Clinic pursues health equity for Black families
As a Black mother, Hope Williams-Burt always felt as if she had to fight to get her doctors to listen to her. One health care worker even criticized the way she spoke, telling her that she needed to articulate better.
But when Williams-Burt first sat down with pediatrician Dr. Dayna Long, co-founder of the BLOOM: Black Baby Equity Clinic, to discuss her daughter Mykylah's breathing issues, her usual anxiety in health care settings immediately dissolved.
“I was talkig to her and she just looked at me and asked, `How are you?'” Williams-Burt said. “She just had a conversation with me.” BLOOM — an acronym for Black Love Opportunity & Outcome Improvement in Medicine Primary Care — is based at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in Oakland. It is the first clinic in the Bay Area to provide Black families with baby and toddler care from a team of health
care workers who share their racial identities and understand the social, cultural and racial challenges that Black families such as Williams-Burt's face.
“When I go into this clinic, I don't have anxiety; I don't have stress,” WilliamsBurt said. “My baby girl is now 14 months old and I'm still breastfeeding because I'm not stressed when I go into that space.” Across the
U.S., Black newborns are more than twice as likely as White newborns to die before they turn 1 year old. In the Bay Area, the disparities are particularly concerning.
According to a 2017 report from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Black babies in the city were more than four times more likely to die before the age of 3 than those born into White or Asian families. Long and cofounder Dr. Javay Ross, a primary care doctor, opened BLOOM in July to improve these health outcomes. Research suggests that high rates of Black infant mortality are associated with racial inequity in employment and education, but the health care system also can be a hostile place for new Black mothers.
In one survey, researchers found that women of color seeking pregnancy and childbirth care reported higher rates of being shouted at, scolded, threatened, ignored or receiving no response to requests for help.A growing body of evidence indicates that health outcomes improve when Black patients are treated by Black health care providers.
In a 2018 study among 1,300 Black men in Oakland, patients were more likely to seek preventative care and advice if they were seen by a Black physician. The researchers calculated that the increased screenings could lead to a 19% reduction in cardiovascular deaths among Black men.
Crucially for the BLOOM clinic, a study of 1.8 million hospital births in Florida from 1992 to 2015 found that when Black newborns were cared for by a Black doctor, their chance of dying in the first year of life — while still higher than for White babies — dropped by more than 50%.
“There's something to be said about likeness in medicine that decreases a barrier to health equity,” Ross said. But while about 5% of California's population is Black, less than 3% of physicians identified as Black or African American, according to data from the California Health Care Foundation.
Long and Ross began thinking about how to improve health outcomes for Black babies during the global protests that erupted against racial injustice following the death of George Floyd in 2020. “I had three school-aged children who were home. And the racial reckoning that we went through with George Floyd made me think, `How can we do more? How can we do better?'” Long said.
In 2021, plans accelerated after Ross came back from maternity leave with her second child. She realized how lucky she was to have a village and access to resources like a supportive partner, extended family and lactation support. But she knew that many Black women were not getting the same help, leading to depression and anxiety.
“After I had my second child, I felt like I needed to do something to address this lack of support,” Ross said. At first, Ross proposed providing Black mothers with a basket filled with breastfeeding supplies. But Long had the funding from grants to do more. So, plans for the BLOOM clinic took shape.
The clinic, which is open every Friday, currently has three physicians — Long, Ross and a recent UCSF pediatric residency graduate, Dr. Justin Williams — plus a wider team dedicated to meeting each family's needs.