If you are involved in the community, you can be the cause for change.

Support the Black Women’s Health Imperative and similar organizations. The Black Women’s Health Imperative has been advocating for Black women’s health equity since 1983. So has the National Medical Association. These organizations do policy, research, and community education work that individual action cannot replicate. Supporting them financially and politically will amplify all other efforts else on this list.

Push for legislative action on maternal and patient mortality data by race. Federal and state legislation requiring healthcare systems to report patient outcomes by race creates the public accountability that internal audits cannot. Tracking mortality rates, pain management disparities, and diagnostic wait times is the first step in correcting a culture of unknowing. Contact your representatives and name this specifically.

Talk about it publicly and repeatedly. Medical racism persists in part because it is treated as a sensitive topic that should be discussed carefully and quietly. Name it plainly, in public, with specific evidence, until the pattern can no longer be explained away as individual variation. Bringing it out in the sunshine in a constructive way is the best antiseptic.