Side Effects
Side Effects is a health news service exploring the impacts of place, policy and economics on Americans’ health. Their award-winning reporting sheds light on root causes of community-wide issues including mental health treatment in schools, health care challenges faced by immigrants and refugees, and ways people work around the health care system as well as new efforts to solve them. It has been heard nationally on NPR and published in news outlets around the country.
Side Effects Public Media is a project of WFYI Public Media.
Several advocacy groups have been calling for B.C. to collect data that is disaggregated by race so that the provincial government can better understand the ways in which some racial groups are being left behind in education, health care, the labour market and other sectors.
Boma Brown, founder of the Victoria-based Support Network for Indigenous Women and Women of Colour, said she’s pleased by the move, especially in light of a survey released by the province in August showing the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected some racial group.
In the six years it’s been operating, the support network has heard from Black and Indigenous women who say systemic racism has prevented them from getting adequate medical treatment.