World Health Day

April 7th was World Health Day and our Director of Policy & Social Impact, Jasmine Henderson shared her thought process and experiences receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, especially as a Black woman. You can watch her video or read the full transcript down below:

“Hey, everyone, my name is Jasmine, and I'm the Director of Policy and Social Impact at the Ohio Women's Alliance. And today for World Health Day, I'm going to tell you the story of how myself and my family made the decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine. And why we did that, as African Americans as African American family, right. So I guess I'll start from the very beginning. So when COVID-19 reached communicable spread levels, in about march of 2020, my family and I made the really difficult decision to hunker down and start social distancing very early. And the reason being so is we are caretakers of my aging father who has dementia, my mom has a severe spinal cord injury that she's had for about 30 years, and I have to autoimmune disorders, I have rheumatoid arthritis and also have fibromyalgia. So we understood very early on with this new disease, that we did not know all of the health outcomes and implications for contracting this disease, and we didn't want to risk it. So for all of 2020, we basically spend time in our house where I'm currently recording this video. So when the Ohio Valley, this part of the Ohio Valley, I live in the Dayton region, started to get vaccines, my family and I had to sit down and have a conversation about what was the best pathway for her family. And since we have a gamut of underlying health conditions that could impact honestly our survivability of COVID-19. We all made the difficult decision together to go get vaccinated. So on, I believe March, I can't remember Yeah. But in the late part of March, my family and I actually had the opportunity to go get vaccinated downtown at the Dayton Convention Center, through the vaccination program through the Montgomery County combined health districts. And it was absolutely a surreal day we got the Pfizer vaccine. And the reason why it was surreal was because we were able to have a healthcare choice, which if I'm being honest, is very rare for a lot of African Americans and a lot of black Ohioans. across our state, a lot of people didn't have the same choices that I had, they didn't have the choice to social distance with their family, they didn't have the choice to not stay at home, as many black folks are first responders, or are also frontline workers, many cannot afford to take off. And if they had to take off or they were laid off from their jobs, they literally cannot afford their lives, they cannot afford to be house they cannot afford food or clothing for themselves or their other family members that they care for. And so when we are talking about reproductive justice, which is our attended at The Ohio women's Alliance, we're absolutely talking about the right to self determine health care choices. Many times there's misconceptions around the African American community and other communities of color around our hesitancy toward the vaccine. But one of the ways that we've seen the government respond and other people respond who possibly work in the healthcare field, is to say that we absolutely still need the same level of resources for our black, brown, indigenous and AAPI communities that we need in other communities. Because even though our pathways towards self determination, often come with hostility often come with violence at the hands of medical practitioners, what everyone needs to know on World Health Day as we're in the midst of a global pandemic, is it every one should have the choice to make the best decisions for their family and for themselves when it comes to health care. And right now we live in the state and we live in a world where not everybody has the same amount of choices when it comes to health care. So I just wanted to take this time to share my story. I'll be given a final update because we go in for our final dose for the Pfizer vaccine in about a week. So thank you so much for taking this time to listen to my story. But most importantly, know that at The Ohio women's Alliance, we believe do a reproductive just do a reproductive justice lens that all folks have the right to choose and have access to healthcare and healthcare resources, no matter what their pathway of determination looks like. Thank you for your time.”