Health care workers hold forum on race

Health care workers hold forum on race

As a nurse, Barbara Blakeney sees it too often - a person in dire need of medical attention turned away for lack of health insurance.

Even if it looks as if the physician may have treated the person, beware, Blakeney said. She said that many times the physician will write up a recommendation so well that the reality of a person's critical state remains hidden.

Blakeney, who works in a homeless shelter and serves on the board of the American Nurses Association, said that the worst case she could recall was a man who had undergone a quadruple by-pass procedure, or replacement of the blood vessels in his heart, and whose condition was so critical that he was placed in the intensive care unit. When the hospital realized that his insurance was not up-to-date, they immediately released him to a homeless shelter, Blakeney said.

"We see these things happen all the time," she commented. "We've had nursed fired for protecting their patients."

Blakeney is also dismayed at how minority clientele are more likely to be denied or receive inadequate care and how they have no one to defend them in the system. She points out the lack of minority physicians and caretakers in the field.

"I hope ... that they look at the barriers," Blakeney said. "Those barriers look different to different people. We need to respect those differences and break down those barriers. We need to talk to each other and we need ethnic minorities to be a part of the field. I would love it if there were more African American physicians, more Asian American physicians, more Asian nurses, more Phillipino physical therapists."

Blakeney, whose association has addressed the issue on the local level, finally turned to President Clinton for solutions.

Last week, Blakeney was one of 300 people crowded into a Faneuil Hall meetinghouse to participate in one of Clinton's race initiative forums. Appalled by the disparities in the health care system between the country's minorities and white counterparts, President Bill Clinton has undertaken the responsibility to bridge these gaps in opening up dialogue among distinguished community leaders across the country.

Stopping in Beantown, the prominent meeting point of the slavery abolitionist movement and home of the first health center founded by Paul Revere, US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said that the aired concerns of the panel very seriously, considering that in the year 2030, minorities will make up 40 percent of the population.

Satcher said that the future of the country is unstable as he began to list dismaying statistics: African Americans have a higher infant mortality rate than any other racial group and African American women are least likely to receive prenatal care, Hispanics are twice as likely as whites to be diabetic, Vietnamese women are six times as likely to die of cervical cancer, and Hispanics and African Americans have been contracting HIV faster than any other group.

"You can go on and on," Dr. Satcher said. "We will make a difference in the health of people in America. Access [to health care] is crucial."

Satcher said that he takes his role in the public debate quite seriously, emphasizing how he has been personally affected as an African American. He recalled contracting whooping cough when he was a child and having his mother nurse him back to health because he was not able to receive care at the local segregated white clinic. He also recalled an instance when he walked out of his class in medical school because the students were asked to conduct pelvic examinations on uninsured women, who were primarily African American.

Satcher, who was the person to receive a standing ovation from the crowd in Faneuil Hall, called for a more diverse faculty and student body in the country's medical schools and an increase in minority participation in the health care field.

"We are under represented in the health field," Satcher said. "Ten percent of physicians are minorities. We need more diversity, because it is a major better to access."

Hortensia Amaro, professor from the Boston University School of Public Health, acted as a moderator for a panel whose views were taped and later shown to the president. Panelists acted as the voices for Native American Indians, Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans across the state.

Among many of the concerns aired, Marianela Garcia, spokeswoman for the Economic Development and Social Services at the Worcester Housing Authority, said that a lack of Spanish speakers in the health field was a significant barrier for Latinos to obtain care.

"The Latino community experiences great difficulty obtaining health coverage for themselves and their children," Garcia said. "I know that language barriers play a major part in accessing quality health care. This is a barrier in my community. English is a second language in my community, and offering services in a language that residents can understand is essential."

Craig Cobb of the Dimock Community Health Center, emphasized other issues afflicting the black community, such as lack of education and substance addiction, particularly crack cocaine. He said that the only cure for these problems are trades and education.

"Neither cultural diversity for access to quality health care and coverage exists in vacuums," Cobb said. "They are clearly parts of socio-economic conditions which repeat themselves throughout generations. Clearly, the less education or training a person has will reflect the jobs they get, the amount of money they generate, and ultimately, the quality of life they live."

While Satcher admits that some of the president's initiatives on health care were dashed in the past, he stated that the president was overlooking any risks of disapproval by a conservative congress to move ahead with his agenda.

"I think we plan to move forward," Satcher told the Banner. "It would be great if we had a supportive congress, but we aren't giving up."

Photo (Dr. John Hope Franklin as part of Health Care panel)