A UW medical student crusades for equity in health care
Written, designed and produced by Ayaka Thorson
Baillie Frizell would have never imagined herself to be standing before a crowd of a thousand people on a blazing hot day in mid-June.
In the two weeks since George Floyd’s murder, Frizell, a medical student at UW–Madison, had urgently made phone calls, distributed mass emails, gathered volunteers and sent out press releases to every local media outlet to help spark a movement in Wisconsin to dismantle systemic racism in health care. Exhausted and overwhelmed, she expected no more than a few hundred people to show up outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to rally for the cause. But her exhaustion quickly turned to excitement and her eyes lit up as she saw the crowd grow into a sea of a thousand white coats.
At the beginning of the summer, Frizell, 23, and her mentor, Dr. Jasmine Zapata, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics, had been hard at work on an infant mortality research project — Wisconsin leads the nation with the highest infant mortality rate for non–Hispanic Black women. However, after Floyd’s death, they decided to shift gears; they needed to address everything that was going on.
Across the country, the coronavirus has exposed long-standing systemic health and social inequities in American society — Wisconsin is no exception. Black Wisconsinites are about five times more likely to be diagnosed or die from COVID-19 compared to white Wisconsinites, according to the UW Population Health Institute. Two years before the pandemic, the Wisconsin Public Health Association declared racism as a public health crisis in Wisconsin.
The two women organized the statewide rally to launch UW–Madison’s Chapter of White Coats 4 Black Lives, a national student–run organization dedicated to dismantling racial inequality and racism in health care. It was an unconventional student research project — an initiative to mobilize words into real, meaningful actions. As the next generation of health care workers and providers, medical students play an integral role in overturning one of America’s foremost public health crises: racism. Frizell’s commitment to anti-racist student activism demonstrates the central role education can play in building equity in health care.
“You need to start with these conversations on day one of med school as you walk in. Making sure that it’s known, that it’s important and it’s going to impact how you take care of your future patients,” Frizell says.
The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has reignited the push for racial justice across the country. And the disparate impacts of COVID–19 on communities of color highlight the fact that people of color face discrimination in many aspects of their daily lives, including from police brutality and education to housing and health care.
The White Coats 4 Black Lives rally on June 13 was a diverse and power-packed event with speakers, physicians, medical students, residents and community leaders coming together to fight for racial justice. Nearly a thousand people flooded State Street and the Capitol square to support the movement. Local hospital administrators ordered their employees to work together and cover shifts to make sure that everyone could attend, Frizell says. Zapata and Dr. Tracy Downs, an associate dean at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, kick-started the event, followed by speeches from physicians, residents and Black community leaders in Wisconsin health care.
“The dean of the med school actually came, too, and he stood at the front,” Frizell says. “I thought that was a super powerful statement, just showing how much our school cared to show up for us.”
It was a celebratory event, but Frizell noted a significant shift when Black community members began to speak. For many, it was the first time they had a platform to amplify their concerns and experiences with providers in the health care system, including the need for more Black doctors. “Doctors need to start taking their own medicine” was the most powerful refrain that emerged, she says.
“They are real people. They have lives. We need to listen to their wants and needs.”
“It was powerful to see them get out there with the confidence they did to call out these issues, and I think a lot of people took it to heart,” Frizell says. “They are real people. They have lives. We need to listen to their wants and needs.”
Frizell found a common theme among respondents in a survey conducted after the event: the desire to mobilize talk into concrete action. Many rally attendants realized that being “not racist” wasn’t enough; they need to be affirmatively anti–racist.
In the months that followed, Frizell helped assemble a network of key leaders in Wisconsin health care to mobilize action to dismantle systemic racism. She also organized a monthly webinar series for Black physicians to dive deeper on how they talk about systemic racism in health care and educate the community on how the health care system contributes to the crisis. About 90 doctors, medical students and residents eager to help make change participated.
Frizell is now a second–year medical student at UW–Madison, where her peers describe her as brilliant and determined. She is the event coordinator for UW’s Student National Medical Association chapter, a national student organization for Black students in medical school that has long worked toward change.
Highlighting her belief in “power by the numbers,” Frizell notes that her cohort is the most diverse class that the school has had until this year. This summer, she and her peers at the student organization worked together to advocate for hiring a new Black guidance counselor to improve the Black medical student experience and increase faculty representation. Administrators from the University of Washington also reached out for help creating a mandatory, anti-racism curriculum for its incoming first-year medical students.
Frizell continues to attend regular meetings with the UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health administrative board to improve the institution’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and increase its efforts toward addressing racism in medical education. “I can’t do everything, I’m a med student,” Frizell says. “It’s about bringing [issues] up to people who have the resources and the power and the ability to make changes. They’re actually doing more of the heavy lifting than us, but I think if we wouldn’t have said anything, that would have never changed.”
Frizell’s love for building relationships is part of what drew her to medicine after she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. The daughter of a police officer and an art teacher raised in Maple Grove, Minnesota, she diverged onto her own path when she spent her free time volunteering at a local hospital and clinic during high school and college. The focus on clinical training and collaborative environments at UW–Madison drew her to pursue a medical degree in Wisconsin.
The overwhelming success of the White Coats 4 Black Lives initiative makes Zapata, Frizell’s mentor, hopeful for the future and proud of the next generation of medicine and public health leaders. “It took the burden off me knowing that there are so many outstanding and amazing up–and–coming leaders that will carry the torch,” she says. “I want them to know that we need them in this fight and they should never give up.”
Frizell continues to attend regular meetings with the UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health administrative board to improve the institution’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and increase its efforts toward addressing racism in medical education. “I can’t do everything, I’m a med student,” Frizell says. “It’s about bringing [issues] up to people who have the resources and the power and the ability to make changes. They’re actually doing more of the heavy lifting than us, but I think if we wouldn’t have said anything, that would have never changed.”
The White Coats 4 Black Lives initiative helped Frizell gain confidence in her ability to bring people together and make a difference. She hopes that the rally will become an annual event, and she is determined to carry on the community movement for eliminating racism in health care. Frizell’s passion and energy radiates to the students and faculty around her as she works to pave the way for change for the next generation of doctors and medical professionals.
“Being able to open the doors for students behind us to be like, ‘This is what we did, this is how we did it.’ That’s been huge,” Frizell says. “Some of the facilitators I was with told me, ‘You’ve done more in the last three months than we’ve seen in 18 years.’”
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