Let us break down barriers to healthcare by expanding Medicaid – The Augusta Chronicle

Dr. Kay Eady is a retired educator, author and community-based researcher for Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative and Human Right Watch. She is a community organizer, advocate and supporter for women’s health and broadband access.

Nestled in the southwestern corner in the State of Georgia lies Baker County. This is an agricultural community rich in peanut production, fertile fields mingled with rich tall oak trees. Yet in this county, basked with all that nature offers, 18 percent of residents under 65 do not have health insurance. This county is a medically underserved area with few providers of primary care for the low-income population.

Over the past year and a half, I have been one of nine community-based researchers who interviewed 148 people, mostly Black women ages 18 to 82 living in three rural counties in Georgia: Baker, Coffee and Wilcox, about barriers to life-saving cervical cancer prevention and treatment.

As part of January’s Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice (SRBWI) and Human Rights Watch issued a report of the findings from this research.

Nationally, Black women are more than one and a half times as likely to die from cervical cancer as white women. Georgia’s data shows that from 2014 to 2018, Black women had cervical cancer mortality rates almost one and a half times as high as white women even though overall cervical cancer rates for both groups are nearly the same. These disparities increase as women age, with Black women over 70 almost three times as likely to die.

But that’s not the full story. It turns out, where you live matters. The further you live from a metropolitan center, rates of cervical cancer incidence and even death increase. Women in rural Georgia face extraordinary barriers to healthcare. Our research showed that inconsistent insurance coverage, inability to pay for reproductive health care, gaps in information, a shortage of gynecological care and significant challenges in accessing transportation combine to make it very difficult for women to access to the care they need.  For Black women in rural Georgia, historical and systemic racial discrimination and distrust of the medical field can compound these barriers.

These barriers became known for me when I became friends with a resident of this county that I will affectionately refer to as Tee. Tee and I spent countless hours together talking about growing up and realizing that while we had some commonalities, we had many differences in our lives.

She did finish high school but did not pursue higher education. She has had a variety of jobs, but they never paid enough for her to afford health insurance. Preventive healthcare was not a priority since she “always felt good and saw no reason to go to the doctor.” And then one day it all changed, and she was forced to go the local clinic for care. She found the clinic to be overwhelmed with people and not enough doctors to care for them all. Tee admits to having little money and was resigned to using the sliding pay scale. One cool afternoon while sitting on her porch she relayed to me that the clinic, nurses and doctors made her feel uncomfortable and she refused to return.

During this conversation two barriers emerged: lack of insurance and a mistrust of physicians and healthcare workers. But she also shed light on how lack of transportation, broadband access and specialty physicians in her community make this even more challenging.

These barriers must be eliminated.

Small changes are coming. There is more federal money being invested in the area for broadband expansion, which may allow for telehealth visits to doctors from patients via the comforts of their own home.

But the most significant change that can be made to ensure access to care is for Georgia to finally expand Medicaid. Georgia is one of 12 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid coverage, despite having the opportunity to do so since 2010.

This expansion is vital for the women of southwest Georgia – it means transportation options funded by the program, more resources to attract and retain medical professionals and consistent access to insurance coverage.

Georgia needs to take the bold step to expand Medicaid so that people, like my friend Tee, have access to healthcare.