Facing (In)Justice in Health

I participated as a writer for the book Facing (In)Justice in Health, a collaboration between The Facing Project and the Johns Hopkins SOURCE service-learning center. The Facing Project connects writers with storytellers, with the two working together to produce written narratives from the first-person perspective of the storyteller. In this case, storytellers who were Baltimore community members were paired with writers who studied or worked on the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore campus.

Being trusted to share someone else’s story was a great responsibility. I wanted the storyteller I was working with to see herself in the words that I used. This is not too dissimilar from the role clinicians play as historians who document and interpret patient stories in the electronic medical record. Of course, we bring the lens of professional judgment and assessment, but we also have the power to focus on certain parts of the story we hear and reconstruct a certain narrative. This can have material consequences for other clinicians who will make treatment decisions based on reading our notes. For instance, the labels of “poor historian” or “strange beliefs” can follow patients in their chart, being copy-pasted from one encounter to another. This can unfortunately affect how much grace clinicians give patients, how much we want to believe they have the power to overcome adverse circumstances, and how much we want to go beyond the standard of care in investing our time and advocacy. When our words have power, we owe it to our patients to choose language that highlights their strengths and capabilities, and how they see their own story.

I received physical copies of the book in August, and we had a book launch at the school of nursing in early October. I cried several times the first time I read the book. It is rare to see it so plainly spelled out that people survive in impossible conditions. One storyteller had to choose between an unsafe apartment, with mold 50,000 times above the acceptable limit and a door that did not fully close, or moving back in with their physically violent ex-husband. One storyteller described middle-aged women taking care of grandchildren, with their children caught in the crack cocaine epidemic.

There were also many stories of people dedicating themselves to working for change. One storyteller went to churches and taught African American women how to conduct breast self-examinations, in response to their disproportionate risk of breast cancer mortality. Another storyteller went to schools and skating rinks and directly enrolled people in Maryland Health Connection, helping people fill out complicated insurance forms. Everywhere, people were doing work on the ground to solve the problems that seemed immovable from the hospital. People are doing the work every day, chipping away at the big problems of injustice from multiple angles.

I was proud to have contributed a little bit to something so moving, that documented the strength of my new home. You can buy a copy of Facing (In)Justice in Health at Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Books-A-Million, Amazon or anywhere books are sold. You can learn more about The Facing Project and find links to purchase the book here: www.facingproject.com/facing-injustice-in-health

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• Stories That Weigh, Communities That Uplift
• The Need to Diversify Narrative Medicine
• Community Health Curriculum Instills Positivity in Baltimore Youth

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