YouSaid · the spoken record

Layal Liverpool

lines on the record: 38
first: 2024-07-20
most recent: 2024-07-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I'm happy to talk. It means so much to be able to hear people's questions and that people are even, it feels like a small thing, but simply just recognizing that racism is harmful to health is a huge milestone because then we can start to tackle the problem. I think before we were in a place where it wasn't even acknowledged, so I'm grateful that people are interested in this and are taking it seriously. And yeah, I'm really happy to talk more and to answer questions after the event.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How racism affects people depending on their experiences of that in the context of their culture is also important when we're engaging in healthcare.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tradition of giving birth in their ancestral lands and following certain practices. And when they kind of took that into account and used that as a birthing model, they actually saw measurable health benefits. So there are inequalities in Australia also for Indigenous Australians are more likely to die also during childbirth and pregnancy. And incorporating those principles from birthing on country really helped to reduce those inequalities. So they saw benefits in terms of engagement with antinatal care and health outcomes for the baby as well as the mother. So I think that's really important and should be a part of, it should just be a normal part of healthcare that healthcare should be for all of us no matter our background. It should be taken into account and we should be able to feel comfortable and empowered to speak up for ourselves in the healthcare space. And I think when our culture and who we are is taken into account, we can feel more comfortable to express ourselves. So I think that's really important. And at the same time, I think recognize”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. I think that's also a helpful thing to look at moving away from genetics, but thinking about society, but also cultural factors that affect our health and also being seen for our full selves when we engage with healthcare. So it's interesting you talk about Australia. When I was researching the book, I was looking at inequalities in maternal health. And in Australia, there's been really brilliant work looking at what's called birthing on country so people belonging to indigenous groups in Australia, they're supported to give birth according to cultural practices that have been for centuries. And in that way, there's actually been research where they really tried to test that because obviously sometimes it's hard to measure these things, but they developed a model called birthing in our community, which was based on principles of birthing on country. So birthing in country is where people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians,”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People belonging to marginalized classes are reporting experiencing more mistreatment in their maternity care. So a lot of those inequalities, you see parallels. I mean, India is very affected by air pollution, which you've talked about, and there are also inequalities in terms of caste. So, again, people belonging to caste that are discriminated against, often are more exposed to air pollution based on where they live and the kind of work that people do. So I think it's actually a theme. I did try to focus more in the UK because we're here in the UK today, but in the book, I look at this really through a global lens that around the world, wherever we see that people are marginalized, we see worse health outcomes in those cases. And I believe that racism really should be recognized as a global public health crisis that is affecting our health.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, thank you for that question and for talking about casteism and colorism. This is also something that I look into in the book that, you know, I interpret racism in a really broad sense. So we've talked a lot today about discrimination against black people, but there's discrimination against so many different groups. And in all cases, it's harmful to health. That's what the evidence shows. And in my research for the book, I also interviewed researchers in India. There was one researcher who was looking at maternal health. And as I've talked about, I talked about inequalities for black women here in the UK. In India, you see that people belonging to marginalized castes experience worse health outcomes in maternity, also infant health, and across the board. And also in the same way,”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found that my experiences of racism were not really acknowledged initially when I tried to approach that in therapy, and I know that in Germany where I live, there was research showing that many people felt that their experiences of racism were kind of dismissed in psychotherapy or not acknowledged. So I think it's also important that mental health practitioners are trained to understand how racism affects our mental health because racism itself is harming our health, but then on top of that there are inequalities once we have a mental health condition in how we're treated.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For that are often perceptions about black people, particularly black men being dangerous or perceived as dangerous. And in the US, where there's a lot more guns and violence, then you see that when it comes to mental health, often the police are being involved. I think that's also a problem here. But in the US, research has shown that black men, when they're experiencing a mental health episode, they're more likely to be met with violence from police compared to white people where they might be given perhaps more sympathy and support. So I think that's a huge issue. There's also a lot of stigma when it comes to mental health and talking about it in different communities. So I think there are a lot of ways in which that operates. And something that I've experienced myself is just even when you are accessing preventative services, so just like therapy, if you're trying to prevent mental health conditions or just support yourself in your life, we all have mental health.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, thank you so much for bringing that point because, yeah, I think it's important to point out that racism affects health, you know, physical health, but also mental health. It's a huge area. And I think there are kind of, there's more than one way in which that operates. I think we see inequalities, for example, ethnic minorities in the UK are underdiagnosed with a lot of conditions. They're undertreated for common mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But then at the same time, black people in particular tend to be underdiagnosed with depression but then overdiagnosed with schizophrenia and often in a way that is quite racialized and stigmatizing. We also see inequalities when it comes to really acute cases of mental illness. So when people are, if you look, there are ethnic inequalities, for example, in hospitalization and involuntary psychiatric holds. So black people are more likely to be put in an involuntary hold. And research shows that reason”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sometimes it's just that acknowledgement that you're listening to someone that you acknowledge their experience that they can tell you what they're feeling or someone's telling you they're in pain, you know, they're in pain. There's all kinds of really terrible things about different ethnic groups and how they feel pain and Asian people don't express their pain and black people feel less pain because they have thicker skin. And this is just terrible. We're human beings. We feel pain the same. And I think we should just trust people's account of what they're experiencing more. I think there's a lot of evidence that better listening in healthcare is beneficial for all patients. But yeah, especially when it comes to race where there may be prejudice. Thank you so much for all the interest and questions.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I think back to that experience, I think it was kind of a symbol of this wider problem in medicine. And yes, so hearing from people that they also felt not listened to or dismissed or judged, for me it really touched me, but also I realized that it's a systematic problem that affects a lot more people. And I hope that we can tackle it.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it just felt as if the idea that because I have a so it's also class happening there, I think there's how she racialized me as a black woman that she perhaps perceived that I'm high risk for this condition. There are, I think, negative assumptions about people living with HIV, which are terrible because it stigmatizes getting tested, which I think is important. We should be getting tested. We should be encouraging people to get tested because it means that we can access treatment and we can tackle the problem. But then also, yeah, there are assumptions about black women, about sexuality. So I think there's so much going on in there. And I don't bring that story to kind of blame this one doctor, but again, I feel it's just the systems and the prejudices that we have and those assumptions of just kind of checking those biases before we're dealing with patients or even just in life when we're interacting with people outside of healthcare. So that was like an example where, again, at the time, I didn't think much of it, but now having written the book.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She recommended that I should get an HIV test. So I was like, okay, she said, You need to go to the clinic and do that. So I was like, okay, fine. And then as I was getting up to leave, I was wearing like a lanyard because I had come from the lab. So I had a lanyard that says NHS and University of Oxford. And then my lanyard kind of like, she saw it as I stood up. And she was like, oh my God, do you work at the university? Are you a researcher? It's like, oh yeah, I'm doing a PhD, blah, blah. We started talking about viruses. You know, my favorite topic. And then as I'm leaving, she said, oh, don't worry about getting that HIV test. You're probably very low risk for HIV. And as I was leaving, it's like, you know, when something happens and you just, this is one of those things where it's like, I wish you think, oh, I wish I said this or that. But it was just really disturbing to me for a number of reasons that, first of all, when I was working here in the lab, we were researching HIV, and HIV is extremely stigmatized. There's also racialized stigma. There are also ethnic inequalities when it comes to HIV.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I agree. There's a lot of intersectionality in how these things happen. We've talked about economic inequality and race, but there's also something that really struck me in researching the book and interviewing people is that there was this theme of, particularly for black women, but also people who are marginalized in other ways that people felt not listened to. And I think that was a really important message. There's a lot of data and stats when it comes to our health and racial inequalities. I think it's difficult sometimes just to capture that feeling of just not being heard or not being listened to that your kind of narration of your own life experience isn't perceived as trustworthy almost. So I also had an experience myself when I was doing my PhD in Oxford that I just went for a routine appointment. I think it was something about contraceptive pill. I went to the GP and then she was asking, you know, I guess routine questions about sexual health. And I was answering. And at some point,”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Science and medical research, we can all hopefully be healthier, but also just happier. It's like, why wouldn't we want to address this problem? It's harming our health, but it's also just affects our lives and the societies we live in. So I think it's an important issue, whoever you are.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of my health, but also all of us how we can take control of our health journeys and demand fair treatment, whatever our background. I think this is important for everyone to take, that we can ask questions and it's not this kind of doctor knows best approach. Obviously, doctors have a lot of valuable knowledge. It's important, but I think we saw with this infected blood scandal recently that it's like there are sometimes issues in the system that I think need to be acknowledged and we need to be aware of that when we are engaging with that system and then also just in our lives when we're taking care of our health. So yeah, I think there were a lot of reasons for hope in the book and I think changing medical education, changing the environment we live in, learning how to advocate for ourselves were all messages that I took in my life and I hope that other people can take in their lives. I really think if we can tackle racism in our societies but also of course in healthcare and in”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Problems, but also other conditions like heart disease and breast cancer. So there is evidence that that's harmful. So I think that for what we can do, obviously we can support the people and organizations who are working towards change, but I think also just within our friends and communities and colleagues, we can think about how racism plays a role in those interactions and think that even in a small way we might be helping someone's health just by taking this into account. And then also, I think for us as racialized people or people who are facing discrimination, it's important to feel firstly validated. I really wanted to validate people's experiences because I think often you can feel dismissed or a bit gaslit that you experience something and it's like, oh, are you sure? Was it really? Or maybe they meant this or that. And actually, I think writing the book empowered me to call out when I see things that are problematic and also to challenge things in the healthcare setting, but also before thinking about how I can take control.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you so much for that question. And I agree. I think that's something I want to kind of emphasize because we do, I often feel the conversation stays in medicine because I guess, as I said, it's a caring profession. People want to know what they can do to help. And I think there's a lot that can be done within medicine that we've talked about. But I actually think the bigger cause of all of these inequalities comes from society and our daily lives. In the book, I also look at racism-related stress, just even things that seem small and trivial, and as Jenny was saying, sometimes it almost feels it's like we're dismissing it or laughing about it. And I think I've sometimes dismissed some of my own experiences. It's just like going into a shop and being followed or being held up by security when traveling because of my race or things like that. It seems small, but it's like those things are stressful. They affect us. And stress has been shown to be really bad for our health. There's also research linking racism related stress to mental health.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Space. We see racial inequalities there. So ethnic minorities in England are more likely to live in areas where there aren't as many parks and green spaces to exercise. So I think in exercise too, this is an important issue. And then, yeah, when it comes to diet, I think Chris, you can also talk about your book. And Chris also looks at inequalities in access to healthy food environments, which also occur based on economic status, but also based on race.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I also think I've heard that BMI in general, that there's maybe a move away for all groups because it can be problematic. Sometimes it's classifying people as obese. And this is actually something I think Chris knows probably can answer better than me. But no, so I think that, again, racialized assumptions about body type can be a problem. And I think with BMI, it's very much, a lot of the research has been kind of assuming a standard person that is a white man and maybe not encompassing some of the diversity that we see in lots of different body types. It's not necessarily based on race, but just in general. There's a lot of difference in our bodies. And I think it's important to take that into account. So I think sometimes BMI, I don't think it's always that helpful in supporting people's health, but there are also inequalities. I haven't talked about it that much, but when it comes to obesity and diet, exercise, so even just access to...”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up that they'll see because in Germany they love titles, so they'll see the title. They say, Oh, what kind of doctor are you? You almost have a feeling that they're like, okay, we better treat this person well. And I'm thinking, you should treat everyone well. You shouldn't need a PhD as a black person to qualify for good health or healthcare. And I think that is a problem that, yeah, so I think that economic inequality is something that we need to tackle. Racism is an additional thing that we also need to tackle. It's not one or the other. The two are very intimately related. And also by tackling what I hope that we can help the other. So yeah, it's not either or, I think.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, perhaps I should emphasize that as well that, of course, economic inequality plays a huge role in our health, but there's kind of an additional effect of racism. We see there's research looking at pregnancy outcomes where they use educational level as a proxy for income. And even in those studies, they see that black women who are educated to tertiary education, so with university degrees, are still experiencing worse outcomes in pregnancy than white women who are educated to high school level or below. So we still see those inequalities even when you look even at high income groups. So I think there's a lot more going on, and I think that survey from five times more who campaigns for black maternal health was also revealing because they also tried to survey a diverse population, different income levels, and there were just these patterns that were kind of consistent, which I can understand because it's like I have a PhD, right? When I go to the doctor, sometimes in Germany, it does come.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that in itself kind of paints the picture of how there's economic inequality, environmental inequality, and all of those things are driven by the history of racism in this country and in other countries. So I think those issues are very much connected, but we need to consider them together. And if we're tackling each of those things, we're helping in the big picture with the same problem.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's also something I look at in the book is that relationship between racial discrimination and our economic outcomes. And there's a very, very strong relationship. So there are income inequalities that fall on racial lines that play a huge role in our health as well. So being on low income is not good for your health. Wealth gaps is not good for our health. And that happens in the UK, but also in other countries. So I would say the two issues are connected. It's part of the same problem. And the same when it comes to environmental inequality. When I talk to Rosamond, Ella's mother, she said that she, in her campaign work, she often gets asked, oh, why don't you move? Why don't you move to another area? Which I think is a ridiculous thing to ask because, I mean, where is she going to move? Air is everywhere. But she also pointed out that she has thought about moving and that if she could afford it, she was considering moving, but she said the areas where she would move would be less diverse. So they tend to be whiter, more affluent areas.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For clean air in London, but also beyond. There's environmental racism everywhere. And again, this is something that I think is beneficial for all of us. We all want to breathe clean air. So if we can tackle these issues, it's a racial justice issue, but it's also just an issue for society. So I think we should all think about that as the election is coming.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“before we collapse. I talked about Kanayo who almost died, right? But I think a lot of these health inequities start just in our day-to-day life, in society, you know, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, so what kind of healthcare we have access to, all of those things already affect our health before the moment that it becomes acute. So I think we also need to think about that. And there are also organizations campaigning for change. So I talked about Elicacy Deborah, who died in London because of air pollution exposure, and her mother, Rosamond, has been campaigning.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a medical student in London, Maloney McQuende, who developed a handbook for helping doctors to learn how to recognize signs on black and brown skin. I think that's really important. But I think also there is efforts to diversify the dermatology curriculum. There's a Dr. Sharon Belmo who has been working on that also here in the UK. And then also efforts to try and use technology to increase diversity in the data set that all health professionals are learning from. And I think medical education is very important also at the level of medical students. A lot of this equity work has been driven by medical students who have been campaigning or asking questions of their teachers. But I think we need that to also go all the way up to the top and throughout medicine we need to address this. And then I think we've talked a lot about medicine and science because obviously there's a lot of interest in that here. But I think our health starts before we arrive in the emergency.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you so much for saying that. And I agree. I think it's obviously a really, really serious issue. And I think sometimes it is laughable how long these things have been embedded and it feels kind of ridiculous. I think that's how I felt. It's like ridiculous that there are these guidelines that persist. For example, saying that people's pelvices are shaped differently, or as you've mentioned, about pain threshold. But of course, these are very real things. I've mentioned a few cases as we were discussing that really affect people's lives. And I think coming to the election, I think we should think about what's being done to advance positive change in this area. So I think I'll maybe mention a few examples. I think I've talked about how we can teach doctors to recognize health conditions and diverse skin tones because skin is often a window for diagnosing illness. Our skin shows the signs and symptoms of when we're unwell. So I think there's really brilliant work being done in that area.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doesn't have a basis in biology, and it's racism that's harming our health, not these kind of biological notions of race.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I do wonder whether my race also played a part. He kind of said that I'm like a typical journalist who is politicizing his hard scientific research. But I'm thinking, if your research is saying that black people start at a lower level of cognition to white people, that's already political. And, you know, I'm not the one politicizing that. And I felt that you need to be able to justify this recommendation. What is the science behind it? I'm asking for evidence or justification, and I think it was the same when I initially contacted KDGO, the kidney disease organization. I just sent an email saying, could you please just explain the scientific rationale behind your recommendation to adjust kidney function tests for rays? And they just responded saying, we cannot comment on the scientific rationale. And if you're going to publish recommendations, you need to comment. You need to be able to justify that. And I think the reason people don't want to comment is because the evidence isn't there. It doesn't stack up. Race is a social construct.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's something I've experienced in general. Being a science journalist, there's an assumption that because I'm a black woman, that somehow I'm not objective to write about this issue, which I think is ridiculous because I think we're all kind of affected by racism in some way. It's a system that affects all of us. And so the idea that I'm less objective than, I don't know, let's say a white man or someone else to talk about this issue, I think that's not true. But I did experience sort of people almost hiding behind science as an excuse for this. So in the book, I talk about a practice known as race norming. So this is where neuropsychological tests are adjusted again for black race or other racial groups. And it's based on the assumption that black people start out at a lower level of cognition compared to white people, which is horrific, but this was also embedded into kind of guidelines. And I came across this because in the US,”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's often more accurate and more precise because it's racism that is harming our health and nothing inherent about our race or who we are or how we identify.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Positive for me is recognizing that this is something that we can do something about, we can change it, there's nothing inevitable about racial health inequalities. This is a problem that we can fix and people are working towards that. I can talk about maybe some examples, but...”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I should have told him I identify as, you know. And what does it mean? But later on, I did go home and kind of Google it, and I noticed that when I enter my race as black or as mixed or white, I get different suggestions about my risk. And it says that, oh, black race is a risk for so-and-so, I think, Priyakamsey or other pregnancy complications. But I wish it would say racism is a risk for living in a racist society is harmful to your health. You know, sometimes living just in a black body, you feel like there's something wrong with your body. And when you keep hearing that, oh, black people are dying from this, they're more likely to experience heart disease, to die from cancer, and so on. You feel that there's something wrong with us. And I think writing the book and researching it was really empowering for me to realize there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with our bodies. There's a problem with the society we live in, the way we treat people, the systems and structures that underpin our societies, medicine, science. Those are things that we can do something about, thankfully. And I think that was really...”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything on the day, and like, yeah, he seemed confused. I felt almost as if I had to sort of reassure him or counsel him in how to racialize me. And that did not give me confidence in kind of the care that I'm going to receive in my pregnancy. So it's kind of absurd and strange, especially writing the book. In hindsight, I wish I had challenged him more, you know, being a...”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His chair, and it was like looking down at his computer, and he kind of asked me, oh, and so where are your parents? Where are you from originally? Where are your parents from? Is this awkward? Like, where are you really from thing? Obviously, I've had that all the time. I live in Germany and I've lived in the UK and in Netherlands. But I was kind of wondering why is it happening now in the middle of my ultrasound appointment? And then when I kind of asked, I said, oh, well, my dad's from Ghana, my mom grew up in Lebanon. And he said, oh, well, I need to tick your ethnic origin in order to deduce the risk of your pregnancy because they want to estimate how high risk is your pregnancy. So he wanted to calculate my risk of pre-accountia. And then he kind of was like, oh, you don't really fit any of the categories. Oh, just say mixed or other. And the way he sort of randomly assigned it, I think for me just brought home how silly the use of races. It's so random. What if I had told him, you know, I could just identify.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I definitely felt. I think going through pregnancy is quite a vulnerable experience. And even before pregnancy, there are inequities, for example, black women experience higher rates of miscarriage in the UK, US, and other countries. There are inequalities in fertility, care, so black women have worse outcomes with IVF. So there are a lot of inequalities throughout the kind of pregnancy journey. But also during pregnancy, I mean, I at some point had a doctor's appointment for kind of prenatal screening. So that was early on in pregnancy, maybe in the first trimester. And during that appointment, the doctor was kind of making small talk. And at some point, he asked myself and my husband where we're from. My husband said he's from Poland. And then I was like, oh, it's a long story, but I grew up in the Netherlands and I'm British. And then that kind of passed and he continued with the ultrasound and things. And then towards the end of the appointment, we kind of sat down around the desk and he kind of shuffled awkwardly.”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, definitely heavy topic. I think people sort of don't want to face these things because they're so stark. But I felt it was really important to go into this. And definitely I think talking to people who have lost loved ones because of racism and health, this is a really, it brought home reading statistics is already shocking, but I think just talking to people about their experiences really was moving and upsetting, but it also motivated me to kind of continue this and finish the book and also to talk about this issue here. Going through pregnancy myself was really difficult. I was actually editing the book in the final stages of pregnancy. So reading about some of these statistics and stereotypes around pelvic health and black maternal health was really, really difficult. But I kind of took heart in the work that...”
2024-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Inequality in Healthcare Makes Society Sick, with Layal Liverpool and Chris van Tulleken, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT