Improving Maternal Health of the Black Communities

Darmita Wilson, Vice President at Northern Light Health, has 35+ years of multifaceted and progressively responsible expertise in academic hospital administration, program development, marketing strategies, and team leadership and training.

How has your Journey as an Individual been So Far?

I have been an attending physician in Northern Virginia at a private practice since 2009, and I joined Children’s National Hospital as a pediatric cardiologist last year. My main focus is treating chest pain, heart murmurs, and palpitations.

I am also the co-chair of the women and children’s committee of the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC). One of the initiatives we have undertaken as a committee is black maternal health to educate people about the risk factors of cardiovascular disease in pregnant women.

What Challenges do you Usually Face, and How do you Mitigate Them?

Black women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications than their white counterparts, mainly due to postpartum cardiomyopathy and blood pressure disorders like preeclampsia and eclampsia. Through the black maternal health initiative, we avoid these complications by ensuring women exercise and eat healthily from their youth. Supervising their health habits from an early age can help them from developing risk factors for hypertensive disorders during pregnancy.

Children born from preeclamptic moms have a higher risk of having cardiovascular disease in the future. If our patients are born to preeclamptic moms, we keep a close watch on their blood pressure levels and try to avoid something serious by keeping track of their health.

There are different apps that can help expectant mothers monitor their blood pressure and be able to prevent the onset of preeclampsia. They can self-monitor their blood pressure at home and notify their doctors if they notice red flags.

One of the things we do to ensure healthy children is to encourage them to eat good food and exercise regularly. Since children like games and being on their screens, we could combine the two aspects and create a technology that makes healthy eating and living fun in their daily lives.

What Technological Trends or Elements have Emerged Lately That Help you Tackle the Daily Challenges?

The most significant trend is getting pregnant moms to advocate for their health by keeping track of their blood pressure and alerting their doctors if anything is wrong. We also ensure that all the people involved with the patient are aware of the black maternal health issue and ready to intervene as soon as possible in case of an emergency.

We are being more innovative and proactive as pediatric cardiologist specialists to screen and protect kids born to preeclamptic moms so they can lead healthy lives and push for moms to regularly monitor their blood pressure.

Can you Talk About a Recent Project Initiative that you have been a Part of Where you Leveraged The Trends?

One of the main things that the Association of Black Cardiologists committee did was launch a campaign called “the faces of black maternal health” in February. The committee’s president at the time, Dr Michelle Alpert, included people affected by the black pregnancy crisis, either directly or indirectly. We showed videos, shared our experiences, and created an infographic for the community.

How do you Envision the Next Couple of Years?

My hope for the future is that the disparities in the black community don’t exist anymore. Since many health issues affect the black community, we should be given more opportunities and education to advocate for our own health and take proper care of our bodies.

A lot of what I hope for the future has to do with social determinants of health and non-medical issues outside the hospital walls. We also need to consider their surroundings before expecting them to eat healthily because there might be many fast-food or expensive restaurants around them, or they might be living in an unsafe neighborhood to walk around outside. Taking these factors into account, we’re also trying to address them as part of our program. We have set up a holistic team involved in the health care of our black patients so we can make a dent in the disparities and help those who need it.

What Advice Would you Give to your Colleagues or Peers in the Telehealth Industry?

Go beyond technology and make a genuine one-on-one connection with your patients because that patient-doctor connection is essential. As a physician, you should really get to know your patients even if you get 10 to 15 minutes to talk to them, and you may not see them again. By attempting that connection with them, patients know you care, and you might learn interesting titbits about them.