🦄 What Surviving Three Times Taught Me About Health Navigation and Minority Health
Apr 29, 2026
➡️ I Have Been on Both Sides of That Exam Table
I have spent nearly thirty years as a board-certified internal medicine physician. I have sat across from thousands of patients, delivered diagnoses, ordered tests, interpreted results, and guided people through some of the most frightening moments of their lives.
And I have also been the patient. Three times.
I am a three-time cancer survivor. And in each of those experiences, I sat in a room not as a physician with decades of training, but as a Black woman navigating a healthcare system that — even with everything I knew — did not always make it easy to be seen, heard, or fully served.
That experience changed how I practice medicine. And it is the reason I founded my independent health advocacy business.
April is National Minority Health Month. And as we wind down the month, I want to share something personal today, because I think it matters. Not just as a physician talking about data — though the data is important and I will share it. But as a woman who has lived the gap between what healthcare is supposed to provide and what it actually delivers to women who look like us.
📊 What the Data Tells Us — and What It Does Not Capture
National Minority Health Month was established to shine a light on the health disparities that persist across racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States. The data behind those disparities is well-documented and deeply troubling.
Women of color face higher rates of chronic disease across nearly every major category. Heart disease. Type 2 diabetes. Hypertension. Certain cancers. These conditions do not just occur more frequently — they are diagnosed later, treated less aggressively, and managed with fewer resources. The result is lower life expectancy and a disproportionate burden of preventable suffering.
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2× Alzheimer’s Risk |
Certain minority populations face twice the risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to white Americans, compounding the health burden on women already managing multiple chronic conditions. |
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80% Diabetes Disparity |
Communities of color face significantly higher rates of diabetes diagnosis, often with fewer resources for management and higher rates of serious complications. |
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17.9% Poverty Rate |
Black Americans experience a poverty rate of 17.9% compared to the national average — a social driver that directly compounds healthcare access barriers and chronic disease burden. |
But here is what the data does not capture.
It does not capture what it feels like for a black woman to sit in a waiting room and wonder whether you will be taken seriously today. It does not capture the calculation a woman makes before she speaks up about a symptom she is not sure will be believed. It does not capture the exhaustion of having to come to every appointment armed, prepared, and documented, only to leave without the answers you came for.
That invisible burden is real. And it is part of the story of disparity that statistics alone cannot tell.
Health equity is not just about getting in the door. It is about what happens once you are inside.
🔍 What I Learned From the Other Side of the Diagnosis
When I was navigating my own cancer diagnoses, I had clinical training that most patients do not have. I knew the language. I knew the system. I knew which questions to ask and who to ask them to.
And it was still hard.
There were moments when I had to remind myself that I was allowed to ask for more time before making a decision. Moments when I had to consciously push back against the pace of a system that moves faster than any patient — trained or not — can comfortably keep up with. Moments when I had to advocate for myself in rooms where my expertise was less visible than my diagnosis.
Those experiences gave me an unshakeable understanding of what patients without my background navigate every single day. And a clarity of purpose about what my work as an independent health advocate needed to be. Helping women who look like me navigate the system that is supposed to make people feel better.
🧭 Health Navigation: What It Is and Why It Changes Everything
The CLEAR™ Navigation Path — Clarify, Lead, Empower, Advance, Reinforce — is the framework I built from three decades of clinical experience as a clinician and my own lived experience as a patient.
It is not a checklist for a single appointment. It is a system for navigating healthcare as an ongoing journey, which at times can be complex — particularly for women over 50 who are managing chronic conditions, coordinating across multiple providers, and making decisions that have real, long-term consequences for their health.
🔍 C — Clarify
Know your health story before you walk into any room. Your symptom timeline, your relevant family history, your current medications and why you are on each of them, your most pressing concerns for this visit.
Clarity is not just preparation. It is a form of self-advocacy.
🧰 L — Lead
You are allowed to direct the conversation. Write your questions before you arrive. Say them out loud in the first two minutes. Ask: what are you considering as a diagnosis? What are my options? What happens if we wait?
A woman who leads her appointment is not being difficult. She is being informed.
📚 E — Empower
Understand what you are being told. Ask for explanations until the language is clear to you. Know your diagnoses and the next steps.
Empowerment in healthcare is not arrogance. It is the minimum you deserve.
🚀 A — Advance
Confirm your next steps before you leave every appointment. Who is following up? When? Who do you call if something changes?
A woman who takes charge of her care is not passive about her health. She is strategic about it.
🔄 R — Reinforce
Healthcare is not a solo journey — and for women navigating a system not designed with them in mind, reinforcing self-advocacy is not optional. It is protective.
💜 The Work This Month Has Asked of All of Us
National Minority Health Month is not just an awareness campaign. It is a call to action. A call to look honestly at the systems we are part of, the gaps those systems create, and the role each of us plays in either perpetuating or closing them.
For me, that call is personal. It is answered every time I sit across from a woman who has been navigating alone, and help her see that there is another way. Every time a client walks into an appointment with a roadmap that encompasses their care, they can approach their health care with intention.
You deserve that clarity. Not someday. Now.
📞 You Have Been Navigating Long Enough. Let’s Do This Together.
Book your free 30-minute Discovery Call. This is where your CLEAR™ Navigation Path begins.
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