Sorry this blog post is extremely
late! I hope everyone is as excited as I am to leave for South Carolina on
Saturday! Linda and Amee planned some extremely beneficial and informative meetings
and service trips that I believe well prepared us for everything we will be
doing next week. In our second pre-trip meeting, we watched a short documentary
called “Unnatural Causes: When the Bough Breaks.” I actually watched this video
in many of my classes, which truly shows how prevalent this issue is across fields.
This documentary portrayed the racial disparities in infant mortality in
America. It was astonishing to see how African-American women are twice as more
likely to give birth to infants who will due during their first year of life.
The example that they gave in the
video showed this African American woman who was extremely successful in her
life and did not appear to have any chronic stressors, still had issues with
pregnancy and infant mortality. Many people ask why this still happens, but
unfortunately there is still a widespread issue that affects the health and
well being of African Americans, which is racism. Racism can cause anxiety and high
levels of cortisol, which can overall negatively impact pregnancy. Also in our
meeting, we looked at statistics and racial disparities. It was amazing to see
how in places like the south, especially places where racism maintains to be
widespread, how infant mortality decrease. This helped us gain an overall understanding
of how as a country we really need to realize the negative health impacts that
racism has so that women of all minority groups can continue to give birth to
healthy and long living babies. I think that it will be important for all us to
keep in mind the detrimental affects of racism and how it impacts infant
mortality during our service!
XOXO,
Mariah
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