The Color of Care: My Response to Oprah's Call to Action

 Answer to Oprah’s Call to Action: The Color of Care

I have attempted to watch Oprah’s documentary “The Color of Care” three times in the past week. The first time I stopped watching and screamed at the television, “Outrageous. Irresponsible. So sad.” The second and third times, I tried to watch it after my normal 12-hour workday, but I just could not. I am exhausted. Everyone I know who works in healthcare is exhausted. We have just been through a war – a war that has now taken more than a million lives in the U.S. alone. I am an African-American healthcare executive. I stopped counting how many members of my family have passed away from COVID-19 when I hit the number 14. I also work in Detroit, one of the cities featured in the documentary that aired on May 1, 2022 on the Smithsonian channel.

“The Color of Care” made me angry, and then it made me sad. The pain those families experienced was palpable and my heart aches for them as it does for my own family who has lost so much in this pandemic. I also know that our healthcare workers deserve more and deserve better than an expose that points a finger at individuals who are wounded, exhausted, frustrated and depressed after being at war for over two years now – a war against a virus that entered our ecosystem, took hold, and wreaked havoc on our bodies, our families, our communities – and yes, our healthcare system and economy.

The producers of the documentary are correct in stating that health disparities are real. COVID raised awareness of the devasting impact of health inequities on communities of color. They are correct in stating that people of color have worse health outcomes than white Americans and Detroit has disproportionate results given the majority of the city’s population is Black. But where Oprah and her team got it wrong was in stating that during COVID, Black people were turned away from hospitals in Detroit because of their race.

This statement was appalling.  As a healthcare professional, who moved to work in Detroit during the height of the pandemic in order to be a part of the solution versus watching from the sidelines, I too read the news articles referenced by Oprah about people dying. I can say with confidence that during COVID, healthcare workers in this city worked tirelessly, day and night, with no breaks, to treat every human being who entered our facilities with as much care, dignity, and grace as they could muster up given the resource constraints.

The painful truth is, even at times of peace, most community hospitals struggle to maintain the resources they need to provide adequate care. The stark reality is that most Americans do not want to pay for healthcare or pay the tax required to cover the medical expenses of the poor or disabled.  This may be a generalization, but most Americans also hate paying insurance premiums needed to cover themselves in the event they get sick. Hospitals operate with margins that would be considered unacceptable by shareholders in any other market; and because of COVID, many rural and urban hospitals are struggling to maintain operations, even today.

When this global pandemic hit our nation in January of 2020, our systems were not prepared, and our hospitals were overwhelmed and under-resourced. In those early days, without enough testing capacity, beds and medical equipment, healthcare workers braced themselves – doing everything they could to treat everyone who walked through their doors, amidst the heartbreaking reality that they could not save everyone. It was a broken healthcare system that failed the families in that documentary – not an act of hateful, racial discrimination perpetrated at the point of care.

I want to acknowledge that I completely agree with the painful truth described in the show that the color of someone’s skin is absolutely a predictor of health outcomes, with people of color facing a higher probability of dying from every horrible disease known to women and men. And systemic racism and institutional failures exacerbate inequitable access to care and poor health outcomes for Black and brown people.  Unless our society decides to revolutionize the broken system, and responds to Oprah’s call for action, the truth will prevail.  

But to imply that in the city of Detroit, and in cities across this nation, that the same people of color who were fighting COVID and trying to protect their community as frontline workers, used race as a factor in determining who was treated or admitted to the hospital is irresponsible and will make our divide that much bigger.   

Ms. Winfrey, I accepted your call to action in June of 2020 when I decided to move to Detroit to become a part of the solution. I want to encourage others to accept your call as well. We need to demand that our national leaders, profit centers, and power brokers destroy the status quo and dismantle the institution that was designed by a racist, patriarchal society over 150 years ago. We need to rebuild with health and wellbeing at the center of every community, using our financial resources to focus on education, prevention, treatment, urgent and crisis care services in an equitable, accessible, and inclusive way, so all Americans can live their best lives.

Let us not tear down our healthcare workers who are in the trenches. Let us only tear down this broken system.

Respectfully submitted,

Carladenise A. Edwards

This is my viewpoint alone and does not reflect the opinion or view of my employer, but after much consternation I thought it was important to respond and speak up for our healthcare workers and the great city of Detroit. The city that my family and I instantly fell in love with due to its warm embrace.