‘Georgia is not alone’: AOC visits AUC to talk maternal health, policy changes

At the Calvin Smyre Education Conference Center at Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Congresswoman Nikema Williams (D-Ga), and MSM President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice each spoke about what maternal health and the work that needs to be done to even the playing field in the United States means to them.

Monday was Ocasio-Cortez’s first visit to MSM and the Atlanta University Center, and she said she was impressed by what she saw during a tour of the campus and what she learned is being done to train Black and brown physicians.

“You all are delivering results where the rest of American medicine is not,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The issue of motherhood is one of the core issues we have. The way that we care for women, and especially Black women, is how we measure health care in this country.”

It’s been a busy couple of days in the Peach State for Ocasio-Cortez, a native of the Bronx, New York. On Saturday, she endorsed former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, State representative, and current candidate for Senate District 7 (Duluth, Lawrenceville, Norcross, Peachtree Corners, and Suwanee), Ruwa Romman, and attended Sunday service at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Mother’s Day. Ocasio-Cortez is in Georgia for a number of reasons, including redistricting taking place across the country, including in Louisiana, Maryland, and the South in Tennessee.

Asked if her visit helped further her understanding of Atlanta’s importance to the national political picture, Ocasio-Cortez answered in the affirmative. “It’s been really inspiring to be here.” 

“I think that what we’re seeing in Atlanta is both, not just the impacts in great detail and specificity of how policy changes are showing up in communities like the ones in Atlanta, but also where some of the great promises for solutions are,” she said. “We have the greatest density of innovative leaders at the site of where all of these impacts are happening.”

Congresswoman Williams, a frequent visitor to MSM, recently introduced the Blood Pressure Matters Act which will require insurance companies and thus hospitals to give self-monitoring blood pressure devices to women as they are being discharged following giving birth.

“I’m grateful that MSM is still training doctors who look at the whole patient,” Williams said.

MSM Executive Director of the Center for Maternal Health Equity, Dr. Natalie Hernandez-Green, said of Ocasio-Cortez’s visit, “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity that nationally, someone who doesn’t represent Georgia is coming here. A lot of the initiatives that we do here, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has been supportive of.”

Georgia remains at the top of the list of highest rates of maternal death in the country. And the race most affected is, by and large, Black women.  

Pamela Winn is one of those women, and she was in attendance on Monday. Wearing a denim blazer and a navy blue outfit, she wanted to hear what the congresswoman had to say. She also had something to say. Winn lost her baby while incarcerated for a white-collar crime. She is now an advocate on behalf of women who are considered the least of these because of the time they may have spent in prison or jail. 

“It’s interesting that she’s coming here today,” Winn, the founder of RestoreHER USA, an advocacy group. said. “I’m excited to know that she is inquiring because we definitely need more awareness.” 

Winn doesn’t want what happened to her to continue happening around the country.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to capitalize on this and get some policies to change,” she said. 

After Ocasio-Cortez, Montgomery-Rice, Congresswoman Williams, and others had finished talking, two maternal health panels took place.

Before she left the event for a tour of the labs at MSM, Ocasio-Cortez was asked if the recent attacks on freedoms and rights by the current presidential administration would continue, and what, if anything, Congress and local politicians could expect. 

“What I do know is that if there is any attempt out here in Atlanta or in Georgia, the message we want to send is that Georgia is not alone, and we will be here standing with leaders like Congresswoman Williams and many others to fight against changes after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and any of the other impacts we are seeing here in maternal health,” Ocasio-Cortez said. 

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