Close to 300 people working in the medical field have signed a letter in solidarity with the Black Lives Movement in the San Joaquin Valley.
Dr. Susan Logan is a hepatobilitary surgeon in Fresno. She says making the letter public is meant to serve as a way to build trust with the Black community in the Valley.
“It’s putting your name there and saying I support the Black Lives Matter and black health and I want to make a difference and I want to change these disparities and improve these disparities,” Logan says. “I want to create a more equitable health care system.”
Some surgeons say it’s already had a powerful impact. Dr. Kamell Bernard, a Black vascular surgeon in Fresno was one of the first people to sign the letter. He says it has sparked necessary conversations leading to a new coalition in the surgical program at UCSF Fresno.
The Intentional Recruitment Coalition is meant to help recruit underrepresented minorities to the surgical residency.
“You have to have physicians that reflect the patient population,” Bernard says. “It’s very obvious to me that if your patients don't trust you, then they don't tend to be compliant.”
As one of the few Black surgeons in the San Joaquin Valley, Dr. Ibironke Adelaja, who specializes in breast surgery, says she’s noticed the impact her identity has had on her relationships with her patients.
“For me it’s been sort of a grassroots movement where one patient tells another woman ‘you should go see Dr. Adeleja. She’s a young African-American woman and she’ll spend a lot of time with you,’” Adelaja says.
In 2011, Adeleja helped start a breast cancer clinic for underrepresented communities in downtown Fresno. Most of the patients she sees look like her, she says.
"They are young African-American women,” Adelaja says. “And they’re presenting with horribly late breast cancers.”
Those underrepresented communities are also diagnosed at a much later stage, according to Adeleja.
It’s one of the reasons she chose to specialize in breast surgery.
“When you look at the literature about African-American and Hispanic women with breast cancer, you see that the percentage is actually lower than in Caucasian women,” Adelaja says. “But when you look at the mortality in black women, they are 40 percent more likely to die.”
Bernard also sees patients at later stages of their vascular prognosis, which he says means he’s regularly performing primary amputations.
“Primary amputation is when someone’s foot is so bad it’s not salvageable,” he says. “Those people usually have a 50-70% chance of a 5 year mortality rate.”
The community that is most affected by these late diagnoses is the underserved and underrepresented, according to Bernard.
It can be a matter of trust in the medical field, but that would be placing the blame on the patients, Logan says.
“It’s multifactorial,” she says. “I think the blame should be placed on the system for creating an experience that makes patients not trust the system.”
Logan routinely performs surgery on patients with pancreatic and cholangiocarcinoma cancer. She says she’s seen a pattern of underrepresented patients under-referred to cancer specialists until it is too late.
That’s one of the reasons the coalition will also facilitate conferences for diversity training to build cultural awareness, Bernard says. It will consist of at least 10 physicians who will hold their first meeting in two weeks. Bernard, Adeleja and Logan will all serve as members of the coalition.
