Being Black in the Cystic Fibrosis Community, Medical Racism & Disparities in Health Care, and Health Equity For All

In episode 8, Morgan talks with Faith (Fizzy) Shropshire, a mother to a child with cystic fibrosis, content creator, event planner, and student, about what it's like to be a Black family in the cystic fibrosis community, parenting a child with CF, disparities in health care in general between white people and people of color, distrust by Black Americans of the American health care system due to medical racism (e.g. the Tuskegee Experiment), how society and health care can do better by and for the Black community and eventually build up trust that has been repeatedly degraded throughout history, and health equity when it comes to groundbreaking therapies like Trikafta (https://www.vrtx.com/) and continuing the fight for a cure for everyone living with cystic fibrosis. Fizzy's son, Felton (V) is a 5-year-old living with CF. Cystic fibrosis is often believed to be a Caucasian disease, yet. an estimated 15-20% of the CF population are people of color. This common misunderstanding of who the disease can and does affect leads to disparities in the health care and outcomes between white people living with cystic fibrosis and people of color living with cystic fibrosis. V, for example, was diagnosed later than he should have been because doctors told his mother he wouldn’t have inherited cystic fibrosis because "cystic fibrosis is something that little white kids get". His health was impacted as a result. References: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-10-31/cystic-fibrosis-screening-often-misses-black-hispanic-babies https://cff.org/community-posts/2019-11/cf-care-writing-next-chapter-together https://cystic-fibrosis.com/living/lung-function-poc https://academic.oup.com/tropej/article/55/5/281/1677262 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/ https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/what-is-the-tuskegee-study#:~:text=With%20no%20informed%20consent%2C%20hundreds,the%20Tuskegee%20Institute%20in%20Alabama. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Chronically Candid at morgannbarrett.substack.com/subscribe Support my work by reading & subscribing to Chronically Candid on Substack at morgannbarrett.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.