Abstract:
There is no doubt that medical trust and mistrust exists within the African American community.
Mistrust could have stemmed from past experiences including the Tuskegee Syphilis
Experiment, the use of HeLa cells, named after Henrietta Lacks, without her family knowing,
and using enslaved African American women to test out gynecology procedures in the early
1800s. The purpose of this thesis is to measure the trust and mistrust African American’s may
have with the current healthcare systems and staff. With my personal experiences and opinions
of the healthcare systems, I also know a wide range of other individuals whose trust in the
healthcare system no longer exists due to mistreatment and false diagnosis. I would like to shed
light on a topic that has gone unnoticed, but is recognized in our communities, but no one is
raising awareness on the topic and there has not been a study done in 10 years. To help shed light
on the topic, I also performed a study where data was collected and analyzed on medical mistrust
in a community-based population of African American men and women and test the relationship
between medical mistrust, health outcomes, and healthcare utilization. Data was collected from
local churches in the East Chicago and Gary communities and community members were
recruited to take a brief online survey. Results indicate an association between medical mistrust
and healthcare utilization.
