Invisible Visits : Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System

Invisible Visits analyzes why Black middle-class women continue to face inequities in securing fair, equitable, and high-quality healthcare. Unlike other works on health disparities, it integrates social science, public health, and the humanities to better understand why Black women do not receive a proper standard of care at the doctor.

Although the United States spends almost one-fifth of all its resources funding healthcare, the American system continues to be dogged by persistent inequities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women.Invisible Visitsanalyzes how middle-class Black women navigate the complexities of dealing with doctors in this environment. It challenges the idea that race and gender discrimination-particularly in healthcare settings-is a thing of the past, and questions the persistent myth that discrimination only affects poor racial minorities. In so doing, the book expands our understanding of how Black middle-class women are treated when they go to the doctor, why they continue to face inequities in securing proper medical care, and what strategies they use to fight for the best treatment (as well as the consequential toll on their health). Drawing from original research, the author shines a light on how women perceive the persistently negative stereotypes that follow them into the exam room, and proceeds to illustrate why simply providing more cultural-competency or anti-bias training to doctors will not be enough to overcome the problem. For Americans to truly address these challenges, the deeply embedded discrimination in our prized institutions-including those in the healthcare sector-must be acknowledged.