MLK Community Healthcare CEO Dr. Batchlor wrote in The Atlantic about her mother's hesitancy to get the COVID-19 vaccine. At the heart of her personal essay is compassion for her mother's distrust—"stronger than the fear of death"—of the healthcare system. "Only a deep commitment to reversing the structural racial disparities of American healthcare," she writes, will "build Black trust in the medical system."
What is needed, Dr. Batchlor explains, is for Black people and all people of color, to experience being treated with respect and compassion when they need medical attention. She compares her mother's past experience at a hospital in her health insurance network with a recent visit to Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital for the same injured arm.
Read Dr. Batchlor’s essay, "I’m a Black Doctor. My Mom Still Won’t Get Vaccinated." in The Atlantic.