Introducing Juliette Blount, NP!

Closing the gap in racial and gender healthcare disparities

This Women’s History Month, we wanted to highlight one amazing female-identifying practitioner who is working hard to close the gap in racial and gender healthcare disparities. Today we are interviewing Juliette Blount, one of my incredible colleagues here in New York City. We’ve facilitated race and nutrition workshops together where we examine the disproportionate disease burden that communities of color experience and provide actionable interactive experiences for providers to build a patient-centered anti-racist practice.

Please Introduce Yourself
My name is Juliette Blount, and I am an experienced speaker and educator in racial health disparities and health equity. I am also a practicing Adult Nurse Practitioner in New York City.

Tell Us About Your Work
I provide in-person keynote talks, workshops, and webinars to healthcare providers and others working in healthcare. My presentations focus on personal transformation and offer critical foundational concepts and language to inform future conversations about race, implicit bias healthcare, and anti-racist action. The evidence-based content I share has been well received by audiences of high school and college students planning to pursue careers in the health professions, Nursing, Nurse Practitioner, Midwife, Social Work, Nutritionist, professional organizations, and multidisciplinary medical practices. My 20+ years of clinical experience providing Primary and GYN Primary Healthcare to diverse patient populations inform my equity work. In addition to research, I include stories and examples from clinical practice in my talks to increase the transformative impact for participants.

What is implicit bias?
Implicit biases are attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously affect our understanding, actions, and decisions. We ALL have implicit bias. Biases form over time due to exposure or lack of exposure to messages from our environment, family, or the media that develop into stereotypes. Implicit means that we are not intentionally biased. We are conditioned to be biased. For instance, if all I have ever seen and heard about people of color is negative. I may avoid getting in an elevator or feel uneasy standing next to someone who is Black or brown without even realizing what I am doing.

How can this play out both theoretically and practically while serving patients?
A 2003 “Unequal Treatment” study by the Institute of Medicine (now called the National Academy of Medicine is sadly still relevant 20 years later. The report found minorities less likely than whites to receive needed services and necessary procedures, even after correcting for access-related factors, such as insurance status. They also found health care providers’ diagnostic and treatment decisions, in addition to their feelings about patients, are influenced by patients’ race, ethnicity, and associated stereotypes.

Why is this important in relation to women’s health?
Recent focus has been on the shocking statistics for Black and Native American or Alaska Native maternal mortality and the stories from women of color about being unseen, unheard, disbelieved, and dismissed as we navigate healthcare systems. If we are to move our society toward health equity for all, we must understand that bias in healthcare can quite literally mean life or death and start to make systemic change.

Learn more at thehealthequitynp.com