There we go, record on a cloud, and it is going to go live into the Facebook group, the counter narrative Facebook group,
damn Okay, and we are going to be live In like probably 10 seconds. Do Sleep.
Okay, yes, I'm
Oh, okay, social,
okay, so looks like we are. Let me make sure. Let's
Yes, fantastic. We are live. So hello and welcome to the counter narrative Show. Today, I'm very, very excited to be discussing this topic. Today, we'll be discussing social determinants of health among marginalized population with Dr Jeanette Wade, do you prefer me call you Dr Wade? No, no. What do you how do you want me to refer to you? Just that's fine. Say that again, and that is fine. Jeanette is fine. Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with being here with us to have a conversation around this extremely important topic. I really want to start. I'm going to go ahead and start by reading Jeanette bio. So Dr Jeanette way is a black feminist medical sociologist at North Carolina A and T State University. Her work is guided by the strong black woman idea and how making constant over extensions honorable may act as a buffer from racism and sexism, but create a barrier in terms of health related decision making. That's a whole show by itself. She also Her work includes studies of the Superwoman schema,
schema, schema,
and how it predicts diet and exercise trends as well as sexual health and health care. So there's there's so much more to your bio. I really want to have a conversation with you and make your Biograph, your biography more conversational. And I really want to talk to you about what is your interests specific to this topic, and more specifically, how did you come to the work of focusing on Social Determinants at all?
Okay, so interestingly, when I started grad school in sociology, you have to pick two sub topics to, you know, delve deeper into And originally, my area was Family and Social Psychology. Before I went to grad school, I worked in the community with teen moms, and I also worked with people who were recently released from the city jail and had mental health and chemical addiction issues. So I thought that my interest was the family, because it was really fascinating, like how your lifelong socialization gets you to where you are as an adult. But the more I talked to other scholars, they said, No, you're a medical sociologist, because even care about the family, that's just one little piece of it. Your bigger interest is in health outcomes and how people get to these health outcomes. So I just switched over to medical sociology and you So you asked how I got to medical sociology, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how. So basically, just from talking to other scholars in sociology, and hearing them say, oh so to the black feminist part. So when you take these classes, you know there's this literature, this preset that they have identified as important to read, right? You're a black woman and you're the black person in every class, not just black woman, the black person you find yourself like, well, I don't know about this sample, or I don't know about this researcher, or, you know, so it was like beating a dead horse till I got to the point where, okay, I'm gonna have to be a black feminist in this medical sociology, there's no black voice. Races, and, you know, at the crossroads of races gender. So I'm always like, Whoo when we talk about gender, then always like, Woo when we talk about race. So I knew I had to center both in my studies of health, because, you know, funny, I was just reading some work from like, 1920 and the same song was being sung there were talking about how black people are studied as guinea pigs, or studied to make white people look better, but never studied to really understand them. So try to help Exactly. Yeah. So that's how I came to where I am, where I really want to study the lived experience of black women, because you get tired of hearing, well, black women are so obese, and black women's babies die in childcare, and black women, you know, just down the line, every health outcome, it doesn't look good for black women. So I just was in context for this. And we need someone with pure intentions to, you know, do that. So
fantastic. It's so interesting. I appreciate that you also shared that bit about how you came to it as a black feminist, not just how you came to that particular practice, but even having that specific, you know, being intentional about having that specific lens. Some of our folks who are listening may have a somewhat of a familiarity with feminism. What does it mean in the context of this conversation for you when you say you are a black feminist sociologist?
Okay, so like I said, you had to find two large areas. So although I started with social psychology and family, I ended with gender and health. I didn't think I was a feminist. I didn't think I was a gender scholar, because I was fed what everyone else is fed. You have to be white and you have to have this pixie haircut and this flannel shirt if you want to be a feminist. Or I read, I said, No, you know what? I'm a feminist too. And then I got the blessing of reading Angela Davis and bell hooks and song that's that's when you just feel at home finally, because you and they're like, you know, you don't fit in when we talk about gender, you don't fit in when we talk about race. Here's why. And it just felt like such a relief to hear that black women's stories could be centered, because at its core, says women have been left out, and women deserve to have a voice. But with black women, it's even more than that, because we have this gender story, but we also have this racism story, so I had to center both, and that's how I came to black feminine.
Yeah. I mean, I love that coming to story for so many reasons, because I feel like it really so many times when people hear terms like black feminist, or even when they if it's something where you are just even pro black, there's always this call around exclusion, like the goal is to exclude when it's like, no, we kind of like been left out. You know what I mean? When you have men who will Cape hard for racism but not for sexism or any other gender oppression, or when you have women who will keep hard for gender oppression and sexism but not for racism, it's kind of like you served a need. Like it was like, No, this is where I am, and it's like, Y'all, you know, hear the labels out here, this is what I'm going to do, and if this label fits, then I'm going to do it. You know that I really appreciate that. Um, what is so getting into more of the topic when we talk about social determinant, what exactly is a social determinant? And can you find some examples of what a social determinant to health might be,
right? So I think it's easy to explain to people like what biological determinants of health are like obesity, like predisposition, because of family, genetic type stuff. It might even be easy to understand psycho predictors of health, psycho things like mental health, depression, but then the social determinants of health is the context. Like I said, it's enough to say black women have terrible rates of everything, but then you need to find out why that is, because without social determinants, you can only conclude that we are just innately incapable of good health. Social is everything in your social world is where you live. It's who your friends are, it's what kind of decisions they make, what kind of decisions your family makes. It's where you work. Do you stand all day? Do you sit all day. It's, you know, it's your income, it's a lot of things, and then your gender specifically, I was thinking about this earlier, like with men, for example, a social determinant of health is just literally the way they're socialized into their manhood. Men take written men. If they're surrounded by food and friends, they have to eat all the food, they have to drink all the beer, they have to sleep with all the women. So they're in to take risks. So manhood, in and of itself, becomes a social determinant of health.
I think that's such an important thing to tie into, because it talks, because it speaks to me, also the ways in which we are contributing to that, like, as a society, as a social structure, how we are developing the identity of young boys to be men, how we're socializing um, people within genders, and also people within certain cultures. And like what that means. And I really love that piece that you mentioned about the environment, like the role that your environment plays, because I think it is often kind of this thing of you know, black women most likely to have this illness, be sick like this, have this bad thing, this bad thing, but there's not a further investigation into what are The conditions that create that whether it's socially, culturally, environmentally, economically, does that person live in a food desert?
Part of my coming into story was reading a article about fried chicken and fresh apples, and it was one game changer articles, because the the point of it was, if you're black, it's easier to get fried chicken than fresh apples. And it just talked about the fast food density. And it got really deep into how even politically, black communities are not cohesive. So there's like these zoning laws in white communities that don't allow fast food density to happen, but then those don't exist in black communities. And you know, there's so much more the cultural eating and the starting with slavery and having to spruce up scraps. So we fry everything, we salt everything, we overcook our vegetables. And you know, it was amazing, because as a grad student, I was living my house was kind of like on the border, if you turn left, you were in complete food desert, fast food place. And then if you turned right, you were in a very comfortable suburb. So as I was reading it, I was like, Wow, I'm not the only person living like this this, and that's how I even included fast food on my dissertation, because I just got so fascinated. We talk a lot about food deserts, but we don't talk enough about fast food density. And there's like, eight groceries, I'm sorry, eight fast food restaurants for every grocery store. And that's just, it's like impossible to be healthy when you live like that,
I mean, and then even, even to all the other things that it impacts, like, when you mentioned, like, how much money you make, how much money you make is going to determine where you live, right? And so if you're living in a also, if you're living in a neighborhood or area where, like you said, it doesn't have those zoning restrictions, and that whole piece about easier to get fried chicken than a fresh apple. That's ridiculously true. And I also find within city blocks there's like, not as much food deserts as it is a food swamp. So the types of food are liquor and grease, just like liquor and grease everywhere we even
Similac, and that's a whole other. It is single handedly, the predominantly black neighborhoods where you are just Similac, Similac, Similac. Similac is much of a poster for beer. It's just Similac, similacine. And this, like we know, breast milk is the best milk, right? Already busy, and you're already wearing 20 hats, and you're inundated with these Similac posters. That's a whole nother. You know, health issue?
No, I feel like it is, but it's also relevant, right? So I think one of those aspects that it speaks to is not only, I think one of the things that happens sometimes is there's, let's say there's a problem with poor health, poor eating, and we just look at maybe the way that individual is socialized, maybe even just within their culture, but not taken to consider one, what does their financial resources give them access to? What does their neighborhood give them access to? And if you are a mom, and if you are a single mom or even just a working mom, how you know, the way that our society is set up, how much is that is set up for you to actually take the time and then, like, nurture your nurture your child and feed them in that way over a longer period of time? Yeah, so I feel like that is absolutely relevant. And I guess that speaks to that whole piece of when you say you're a black feminist, medical sociologist. So many words. Now it's like, it's a lot there. So black feminist piece, um, and that, of course, that sociology piece, can you speak a little bit more to the medical piece in terms of what are some of the outcomes that. You're seeing from the in terms of it being a social determinant. What are some of the health health outcomes that you're seeing come out of
Yeah, so with the medical sociology part, we look at health risk behaviors. We also look at patient provider interactions. You know, it's just, it's just a spiral. There's so much that goes into black women's health. So you know, you live in this community, there's a large chance that you don't have access to a lot of healthy food. There's a large chance you're working and don't have enough time. There's a large chance you have family and friends who need you. I'm actually currently doing focus groups with young black women about their barriers to diet and exercise and this obligation to friends. It kind of haunted my research partner and I because we didn't expect it to be such a big piece of their life at 18 to 25 you know, we think about women in the sandwich generation, but we don't think about college students, and they're like, you know, my friends are depressed and they need me, and they're always over my house, crashing on my couch, looking for a shoulder so that, in the meantime, self care goes out the window, so stuff going on, you're already overextended. And then when you ask about, do you would you talk to a nutritionist? Would you do you even have a primary care doctor? It's a no. You know, some of them, luckily, have said they found like a solid black female care provider. But for the most part, those who haven't, they talk about terrible experiences they've had that made them never want to go back, or they talk about family stories, you know, grandparents, parents, uncles, who have already told them the hospital is no place for us. So it's just, you know, we don't go to the hospital till we have symptoms that are really ruining our life, kind of like debilitating pain or something.
Can you speak more to that aspect of it, to the aspects of the conditions that deter us from going and you also mentioned you found some that were able to get a solid black woman as a doctor. Why was that important? And could you also speak to some of that, I guess, basically cultural mistrust of the medical field among Black people. Well,
yeah, so again, there's a big piece that starts with family socialization. And, you know, honestly, I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, and I work now in North Carolina, and I am in the home of the place where black people were forced to get sterilized. You know, we're literally used as guinea pigs, and this is stuff in the north you read about, but you can feel the distrust in a real way here, like I even have a student who told me once, when they went to get a physical, they were, hey, while you're here you want to get, you know, a vasectomy and physical. This person was under 25 when that offer was made. Wow. So, I mean, this isn't dead. This isn't the Tuskegee experiment of 1932 this is not dead. This is now, yeah, all it takes is one or two people you personally to tell you a story like that to make you not want to go to the doctor, right? I had another participant talking about just literally getting asked the most offensive racist questions while getting a physical while nude. And it was a female. She just felt so vulnerable, and that's all I needed. I knew I couldn't go back and, you know, funny, like, within the past two weeks, I was interviewing, and I'm doing a study to ask, and part of the question is, you know, we can't have all black women doctors. So what would you recommend people do who aren't black women make the experience read, you know, reasonable or good for black women said, there's nothing they can do. There's nothing, she said, you know, between George Floyd and Brianna Taylor, all bets are off. There's nothing they can do. And that level of just defeat. It kind of took my breath away, because here I am thinking, Well, I can see, you know, as an expert, I'm thinking the key is, we start, you know, we use black women as the trainers, and have them teach other practitioners how to best connect with black women. Mm, hmm, like, No, I'm not even open to it.
See that that further for me, I feel like that further for me, just speaks to who are you there to help, really? You know what I mean? If this is what it takes to to help, to support, who are you actually there to help? Yes, you mentioned something earlier about talking to not realizing the ways in which some of these things impact college age or students that are 18 to 25 when you talk about self care, one of the things that came up in my mind to even when we talk about self care, self care has been so commodified that it is it is not going to get a checkup, it is not seeing a nutritionist. It is not eating healthy and grabbing an apple. It is going to get my nails, nails done. It is going to get a pedicure. It's going to get my hair done. And some of those things are can help you to feel good, but there's this way in which I feel like we've definitely been impacted by we get stressed out, and then our self care is very esthetic and superficial.
You know? Yes, I was just thinking about that the other day. I told a colleague I had a hair appointment, and she was like, Oh, look at you doing self care. Not an African American woman will say that. And it was funny, because I actually have a lot of anxiety around strangers, so I'm getting my nails done. Is self care. I actually hate the whole hour and a half I'm there. I just do it because I like the way it looks to have fresh nails. But when I think of self care, I think of going for a hike. I think of getting my girlfriends together for a great meal, for some cocktails, you know, these kind of things where I actually find joy. I like intimate relationships. I don't really like superficial ones like you would have with service providers are very close with the people that do their hair and nails, but it's just not something you should assume across the board is self care by night.
I know absolutely um Rebecca DuPont says, Teach 99 cent for a burger at 699 for a quality salad. Another person said, our health care providers required, or even encouraged to take social determinants into account when prescribing care.
Whoo, now, that's a good question. I literally, I found myself, you know, it's really lonely to be a sociologist. It's better now because, you know, Trump has helping us, kind of he helped us say, hey, there's racism. He didn't help us, but he made us happy. No, he made it more before him, it was very lonely to be a sociologist. I'm sorry.
Can we go back to the question? I just lost my thought, absolutely no problem. So Ty asked our health care providers, oh, right, or even encouraged to take social
determinants Yes, I was going to tell a story about a dinner I was at with a physician. And you would think that people with this level of education would have some sort of understand we fought tooth and nail about social determinants of health. Mission was convinced racism is over, and the only social determinant of health is income, and if you just get people to a livable wage, there are no more obstacles in their way when it comes to health. And we have so met. We have so much data that shows you, if you take a black woman with a PhD and a white woman with a HD. Their health is not similar at all. Their births are not similar at all. We're talking about somebody with energy, intergenerational wealth, whose parents might have helped them buy their first house, who might have got out of grad school with no debt, versus someone like I said, Who's taking care of family, taking care of friends, hanging on by a thread. This is not apples and apples, and there is no way we can say racism is over and money is the only barrier left today. And you know, today, we're very open to talk about like defunding the police or rethinking the way we do criminal justice, but we haven't got there yet with medical. Absolutely need to rethink medical just it's just as much of an emergency, and maybe COVID is helping us see that, because black women are the essential workers. Black women are the ones hospitalized at greater rates. You know, black women are the ones who are now at home with these virtual learning children at greater rates, trying to wear, once again, 100 hats. So I think COVID has kind of shown us that race is a social determinant of health. But no, not at all. Medical doctors nurses do not have to ever take a sociology class in their life. You could go all the way through and no, never meet someone like me so
interesting, because it it. You know how they're informed about what they prescribe? You know what I mean? If you don't know my environment, if you don't know there's just so much, and that's just with the that's just with the physical health piece, that's not even talking about the mental and emotional piece, absolutely, like, just not, you know, for anybody who's treating black people and they're not taking in race into account racism, I'm just like, I I'm not sure you know, all the way what you're talking about. I'm. Sure you study real good, you learn real good, you got educated. But if you're not taking it to racism, racism into account, you're missing a very huge piece. Yeah. And then I know we talked a bit a bit earlier about the some of the historical components, whether we go back to Dr Sims as a father of gynecology, or we look at this way in which black women or black people in general are viewed as having higher tolerance for pain. And so how that shows up when I'm trying to tell you, No, something is not right and you are not you know, listening to me, I'm not a valid source of knowledge or information on my own body. I think that that, that that is something that comes up in place, yeah,
and the idea that we have to realize history is not over, you know, because it's really easy to say, Oh, well, yeah, slaves were mistreated, but black people are still mistreated. You know, there was slavery and it was God awful. They even, you know, dug up our graves to use bodies for science projects and cadavers, you know, were chopped up. But then, once we got over slavery, Tuskegee happened, and for 40 years, an entire town was denied access to syphilis treatment. So not only were those men dying, their women, their children, generations of people were affected because we were guinea pigs. The same thing happens. Eat, like, two day. And now you see a lot of people nervous about this COVID vaccine, because it's like, are we going to be guinea pigs again? We're always guinea pigs. So I think a lot of people in America like to say, Well, yeah, that was in the past. Let it go. Everything's better. Now it's not better. Now, I fixed our medical system, you know, illegal, but we still have a lot of people in positions of power who don't get it and don't desire to get it. And the fact that Tuskegee ended in 7250 years ago, there were white physicians who thought we were biologically different and thought it made sense to let us just ride out syphilis and see how it went.
That's one generation. Yeah, that's one that's literally
right. That's myself. You know, with my first son, I had an emergency C section, and I went through the whole story. It was 24 hours of them knowing I needed a C section, but insisting I was being dramatic about the pain I experienced. You'll be okay, you'll be okay. And my aunt literally protested the whole day, like, I know she needs a C section. They're like, Oh, she'll be okay, she'll be okay. So it's not it's not over. It's still happening.
Desmond shares sorry. Desmona. Desdemona shares that we are stressed as getting, oh, man, I missed that one. It went the message went back too quick, so it's on to the next message. Now it's like, it only shows me like five other times. Okay, so someone else says, Not only that, but they do not teach nutrition in med school. I didn't know that that one's gone. The mistreatment continues. Yes, Desdemona commented again, says too many clinicians don't think there's any anything different about treating a black person, a black person than a white person. The underlying thought of being the same, simply because we're all human beings, leave us at severe disadvantage in community health settings, another person says biopsychological is taught but is not applied to us. And Desdemona also says exactly why I decided against medical school and and desire to a naturopathic path. Um, yeah, it's just so much to unpack there with all of that. And I want to go back to something and one that's in your in your work, and I think that this particular aspect of your work speaks a lot to mental and emotional health as well as social determinants. You talk about in your work the Superwoman schema and how it predicts diet and exercise. Can you share with our audience what is the Superwoman schema and also share, how does that predict diet and exercise?
Okay, well, I can plug my superhero collaborator, Cheryl woods gizcom. A Cheryl woods gizcombe, she created the Superwoman schema. So basically, before the schema existed black female scholars of health kind of centered the strong black woman idea. And the strong black woman framework has all these tenants, like putting care for others before self, never seeming emotional, having this super, this kind of unconditional self. Love I love me as I am, you know. So that kind of creates a barrier to reflecting. And then there's this religious piece where we don't want to actively work out or do better, we want to let go and let God. So there's all these things that make a strong black woman, but then she took it a step further to Super Woman, because she is a nurse and a psychologist who saw that being a strong black woman is directly tied to mental health. All this pressure we have to care for others before we care for ourselves, it puts us in such a risk. And binge eating is a way we cope, because we're not allowed to be emotional in public. Home at night, we just kind of lay there and snack all night.
I think there's so much to say about that whole Superwoman thing, and this way in which resilience is, you know, I've seen a lot of journals and articles studying and talking about black women's resilience, and so often it's used as a reason to not provide care, like they're good, they don't need anything, they're resilient. And I also look at the folks who perpetuate this as a as a virtue, and I feel like it is the people who we give everything to and we put ourselves back. So this is what makes a good woman. You cook, you clean, you don't cry, you do this, and you do that, and you do it all the ways that I want, and in situations wherein you go to work and they're expecting you to work like you don't have children or a family, and you with your family, and expecting you to show up like you don't have a job, like you have nothing else except for them. So I could see how that definitely connects, and even to that piece about not crying in public. And then let's put race into it. And let's put race into it, specifically around dealing with things like microaggressions and
having this strong race and gender pride is also part of the strong black woman schema. So this kind of like, you know, fist up and you know how that is on your mental health, you know, cool to just be out here being a revolutionary all day, every day, but that takes a toll on you. Oh, it's the emotion piece, I think the two biggest parts that in my research we need to address as black women is the social networks that we are just always available to and the emotion piece, because we have to be comfortable telling Our friends I am overwhelmed myself right now, and unfortunately, I can't, and we have to be able to emotional in public, because white people, we have become strong black woman. It's an adaptive thing, because nobody saying, My life sucks. I'm overwhelmed. It's racist, it's sexist. Out here, I give up. So instead of doing that, we're like, I'm a strong black woman. I'll eat whatever food is available around here. I'll take care of my kids by myself. I'll work. You know, we're men and women. You just described men and women. You said, We cook, we clean, we go to work like we're two people, and we have decided that's a good thing. And if you can't do that, you're not a strong woman. And we pay the cost now, because, like you said, nobody sees us as weak. Nobody ever thinks we're at our capacity. So we need to be unapologetically human. Sometimes someone presses you to the point where you need to cry or you need to scream, then you need to do that bill. You know, we feel so responsible for our whole group. If I become angry, then every black woman is going to pay the price, because they're just going to feed into the stereotype. We can't do that. We can't wear the whole group on our shoulders. If it's too much, we need to say it's too much, because males, when they get even a fifth of the hill we catch they will, they will tell you, Oh, my God, this is too much, right? We have to figure out how we can, you know, not, I'm not saying just go all the way and be a baby, but occupy this space of emotion. We need to know, because otherwise we go home and we take it out on some food, right? It's got to come out some way, you know
how? Some way it will come out. Um, Christy Applegate says, as a white woman, I am routine, routinely encouraged to give a higher pain number than I report. Never connected that to racism before. Ugh. Um, Dez says snack all night or don't eat for days. She also our advocacy for self is expected to be non existent, or we are seen as selfish or not a good person. I'm gonna throw in there. We seen as a bitch. Um, someone else. Say, Healing Justice, address. US addresses this by dismantling these tropes. Someone else said, especially when you are the first or one of few in a space, the pressure to perform, to be more than human.
You know, I wanted to say one of the commenters talked about how they were so turned off, by the way medicine is set up that they went holistic instead, and it's almost like a double edged sword, because we need you in medicine. I literally had to go through hell for five years to get my PhD. I literally had to, you know, and now it was worth it, because I need to be here. So I'm not saying everybody should just go through abuse and go through a program that's racist, but we need to know that we're needed in these spaces, and a big part of the change is our presence. Oh,
man, that's so true. I feel like that's whole conversation that out like, really need to have at some point, because I do feel like there is the individual and then there's the collective self. Because I feel like one of the things that our experiences is like, are you going to go through some of these processes and some of these environments in order? Because you are needed, because, because, because you are needed in that space. And that's something that, on a personal level, I've been grappling with for a while. Like, how much am I going to operate in certain racist spaces? Because I feel like I'm needed in that particular area. I really love what you said before, and I really want everyone listening to like, think about what Jeanette said when she said, think about what networks. How did you say? What networks are you overly accountable to? Or how did you put Yes? Like,
you know, think about being able to tell your friends that you're too and, you know, we can learn from the youth, because I had a student tell me, she makes her friends ask her how her day is going before they proceed to just, you know, how are you doing? Do you mind if I go any forward? Because I would call, let me tell you, girl I had this, this, right, right, with no consideration if they're already halfway broken and not just halfway broken. What if they're having the best day ever with this gray cloud, and it's like Dad, can a black woman ever just have a great day? You know? So just just being conscious of your friends needs, because we need our sisters. Of course, our friends mean everything to us, but just being conscious that they are humans just as well as we are humans, and giving yourself permission to say no, and giving them permission say no if there's just too much, I think
that's huge. And one of the things that you have written a you wrote an article that was published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies. That journal, that article is called, is it race, sex, gender, or all three predicting risk factors for alcohol consumption in emerging adulthood? I wanted to ask you a bit about why was it important to central racism and gender oppression in the conversation around alcohol consumption and predicting risk for alcohol consumption,
it just goes back to the idea any health risk behavior or outcome where one group is substantially more likely to be involved in it. You have to think about racism and sexism, because, again, if you don't, then your only implication is that they are just fundamentally, biologically predisposed to do this thing. And when we look at binge drinking, that's something where white males dominate, and it's not because they are just, you know, biologically in love with liquor. We have to get to the social determinants of alcohol consumption, and a lot of it is high income. Because when you think about the places that people drink a lot, on vacation, at nightclubs, at concerts, these are not cheap places to be. So if you're on a budget, you're probably going to find other ways, you know, to free your mind, if that's what you're doing. But for binge drinking in particular, that's a white male experience. And then it also goes back to what I was saying about masculinity, and how a big part of manhood is over indulging. So when you're a white male, and you're kind of at that intersection of having a lot of money to spend and needing to overindulge binge drinking is, you know, something that would be attractive to you.
So how do you say that that correlates then within so many impoverished or poor neighborhoods, there's so many liquor stores.
Yeah. So it flip flops. 18 to 25 is the group I usually do research on. And at 18 to 25 white males dominate binge drinking. Now, once you get into the 30s and older, black people dominate drinking. But see, binge drinking is a particular type of behavior. It's having four shots at a time for women, five shots at a time for men. So that's a particular kind of lifestyle behavior, okay, you know the beer all day, kind of image that's sold to black people. That's a different drinking style,
okay, okay, um, that's interesting. The differences in terms of like, how income and race play a part. One respondent, world. Respondent, like I'm doing research. One audience member said working with the existing healthcare system was too abusive to be of good help. I had to pull out and develop my own organization that addresses all of the gaps that I was blocked from addressing in the community, health administration, another person said, also not gendering, care, emotions, financial responsibilities, household chores, etc, that could not that could not only be on black Women. And another person says, right, get permission before dumping. That is about consent. Get consent before asking someone else to have to be emotionally available. Or is that one meme was going around for a little bit of time, check on your strong friend. Somebody go check on your strong friend. Um, can you speak to a little bit more about how frequent consumption of fast food, irregular condom use, high risk, partnering, heavy episodic and heavy episodic drink, drinking threat in both individual and public health. I'm really interested in that public health piece. But could you speak to both of those?
Yeah, yeah. So for my dissertation, I looked at fast food consumption, sexual risk and alcohol consumption. And, you know, we think of health risk behaviors as things that people experience, but there's a billion dollar industry which is called medicine, and so people that are going to the hospital for obesity, for liver issues, to get detoxed after drinking too much, for STD treatment that don't have health care that's a public health issue. People who aren't able to go to work because of health concerns, that becomes a public health issue. So anytime your own personal choices are affecting the general population is something we all need to be invested in. And you know, after looking at all three of those health risk behaviors, like I said, I became more committed to black women and eating in particular. But it's heartbreaking, because if you look at obesity, America's number 10 globally, but if black women were a country, we would be number three, and we need other people to care. We need everyone to care. We need everyone's help with this.
Can you speak to some of those, some of those results, some of those findings, whether in your own individual research or things that you have found in the literature, and what are some corresponding paradigm shifts, behavioral changes, social things that we should be looking at at turning turning that around,
turning it around. So my current research, where I've been doing focus groups, asking black women just that, what kind of program would you go to, what kind of services would you want? The theme seems to be group settings. Black women don't want to go to therapy alone. They don't want to work out alone. They don't really want to do anything alone. They want to be with sisters. So the idea of creating a space, a holistic space, where black women can come together and talk about mental health, share recipes, just do this kind of pro health stuff together instead of anti health stuff together. You know, it's great to come together when you think about a church feast after church or at a wedding or whatever. What are you going to see? Fried chicken, spaghetti, mac and cheese? You know, you're just roles. But this idea of still coming together in a community, but shifting the way we do it, so we have to kind of redefine what community looks like to us, because we value community so much. What can White allies do? Invite your black friends with you if you're going somewhere, like for a walk or going for a nice meal at a local vegan place, don't assume they wouldn't want to go. Invite them see what they say. And then also, as far as how white allies can help with medicine you. So it's about calling people out. Because I don't know if you experienced this, but I know a lot of people I know experienced this after George Floyd, a lot of white allies were kind of flooding us with, okay, I want to help. How do I help? Right? Yeah, and it's calling out your family, because it's really nice to say I'm black, lives matter and but it's even better to call out your family, because you might have an aunt who's a nurse who's being racist at work, but you have this opportunity at Thanksgiving when she says something stereotypical by the patient to say, hey, let's talk about that. Why do you feel that way? You know white people have the ability to infiltrate white spaces the way we don't, so maybe we don't need them at the sisterhood workout night, but there is still the medicine piece that's going to be required to get black women's health improved, and they can help there by calling each other out.
I think that's really important to about doing that in spaces where where black people are not even present, right? Like, I always, like, around election time, you have these white politicians going to black churches, no, go to white churches, yes, and talk to them about racism and tell them how it's wrong. Don't, don't, you know, um, Dez says, I read somewhere about how the white man used to make the slaves binge drink during the holidays. It was associated with the only time we had a good laugh or a good time during slavery. I never heard of that. I haven't
either. I just read about the heat stroke study. I don't know if everyone's familiar. I'm not familiar. Sure they had a the research. The research question was, how long can slaves work? How many hours at a slave and they would just sit him outside naked, until he said, from the heat, naked,
what's the point in that? It's just sizzle the man.
So then he would pass out, and they would try medicine, and then he would they for three weeks, they just had him sit there and sizzle until he passed out, until they came up with a concoction that gave you the most bang for your buck, as far as how long a slave could work in the sun. And
what is that called, again, the heat the heat stroke
study.
The heat stroke study, I know one of the things I remember is the ways in which I don't know if it was called cocaine at that time. Think we might have just been called Coke was given to slaves because it said that it made them work harder and faster and more, just like all of these different ways that has have historically and continue to create this cultural distress. Yeah, of the medical profession. And it's like, I don't know if I could, like, all the way, like super blind folks. Dez also says, I'm so glad that you're saying all these things black women want. Those are the things I'm doing. Good, um, man, there's so much that like to go into this topic. And in terms of unpacking different aspects of the mental piece, the emotional piece, the that intersection the gendered gender, racialized gender oppression with the experiences, how much have you seen? Has that played out from more in terms of social determinant, more family related determinants, more like if this person is a mom, or if this person is married versus unmarried, or if this person has more children versus less children, have you seen anything connected to that?
Does that affect their health? Yeah, like I mean, but like I said, there's research that shows the most educated, successful black people still have health disparities, and even, like first generation Africans, have better health than African Americans with high income. So, I mean, of course, things can buffer it. Of course, you know, a woman with four kids that works fast food and has no help is going to have far more to overcome that you and I would. But do we experience racism? Gendered racism? God, yeah. Does it affect our health Absolutely.
How have you seen anything that lets you know about how some of the social determinants that you've mentioned have been further impacted by COVID?
How, I'm sorry repeat that. Have
you seen anything around how some of the social determinants that you mentioned earlier, how they've been even more impacted by COVID, or could you even speak to how black women's experience, specifically black women experience within these COVID times?
Yeah, I'm actually doing a study. It's about barriers to remote. Learning. So it's a study of students and the things they need to learn from home. But along the way, we're also learning a lot more about the social determinants and how COVID has been disparate. For one, people of color, not just black, but also Hispanic, are more likely to live together with family intergenerational housing like 6789, people in the house. So where that alone increases your chances of getting COVID. Because if you have people going to work at four different places as essential workers and then all coming home together, that creates a barrier. You have transportation issues, you have access to health care issues because, again, we don't go to the hospital unless it's like life or death. So you have that piece, I think the biggest issue is distrust. So we're not going when we have early symptoms and just how overrepresented we are at low wage work, all the cashiers, all the people. When we think of essential we think of these heroes like police officers and nurses, but we are not talking about the grocery store clerk. We're not talking about the people who are making $8 an hour every day during a pandemic to put their life on the line, and they're largely black and brown.
Well, thank you so much for that. If anyone has any additional questions to ask Jeanette, please feel free to type it in the chat Jeanette at this time. Could you share with some folks like what? How can they follow you? Get in contact with you. They may even want to read some of the articles that you've written. How can they stalk you in the non stalker sort of way? Oh, great.
That's an interesting question. Stalk me
no. How can they follow and phrase you?
Well, I'm a professor at North Carolina A and T, so if you want to see my work, you can go to the school website, and it'll get you where you need to get if you want to follow me on Instagram, it's Dr, dot j dot Wade. And you can even subscribe to my Facebook, because I preach a lot. So if you enjoyed all this, you can get at least one or two good preachings a week.
That is nice. I'm here for it. I'm going to go back over here and see if there are any questions. Oh, that's the question that I asked. Ty asked, How are black social determinants playing out in the pandemic you spoke to that someone else said, I just read an article about this. I'm not sure which this they were referring to, desert. Essential equals frontline, equals mass contact with the public. You know what I'm starting to feel like when I see how they're interacting with the central workers, I'm really starting to think that they're using essential as like disposable, you know, in terms of like, who is frontline, who gets to be protected, who gets to work from home and who doesn't. And I hope that later on, when we are reflecting on all of this, that that one of the things that comes up in our reflecting is that in a time of crisis, we need the person who works at the grocery store. We needed our mail persons. We needed, you know,
though, yeah, when I say we only think about like officers or nurses, for example. These are people who actively when they get their career know, I'm in a job that might involve putting my life on the line. Get a job at the gas station. You are not making that you're not having that aha moment, that one day I might have to put my life on the line here at this gas station, and you
also not paid exactly, you know, at that level, in terms of for danger, pay exactly.
So that's what I mean. I'm not at all like trying to misrepresent what the definition of essential is, I'm just saying the people who didn't voluntarily sign up to put their life on the line that like it my school, when we were all rushed home, you know, who wasn't rushed home? The people who clean the buildings and what do they you know? So the people who are doing the jobs that we didn't expect to be life or death jobs are us, and that's a big problem during COVID. No,
that's such a big part, because their particular they have a particular job in terms of being essential and being preventative. They're like helping our care by making sure that space is clean, Lysol and things, and definitely never thought about them in that specific context. But that is helpful. Rebecca said this. This was awesome. So informative. Another person asked, Can you share your research partner's name again and where to find? And her work, I think,
um, yeah, the Superwoman, schema, Cheryl woods, gizcon Bay. She's at UNC Chapel Hill.
How do you spell her name, C, H, E, R, Y, l, woods,
and then it's hyphenated, g I s c, O M, B, E,
G I s c, O, M, D, E, so there's her name, and then you just look for Super Woman schema.
She's she's a super woman herself. So she's got a ton of really fascinating articles you could read.
Awesome. Thank you so much again for your time. Do you have any final thoughts?
No, this was really good. It's nice to have a place to talk about social determinants.
I feel like I want to have you on again, because I really want, I'm really, definitely going to be interested in, what are some of the things that come up out of your research around COVID, as it relates to black women, and I don't know if in your health, in your exploration of health, if you tap into or the degree to which you tap into mental and emotional health, because I'm really
Yes, I shortchanged the story I forgot. So that's just the one study where we're doing barriers and promoters for students. However, my two other studies of strong black woman in eating and strong black women and sexual risk, we are actually incorporating COVID into them. When I first started the study of strong black women and diet exercise, our plan was to do college students and a community sample to see if being a strong black woman looks different, you know, based on your roles, but we shifted because we also have a social worker on our research team, Dr Sharon Parker, and she brought it to our attention just how much mental health came up. And she I can only imagine, with rioting from coast to coast, protesting and a pandemic. I can only imagine what these women are feeling now. And she was like, you know, it's kind of our duty to check in and follow up. So we shifted the whole grant, and instead of doing community women, we're going to revisit the college students, and so we're going to do check ins within the next 30 days and reconvene the same focus groups and just see where are you now? How is your diet and exercise been affected? What kind of new levels of stress are you experiencing with everything we have going on? My sexual health study, we've had to add in, how has COVID changed your sex life? And of course, it's like, it's like, I've been completely quarantined. No sex for others. It's like, hey, there's nothing to do, so you might as well have sex.
You know, just like the what is
it the boomers, there might be a COVID Boom, yeah, there's gonna be a COVID Boom. There is, and hopefully it's not a COVID, syphilis, boom, right.
Oh, Lord,
right, yeah, absolutely. The CDC is pushing for wear a mask and a condom, and I'm like, 18 to 25 year olds bring a mask and a condom. Really? Wow,
I would, I wouldn't even think that. Well, of course, you have to still say that, because we still you have to say it, right? That's where we are today. Todd said, Yes, part two, and Chrissy said, Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Yeah. So thank you to everyone who's watching, who shared, if you're watching live, I definitely appreciate it. I will also let everyone in the Facebook group. Know when it will be posted to YouTube, and I'll make sure I share a link with you. I'm going to log off of Facebook and I'm going to chat with you for a little bit more. Jeanette, thank you again. To everyone is watching you've been watching the counter narrative show. All right. All right. Oh, and I can stop recording on mine too.