CLEVELAND — Last week News 5 Anchor, Courtney Gousman, shared her conversation with MetroHealth's new CEO, Dr. Airica Steed.
It was a personal conversation as she recounted the details of her near-death experience during pregnancy.
Steed told Gousman she was very close to becoming a maternal mortality statistic.
Now we bring you the second part of that conversation with Steed, as she told Gousman that the traumatic experience, as well as the loss of several close family members, has caused her to push for equitable healthcare for all.
Steed came in more than five months ago with a big mission: To eliminate the racial inequities in healthcare within her hospital system.
"I've lost too many loved ones too soon being a byproduct of health inequity and healthcare disparities," says Dr. Steed.
So what brought her here to Cleveland from Chicago?
"I was heartbroken learning that Cleveland is the most unlivable city in the United States for Black women, and healthcare is one of the reasons why," the CEO told Gousman.
Steed is talking about the 2020 Project Noir report ranking Cleveland dead last among major cities when it comes to livability for black women.
"I almost fell off my chair when I saw the study, and I said, 'No, no! Not in my backyard!' What I'm trying to zero in on, in terms of reversing some of these historic norms, obviously the Black population, so the Black and brown communities specifically," says Steed.
A sudden onset of preeclampsia put this nurse eerily close to becoming a victim of maternal mortality during her fourth and final pregnancy.
"I was in critical care for a while. It was a very traumatic experience," Steed said.
The mother is making women and babies a priority for MetroHealth.
"I'm deeply concerned about the infant mortality statistics out here in Cuyahoga County being four times, specifically Black babies, than whites. I'm sounding the alarm. This is absolutely a top priority for us," she told Gousman.
To help her carry out her mission, Steed promoted Kimberly Green. Green brings 35 years in healthcare to the table with a background in nursing. This month, Green secured her newly created title of vice president of Women and Children Services.
"If the mom is doing well, then basically she is the support, backbone, of the family," Green said.
Gousman was the first to sit down with Green since accepting her new role.
"There is a huge disparity between our white patients and our Black patients, particularly maternal mortality, unconscious bias, implicit bias. We want to try to narrow that," Green said.
Steed is also aiming for more diversity among providers and staff.
"I'm here to start to increase the representation of our healthcare professionals at the physician level, at the nursing level," she said.
Green reinforced, "Statistics show that if you have a healthcare provider that looks like you, you can relate to them, and better outcomes appear to be better."
Steed says a series of community meetings hosted by Metro has helped highlight some of the social barriers that bleed into healthcare.
"We have to start to address food insecurity, housing insecurity, lifting our communities up out of poverty, which does contribute to poor life expectancy. It's my personal goal to keep you out of the hospital. We're in this to make our communities healthier," said Steed.
Steed told Gousman she wants to create a series of community advisory councils to help guide some of these changes.
To help with Steed's initiatives, MetroHealth will host its first children's health fair in July, and its first women's health fair will follow that in September.
RELATED: MetroHealth CEO shares harrowing story of surviving preeclampsia
You can watch Steed's first interview with News 5 in the player below:
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