Dr. Paula Braveman, director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University of California-San Francisco, says her latest research revealed an “astounding” level of evidence that racism is a decisive “upstream” cause of higher rates of preterm birth among Black women. (Nancy Rothstein)
The tipping point for Dr. Paula Braveman came when a longtime patient of hers at a community clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District slipped past the front desk and knocked on her office door to say goodbye. He wouldn’t be coming to the clinic anymore, he told her, because he could no longer afford it.
This story also ran on California Black Media. It can be republished for free.
It was a decisive moment for Braveman, who decided she wanted not only to heal ailing patients but also to advocate for policies that would help them be healthier when they arrived at her clinic. In the nearly four decades since, Braveman has dedicated herself to studying the “social determinants of health” — how the spaces where we live, work, play and learn, and the relationships we have in those places, influence how healthy we are.
As director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University of California-San Francisco, Braveman has studied the link between neighborhood wealth and children’s health, and how access to insurance influences prenatal care. A longtime advocate of translating research into policy, she has collaborated on major health initiatives with the health department in San Francisco, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Read more on the original article : https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/why-are-blacks-more-likely-than-whites-to-give-birth-prematurely-racism-plays-key-role-study-finds/
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