The path to health justice must include funding women of color in healthcare

I’ve heard people praise the ingenuity of Black women with that all too familiar phrase ”She could make a dollar out of 15 cents.” Or…she could just ask for a dollar.

As I continue to progress in my social entrepreneurship journey and help other women of color in theirs, I am learning how often we are taught to normalize and even praise the difficult path.

Expanding from physician, professor and researcher in academia to a social entrepreneur in the real world was daunting, especially since I had no idea what I was doing. I think the large majority of us who do this work, lack a well-thought out strategy but are called to create our vision. because we can no longer tolerate the absence of it in the world.

Moving forward with my two ideas for improving health equity meant pouring into women of color in healthcare and pouring into communities and I embarked on these missions in two completely different ways.

The first, Strong Children Wellness, my co-founders and I followed the path of fund, build & grow.

The second, Melanin & Medicine, I just chose to build and grow.

As I talk to other women of color, seeking to grow for-profits and nonprofits dedicated to health justice, I’m uncovering that the latter path is the more common one and the more difficult path for true impact, sustainability and legacy.

Yes, we know Black women are the most likely to start their own enterprises (we won’t chat right now about the toxicity in their workplaces that moves them out- different discussion). However, Black and other women of color are more likely to build their enterprises with their own resources (i.e. bootstrap) than other groups, and Black women are twice as likely than other women of color to do so.

Given that cash flow kills 8 out of 10 businesses, we can posit that our visionary enterprises, despite their innovation and necessity, are sadly more likely to fail.

This is not to say bootstrapping does not work. This is how I built Melanin & Medicine. However, it is not lost on me, how the potential impact and reach could have been accelerated with a recoverable grant, a fiscal sponsorship or a social impact investment award. The ability to invest in a team early with strategy and support and reduce the stress, struggle and self-sacrifice.

To be honest, bootstrapping would have been our default method when my co-founders and I decided to form my first company, Strong Children Wellness. The difference was all three of us came in knowing we wanted to transform communities and had the lens of grant-funded research. We had seen the difference between programs you build and programs you get funded to build- and it was like night and day.

Building the vision first means that only you have to believe in your solution.

- You learn a lot.

- You gain resilience

- You figure out how to make tough decisions

And if you’re lucky, you change people.

Funding the vision first, means that you have to help others believe in your solution.

- You have to see it before you see it.

- You have to identify the holes in your idea and your team and show how you’ll fix them.

- You have to create partnerships that instills confidence.

And if you’re lucky, you change structures.

When you decide to jump through the hoops of getting the resources to build what you want instead of what you can- you moved into a mindset beyond creating impact, to one that is focused on creating legacy.

And it is scary.

It was frightening to put the vision on paper and ask a partner to work with us. It was scary to bring it to a funder and explain how something that doesn’t exist would transform lives.it was scary when we go that first $125,000 and had to start building. For me, it was much scarier than the millions I had received in grant funding as an academic because there was no safety-net institution.

But it’s also liberating.

Too often as individuals, there are restrictions on our ideas and how they are allowed to grow in healthcare. Instead healthcare has for decades, thrived on an “exploit and extract model” heavily relying on the under-compensated innovation and work of women of color that health systems can build their legacy from.

Moreover, the impact of our innovations are taken, diluted into programs that don’t remotely resemble our initial vision. If we aren’t careful and speak up about the gaps, then we are squeezed out of the vision and promptly erased.

Now raising capital from foundations, banks or investors is not immune to this same problem of restricting what healthcare ideas get to grow into enterprises and which remain under-resourced and unable to change the lives of those most in need. However, at least we can advocate as leaders of our vision, on our own terms.

We can do hard things, yet there are too many of us with transformative ideas that aren’t even coming into the funding ring. In addition, there are a growing number of us who have succeeded in the funding ring, but have not shown others how to come in and do the same.

There is a dire need for the ideas of women of color to get access to the money needed to bring them to life.

As those who have often been dismissed and devalued in healthcare, we not only viscerally feel and embody needs to be changed in healthcare, but also what needs to be dismantled and in turn, what needs to be built to achieve health justice for all of us.

There is money for these visions we have to help our communities and power concedes nothing without a demand.

Let's stop fearing funding and fight for it.

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Dr. Uwemedimo is a former physician-researcher & professor, and now works as community health equity consultant & social entrepreneurship funding coach. She is CEO & founder of?Melanin & Medicine, she helps Black women in healthcare create strategic partnerships with healthcare institutions and community organizations to build and fund community health equity programs that are sustainable, create massive impact and return on investment. She is also the co-founder of an integrated care practice network ,?Strong Children Wellness?is focused on reverse integrating physical health, mental health and social services for psychosocially complex children and families within underserved communities. In less than 18 months, Strong Children Wellness has been awarded over $600,000 of non-dilutive funding through grants and social impact investment awards and has been featured in Crain's, New York Times, Fierce Healthcare and more.