Maternal Health Visionary Spotlight: Dr. Joia Crear-Perry [MHTF]

_{MHTF July 19, 2019}

Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, National Birth Equity Collaborative founder and president, calls on us to value every woman to achieve maternal health equity. 

At the 10^th anniversary celebration of the Maternal Health Task Force, The Global Maternal Health Symposium, 10 Maternal Health Visionary awards were presented. The recipients were honored for the impact, innovation, inspiration, leadership, and future vision they have provided to the field of Maternal Health. This blog series highlights the work of these maternal health visionaries.

Dr. Joia Crear-Perry was led to a career fighting to eliminate racial disparities in maternal and infant health through her own experiences as a Black mother. Pregnant with her first daughter and entering medical school, she struggled to find a female Ob/Gyn who was taking patients. While she had always thought she would be an ophthalmologist like her father, she found she loved spending time with mothers and infants. The premature birth of her second child opened her eyes to a glaring error in the way race and ethnicity was thought of in the medical field. As she went into early labor, she knew the risk factors for preterm birth, but the only one that was included in her medical textbook that fit her situation was being Black. Yet, she also knew there was no true genetic basis for race. So how could race be a risk factor?

That question led her not only to pursue a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology, but also to become a champion of the idea that it is not race, but racism and bias that increase the risk of poor maternal health outcomes, including mortality. Dr. Crear-Perry explains:

“Although in Atlanta white infant mortality is 6 per 1,000 and Black infant mortality is 13 per 1,000, white women are still doing poorly. In Portland, the white infant mortality is 1 per 1,000. We’re not looking for the genetic differences between white women in Portland and white women in Atlanta. We know [in Portland] there is much more midwifery, much better infrastructure, Medicaid expansion, better jobs, and better educational attainment. People use racist ideas to harm all of us.”

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