Stuff no one talks about: Becoming an entrepreneur
In this episode’s “Stuff No One Talks About” we hear from Da’na M. Langford, CNM on her experience as an entrepreneur. Da’na speaks on the challenges she faced leaving her job to found “The Village of Healing”, a nonprofit women’s health center.
Transcript
This is stuff no one talks about. [MUSIC PLAYING]
I was unhappy. I was-- my mental health had started being affected. I felt the easiest way to describe
it is like a wet cat backed into a corner.
It was in that moment that I completely walked away and I had to rely completely on my faith.
Especially because, in that moment, we were also being told we couldn't dare open a center and be talking about Black providers taking care of Black patients,
and we wouldn't get any funding to do it. I mean, here we are, thriving, with that conversation.
So I think that entrepreneurship involves a lot of faith. And I think, for me, personally, it's the politics and policy,
that I wish I would have known that I had to know and get more involved. I think one of the biggest things that we don't talk about when we talk about health care,
especially, and increasing the pipeline is the policies involved. Every Black midwife can't afford to go to graduate school.
Every Black midwife can't afford to take on the debt, right? Or the time, if you already have a family.
We need our elected officials to get involved, number one, to get rid of the standard care agreement that we see in Ohio.
We're paying a collaborating physician to essentially sign off on our charts, and we get some advice from,
but that's a requirement from the state of Ohio which limits a lot of Black providers from being able to start their own practices because they
don't have the funding to be able to do that, nor do they have the resources to seek out a collaborating physician.
So that's something huge, the standard care agreement, payment for doulas, and even opening up
the scope of midwifery in Ohio that I am especially starting to get more involved now
so that more Black midwives can walk away from these systems, keep their sanity, and then, provide the care that we
know that Black women need. [MUSIC PLAYING]
womens health
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