systematic and pervasive bias in the treatment of people of color resulting in substandard care.”

That report concluded that “bias, stereotyping, prejudice, and clinical uncertainty on the part of healthcare providers” likely play a role in the continuation of health disparities. More recent data – including the NCHS maternal mortality data – show an ongoing crisis.

A study of 210 experienced primary care providers and 190 community members in the Denver area, for example, found substantial evidence of implicit bias against both Latino and African American patients. The authors defined implicit bias as “unintentional and even unconscious” negative evaluation of one group and its members relative to another that is expressed implicitly, such as through negative nonverbal behavior.

“Activated by situational cues (e.g., a person’s skin color), implicit bias can quickly and unknowingly exert its influence on perception, memory, and behavior,” they wrote.

In their study, Implicit Association Test and self-report measures of bias showed similar rates of implicit bias among the providers and community members, with only a slight weakening of ethnic/racial bias among providers after adjustment for background characteristics, which suggests “a wider societal problem,” they said.

A specific example of how implicit bias can manifest was described in a 2016 report addressing the well-documented under-treatment of pain among black versus white patients. Kelly M. Hoffman, PhD, and colleagues demonstrated that a substantial number of individuals with at least some medical training endorse false beliefs regarding biological differences between black and white patients. For example, 25% of 28 white residents surveyed agreed black individuals have thicker skin, and 4% believed black individuals have faster blood coagulation and less sensitivity in their nerve endings.

Those who more strongly endorsed such erroneous beliefs were more likely to underestimate and undertreat pain among black patients, the authors found.

Another study, which underscored the insidiousness of structural racism, was reported in Science. The authors identified significant racial bias in an algorithm widely used by health systems, insurers, and practitioners to allocate health care resources for patients with complex health needs. The algorithm, which affects millions of patients, uses predictions of future health care costs rather than future illness to determine who should receive extra medical care.

The problem is that unequal care access for black patients skews lower the foundational cost data used for making those predictions. Correcting the algorithm would increase the percentage of black patients receiving additional medical help from 17.7% to 46.5%, the authors concluded.

This evidence of persistent racism and bias in medicine, however, doesn’t mean progress is lacking.

ACOG has partnered with numerous other organizations to promote awareness and change, including through legislation. A recent win was the enactment of the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2018, a bipartisan bill designed to promote and support maternal mortality review committees in every state. A major focus of BMMA’s Black Maternal Health Week was the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March to comprehensively address the crisis.

But efforts like these, whether they aim to elucidate the contributors to health disparities or to directly target structural and overt racism and root out implicit bias in medical care, are nothing new. As Dr. Bailey and colleagues noted, a challenge is getting the message across because efforts to avoid tough conversations around these topics are nothing new, either.

Dr. Gee attested to that during a maternal mortality panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke about the resistance she encountered in 2016 when she was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Health Department and worked to make racism and bias a foundational part of the discussion on improving maternal and fetal outcomes.

She established the first Office of Health Equity in the state – and the first in the nation to not only require measurement outcomes by race but also explicitly address racial bias at the outset. The goal wasn’t just to talk about it but to “plan for addressing equity in every single aspect of what we do with ... our case equity action teams.”

“At our first maternal mortality quality meetings we insisted on focusing on equity at the very outset, and we had people that left when we started talking about racism,” she said, noting that others said it was “too political” to discuss during an election year or that equity was something to address later.

“We said no. We insisted on it, and I think that was very important because all ships don’t rise with the tide, not with health disparities,” she said, recounting an earlier experience when she led the Louisiana Birth Outcomes Initiative: “I asked to have a brown-bag focused on racism at the department so we could talk about the impact of implicit bias on decision making, and I was told that I was a Yankee who didn’t understand the South and that racism didn’t really exist here, and what did I know about it – and I couldn’t have the brown-bag.”

That was in 2011.

Fast-forward to April 24, 2020. As Dr. Gee shared her perspective on addressing racism and bias in medicine, she was preparing for a call regarding the racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes – the first health equity action sanctioned by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (D).

“I think we really set the stage for these discussions,” she said.
 

Addressing equity to enact change

The efforts in Louisiana also set the stage for better maternal outcomes. At the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke as part of the President’s Panel, Dr. Gee said Louisiana had the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. The NCHC data released in January, however, suggest that may no longer be the case.

Inconsistencies in how the latest and prior data were reported, including in how maternal mortality was defined, make direct comparison impossible. But in the latest report, Louisiana ranked seventh among states with available data.

“Ninety percent of the deliveries in the state happen at hospitals that we worked with,” Dr. Gee said, highlighting the reach of the efforts to improve outcomes there.

She also described a recent case involving an anemic patient whose bleeding risk was identified early thanks to the programs put in place. That enabled early preparation in the event of complications.

The patient experienced a massive hemorrhage, but the preparation, including having units of blood on hand in case of such an emergency, saved her life.

“So we clearly have not just data, but individual stories of people whose lives have been saved by this work,” she said.

More tangible data on maternal morbidity further show that the efforts in the state are making a difference, Dr. Gillispie said, citing preliminary outcomes data from the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review launched in 2018.

“We started with an initial goal of reducing severe maternal morbidity related to hypertension and hemorrhage by 20%, as well as reducing the black/white disparity gap by Mother’s Day 2020,” she said.

Final analyses have been delayed because of COVID-19, but early assessments showed a reduction in the disparity gap, she said, again highlighting the importance of focusing on equity.

“Definitely from the standpoint of the Quality Collaborative side ... we’ve been working with our facilities to make them aware of what implicit bias is, helping them to also do the Harvard Implicit Bias Test so they can figure out what their own biases are, start working to acknowledge them and address them, and start working to fight against letting that bias change how they treat individuals,” Dr. Gillispie said.

The work started through these initiatives will continue because there is much left to be done, she said.

Indeed, the surprised reactions in recent weeks to the reports of disparities in COVID-19 outcomes further underscore that reality, and the maternal mortality statistics – with use of the voices of those directly affected by structural and overt racism and bias in maternal care as a megaphone – speak for themselves.

Hearing implicit bias from patients’ perspective

Just ask Timoria McQueen Saba, a black woman who nearly died from a postpartum hemorrhage in 2010. At ACOG 2019, she spoke about how she had to switch ob.gyns. three times during her first pregnancy because she felt she had not received quality care – one doctor neglected to tell her she had placenta previa. She also experienced excessive wait times at prenatal appointments and had been on the receiving end of microaggressions and degrading questions such as “Are you still married?” and “Is your husband your baby’s father?” – and these are all things her white friends who recommended those physicians never experienced, she said.

“The health care system has just sometimes beaten people down so much, just like the world has – people of color, especially – to where you’re dismissed, your concerns are invalidated,” she said. “Some doctors don’t even think black people feel pain [or that] our pain is less.”

Mrs. Saba also spoke about how her health care “improved a billion percent” when her white husband accompanied her to appointments.

Just ask Charles S. Johnson IV, whose wife Kira Dixon Johnson died in 2016 during surgery for postpartum bleeding complications – after he and other family members spent 10 hours pleading for help for her.

Speaking at the ACOG panel discussion with Mrs. Saba, Mr. Johnson described “a clear disconnect” between the medical staff at the hospital and the way they viewed and valued Kira. He shared his frustration in wanting to advocate for his wife, but knowing that, as an African American male, he risked being seen as a threat and removed from the hospital if he didn’t stay calm, if he “tapped into those natural instincts as a man and a husband who wants to just protect his family.”

He fought back emotions, struggling to get the words out, saying that’s what haunts him and keeps him up at night – wondering if he should have “fought harder, grabbed the doctor by the collar, raised his voice, slammed on the counter.

“Maybe they would have done something,” he said.

Such experiences cross all socioeconomic boundaries. Ask U.S. Track and Field Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, who testified at a U.S. House Ways and Means Committee hearing on May 16, 2019 after developing severe preeclampsia that threatened her life and that of her baby. Ask tennis champion Serena Williams, who demanded assessment for pulmonary embolism following the birth of her child; she knew the signs, but her health care providers initially dismissed her concerns.

Their experiences aren’t just anecdotal. Data consistently show how racism and bias affect patient treatment and outcomes. Dr. Gee, for example, shared findings from a retrospective assessment of 47 confirmed pregnancy-related deaths in Louisiana between 2011 and 2016 that looked specifically at whether the deaths could potentially have been prevented if blood was given sooner, cardiomyopathy was recognized sooner, hypertension was treated on time, or other changes were made to care.

The answer was “Yes” in 9% of cases involving white patients – and in 59% of cases involving black patients (odds ratio, 14.6).

The study, reported in February in Obstetrics & Gynecology, showed that 27 of the deaths (58%) occurred at level III or IV birth facilities and that those deaths were not less likely than those at level I or II facilities to be categorized as preventable (OR, 2.0).

Findings from the Giving Voice to Mothers study, published in Reproductive Health in 2019, showed how mistreatment during childbirth might contribute to such outcomes.

In an online cross-sectional survey of more than 2,100 U.S. women, one in six reported at least one type of mistreatment, such as loss of autonomy, being yelled at or threatened, being ignored or having requests for help ignored, Saraswathi Vedam, SciD, of the Birth Place Lab at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported.

Race was among the factors associated with likelihood of mistreatment, and the rates of mistreatment for women of color were consistently higher – even when looking at interactions between race and other characteristics, such as socioeconomic status (SES). For example, 27.2% of women of color with low SES, compared with 18.7% of white women with low SES, reported mistreatment. Having a partner who was black, regardless of maternal race, was also associated with an increased rate of mistreatment, the authors found.

“I often get the question, ‘Do you think Kira would be alive if she was white,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. “The first way I respond to that question is [by saying that] the simple fact that you have to ask me is a problem.

“When this first happened, I was in so much pain that I couldn’t process the fact that something so egregious and outrageous happened to my wife because of the color of her skin, but as I began to process and really think about it and unpack this scenario, I have to be really frank ... do I think that she would have sat there for 10 hours while we begged and pleaded? Absolutely not.”

He stressed that his words aren’t “an indictment of the profession.”

“This is not an indictment saying that all people are racist or prejudiced,” he said. “But here’s the reality: If you are in this profession, if you are responsible for the well-being of patients and their families, and you are not able to see them in the same way that you see your mother, your wife, your sister, you have two options – you need to find something else to do or you need to take steps to get better.”
 

Fixing systems, finding solutions

Dr. Gee acknowledged the work that physicians need to do to help improve outcomes.

“The average time we give a patient to talk is 11 seconds before we interrupt them,” she said, as one example. “We have to recognize that.”

But efforts to improve outcomes shouldn’t just focus on changing physician behavior, she said.

“We really need to focus, as has the U.K. – very effectively – on using midwives, doulas, other health care professionals as complements to physicians to make sure that we have women-centered birth experiences.

“So, instead of just blaming the doctors, I think we need to change the system,” Dr. Gee emphasized.

The disruptions in health systems caused by COVID-19 present a unique opportunity to do that, she said. There is now an opportunity to build them back.

“We have a chance to build the systems back, and when we do so, we ought to build them back correcting for implicit bias and some of the systemic issues that lead to poor outcomes for people of color in our country,” she said.

Solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and others include more diversity in the workforce, more inclusion of patient advocates in maternal care, development of culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications, measurement by race (and action on the outcomes), standardization of care, and development of new ways to improve care access.


We will focus more specifically on these solutions in Part 2 of this article in our maternal mortality series. Previous articles in the series are available at mdedge.com/obgyn/maternal-mortality.

sworcester@mdedge.com

April 11-17 marked the third annual national Black Maternal Health Week, an event launched in 2017 by the Atlanta-based Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA), in part to “deepen the national conversation about black maternal health.”

Around the same time, emerging data showing higher mortality rates among black patients versus patients of other races with COVID-19 opened similar dialogue fraught with questions about what might explain the disturbing health disparities.

ACOG

Facing hard numbers, harder conversations

The U.S. maternal mortality rate in 2018 was 17 per 100,000 live births – the highest of any similarly wealthy industrialized nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported in January. That’s a striking statistic in its own right. Perhaps more striking is the breakdown by race.

Hispanic women had the lowest maternal mortality rate at 12 per 100,000 live births, followed by non-Hispanic white women at 15.

The rate for non-Hispanic black women was 37 per 100,000 live births.

Numerous factors contribute to these disparities. Among those listed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ chief executive officer Maureen G. Phipps, MD, in a press statement on the NCHS data, are care access issues, lack of standardization of care, bias, and racism. All of these must be addressed if the disparities in maternal and other areas of care are to be eliminated, according to Dr. Phipps.

“The NCHS data confirmed what we have known from other data sources: The rate of maternal deaths for non-Hispanic black women is substantially higher than the rates for non-Hispanic white women,” she wrote. “Continued efforts to improve the standardization of data and review processes related to U.S. maternal mortality are a necessary step to achieving the goal of eliminating disparities and preventable maternal mortality.”

However, such efforts frequently encounter roadblocks constructed by the reluctance among “many academics, policy makers, scientists, elected officials, journalists, and others responsible for defining and responding to the public discourse” to identify racism as a root cause of health disparities, according to Zinzi D. Bailey, ScD, former director of research and evaluation for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and colleagues.

In the third of a three-part conceptual report in The Lancet, entitled America: Equity and Equality in Health, Dr. Bailey and colleagues argued that advancing health equity requires a focus on structural racism – which they defined as “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination via mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (e.g., in housing, education, employment, earning, benefits, credit, media, healthcare, and criminal justice, etc.) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources.”

In their series, the authors peeled back layer upon layer of sociological and political contributors to structural racism throughout history, revealing how each laid a foundation for health inequity over time. They particularly home in on health care quality and access.

“Interpersonal racism, bias, and discrimination in healthcare settings can directly affect health through poor health care,” they wrote, noting that “almost 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine report entitled Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, documented systematic and pervasive bias in the treatment of people of color resulting in substandard care.”

That report concluded that “bias, stereotyping, prejudice, and clinical uncertainty on the part of healthcare providers” likely play a role in the continuation of health disparities. More recent data – including the NCHS maternal mortality data – show an ongoing crisis.

A study of 210 experienced primary care providers and 190 community members in the Denver area, for example, found substantial evidence of implicit bias against both Latino and African American patients. The authors defined implicit bias as “unintentional and even unconscious” negative evaluation of one group and its members relative to another that is expressed implicitly, such as through negative nonverbal behavior.

“Activated by situational cues (e.g., a person’s skin color), implicit bias can quickly and unknowingly exert its influence on perception, memory, and behavior,” they wrote.

In their study, Implicit Association Test and self-report measures of bias showed similar rates of implicit bias among the providers and community members, with only a slight weakening of ethnic/racial bias among providers after adjustment for background characteristics, which suggests “a wider societal problem,” they said.

A specific example of how implicit bias can manifest was described in a 2016 report addressing the well-documented under-treatment of pain among black versus white patients. Kelly M. Hoffman, PhD, and colleagues demonstrated that a substantial number of individuals with at least some medical training endorse false beliefs regarding biological differences between black and white patients. For example, 25% of 28 white residents surveyed agreed black individuals have thicker skin, and 4% believed black individuals have faster blood coagulation and less sensitivity in their nerve endings.

Those who more strongly endorsed such erroneous beliefs were more likely to underestimate and undertreat pain among black patients, the authors found.

Another study, which underscored the insidiousness of structural racism, was reported in Science. The authors identified significant racial bias in an algorithm widely used by health systems, insurers, and practitioners to allocate health care resources for patients with complex health needs. The algorithm, which affects millions of patients, uses predictions of future health care costs rather than future illness to determine who should receive extra medical care.

The problem is that unequal care access for black patients skews lower the foundational cost data used for making those predictions. Correcting the algorithm would increase the percentage of black patients receiving additional medical help from 17.7% to 46.5%, the authors concluded.

This evidence of persistent racism and bias in medicine, however, doesn’t mean progress is lacking.

ACOG has partnered with numerous other organizations to promote awareness and change, including through legislation. A recent win was the enactment of the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2018, a bipartisan bill designed to promote and support maternal mortality review committees in every state. A major focus of BMMA’s Black Maternal Health Week was the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020, a nine-bill package introduced in March to comprehensively address the crisis.

But efforts like these, whether they aim to elucidate the contributors to health disparities or to directly target structural and overt racism and root out implicit bias in medical care, are nothing new. As Dr. Bailey and colleagues noted, a challenge is getting the message across because efforts to avoid tough conversations around these topics are nothing new, either.

Dr. Gee attested to that during a maternal mortality panel discussion at the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke about the resistance she encountered in 2016 when she was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Health Department and worked to make racism and bias a foundational part of the discussion on improving maternal and fetal outcomes.

She established the first Office of Health Equity in the state – and the first in the nation to not only require measurement outcomes by race but also explicitly address racial bias at the outset. The goal wasn’t just to talk about it but to “plan for addressing equity in every single aspect of what we do with ... our case equity action teams.”

“At our first maternal mortality quality meetings we insisted on focusing on equity at the very outset, and we had people that left when we started talking about racism,” she said, noting that others said it was “too political” to discuss during an election year or that equity was something to address later.

“We said no. We insisted on it, and I think that was very important because all ships don’t rise with the tide, not with health disparities,” she said, recounting an earlier experience when she led the Louisiana Birth Outcomes Initiative: “I asked to have a brown-bag focused on racism at the department so we could talk about the impact of implicit bias on decision making, and I was told that I was a Yankee who didn’t understand the South and that racism didn’t really exist here, and what did I know about it – and I couldn’t have the brown-bag.”

That was in 2011.

Fast-forward to April 24, 2020. As Dr. Gee shared her perspective on addressing racism and bias in medicine, she was preparing for a call regarding the racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes – the first health equity action sanctioned by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (D).

“I think we really set the stage for these discussions,” she said.
 

Addressing equity to enact change

The efforts in Louisiana also set the stage for better maternal outcomes. At the 2019 ACOG meeting where she spoke as part of the President’s Panel, Dr. Gee said Louisiana had the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. The NCHC data released in January, however, suggest that may no longer be the case.

Inconsistencies in how the latest and prior data were reported, including in how maternal mortality was defined, make direct comparison impossible. But in the latest report, Louisiana ranked seventh among states with available data.

“Ninety percent of the deliveries in the state happen at hospitals that we worked with,” Dr. Gee said, highlighting the reach of the efforts to improve outcomes there.

She also described a recent case involving an anemic patient whose bleeding risk was identified early thanks to the programs put in place. That enabled early preparation in the event of complications.

The patient experienced a massive hemorrhage, but the preparation, including having units of blood on hand in case of such an emergency, saved her life.

“So we clearly have not just data, but individual stories of people whose lives have been saved by this work,” she said.

More tangible data on maternal morbidity further show that the efforts in the state are making a difference, Dr. Gillispie said, citing preliminary outcomes data from the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review launched in 2018.

“We started with an initial goal of reducing severe maternal morbidity related to hypertension and hemorrhage by 20%, as well as reducing the black/white disparity gap by Mother’s Day 2020,” she said.

Final analyses have been delayed because of COVID-19, but early assessments showed a reduction in the disparity gap, she said, again highlighting the importance of focusing on equity.

“Definitely from the standpoint of the Quality Collaborative side ... we’ve been working with our facilities to make them aware of what implicit bias is, helping them to also do the Harvard Implicit Bias Test so they can figure out what their own biases are, start working to acknowledge them and address them, and start working to fight against letting that bias change how they treat individuals,” Dr. Gillispie said.

The work started through these initiatives will continue because there is much left to be done, she said.

Indeed, the surprised reactions in recent weeks to the reports of disparities in COVID-19 outcomes further underscore that reality, and the maternal mortality statistics – with use of the voices of those directly affected by structural and overt racism and bias in maternal care as a megaphone – speak for themselves.

Hearing implicit bias from patients’ perspective

Just ask Timoria McQueen Saba, a black woman who nearly died from a postpartum hemorrhage in 2010. At ACOG 2019, she spoke about how she had to switch ob.gyns. three times during her first pregnancy because she felt she had not received quality care – one doctor neglected to tell her she had placenta previa. She also experienced excessive wait times at prenatal appointments and had been on the receiving end of microaggressions and degrading questions such as “Are you still married?” and “Is your husband your baby’s father?” – and these are all things her white friends who recommended those physicians never experienced, she said.

“The health care system has just sometimes beaten people down so much, just like the world has – people of color, especially – to where you’re dismissed, your concerns are invalidated,” she said. “Some doctors don’t even think black people feel pain [or that] our pain is less.”

Mrs. Saba also spoke about how her health care “improved a billion percent” when her white husband accompanied her to appointments.

Just ask Charles S. Johnson IV, whose wife Kira Dixon Johnson died in 2016 during surgery for postpartum bleeding complications – after he and other family members spent 10 hours pleading for help for her.

Speaking at the ACOG panel discussion with Mrs. Saba, Mr. Johnson described “a clear disconnect” between the medical staff at the hospital and the way they viewed and valued Kira. He shared his frustration in wanting to advocate for his wife, but knowing that, as an African American male, he risked being seen as a threat and removed from the hospital if he didn’t stay calm, if he “tapped into those natural instincts as a man and a husband who wants to just protect his family.”

He fought back emotions, struggling to get the words out, saying that’s what haunts him and keeps him up at night – wondering if he should have “fought harder, grabbed the doctor by the collar, raised his voice, slammed on the counter.

“Maybe they would have done something,” he said.

Such experiences cross all socioeconomic boundaries. Ask U.S. Track and Field Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, who testified at a U.S. House Ways and Means Committee hearing on May 16, 2019 after developing severe preeclampsia that threatened her life and that of her baby. Ask tennis champion Serena Williams, who demanded assessment for pulmonary embolism following the birth of her child; she knew the signs, but her health care providers initially dismissed her concerns.

Their experiences aren’t just anecdotal. Data consistently show how racism and bias affect patient treatment and outcomes. Dr. Gee, for example, shared findings from a retrospective assessment of 47 confirmed pregnancy-related deaths in Louisiana between 2011 and 2016 that looked specifically at whether the deaths could potentially have been prevented if blood was given sooner, cardiomyopathy was recognized sooner, hypertension was treated on time, or other changes were made to care.

The answer was “Yes” in 9% of cases involving white patients – and in 59% of cases involving black patients (odds ratio, 14.6).

The study, reported in February in Obstetrics & Gynecology, showed that 27 of the deaths (58%) occurred at level III or IV birth facilities and that those deaths were not less likely than those at level I or II facilities to be categorized as preventable (OR, 2.0).

Findings from the Giving Voice to Mothers study, published in Reproductive Health in 2019, showed how mistreatment during childbirth might contribute to such outcomes.

In an online cross-sectional survey of more than 2,100 U.S. women, one in six reported at least one type of mistreatment, such as loss of autonomy, being yelled at or threatened, being ignored or having requests for help ignored, Saraswathi Vedam, SciD, of the Birth Place Lab at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues reported.

Race was among the factors associated with likelihood of mistreatment, and the rates of mistreatment for women of color were consistently higher – even when looking at interactions between race and other characteristics, such as socioeconomic status (SES). For example, 27.2% of women of color with low SES, compared with 18.7% of white women with low SES, reported mistreatment. Having a partner who was black, regardless of maternal race, was also associated with an increased rate of mistreatment, the authors found.

“I often get the question, ‘Do you think Kira would be alive if she was white,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. “The first way I respond to that question is [by saying that] the simple fact that you have to ask me is a problem.

“When this first happened, I was in so much pain that I couldn’t process the fact that something so egregious and outrageous happened to my wife because of the color of her skin, but as I began to process and really think about it and unpack this scenario, I have to be really frank ... do I think that she would have sat there for 10 hours while we begged and pleaded? Absolutely not.”

He stressed that his words aren’t “an indictment of the profession.”

“This is not an indictment saying that all people are racist or prejudiced,” he said. “But here’s the reality: If you are in this profession, if you are responsible for the well-being of patients and their families, and you are not able to see them in the same way that you see your mother, your wife, your sister, you have two options – you need to find something else to do or you need to take steps to get better.”
 

Fixing systems, finding solutions

Dr. Gee acknowledged the work that physicians need to do to help improve outcomes.

“The average time we give a patient to talk is 11 seconds before we interrupt them,” she said, as one example. “We have to recognize that.”

But efforts to improve outcomes shouldn’t just focus on changing physician behavior, she said.

“We really need to focus, as has the U.K. – very effectively – on using midwives, doulas, other health care professionals as complements to physicians to make sure that we have women-centered birth experiences.

“So, instead of just blaming the doctors, I think we need to change the system,” Dr. Gee emphasized.

The disruptions in health systems caused by COVID-19 present a unique opportunity to do that, she said. There is now an opportunity to build them back.

“We have a chance to build the systems back, and when we do so, we ought to build them back correcting for implicit bias and some of the systemic issues that lead to poor outcomes for people of color in our country,” she said.

Solutions proposed by Dr. Gee and others include more diversity in the workforce, more inclusion of patient advocates in maternal care, development of culturally appropriate literacy and numeracy communications, measurement by race (and action on the outcomes), standardization of care, and development of new ways to improve care access.


We will focus more specifically on these solutions in Part 2 of this article in our maternal mortality series. Previous articles in the series are available at mdedge.com/obgyn/maternal-mortality.

sworcester@mdedge.com

In the African American and African communities, information regarding the care and treatment of hair and skin often is obtained from relatives as well as Internet videos and bloggers.¹ Moreover, fewer than half of African American women surveyed believe that their physician understands African American hair.² In addition to proficiency in the diagnosis and treatment of hair and scalp disorders in this population, dermatologists must be aware of common hair and scalp beliefs, misconceptions, care, and product use to ensure culturally competent interactions and treatment.

When a patient of African descent refers to their hair as “natural,” he/she is referring to its texture compared with hair that is chemically treated with straighteners (ie, “relaxed” or “permed” hair). Natural hair refers to hair that has not been altered with chemical treatments that permanently break and re-form disulfide bonds of the hair.¹ In 2003, it was estimated that 80% of African American women treated their hair with a chemical relaxer.³ However, this preference has changed over the last decade, with a larger percentage of African American women choosing to wear a natural hairstyle.⁴

Regardless of preferred hairstyle, a multitude of products can be used to obtain and maintain the particular style. According to US Food and Drug Administration regulations, a product’s ingredients must appear on an information panel in descending order of predominance. Additionally, products must be accurately labeled without misleading information. However, one study found that hair care products commonly used by African American women contain mixtures of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and 84% of detected chemicals are not listed on the label.⁵

Properties of Hair Care Products

Women of African descent use hair grooming products for cleansing and moisturizing the hair and scalp, detangling, and styling. Products to achieve these goals comprise shampoos, leave-in and rinse-out conditioners, creams, pomades, oils, and gels. In August 2018 we performed a Google search of the most popular hair care products used for natural hair and chemically relaxed African American hair. Key terms used in our search included popular natural hair products, best natural hair products, top natural hair products, products for permed hair, shampoos for permed hair, conditioner for permed hair, popular detanglers for African American hair, popular products for natural hair, detanglers used for permed hair, gels for relaxed hair, moisturizers for relaxed hair, gels for natural hair, and popular moisturizers for African American hair. We reviewed all websites generated by the search and compared the most popular brands, compiled a list of products, and reviewed them for availability in 2 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1 Walmart in Hershey, Pennsylvania; and 1 Walmart in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Of the 80 products identified, we selected 57 products to be reviewed for ingredients based on which ones were most commonly seen in search results. Table 1 highlights several randomly chosen popular hair care products used by African American women to familiarize dermatologists with specific products and manufacturers.

Tightly coiled hair, common among women of African descent, is considered fragile because of decreased water content and tensile strength.⁶ Fragility is exacerbated by manipulation during styling, excessive heat, and harsh shampoos that strip the hair of moisture, as well as chemical treatments that lead to protein deficiency.^4,6,7 Because tightly coiled hair is naturally dry and fragile, women of African descent have a particular preference for products that reduce hair dryness and breakage, which has led to the popularity of sulfate-free shampoos that minimize loss of moisture in hair; moisturizers, oils, and conditioners also are used to enhance moisture retention in hair. Conditioners also provide protein substances that can help strengthen hair.⁴

Consumers’ concerns about the inclusion of potentially harmful ingredients have resulted in reformulation of many products. Our review of products demonstrated that natural hair consumers used fewer products containing silicones, parabens, and sulfates, compared to consumers with chemically relaxed hair. Another tool used by manufacturers to address these concerns is the inclusion of an additional label to distinguish the product as sulfate free, silicone free, paraben free, petroleum free, or a combination of these terms. Although many patients believe that there are “good” and “bad” products, they should be made aware that there are pros and cons of ingredients frequently found in hair-grooming products. Popular ingredients in hair care products include sulfates, cationic surfactants and cationic polymers, silicone, oils, and parabens.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is sodium laureth sulfate, commonly used as a primary detergent in shampoos designed for normal to dry hair.¹⁰ Sodium laureth sulfate, which provides excellent cleansing and leaves the hair better moisturized and manageable compared to lauryl sulfates,¹⁰ is a common ingredient in the products in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, and Pantene Pro-V Truly Relaxed Moisturizing Shampoo).

An ingredient that might be confused for a sulfate is behentrimonium methosulfate, a cationic quaternary ammonium salt that is not used to cleanse the hair, unlike sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, but serves as an antistatic conditioning agent to keep hair moisturized and frizz free.¹¹ Behentrimonium methosulfate is found in conditioners and detanglers in Table 1 (The Mane Choice Green Tea & Carrot Conditioning Mask, Kinky-Curly Knot Today, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, SheaMoisture Raw Shea Butter Extra-Moisture Detangler, Mielle Pomegranate & Honey Leave-In Conditioner). Patients should be informed that behentrimonium methosulfate is not water soluble, which suggests that it can lead to buildup of residue.

Cationic Surfactants and Cationic Polymers
Cationic surfactants and cationic polymers are found in many hair products and improve manageability by softening and detangling hair.^6,10 Hair consists of negatively charged keratin proteins⁷ that electrostatically attract the positively charged polar group of cationic surfactants and cationic polymers. These surfactants and polymers then adhere to and normalize hair surface charges, resulting in improved texture and reduced friction between strands.⁶ For African American patients with natural hair, cationic surfactants and polymers help to maintain curl patterns and assist in detangling.⁶ Polyquaternium is a cationic polymer that is found in several products in Table 1 (Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo, ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-in Conditioner, and John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner).

The surfactants triethanolamine and tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) are ingredients in some styling gels and have been reported as potential carcinogens.¹² However, there are inadequate human or animal data to support the carcinogenicity of either ingredient at this time. Of note, tetrasodium EDTA has been reported to increase the penetration of other chemicals through the skin, which might lead to toxicity.¹²

Silicone
Silicone agents can be found in a variety of hair care products, including shampoos, detanglers, hair conditioners, leave-in conditioners, and moisturizers. Of the 22 products listed in Table 1, silicones are found in 14 products. Common silicones include dimethicone, amodimethicone, cyclopentasiloxane, and dimethiconol. Silicones form hydrophobic films that create smoothness and shine.^6,8 Silicone-containing products help reduce frizz and provide protection against breakage and heat damage in chemically relaxed hair.^6,7 For patients with natural hair, silicones aid in hair detangling.

Frequent use of silicone products can result in residue buildup due to the insolubility of silicone in water. Preventatively, some products include water-soluble silicones with the same benefits, such as silicones with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-, laurylmethicone copolyol, and dimethicone copolyol.⁷ Dimethicone copolyol was found in 1 of our reviewed products (OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo); 10 products in Table 1 contain ingredients with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-. Several products in our review contain both water-soluble and water-insoluble silicones (eg, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-In Conditioner).

Oils
Oils in hair care products prevent hair breakage by coating the hair shaft and sealing in moisture. There are various types of oils in hair care products. Essential oils are volatile liquid-aroma substances derived most commonly from plants through dry or steam distillation or by other mechanical processes.¹³ Essential oils are used to seal and moisturize the hair and often are used to produce fragrance in hair products.⁶ Examples of essential oils that are ingredients in cosmetics include tea tree oil (TTO), peppermint oil, rosemary oil, and thyme oil. Vegetable oils can be used to dilute essential oils because essential oils can irritate skin.¹⁴

Tea tree oil is an essential oil obtained through steam distillation of the leaves of the coastal tree Melaleuca alternifolia. The molecule terpinen-4-ol is a major component of TTO thought to exhibit antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties.¹⁵ Pazyar et al¹⁶ reviewed several studies that propose the use of TTO to treat acne vulgaris, seborrheic dermatitis, and chronic gingivitis. Although this herbal oil seemingly has many possible dermatologic applications, dermatologists should be aware that reports have linked TTO to allergic contact dermatitis due to 1,8-cineole, another constituent of TTO.¹⁷ Tea tree oil is an ingredient in several of the hair care products that we reviewed. With growing patient interest in the benefits of TTO, further research is necessary to establish guidelines on its use for seborrheic dermatitis.

Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from the seeds of the castor oil plant. Its primary fatty acid group—ricinoleic acid—along with certain salts and esters function primarily as skin-conditioning agents, emulsion stabilizers, and surfactants in cosmetic products.¹⁸ Jamaican black castor oil is a popular moisturizing oil in the African American natural hair community. It differs in color from standard castor oil because of the manner in which the oil is processed. Anecdotally, it is sometimes advertised as a hair growth serum; some patients admit to applying Jamaican black castor oil on the scalp as self-treatment of alopecia. The basis for such claims might stem from research showing that ricinoleic acid exhibits anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties in some mice and guinea pig models with repeated topical application.¹⁷ Scientific evidence does not, however, support claims that castor oil or Jamaican black castor oil can treat alopecia.

Mineral oils have a lubricant base and are refined from petroleum crude oils. The composition of crude oil varies; to remove impurities, it must undergo treatment with different degrees of refinement. When products are highly treated, the result is a substantially decreased level of impurities.¹⁹ Although they are beneficial in coating the hair shaft and preventing hair damage, consumers tend to avoid products containing mineral oil because of its carcinogenic potential if untreated or mildly treated.²⁰

Although cosmetics with mineral oils are highly treated, a study showed that mineral oil is the largest contaminant in the human body, with cosmetics being a possible source.²¹ Studies also have revealed that mineral oils do not prevent hair breakage compared to other oils, such as essential oils and coconut oil.^22,23 Many consumers therefore choose to avoid mineral oil because alternative oils exist that are beneficial in preventing hair damage but do not present carcinogenic risk. An example of a mineral oil–free product in Table 1 is Mizani Coconut Souffle Light Moisturizing Hairdress. Only 8 of the 57 products we reviewed did not contain oil, including the following 5 included in Table 1: Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, Kinky-Curly Knot Today (although this product did have behentrimonium made from rapeseed oil), Herbal Essences Hello Hydration Moisturizing Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel.

Parabens
Parabens are preservatives used to prevent growth of pathogens in and prevent decomposition of cosmetic products. Parabens have attracted a lot of criticism because of their possible link to breast cancer.²⁴ In vitro and in vivo studies of parabens have demonstrated weak estrogenic activity that increased proportionally with increased length and branching of alkyl side chains. In vivo animal studies demonstrated weak estrogenic activity—100,000-fold less potent than 17β-estradiol.²⁵ Ongoing research examines the relationship between the estrogenic properties of parabens, endocrine disruption, and cancer in human breast epithelial cells.^5,24 The Cosmetic Ingredient Review and the US Food and Drug Administration uphold that parabens are safe to use in cosmetics.²⁶ Several products that include parabens are listed in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel).

Our Recommendations

Table 2 (although not exhaustive) includes the authors’ recommendations of hair care products for individuals of African descent. Dermatologists should discuss the pros and cons of the use of products with ingredients that have controversial health effects, namely parabens, triethanolamine, tetrasodium EDTA, and mineral oils. Our recommendations do not include products that contain the prior ingredients. For many women of African descent, their hair type and therefore product use changes with the season, health of their hair, and normal changes to hair throughout their lifetime. There is no magic product for all: Each patient has specific individual styling preferences and a distinctive hair type. Decisions about which products to use can be guided with the assistance of a dermatologist but will ultimately be left up to the patient.

Conclusion

Given the array of hair and scalp care products, it is helpful for dermatologists to become familiar with several of the most popular ingredients and commonly used products. It might be helpful to ask patients which products they use and which ones have been effective for their unique hair concerns. Thus, you become armed with a catalogue of product recommendations for your patients.

In the African American and African communities, information regarding the care and treatment of hair and skin often is obtained from relatives as well as Internet videos and bloggers.¹ Moreover, fewer than half of African American women surveyed believe that their physician understands African American hair.² In addition to proficiency in the diagnosis and treatment of hair and scalp disorders in this population, dermatologists must be aware of common hair and scalp beliefs, misconceptions, care, and product use to ensure culturally competent interactions and treatment.

When a patient of African descent refers to their hair as “natural,” he/she is referring to its texture compared with hair that is chemically treated with straighteners (ie, “relaxed” or “permed” hair). Natural hair refers to hair that has not been altered with chemical treatments that permanently break and re-form disulfide bonds of the hair.¹ In 2003, it was estimated that 80% of African American women treated their hair with a chemical relaxer.³ However, this preference has changed over the last decade, with a larger percentage of African American women choosing to wear a natural hairstyle.⁴

Regardless of preferred hairstyle, a multitude of products can be used to obtain and maintain the particular style. According to US Food and Drug Administration regulations, a product’s ingredients must appear on an information panel in descending order of predominance. Additionally, products must be accurately labeled without misleading information. However, one study found that hair care products commonly used by African American women contain mixtures of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and 84% of detected chemicals are not listed on the label.⁵

Properties of Hair Care Products

Women of African descent use hair grooming products for cleansing and moisturizing the hair and scalp, detangling, and styling. Products to achieve these goals comprise shampoos, leave-in and rinse-out conditioners, creams, pomades, oils, and gels. In August 2018 we performed a Google search of the most popular hair care products used for natural hair and chemically relaxed African American hair. Key terms used in our search included popular natural hair products, best natural hair products, top natural hair products, products for permed hair, shampoos for permed hair, conditioner for permed hair, popular detanglers for African American hair, popular products for natural hair, detanglers used for permed hair, gels for relaxed hair, moisturizers for relaxed hair, gels for natural hair, and popular moisturizers for African American hair. We reviewed all websites generated by the search and compared the most popular brands, compiled a list of products, and reviewed them for availability in 2 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1 Walmart in Hershey, Pennsylvania; and 1 Walmart in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Of the 80 products identified, we selected 57 products to be reviewed for ingredients based on which ones were most commonly seen in search results. Table 1 highlights several randomly chosen popular hair care products used by African American women to familiarize dermatologists with specific products and manufacturers.

Tightly coiled hair, common among women of African descent, is considered fragile because of decreased water content and tensile strength.⁶ Fragility is exacerbated by manipulation during styling, excessive heat, and harsh shampoos that strip the hair of moisture, as well as chemical treatments that lead to protein deficiency.^4,6,7 Because tightly coiled hair is naturally dry and fragile, women of African descent have a particular preference for products that reduce hair dryness and breakage, which has led to the popularity of sulfate-free shampoos that minimize loss of moisture in hair; moisturizers, oils, and conditioners also are used to enhance moisture retention in hair. Conditioners also provide protein substances that can help strengthen hair.⁴

Consumers’ concerns about the inclusion of potentially harmful ingredients have resulted in reformulation of many products. Our review of products demonstrated that natural hair consumers used fewer products containing silicones, parabens, and sulfates, compared to consumers with chemically relaxed hair. Another tool used by manufacturers to address these concerns is the inclusion of an additional label to distinguish the product as sulfate free, silicone free, paraben free, petroleum free, or a combination of these terms. Although many patients believe that there are “good” and “bad” products, they should be made aware that there are pros and cons of ingredients frequently found in hair-grooming products. Popular ingredients in hair care products include sulfates, cationic surfactants and cationic polymers, silicone, oils, and parabens.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is sodium laureth sulfate, commonly used as a primary detergent in shampoos designed for normal to dry hair.¹⁰ Sodium laureth sulfate, which provides excellent cleansing and leaves the hair better moisturized and manageable compared to lauryl sulfates,¹⁰ is a common ingredient in the products in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, and Pantene Pro-V Truly Relaxed Moisturizing Shampoo).

An ingredient that might be confused for a sulfate is behentrimonium methosulfate, a cationic quaternary ammonium salt that is not used to cleanse the hair, unlike sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, but serves as an antistatic conditioning agent to keep hair moisturized and frizz free.¹¹ Behentrimonium methosulfate is found in conditioners and detanglers in Table 1 (The Mane Choice Green Tea & Carrot Conditioning Mask, Kinky-Curly Knot Today, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, SheaMoisture Raw Shea Butter Extra-Moisture Detangler, Mielle Pomegranate & Honey Leave-In Conditioner). Patients should be informed that behentrimonium methosulfate is not water soluble, which suggests that it can lead to buildup of residue.

Cationic Surfactants and Cationic Polymers
Cationic surfactants and cationic polymers are found in many hair products and improve manageability by softening and detangling hair.^6,10 Hair consists of negatively charged keratin proteins⁷ that electrostatically attract the positively charged polar group of cationic surfactants and cationic polymers. These surfactants and polymers then adhere to and normalize hair surface charges, resulting in improved texture and reduced friction between strands.⁶ For African American patients with natural hair, cationic surfactants and polymers help to maintain curl patterns and assist in detangling.⁶ Polyquaternium is a cationic polymer that is found in several products in Table 1 (Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo, ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-in Conditioner, and John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner).

The surfactants triethanolamine and tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) are ingredients in some styling gels and have been reported as potential carcinogens.¹² However, there are inadequate human or animal data to support the carcinogenicity of either ingredient at this time. Of note, tetrasodium EDTA has been reported to increase the penetration of other chemicals through the skin, which might lead to toxicity.¹²

Silicone
Silicone agents can be found in a variety of hair care products, including shampoos, detanglers, hair conditioners, leave-in conditioners, and moisturizers. Of the 22 products listed in Table 1, silicones are found in 14 products. Common silicones include dimethicone, amodimethicone, cyclopentasiloxane, and dimethiconol. Silicones form hydrophobic films that create smoothness and shine.^6,8 Silicone-containing products help reduce frizz and provide protection against breakage and heat damage in chemically relaxed hair.^6,7 For patients with natural hair, silicones aid in hair detangling.

Frequent use of silicone products can result in residue buildup due to the insolubility of silicone in water. Preventatively, some products include water-soluble silicones with the same benefits, such as silicones with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-, laurylmethicone copolyol, and dimethicone copolyol.⁷ Dimethicone copolyol was found in 1 of our reviewed products (OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo); 10 products in Table 1 contain ingredients with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-. Several products in our review contain both water-soluble and water-insoluble silicones (eg, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-In Conditioner).

Oils
Oils in hair care products prevent hair breakage by coating the hair shaft and sealing in moisture. There are various types of oils in hair care products. Essential oils are volatile liquid-aroma substances derived most commonly from plants through dry or steam distillation or by other mechanical processes.¹³ Essential oils are used to seal and moisturize the hair and often are used to produce fragrance in hair products.⁶ Examples of essential oils that are ingredients in cosmetics include tea tree oil (TTO), peppermint oil, rosemary oil, and thyme oil. Vegetable oils can be used to dilute essential oils because essential oils can irritate skin.¹⁴

Tea tree oil is an essential oil obtained through steam distillation of the leaves of the coastal tree Melaleuca alternifolia. The molecule terpinen-4-ol is a major component of TTO thought to exhibit antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties.¹⁵ Pazyar et al¹⁶ reviewed several studies that propose the use of TTO to treat acne vulgaris, seborrheic dermatitis, and chronic gingivitis. Although this herbal oil seemingly has many possible dermatologic applications, dermatologists should be aware that reports have linked TTO to allergic contact dermatitis due to 1,8-cineole, another constituent of TTO.¹⁷ Tea tree oil is an ingredient in several of the hair care products that we reviewed. With growing patient interest in the benefits of TTO, further research is necessary to establish guidelines on its use for seborrheic dermatitis.

Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from the seeds of the castor oil plant. Its primary fatty acid group—ricinoleic acid—along with certain salts and esters function primarily as skin-conditioning agents, emulsion stabilizers, and surfactants in cosmetic products.¹⁸ Jamaican black castor oil is a popular moisturizing oil in the African American natural hair community. It differs in color from standard castor oil because of the manner in which the oil is processed. Anecdotally, it is sometimes advertised as a hair growth serum; some patients admit to applying Jamaican black castor oil on the scalp as self-treatment of alopecia. The basis for such claims might stem from research showing that ricinoleic acid exhibits anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties in some mice and guinea pig models with repeated topical application.¹⁷ Scientific evidence does not, however, support claims that castor oil or Jamaican black castor oil can treat alopecia.

Mineral oils have a lubricant base and are refined from petroleum crude oils. The composition of crude oil varies; to remove impurities, it must undergo treatment with different degrees of refinement. When products are highly treated, the result is a substantially decreased level of impurities.¹⁹ Although they are beneficial in coating the hair shaft and preventing hair damage, consumers tend to avoid products containing mineral oil because of its carcinogenic potential if untreated or mildly treated.²⁰

Although cosmetics with mineral oils are highly treated, a study showed that mineral oil is the largest contaminant in the human body, with cosmetics being a possible source.²¹ Studies also have revealed that mineral oils do not prevent hair breakage compared to other oils, such as essential oils and coconut oil.^22,23 Many consumers therefore choose to avoid mineral oil because alternative oils exist that are beneficial in preventing hair damage but do not present carcinogenic risk. An example of a mineral oil–free product in Table 1 is Mizani Coconut Souffle Light Moisturizing Hairdress. Only 8 of the 57 products we reviewed did not contain oil, including the following 5 included in Table 1: Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, Kinky-Curly Knot Today (although this product did have behentrimonium made from rapeseed oil), Herbal Essences Hello Hydration Moisturizing Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel.

Parabens
Parabens are preservatives used to prevent growth of pathogens in and prevent decomposition of cosmetic products. Parabens have attracted a lot of criticism because of their possible link to breast cancer.²⁴ In vitro and in vivo studies of parabens have demonstrated weak estrogenic activity that increased proportionally with increased length and branching of alkyl side chains. In vivo animal studies demonstrated weak estrogenic activity—100,000-fold less potent than 17β-estradiol.²⁵ Ongoing research examines the relationship between the estrogenic properties of parabens, endocrine disruption, and cancer in human breast epithelial cells.^5,24 The Cosmetic Ingredient Review and the US Food and Drug Administration uphold that parabens are safe to use in cosmetics.²⁶ Several products that include parabens are listed in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel).

Our Recommendations

Table 2 (although not exhaustive) includes the authors’ recommendations of hair care products for individuals of African descent. Dermatologists should discuss the pros and cons of the use of products with ingredients that have controversial health effects, namely parabens, triethanolamine, tetrasodium EDTA, and mineral oils. Our recommendations do not include products that contain the prior ingredients. For many women of African descent, their hair type and therefore product use changes with the season, health of their hair, and normal changes to hair throughout their lifetime. There is no magic product for all: Each patient has specific individual styling preferences and a distinctive hair type. Decisions about which products to use can be guided with the assistance of a dermatologist but will ultimately be left up to the patient.

Conclusion

Given the array of hair and scalp care products, it is helpful for dermatologists to become familiar with several of the most popular ingredients and commonly used products. It might be helpful to ask patients which products they use and which ones have been effective for their unique hair concerns. Thus, you become armed with a catalogue of product recommendations for your patients.

In the African American and African communities, information regarding the care and treatment of hair and skin often is obtained from relatives as well as Internet videos and bloggers.¹ Moreover, fewer than half of African American women surveyed believe that their physician understands African American hair.² In addition to proficiency in the diagnosis and treatment of hair and scalp disorders in this population, dermatologists must be aware of common hair and scalp beliefs, misconceptions, care, and product use to ensure culturally competent interactions and treatment.

When a patient of African descent refers to their hair as “natural,” he/she is referring to its texture compared with hair that is chemically treated with straighteners (ie, “relaxed” or “permed” hair). Natural hair refers to hair that has not been altered with chemical treatments that permanently break and re-form disulfide bonds of the hair.¹ In 2003, it was estimated that 80% of African American women treated their hair with a chemical relaxer.³ However, this preference has changed over the last decade, with a larger percentage of African American women choosing to wear a natural hairstyle.⁴

Regardless of preferred hairstyle, a multitude of products can be used to obtain and maintain the particular style. According to US Food and Drug Administration regulations, a product’s ingredients must appear on an information panel in descending order of predominance. Additionally, products must be accurately labeled without misleading information. However, one study found that hair care products commonly used by African American women contain mixtures of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and 84% of detected chemicals are not listed on the label.⁵

Properties of Hair Care Products

Women of African descent use hair grooming products for cleansing and moisturizing the hair and scalp, detangling, and styling. Products to achieve these goals comprise shampoos, leave-in and rinse-out conditioners, creams, pomades, oils, and gels. In August 2018 we performed a Google search of the most popular hair care products used for natural hair and chemically relaxed African American hair. Key terms used in our search included popular natural hair products, best natural hair products, top natural hair products, products for permed hair, shampoos for permed hair, conditioner for permed hair, popular detanglers for African American hair, popular products for natural hair, detanglers used for permed hair, gels for relaxed hair, moisturizers for relaxed hair, gels for natural hair, and popular moisturizers for African American hair. We reviewed all websites generated by the search and compared the most popular brands, compiled a list of products, and reviewed them for availability in 2 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1 Walmart in Hershey, Pennsylvania; and 1 Walmart in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Of the 80 products identified, we selected 57 products to be reviewed for ingredients based on which ones were most commonly seen in search results. Table 1 highlights several randomly chosen popular hair care products used by African American women to familiarize dermatologists with specific products and manufacturers.

Tightly coiled hair, common among women of African descent, is considered fragile because of decreased water content and tensile strength.⁶ Fragility is exacerbated by manipulation during styling, excessive heat, and harsh shampoos that strip the hair of moisture, as well as chemical treatments that lead to protein deficiency.^4,6,7 Because tightly coiled hair is naturally dry and fragile, women of African descent have a particular preference for products that reduce hair dryness and breakage, which has led to the popularity of sulfate-free shampoos that minimize loss of moisture in hair; moisturizers, oils, and conditioners also are used to enhance moisture retention in hair. Conditioners also provide protein substances that can help strengthen hair.⁴

Consumers’ concerns about the inclusion of potentially harmful ingredients have resulted in reformulation of many products. Our review of products demonstrated that natural hair consumers used fewer products containing silicones, parabens, and sulfates, compared to consumers with chemically relaxed hair. Another tool used by manufacturers to address these concerns is the inclusion of an additional label to distinguish the product as sulfate free, silicone free, paraben free, petroleum free, or a combination of these terms. Although many patients believe that there are “good” and “bad” products, they should be made aware that there are pros and cons of ingredients frequently found in hair-grooming products. Popular ingredients in hair care products include sulfates, cationic surfactants and cationic polymers, silicone, oils, and parabens.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is sodium laureth sulfate, commonly used as a primary detergent in shampoos designed for normal to dry hair.¹⁰ Sodium laureth sulfate, which provides excellent cleansing and leaves the hair better moisturized and manageable compared to lauryl sulfates,¹⁰ is a common ingredient in the products in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, and Pantene Pro-V Truly Relaxed Moisturizing Shampoo).

An ingredient that might be confused for a sulfate is behentrimonium methosulfate, a cationic quaternary ammonium salt that is not used to cleanse the hair, unlike sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, but serves as an antistatic conditioning agent to keep hair moisturized and frizz free.¹¹ Behentrimonium methosulfate is found in conditioners and detanglers in Table 1 (The Mane Choice Green Tea & Carrot Conditioning Mask, Kinky-Curly Knot Today, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, SheaMoisture Raw Shea Butter Extra-Moisture Detangler, Mielle Pomegranate & Honey Leave-In Conditioner). Patients should be informed that behentrimonium methosulfate is not water soluble, which suggests that it can lead to buildup of residue.

Cationic Surfactants and Cationic Polymers
Cationic surfactants and cationic polymers are found in many hair products and improve manageability by softening and detangling hair.^6,10 Hair consists of negatively charged keratin proteins⁷ that electrostatically attract the positively charged polar group of cationic surfactants and cationic polymers. These surfactants and polymers then adhere to and normalize hair surface charges, resulting in improved texture and reduced friction between strands.⁶ For African American patients with natural hair, cationic surfactants and polymers help to maintain curl patterns and assist in detangling.⁶ Polyquaternium is a cationic polymer that is found in several products in Table 1 (Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo, ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Pantene Pro-V Gold Series Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-in Conditioner, and John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner).

The surfactants triethanolamine and tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) are ingredients in some styling gels and have been reported as potential carcinogens.¹² However, there are inadequate human or animal data to support the carcinogenicity of either ingredient at this time. Of note, tetrasodium EDTA has been reported to increase the penetration of other chemicals through the skin, which might lead to toxicity.¹²

Silicone
Silicone agents can be found in a variety of hair care products, including shampoos, detanglers, hair conditioners, leave-in conditioners, and moisturizers. Of the 22 products listed in Table 1, silicones are found in 14 products. Common silicones include dimethicone, amodimethicone, cyclopentasiloxane, and dimethiconol. Silicones form hydrophobic films that create smoothness and shine.^6,8 Silicone-containing products help reduce frizz and provide protection against breakage and heat damage in chemically relaxed hair.^6,7 For patients with natural hair, silicones aid in hair detangling.

Frequent use of silicone products can result in residue buildup due to the insolubility of silicone in water. Preventatively, some products include water-soluble silicones with the same benefits, such as silicones with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-, laurylmethicone copolyol, and dimethicone copolyol.⁷ Dimethicone copolyol was found in 1 of our reviewed products (OGX Nourishing Coconut Milk Shampoo); 10 products in Table 1 contain ingredients with the prefixes PPG- or PEG-. Several products in our review contain both water-soluble and water-insoluble silicones (eg, Creme of Nature Argan Oil Strength & Shine Leave-In Conditioner).

Oils
Oils in hair care products prevent hair breakage by coating the hair shaft and sealing in moisture. There are various types of oils in hair care products. Essential oils are volatile liquid-aroma substances derived most commonly from plants through dry or steam distillation or by other mechanical processes.¹³ Essential oils are used to seal and moisturize the hair and often are used to produce fragrance in hair products.⁶ Examples of essential oils that are ingredients in cosmetics include tea tree oil (TTO), peppermint oil, rosemary oil, and thyme oil. Vegetable oils can be used to dilute essential oils because essential oils can irritate skin.¹⁴

Tea tree oil is an essential oil obtained through steam distillation of the leaves of the coastal tree Melaleuca alternifolia. The molecule terpinen-4-ol is a major component of TTO thought to exhibit antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties.¹⁵ Pazyar et al¹⁶ reviewed several studies that propose the use of TTO to treat acne vulgaris, seborrheic dermatitis, and chronic gingivitis. Although this herbal oil seemingly has many possible dermatologic applications, dermatologists should be aware that reports have linked TTO to allergic contact dermatitis due to 1,8-cineole, another constituent of TTO.¹⁷ Tea tree oil is an ingredient in several of the hair care products that we reviewed. With growing patient interest in the benefits of TTO, further research is necessary to establish guidelines on its use for seborrheic dermatitis.

Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from the seeds of the castor oil plant. Its primary fatty acid group—ricinoleic acid—along with certain salts and esters function primarily as skin-conditioning agents, emulsion stabilizers, and surfactants in cosmetic products.¹⁸ Jamaican black castor oil is a popular moisturizing oil in the African American natural hair community. It differs in color from standard castor oil because of the manner in which the oil is processed. Anecdotally, it is sometimes advertised as a hair growth serum; some patients admit to applying Jamaican black castor oil on the scalp as self-treatment of alopecia. The basis for such claims might stem from research showing that ricinoleic acid exhibits anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties in some mice and guinea pig models with repeated topical application.¹⁷ Scientific evidence does not, however, support claims that castor oil or Jamaican black castor oil can treat alopecia.

Mineral oils have a lubricant base and are refined from petroleum crude oils. The composition of crude oil varies; to remove impurities, it must undergo treatment with different degrees of refinement. When products are highly treated, the result is a substantially decreased level of impurities.¹⁹ Although they are beneficial in coating the hair shaft and preventing hair damage, consumers tend to avoid products containing mineral oil because of its carcinogenic potential if untreated or mildly treated.²⁰

Although cosmetics with mineral oils are highly treated, a study showed that mineral oil is the largest contaminant in the human body, with cosmetics being a possible source.²¹ Studies also have revealed that mineral oils do not prevent hair breakage compared to other oils, such as essential oils and coconut oil.^22,23 Many consumers therefore choose to avoid mineral oil because alternative oils exist that are beneficial in preventing hair damage but do not present carcinogenic risk. An example of a mineral oil–free product in Table 1 is Mizani Coconut Souffle Light Moisturizing Hairdress. Only 8 of the 57 products we reviewed did not contain oil, including the following 5 included in Table 1: Carol’s Daughter Black Vanilla Moisture & Shine Sulfate-Free Shampoo, Miss Jessie’s Leave-In Condish, Kinky-Curly Knot Today (although this product did have behentrimonium made from rapeseed oil), Herbal Essences Hello Hydration Moisturizing Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel.

Parabens
Parabens are preservatives used to prevent growth of pathogens in and prevent decomposition of cosmetic products. Parabens have attracted a lot of criticism because of their possible link to breast cancer.²⁴ In vitro and in vivo studies of parabens have demonstrated weak estrogenic activity that increased proportionally with increased length and branching of alkyl side chains. In vivo animal studies demonstrated weak estrogenic activity—100,000-fold less potent than 17β-estradiol.²⁵ Ongoing research examines the relationship between the estrogenic properties of parabens, endocrine disruption, and cancer in human breast epithelial cells.^5,24 The Cosmetic Ingredient Review and the US Food and Drug Administration uphold that parabens are safe to use in cosmetics.²⁶ Several products that include parabens are listed in Table 1 (ApHogee Deep Moisture Shampoo, Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk Touch Leave-In Conditioner, John Frieda Frizz Ease Daily Nourishment Leave-In Conditioner, and ampro Pro Styl Protein Styling Gel).

Our Recommendations

Table 2 (although not exhaustive) includes the authors’ recommendations of hair care products for individuals of African descent. Dermatologists should discuss the pros and cons of the use of products with ingredients that have controversial health effects, namely parabens, triethanolamine, tetrasodium EDTA, and mineral oils. Our recommendations do not include products that contain the prior ingredients. For many women of African descent, their hair type and therefore product use changes with the season, health of their hair, and normal changes to hair throughout their lifetime. There is no magic product for all: Each patient has specific individual styling preferences and a distinctive hair type. Decisions about which products to use can be guided with the assistance of a dermatologist but will ultimately be left up to the patient.

Conclusion

Given the array of hair and scalp care products, it is helpful for dermatologists to become familiar with several of the most popular ingredients and commonly used products. It might be helpful to ask patients which products they use and which ones have been effective for their unique hair concerns. Thus, you become armed with a catalogue of product recommendations for your patients.

We are in the healing profession. We practice a trade. We are doctors, therapists, counselors. We work with children, adults, and couples. We document the physical form of our patient after examination, setting the stage for interventions that heal and alleviate suffering. With those who we do not touch physically, we hold out our psychological arms to embrace them in a therapeutic relationship.

We are privileged to appreciate their deeper selves through voice, unsaid words, and body language. A trust evolves (or might not); deeper exploration where our intuition and technical skill discover what troubles the soul. Healing begins as a delicate dance: As trust is earned, our patients risk vulnerability by revealing their weakest selves.

As healers, we often find ourselves adrift with our own insecurities, our own histories that make us human; our styles may differ but training and the tenets and guidelines set by our professional societies keep us in safe waters. These guidelines are informed by the science of health care research and vetted through centuries of observation and experience of process. “Do no harm” is perhaps one of the major rules of engaging with patients. The scaffolding that our code of ethics provides healing professions trumps external pressures to deviate. If you violate these codes, the consequences are borne by the patient and the potential loss of your license.

Some of you may have read about Kevin Euceda, an adolescent who reportedly was waiting for his immigration interview and ordered to undergo mandatory therapy as part of the immigration protocol. Kevin revealed to his therapist the history of violence he experienced as a child growing up in Honduras. His subsequent initiation into a gang was the only option he had to escape a violent death. Those of us who work with youth from gang cultures know fully that allegiance to a gang is a means to find an identity and brotherhood with the payment by a lifestyle of violence. A therapist faced with this information does not judge but helps the person deal with PTSD, nightmares, and guilt that become part of an identity just as the memories of mines blowing up in the face of combat affect veterans.

But the therapist, who reportedly holds a master’s in rehabilitation counseling and was “a year away from passing her licensing exam,” according to an article published in the Washington Post, followed policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The therapist betrayed Kevin by reporting the information he shared with her confidentially to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reason the therapist gave for the breach was that she was compelled do so because Kevin reported participating in gang activity in Honduras. Subsequently, Kevin was sent to a high-security detention center – and is now facing deportation.
 

Betraying a patient, profession

Therapy begins as a contract between patient and therapist. The contract stipulates that all that transpires in the process of therapy (usually a 50-minute block of time, usually weekly) is information held by the therapist and patient – and is not to be shared with anyone, including parents, guardians, legal entities, and health care agencies. This allows the gradual sharing of events, emotions, behaviors, and reactions akin to peeling an onion. Memories, reactions, and feelings assist the therapist as they start their quest of discovery of the conflict and how to resolve it. Trust is the central tenet of this journey. The patient thinks: “You will hear me; you will see me you will understand me and help me understand myself.” The doctor responds: “Even I don’t yet know fully what ails you; we will discover that together. … I will not fail your trust.”

So how does this interface with external pressures? The constitution of a free country provides some inviolable protections that prevent derailment of the codes of ethics based on science. The fine line between what are considered sacrosanct ethics of a field – be it health care, climatology, or architecture – and what could be sacrificed in the name of prevailing forces (political or otherwise) has to be under constant scrutiny by the members of the guild. In health care, when patients cannot trust the science, its implementation, or is let down by the clinician, they are unlikely to benefit from treatment. A foundation of distrust paves the way for future therapeutic relationships that are stained with distrust and noncompliance.

The ethics guidelines of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law specify that psychiatrists in forensic roles “should be clear about limitations on confidentiality in the treatment relationship and ensure that these limitations are communicated to the patient.” Again, the therapist in this case is not a psychiatrist, but I would argue that the same rules would apply.

It is reassuring to know that several key groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association, have all condemned the therapist’s actions. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must do no harm. We must not stand idly by and allow the kind of professional breach that happened to Kevin continue. Patients who confide in mental health professionals with the promise of confidentiality must be able to do so without fear. Only with confidentiality can the therapeutic relationship thrive.

Dr. Sood is professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, and senior professor of child mental health policy, at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

We are in the healing profession. We practice a trade. We are doctors, therapists, counselors. We work with children, adults, and couples. We document the physical form of our patient after examination, setting the stage for interventions that heal and alleviate suffering. With those who we do not touch physically, we hold out our psychological arms to embrace them in a therapeutic relationship.

We are privileged to appreciate their deeper selves through voice, unsaid words, and body language. A trust evolves (or might not); deeper exploration where our intuition and technical skill discover what troubles the soul. Healing begins as a delicate dance: As trust is earned, our patients risk vulnerability by revealing their weakest selves.

As healers, we often find ourselves adrift with our own insecurities, our own histories that make us human; our styles may differ but training and the tenets and guidelines set by our professional societies keep us in safe waters. These guidelines are informed by the science of health care research and vetted through centuries of observation and experience of process. “Do no harm” is perhaps one of the major rules of engaging with patients. The scaffolding that our code of ethics provides healing professions trumps external pressures to deviate. If you violate these codes, the consequences are borne by the patient and the potential loss of your license.

Some of you may have read about Kevin Euceda, an adolescent who reportedly was waiting for his immigration interview and ordered to undergo mandatory therapy as part of the immigration protocol. Kevin revealed to his therapist the history of violence he experienced as a child growing up in Honduras. His subsequent initiation into a gang was the only option he had to escape a violent death. Those of us who work with youth from gang cultures know fully that allegiance to a gang is a means to find an identity and brotherhood with the payment by a lifestyle of violence. A therapist faced with this information does not judge but helps the person deal with PTSD, nightmares, and guilt that become part of an identity just as the memories of mines blowing up in the face of combat affect veterans.

But the therapist, who reportedly holds a master’s in rehabilitation counseling and was “a year away from passing her licensing exam,” according to an article published in the Washington Post, followed policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The therapist betrayed Kevin by reporting the information he shared with her confidentially to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reason the therapist gave for the breach was that she was compelled do so because Kevin reported participating in gang activity in Honduras. Subsequently, Kevin was sent to a high-security detention center – and is now facing deportation.
 

Betraying a patient, profession

Therapy begins as a contract between patient and therapist. The contract stipulates that all that transpires in the process of therapy (usually a 50-minute block of time, usually weekly) is information held by the therapist and patient – and is not to be shared with anyone, including parents, guardians, legal entities, and health care agencies. This allows the gradual sharing of events, emotions, behaviors, and reactions akin to peeling an onion. Memories, reactions, and feelings assist the therapist as they start their quest of discovery of the conflict and how to resolve it. Trust is the central tenet of this journey. The patient thinks: “You will hear me; you will see me you will understand me and help me understand myself.” The doctor responds: “Even I don’t yet know fully what ails you; we will discover that together. … I will not fail your trust.”

So how does this interface with external pressures? The constitution of a free country provides some inviolable protections that prevent derailment of the codes of ethics based on science. The fine line between what are considered sacrosanct ethics of a field – be it health care, climatology, or architecture – and what could be sacrificed in the name of prevailing forces (political or otherwise) has to be under constant scrutiny by the members of the guild. In health care, when patients cannot trust the science, its implementation, or is let down by the clinician, they are unlikely to benefit from treatment. A foundation of distrust paves the way for future therapeutic relationships that are stained with distrust and noncompliance.

The ethics guidelines of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law specify that psychiatrists in forensic roles “should be clear about limitations on confidentiality in the treatment relationship and ensure that these limitations are communicated to the patient.” Again, the therapist in this case is not a psychiatrist, but I would argue that the same rules would apply.

It is reassuring to know that several key groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association, have all condemned the therapist’s actions. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must do no harm. We must not stand idly by and allow the kind of professional breach that happened to Kevin continue. Patients who confide in mental health professionals with the promise of confidentiality must be able to do so without fear. Only with confidentiality can the therapeutic relationship thrive.

Dr. Sood is professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, and senior professor of child mental health policy, at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

We are in the healing profession. We practice a trade. We are doctors, therapists, counselors. We work with children, adults, and couples. We document the physical form of our patient after examination, setting the stage for interventions that heal and alleviate suffering. With those who we do not touch physically, we hold out our psychological arms to embrace them in a therapeutic relationship.

We are privileged to appreciate their deeper selves through voice, unsaid words, and body language. A trust evolves (or might not); deeper exploration where our intuition and technical skill discover what troubles the soul. Healing begins as a delicate dance: As trust is earned, our patients risk vulnerability by revealing their weakest selves.

As healers, we often find ourselves adrift with our own insecurities, our own histories that make us human; our styles may differ but training and the tenets and guidelines set by our professional societies keep us in safe waters. These guidelines are informed by the science of health care research and vetted through centuries of observation and experience of process. “Do no harm” is perhaps one of the major rules of engaging with patients. The scaffolding that our code of ethics provides healing professions trumps external pressures to deviate. If you violate these codes, the consequences are borne by the patient and the potential loss of your license.

Some of you may have read about Kevin Euceda, an adolescent who reportedly was waiting for his immigration interview and ordered to undergo mandatory therapy as part of the immigration protocol. Kevin revealed to his therapist the history of violence he experienced as a child growing up in Honduras. His subsequent initiation into a gang was the only option he had to escape a violent death. Those of us who work with youth from gang cultures know fully that allegiance to a gang is a means to find an identity and brotherhood with the payment by a lifestyle of violence. A therapist faced with this information does not judge but helps the person deal with PTSD, nightmares, and guilt that become part of an identity just as the memories of mines blowing up in the face of combat affect veterans.

But the therapist, who reportedly holds a master’s in rehabilitation counseling and was “a year away from passing her licensing exam,” according to an article published in the Washington Post, followed policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The therapist betrayed Kevin by reporting the information he shared with her confidentially to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reason the therapist gave for the breach was that she was compelled do so because Kevin reported participating in gang activity in Honduras. Subsequently, Kevin was sent to a high-security detention center – and is now facing deportation.
 

Betraying a patient, profession

Therapy begins as a contract between patient and therapist. The contract stipulates that all that transpires in the process of therapy (usually a 50-minute block of time, usually weekly) is information held by the therapist and patient – and is not to be shared with anyone, including parents, guardians, legal entities, and health care agencies. This allows the gradual sharing of events, emotions, behaviors, and reactions akin to peeling an onion. Memories, reactions, and feelings assist the therapist as they start their quest of discovery of the conflict and how to resolve it. Trust is the central tenet of this journey. The patient thinks: “You will hear me; you will see me you will understand me and help me understand myself.” The doctor responds: “Even I don’t yet know fully what ails you; we will discover that together. … I will not fail your trust.”

So how does this interface with external pressures? The constitution of a free country provides some inviolable protections that prevent derailment of the codes of ethics based on science. The fine line between what are considered sacrosanct ethics of a field – be it health care, climatology, or architecture – and what could be sacrificed in the name of prevailing forces (political or otherwise) has to be under constant scrutiny by the members of the guild. In health care, when patients cannot trust the science, its implementation, or is let down by the clinician, they are unlikely to benefit from treatment. A foundation of distrust paves the way for future therapeutic relationships that are stained with distrust and noncompliance.

The ethics guidelines of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law specify that psychiatrists in forensic roles “should be clear about limitations on confidentiality in the treatment relationship and ensure that these limitations are communicated to the patient.” Again, the therapist in this case is not a psychiatrist, but I would argue that the same rules would apply.

It is reassuring to know that several key groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association, have all condemned the therapist’s actions. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must do no harm. We must not stand idly by and allow the kind of professional breach that happened to Kevin continue. Patients who confide in mental health professionals with the promise of confidentiality must be able to do so without fear. Only with confidentiality can the therapeutic relationship thrive.

Dr. Sood is professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, and senior professor of child mental health policy, at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

Nearly 3.5 million adherents to the religion of Islam (Muslims) live in the United States, and this number is projected to more than double to 8.1 million by 2050.¹ As of 2017, an estimated 58% of American Muslims were immigrants, but nearly 25% were born in the United States to parents who also were US-born, including many African American Muslims.¹ American Muslims face a rise of Islamophobia, hate crimes, and discrimination at school, work, and the communities in which they live.² This population may experience feelings of anger as well as rejection and abandonment by the country they call home. They may also wrestle with conforming to American social norms while maintaining their Muslim identity.

When providing psychiatric care to American Muslim patients, clinicians need to understand these patients’ specific stressors. American Muslim patients may experience a variety of mental health conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, adjustment disorder, and somatization.² Unfortunately, American Muslims may be less likely to seek psychiatric help because the stigma of mental illness remains a barrier to care in this community.³ In addition, entrenched cultural beliefs about mental illness may discourage many from seeking treatment. Because of a paucity of data on the psychiatric care of American Muslim patients, there is a great need to understand how to treat this vulnerable, often marginalized population.

Suggestions for improving care

Based on my clinical experience, I recommend the following practices for clinicians to consider when caring for American Muslim patients:

• Ensure that your assessment accounts for religious and cultural factors to help understand your patient’s perception of his/her illness.⁴ Consider using the DSM-IV Outline for Culture Formulation,⁵ DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview,⁶ or the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Practice Parameter for Cultural Competence in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Practice.⁷
• Be sensitive to your patient’s family hierarchy and history. Often, extended family members will accompany an American Muslim patient for input and support during a clinical visit.
• Provide appropriate psychoeducation, because some patients may shun medication, especially those who think that medication should be reserved for severe illness that requires long-term inpatient stays.
• Listen for somatic symptoms that may mask distress.⁸
• Be mindful of your patient’s preferences regarding gender roles. For example, a female patient may prefer to receive care from a female clinician.
• Align therapy with your patient’s religious and cultural beliefs. Some research shows that for Muslim patients, modified short-term psychodynamic therapy fares better than classic long-term psychoanalysis.⁹ Therapy should focus on family dynamics, conflicts, and relationships.⁹
• Consider employing cognitive-behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, modeling, and behavioral techniques such as behavioral modification, systemic desensitization, and flooding because these may be effective for Muslim patients.^9,10
• Suggest guided imagery and relaxation techniques because some Muslim patients may find that these could be a natural extension of prayer and meditation.⁹
• Work with local Imams (Muslim spiritual leaders) to recognize mental illness, overcome stigma in the community, dispel misinformation, and refer patients.¹¹
• If the patient has a “traditional healer,” such as a Sheikh or Imam, understand the extent of this individual’s involvement. Some healers may tell patients that mental illness is a problem of faith or being possessed by a spirit (ie, “jinn” or Satan-like spirits).
• Use an interpreter if English is not the patient’s primary language.
• Respect the patient’s religious practices. When possible, offer alternative treatments to medication formulations that include pork (most gelatins). Also, patients may want to adjust their medication schedule during Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

Future goals: Increasing access, reducing stigma

More research on the mental health needs of American Muslim patients is needed, especially as discrimination and hate crimes against this population continue to rise. Clinicians should tailor their assessments and recommended treatments to these patients’ preferences, and address how religious and cultural connectedness may impact their patient’s mental health. Increasing access to services and reducing stigma associated with mental health care are critical for improving outcomes among Muslim patients.

Nearly 3.5 million adherents to the religion of Islam (Muslims) live in the United States, and this number is projected to more than double to 8.1 million by 2050.¹ As of 2017, an estimated 58% of American Muslims were immigrants, but nearly 25% were born in the United States to parents who also were US-born, including many African American Muslims.¹ American Muslims face a rise of Islamophobia, hate crimes, and discrimination at school, work, and the communities in which they live.² This population may experience feelings of anger as well as rejection and abandonment by the country they call home. They may also wrestle with conforming to American social norms while maintaining their Muslim identity.

When providing psychiatric care to American Muslim patients, clinicians need to understand these patients’ specific stressors. American Muslim patients may experience a variety of mental health conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, adjustment disorder, and somatization.² Unfortunately, American Muslims may be less likely to seek psychiatric help because the stigma of mental illness remains a barrier to care in this community.³ In addition, entrenched cultural beliefs about mental illness may discourage many from seeking treatment. Because of a paucity of data on the psychiatric care of American Muslim patients, there is a great need to understand how to treat this vulnerable, often marginalized population.

Suggestions for improving care

Based on my clinical experience, I recommend the following practices for clinicians to consider when caring for American Muslim patients:

• Ensure that your assessment accounts for religious and cultural factors to help understand your patient’s perception of his/her illness.⁴ Consider using the DSM-IV Outline for Culture Formulation,⁵ DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview,⁶ or the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Practice Parameter for Cultural Competence in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Practice.⁷
• Be sensitive to your patient’s family hierarchy and history. Often, extended family members will accompany an American Muslim patient for input and support during a clinical visit.
• Provide appropriate psychoeducation, because some patients may shun medication, especially those who think that medication should be reserved for severe illness that requires long-term inpatient stays.
• Listen for somatic symptoms that may mask distress.⁸
• Be mindful of your patient’s preferences regarding gender roles. For example, a female patient may prefer to receive care from a female clinician.
• Align therapy with your patient’s religious and cultural beliefs. Some research shows that for Muslim patients, modified short-term psychodynamic therapy fares better than classic long-term psychoanalysis.⁹ Therapy should focus on family dynamics, conflicts, and relationships.⁹
• Consider employing cognitive-behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, modeling, and behavioral techniques such as behavioral modification, systemic desensitization, and flooding because these may be effective for Muslim patients.^9,10
• Suggest guided imagery and relaxation techniques because some Muslim patients may find that these could be a natural extension of prayer and meditation.⁹
• Work with local Imams (Muslim spiritual leaders) to recognize mental illness, overcome stigma in the community, dispel misinformation, and refer patients.¹¹
• If the patient has a “traditional healer,” such as a Sheikh or Imam, understand the extent of this individual’s involvement. Some healers may tell patients that mental illness is a problem of faith or being possessed by a spirit (ie, “jinn” or Satan-like spirits).
• Use an interpreter if English is not the patient’s primary language.
• Respect the patient’s religious practices. When possible, offer alternative treatments to medication formulations that include pork (most gelatins). Also, patients may want to adjust their medication schedule during Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

Future goals: Increasing access, reducing stigma

More research on the mental health needs of American Muslim patients is needed, especially as discrimination and hate crimes against this population continue to rise. Clinicians should tailor their assessments and recommended treatments to these patients’ preferences, and address how religious and cultural connectedness may impact their patient’s mental health. Increasing access to services and reducing stigma associated with mental health care are critical for improving outcomes among Muslim patients.

Nearly 3.5 million adherents to the religion of Islam (Muslims) live in the United States, and this number is projected to more than double to 8.1 million by 2050.¹ As of 2017, an estimated 58% of American Muslims were immigrants, but nearly 25% were born in the United States to parents who also were US-born, including many African American Muslims.¹ American Muslims face a rise of Islamophobia, hate crimes, and discrimination at school, work, and the communities in which they live.² This population may experience feelings of anger as well as rejection and abandonment by the country they call home. They may also wrestle with conforming to American social norms while maintaining their Muslim identity.

When providing psychiatric care to American Muslim patients, clinicians need to understand these patients’ specific stressors. American Muslim patients may experience a variety of mental health conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, adjustment disorder, and somatization.² Unfortunately, American Muslims may be less likely to seek psychiatric help because the stigma of mental illness remains a barrier to care in this community.³ In addition, entrenched cultural beliefs about mental illness may discourage many from seeking treatment. Because of a paucity of data on the psychiatric care of American Muslim patients, there is a great need to understand how to treat this vulnerable, often marginalized population.

Suggestions for improving care

Based on my clinical experience, I recommend the following practices for clinicians to consider when caring for American Muslim patients:

• Ensure that your assessment accounts for religious and cultural factors to help understand your patient’s perception of his/her illness.⁴ Consider using the DSM-IV Outline for Culture Formulation,⁵ DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview,⁶ or the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Practice Parameter for Cultural Competence in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Practice.⁷
• Be sensitive to your patient’s family hierarchy and history. Often, extended family members will accompany an American Muslim patient for input and support during a clinical visit.
• Provide appropriate psychoeducation, because some patients may shun medication, especially those who think that medication should be reserved for severe illness that requires long-term inpatient stays.
• Listen for somatic symptoms that may mask distress.⁸
• Be mindful of your patient’s preferences regarding gender roles. For example, a female patient may prefer to receive care from a female clinician.
• Align therapy with your patient’s religious and cultural beliefs. Some research shows that for Muslim patients, modified short-term psychodynamic therapy fares better than classic long-term psychoanalysis.⁹ Therapy should focus on family dynamics, conflicts, and relationships.⁹
• Consider employing cognitive-behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, modeling, and behavioral techniques such as behavioral modification, systemic desensitization, and flooding because these may be effective for Muslim patients.^9,10
• Suggest guided imagery and relaxation techniques because some Muslim patients may find that these could be a natural extension of prayer and meditation.⁹
• Work with local Imams (Muslim spiritual leaders) to recognize mental illness, overcome stigma in the community, dispel misinformation, and refer patients.¹¹
• If the patient has a “traditional healer,” such as a Sheikh or Imam, understand the extent of this individual’s involvement. Some healers may tell patients that mental illness is a problem of faith or being possessed by a spirit (ie, “jinn” or Satan-like spirits).
• Use an interpreter if English is not the patient’s primary language.
• Respect the patient’s religious practices. When possible, offer alternative treatments to medication formulations that include pork (most gelatins). Also, patients may want to adjust their medication schedule during Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

Future goals: Increasing access, reducing stigma

More research on the mental health needs of American Muslim patients is needed, especially as discrimination and hate crimes against this population continue to rise. Clinicians should tailor their assessments and recommended treatments to these patients’ preferences, and address how religious and cultural connectedness may impact their patient’s mental health. Increasing access to services and reducing stigma associated with mental health care are critical for improving outcomes among Muslim patients.

Transgender health care can be a successful component of a primary care practice, with sufficient commitment to staff training and a host of practical matters.

In a new “blueprint” for practices planning to implement a transgender care program, Anna M. Morenz, MD, and her coauthors emphasized that more than technical skills are needed to build an effective and welcoming transgender health practice.

All patient-facing staff – from schedulers and receptionists to nurses and billers – should “receive a foundational level of training in cultural sensitivity and effective communication with transgender and gender-diverse persons,” they wrote. In addition, they emphasized, “the workplace culture must ensure that chatter behind closed doors does not differ from patient-facing language.”

One thing that’s become clear over time, noted the authors of the blueprint, is that transgender care is no longer limited to the endocrinologist’s office. “After years of referring transgender and gender-diverse patients to specialty clinics and endocrinologists, transgender health experts have come to agree that gender-affirming hormone therapy can be safely delivered as part of routine care by a trained primary care clinician,” wrote Dr. Morenz, an internal medicine resident at the University of Washington, Seattle, and her coauthors.

Nor do most adults receiving gender-affirming care require mental health services, unless the patient or the primary care clinician sees a need or utility for psychological care. The blueprint was published in the Annals of Family Medicine.

The first step to setting up transgender services within a primary care practice is to conduct a needs assessment, suggested Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Whether in-person focus groups or online surveys or questionnaires are best might depend on the community climate, they wrote. When stigma is high, the opportunity for anonymity might provide more robust results. Other considerations include whether there’s a concentration of transgender people with particularly high need or risk in the community – for example, transgender women of color, who might be at higher risk of HIV/AIDS than the general population. Depending on the needs of a particular community, initial transgender care efforts may have a focus on such a population.

A practice also should conduct a realistic appraisal of its own strengths and areas of weakness: Is signage inclusive? Do intake forms afford flexibility in gender and pronoun preference? Are front office staff comfortable greeting members of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-intersex-asexual (LGBTQIA) community? What about restroom signage – is there a gender-inclusive option?

Competent provision of trauma-informed care goes hand in hand with assessment and preparation for providing transgender care, noted the blueprint authors, because “transgender and gender-diverse people experience high levels of trauma and stress related to minority status.”

Performing outreach within an organization and community also can unearth existing services, so that a primary care transgender practice dovetails with and complements those ongoing efforts, avoiding unnecessarily duplicative services. “All transgender health programs can benefit from developing broad relationships with external agencies, community-based organizatons, and individual practitioners who provide a range of services and can function as a network for knowledge-sharing and referrals,” noted Dr. Morenz and her coauthors.

“Starting a new program, especially one focused on a stigmatized population, can generate staff concerns and resistance,” acknowledged Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Efforts at getting organizational buy-in can emphasize that providing transgender care helps meet ethical obligations within medicine. Emphasizing that making such care available is really at the vanguard of best practices might help overcome some resistance, they said.

The best success in implementation will be seen when at least two internal “champions” who are knowledgeable and committed lead the transition, with at least one champion having a leadership role within the organization, wrote Dr. Morenz and her colleagues.

A variety of care models can work when a practice is initiating transgender care, depending on community needs, internal resources, and the commitment level of various stakeholders. An evening clinic staffed by a small number of clinicians can be a good way to test the waters in some cases. Other facilities might wish to identify clinicians who are competent to offer hormone therapy, while still other clinics might be able to incorporate transgender care more globally within their practice. Regardless of which service model a practice opts for, however, it’s crucial to have staff members who are savvy navigators of insurance reimbursement for gender-affirming care.

And when transgender care is nested within a practice, those patients must not feel like second-class citizens of the clinic, or that they’re receiving care that’s somehow different or substandard. For example, wrote Dr. Morenz and her coauthors, a facility must consider what will happen when a transgender patient presents for urgent health needs and the primary care clinician is not available.

The nuts and bolts of providing safe and effective gender-affirming hormone therapy, said the blueprint authors, can be mastered with training and practice. “Despite common concerns that transgender health care is complicated, it is in fact as straightforward as managing common chronic diseases.”

The first step, they said, is providing risk-benefit education and counseling to patients, and reviewing fertility preservation considerations and options. Then, either estradiol or testosterone is initiated; Further suppression of endogenous hormones also might be indicated in feminization therapy in particular. The authors provided several continuing education resources for clinicians and other health care team members, and noted that a “train the trainer” model can prove effective, with a core team training others once they’ve become comfortable with the ins and outs of hormone prescribing and monitoring.

Having a staff that looks like the patient panel can go a long way toward promoting authentic inclusivity, but Dr. Morenz and her colleagues cautioned against hiring practices that amount to tokenism, or expecting transgender or gender-diverse staff to be ambassadors or spokespeople for others.

Taken together, the start-up costs for providing transgender care can be “minimal,” wrote the blueprint authors, because many free and low-cost educational resources are available. Some of the only real outlays may come from altering restroom signage and tweaking the electronic health record to accommodate gender diversity.

A practice that goes forward with transgender care, they conclude, “will provide a unique opportunity to holistically improve wellness and quality of life for transgender and gender-diverse people,” joining the “growing and passionate network of clinical practice teams who are committed to health care, innovation, and equity for transgender and gender-diverse communities.”

Dr. Morenz reported no outside sources of funding and reported that she has no relevant conflicts of interest.
 

koakes@mdedge.com

SOURCE: Morenz AM et al. Ann Fam Med. 2020 Jan;18(1):73-9.
 

Transgender health care can be a successful component of a primary care practice, with sufficient commitment to staff training and a host of practical matters.

In a new “blueprint” for practices planning to implement a transgender care program, Anna M. Morenz, MD, and her coauthors emphasized that more than technical skills are needed to build an effective and welcoming transgender health practice.

All patient-facing staff – from schedulers and receptionists to nurses and billers – should “receive a foundational level of training in cultural sensitivity and effective communication with transgender and gender-diverse persons,” they wrote. In addition, they emphasized, “the workplace culture must ensure that chatter behind closed doors does not differ from patient-facing language.”

One thing that’s become clear over time, noted the authors of the blueprint, is that transgender care is no longer limited to the endocrinologist’s office. “After years of referring transgender and gender-diverse patients to specialty clinics and endocrinologists, transgender health experts have come to agree that gender-affirming hormone therapy can be safely delivered as part of routine care by a trained primary care clinician,” wrote Dr. Morenz, an internal medicine resident at the University of Washington, Seattle, and her coauthors.

Nor do most adults receiving gender-affirming care require mental health services, unless the patient or the primary care clinician sees a need or utility for psychological care. The blueprint was published in the Annals of Family Medicine.

The first step to setting up transgender services within a primary care practice is to conduct a needs assessment, suggested Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Whether in-person focus groups or online surveys or questionnaires are best might depend on the community climate, they wrote. When stigma is high, the opportunity for anonymity might provide more robust results. Other considerations include whether there’s a concentration of transgender people with particularly high need or risk in the community – for example, transgender women of color, who might be at higher risk of HIV/AIDS than the general population. Depending on the needs of a particular community, initial transgender care efforts may have a focus on such a population.

A practice also should conduct a realistic appraisal of its own strengths and areas of weakness: Is signage inclusive? Do intake forms afford flexibility in gender and pronoun preference? Are front office staff comfortable greeting members of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-intersex-asexual (LGBTQIA) community? What about restroom signage – is there a gender-inclusive option?

Competent provision of trauma-informed care goes hand in hand with assessment and preparation for providing transgender care, noted the blueprint authors, because “transgender and gender-diverse people experience high levels of trauma and stress related to minority status.”

Performing outreach within an organization and community also can unearth existing services, so that a primary care transgender practice dovetails with and complements those ongoing efforts, avoiding unnecessarily duplicative services. “All transgender health programs can benefit from developing broad relationships with external agencies, community-based organizatons, and individual practitioners who provide a range of services and can function as a network for knowledge-sharing and referrals,” noted Dr. Morenz and her coauthors.

“Starting a new program, especially one focused on a stigmatized population, can generate staff concerns and resistance,” acknowledged Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Efforts at getting organizational buy-in can emphasize that providing transgender care helps meet ethical obligations within medicine. Emphasizing that making such care available is really at the vanguard of best practices might help overcome some resistance, they said.

The best success in implementation will be seen when at least two internal “champions” who are knowledgeable and committed lead the transition, with at least one champion having a leadership role within the organization, wrote Dr. Morenz and her colleagues.

A variety of care models can work when a practice is initiating transgender care, depending on community needs, internal resources, and the commitment level of various stakeholders. An evening clinic staffed by a small number of clinicians can be a good way to test the waters in some cases. Other facilities might wish to identify clinicians who are competent to offer hormone therapy, while still other clinics might be able to incorporate transgender care more globally within their practice. Regardless of which service model a practice opts for, however, it’s crucial to have staff members who are savvy navigators of insurance reimbursement for gender-affirming care.

And when transgender care is nested within a practice, those patients must not feel like second-class citizens of the clinic, or that they’re receiving care that’s somehow different or substandard. For example, wrote Dr. Morenz and her coauthors, a facility must consider what will happen when a transgender patient presents for urgent health needs and the primary care clinician is not available.

The nuts and bolts of providing safe and effective gender-affirming hormone therapy, said the blueprint authors, can be mastered with training and practice. “Despite common concerns that transgender health care is complicated, it is in fact as straightforward as managing common chronic diseases.”

The first step, they said, is providing risk-benefit education and counseling to patients, and reviewing fertility preservation considerations and options. Then, either estradiol or testosterone is initiated; Further suppression of endogenous hormones also might be indicated in feminization therapy in particular. The authors provided several continuing education resources for clinicians and other health care team members, and noted that a “train the trainer” model can prove effective, with a core team training others once they’ve become comfortable with the ins and outs of hormone prescribing and monitoring.

Having a staff that looks like the patient panel can go a long way toward promoting authentic inclusivity, but Dr. Morenz and her colleagues cautioned against hiring practices that amount to tokenism, or expecting transgender or gender-diverse staff to be ambassadors or spokespeople for others.

Taken together, the start-up costs for providing transgender care can be “minimal,” wrote the blueprint authors, because many free and low-cost educational resources are available. Some of the only real outlays may come from altering restroom signage and tweaking the electronic health record to accommodate gender diversity.

A practice that goes forward with transgender care, they conclude, “will provide a unique opportunity to holistically improve wellness and quality of life for transgender and gender-diverse people,” joining the “growing and passionate network of clinical practice teams who are committed to health care, innovation, and equity for transgender and gender-diverse communities.”

Dr. Morenz reported no outside sources of funding and reported that she has no relevant conflicts of interest.
 

koakes@mdedge.com

SOURCE: Morenz AM et al. Ann Fam Med. 2020 Jan;18(1):73-9.
 

Transgender health care can be a successful component of a primary care practice, with sufficient commitment to staff training and a host of practical matters.

In a new “blueprint” for practices planning to implement a transgender care program, Anna M. Morenz, MD, and her coauthors emphasized that more than technical skills are needed to build an effective and welcoming transgender health practice.

All patient-facing staff – from schedulers and receptionists to nurses and billers – should “receive a foundational level of training in cultural sensitivity and effective communication with transgender and gender-diverse persons,” they wrote. In addition, they emphasized, “the workplace culture must ensure that chatter behind closed doors does not differ from patient-facing language.”

One thing that’s become clear over time, noted the authors of the blueprint, is that transgender care is no longer limited to the endocrinologist’s office. “After years of referring transgender and gender-diverse patients to specialty clinics and endocrinologists, transgender health experts have come to agree that gender-affirming hormone therapy can be safely delivered as part of routine care by a trained primary care clinician,” wrote Dr. Morenz, an internal medicine resident at the University of Washington, Seattle, and her coauthors.

Nor do most adults receiving gender-affirming care require mental health services, unless the patient or the primary care clinician sees a need or utility for psychological care. The blueprint was published in the Annals of Family Medicine.

The first step to setting up transgender services within a primary care practice is to conduct a needs assessment, suggested Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Whether in-person focus groups or online surveys or questionnaires are best might depend on the community climate, they wrote. When stigma is high, the opportunity for anonymity might provide more robust results. Other considerations include whether there’s a concentration of transgender people with particularly high need or risk in the community – for example, transgender women of color, who might be at higher risk of HIV/AIDS than the general population. Depending on the needs of a particular community, initial transgender care efforts may have a focus on such a population.

A practice also should conduct a realistic appraisal of its own strengths and areas of weakness: Is signage inclusive? Do intake forms afford flexibility in gender and pronoun preference? Are front office staff comfortable greeting members of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-intersex-asexual (LGBTQIA) community? What about restroom signage – is there a gender-inclusive option?

Competent provision of trauma-informed care goes hand in hand with assessment and preparation for providing transgender care, noted the blueprint authors, because “transgender and gender-diverse people experience high levels of trauma and stress related to minority status.”

Performing outreach within an organization and community also can unearth existing services, so that a primary care transgender practice dovetails with and complements those ongoing efforts, avoiding unnecessarily duplicative services. “All transgender health programs can benefit from developing broad relationships with external agencies, community-based organizatons, and individual practitioners who provide a range of services and can function as a network for knowledge-sharing and referrals,” noted Dr. Morenz and her coauthors.

“Starting a new program, especially one focused on a stigmatized population, can generate staff concerns and resistance,” acknowledged Dr. Morenz and her colleagues. Efforts at getting organizational buy-in can emphasize that providing transgender care helps meet ethical obligations within medicine. Emphasizing that making such care available is really at the vanguard of best practices might help overcome some resistance, they said.

The best success in implementation will be seen when at least two internal “champions” who are knowledgeable and committed lead the transition, with at least one champion having a leadership role within the organization, wrote Dr. Morenz and her colleagues.

A variety of care models can work when a practice is initiating transgender care, depending on community needs, internal resources, and the commitment level of various stakeholders. An evening clinic staffed by a small number of clinicians can be a good way to test the waters in some cases. Other facilities might wish to identify clinicians who are competent to offer hormone therapy, while still other clinics might be able to incorporate transgender care more globally within their practice. Regardless of which service model a practice opts for, however, it’s crucial to have staff members who are savvy navigators of insurance reimbursement for gender-affirming care.

And when transgender care is nested within a practice, those patients must not feel like second-class citizens of the clinic, or that they’re receiving care that’s somehow different or substandard. For example, wrote Dr. Morenz and her coauthors, a facility must consider what will happen when a transgender patient presents for urgent health needs and the primary care clinician is not available.

The nuts and bolts of providing safe and effective gender-affirming hormone therapy, said the blueprint authors, can be mastered with training and practice. “Despite common concerns that transgender health care is complicated, it is in fact as straightforward as managing common chronic diseases.”

The first step, they said, is providing risk-benefit education and counseling to patients, and reviewing fertility preservation considerations and options. Then, either estradiol or testosterone is initiated; Further suppression of endogenous hormones also might be indicated in feminization therapy in particular. The authors provided several continuing education resources for clinicians and other health care team members, and noted that a “train the trainer” model can prove effective, with a core team training others once they’ve become comfortable with the ins and outs of hormone prescribing and monitoring.

Having a staff that looks like the patient panel can go a long way toward promoting authentic inclusivity, but Dr. Morenz and her colleagues cautioned against hiring practices that amount to tokenism, or expecting transgender or gender-diverse staff to be ambassadors or spokespeople for others.

Taken together, the start-up costs for providing transgender care can be “minimal,” wrote the blueprint authors, because many free and low-cost educational resources are available. Some of the only real outlays may come from altering restroom signage and tweaking the electronic health record to accommodate gender diversity.

A practice that goes forward with transgender care, they conclude, “will provide a unique opportunity to holistically improve wellness and quality of life for transgender and gender-diverse people,” joining the “growing and passionate network of clinical practice teams who are committed to health care, innovation, and equity for transgender and gender-diverse communities.”

Dr. Morenz reported no outside sources of funding and reported that she has no relevant conflicts of interest.
 

koakes@mdedge.com

SOURCE: Morenz AM et al. Ann Fam Med. 2020 Jan;18(1):73-9.