“Ultimately, our vision for Health In Her Hue is to be the first touchpoint for women of color managing their healthcare.”
January 8, 2022
The gist:
After getting some hard-won funding, as black female entrepreneurs, co-founders Ashlee Wisdom (chief executive) and Eddwina Bright (chief product officer) are working to develop a new web platform and membership experience, “which will offer care support and resources tailored to each woman’s specific healthcare needs.”
Wisdom shares this anecdote as her inspiration to co-found Health in Her Hue in the article.
“At that time, two things were happening: I was working in a toxic work environment, and I was breaking out in chronic hives. So I was going to see an allergist, who happened to be a white woman. She was a great doctor, but because we didn’t have that shared identity, it never occurred to me to tell her that I was dealing with racism and discrimination at work. So long story short, she was running all these tests on me, and I wasn’t allergic to anything. We couldn’t figure out what was triggering the hives. After I left the job, I realized that they were related to that stressful, toxic work environment.
That got my wheels turning and made me realize that I shared much more with my Black gynecologist. If I was more transparent and felt more comfortable sharing the full picture of what was going on in my life, that allergist would’ve been able to get to the root cause of what was triggering my hives. At the same time, I was getting my master’s in public health and got really tired of reading research papers about the disparate healthcare outcomes for Black women. And so I decided I wanted to do something to support Black women and women of color to better manage their health and also better navigate the US healthcare system.”
The platform idea also benefited from pandemic realities:
“The resounding thing we kept hearing was that it’s difficult to find a Black doctor, or a doctor of color, on existing platforms. So that was the impetus to build out a curated directory of Black physicians across the country. When we launched that directory in June 2020 – given the pandemic and the racial reckoning – people were ready. Thirty-four thousand people logged in within the first week or two.”
When asked about the next steps for Health in her Hue, co-founder Bright responded, “I’d love for us to also become a resource for Bipoc women to better navigate not only their individual health but the health of their families: their kids, their spouse, their parents. Because we know that community health is very important for the collective. I would also like us to help support the talent pipeline of culturally sensitive health care providers. Maybe that means helping with scholarships and internships, putting students into doctor’s offices, and teaching them the business of medicine. That’s a major gap in the market, which I’d love to see us fill.”
Photograph: Health In Her Hue
Link to the Guardian post here.
