Maternal Mortality with Charles Johnson... Ep 9

And I know you Thursday but don't know where your glass.

Keep up with Power 108.9 on social.

Media, Instagram and Facebook.

It's the exact same thing. It's at power 108.9.

Oh, okay.

Power 108.9, a station for the people.

If you're a content creator, social media, socialite influencer, or simply love to record current events, you need the joystick. The Joystick is an essential tool for every type of digital content creator. It holds two or more mobile phones or tablets allowing users to stream and record hands free on multiple apps simultaneously. And it's lightweight and portable. For more information or to purchase your Joystick today, visit our website at www.joystick.com.

My powerful and pristine people, it's your boy, Emoney, your favorite engineer. Check it out. If you want to get involved with Power 108.9 as far as partnerships and advertising. If you want to reach our 50,000 listeners and viewers per week, please email power1089adsgmail.com that's power1089 ads Gmail.com Speak to our marketing directors so we can get you set up and ready to go. Let us help you reach your targeted audience and expand your brand. Question. What's the only station where you can get R B, hip hop, pop, and talk radio?

Time's up. Power 108.9, a station for the people. The opinions and views expressed by this.

Program are those of the program, program host and guest and do not necessarily.

Reflect the views of Power 108.9 and its officials.

We hope you enjoy. Keep up with Power 108.9 on social media, Instagram, and @Power 108.9.

It's.

It's the.

It's the exact same thing. It's at power 108.9.

Oh, okay. Power 108.9.

A station for the people. Yo, what's going on, y'? All?

This is Malik McFadden. And did you know that you can listen to Power 108.9 247? Just visit the website power189.com or simply say, Alexa, play Power 108.9. Yeah.

We'Ll make it work. Let go.

Hey.

Hey.

What's up? What's up, y'?

All?

Welcome back to Conscious Intercourse. You are tuned into Power 108.9. And today we have a very, very, very interesting show, as we always do. Do right.

Always, always, always right.

But today it's. It's pretty special. Yeah, very Heartfelt show today, you know, very definitely, you know, very, very heartfelt show today.

You know, it's a beautiful day. You know, we have a lot of beautiful people listening to us. A lot of conscious people, awoke people.

Right.

And, you know, Conscious Intercourse is that platform where we discuss those things that, you know, a lot of times are overlooked, overseen, or are too sensitive to bring to the forefront.

Right, right.

These, these issues that impact us on.

A day to day basis or things people just overlook.

Indeed.

Or just are unconscious of, you know.

Exactly. Unconscious of.

Right.

We want to shed some light on some serious topics today. Definitely, definitely that people need to be aware of. And we have a special guest today to help us do that. Armand, I'm gonna let you go ahead and introduce him.

Yes, we have my man, my main man, Charles Johnson here.

Charles Johnson.

Hey, Charles.

What is going on? Ebony Sister President, it's a pleasure to be in your presence. Thank you, Armand Brother, just thank you much. So, so much. It's a true honor to be here. This is something that I've been looking forward to. I'm so excited for what you all are doing with this platform, utilizing your gifts collectively to inform and empower our people. And so for me to be a part of this is a true blessing for me. So I'm excited to jump in. I know that we have, you know, this kindred journey and we have so much you want to share with the people. People. Absolutely. And so I am here. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's get it.

Let's get it.

Well, y', all, what we are talking about today is maternal mortality. Yes, yes, maternal mortality. And if you don't know and if you're not aware, it plagues us like, and especially black women. Okay. And we want to shed some light on it and give y' all some information about what's going on. If I'm sure you all know and heard Armand's story, his wife, you know, unfortunately we lost her due to maternal mortality. And that's why Charles is joining us today as well, because his wife, unfortunately, as well. And they're going to share their, their story and shed some light and give y' all some information about maternal mortality.

Am I. Yeah, it's, you know, Charles, you know, that's how we came together.

Right.

Unfortunately, in, in that such a difficult time. You know, at the time when I was literally shocked and just trying to figure out what has just happened, what had just occurred. You heard the news, you heard the word and, and you reached out you know, you reached out and came to. Came to my, you know, to my aid. It came to my support, you know, my family and I in such a, you know, just, man, painstaking time. And I really, really, first and foremost, just want to thank you for, you know, taking your time, taking. For your love, your, you know, your diligence, you know, your. Your willingness to be there for me and my family, man. So I just at least want to thank you first and foremost, just for being there.

It is truly my honor, brother. I. You know, I love you, and there's nothing I can. Nothing you can do about it. You know what I mean? You stuck with me. And, you know, it is such an unfortunate set of circumstances that brought us together, but together we are building a legacy on behalf of our angels that will last what I truly believe, forever and not only change this environment in this set of circumstances for our community, but ultimately impact the world, you know, I'm saying, and continue to impact this world, you know, prayerfully, long after we're gone. Right. So that's what I'm honored to be on this journey with you.

Yeah.

And, Charles, you have a platform on Facebook for Kira, for moms.

Sure, sure.

Tell us a little something about that and what got that started.

Yeah. So thank you, Ebony. So I, you know, this journey, similar to Armand, I was fortunate enough to meet a woman absolutely changed my life. Right. We talk about Kira. We're talking about, I mean, amongst family. I'm tell y' all straight, she was way out of my league. Ebony. We're talking about, you know, spokes, five languages. She was a pilot. Wow. You know, she was an entrepreneur. She raced cars. She skydove. And I'm not talking about, like, you know, I do this for my bucket list. I'm gonna just do. And I'm like, literally was a solo jumper, which means she had to complete the 20 plus tandems to be able to jump. So I could. I could brag about Kira all day. But that being said, we welcomed our first son in 2016, and we always talked about how it would be, how cool would be to have back to back boys. And so we finally welcomed our second son, Langston, who you met today.

Beautiful, beautiful boy.

Thank you so much. We were just on top of the world. And so the painful irony of what happened to us is that as a father, as a husband, you want the best for your children, you want the best for your wife. And so we made the choice to give birth at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California, because we thought this was the place, right? We thought this was this fancy hospital in Beverly Hills that had all the fancy, cutting edge technology. And we walked in on April 12th of 2016, who we expected to be the happiest day of our lives, and walked into a nightmare. Langston was born perfectly healthy. 10 fingers, 10 toes, like I teased, you know, super handsome, looking just like his dad. And, you know, this was it. Everything we had planned for, everything we had prayed for was here. And at the top of discussion, I won't just bog you down with this, but what happened is shortly after, you know, Langston's delivery, we went back to recovery. And as Kira's there resting and Langston's resting, I look down, I see blood coming from her catheter. I bring attention to the doctors and the nurses, the Cedars, they come in, they examine her, and we can go back and circle back and talk about some of the details. But in the interest of time, what took place over the next 12 hours was the most egregious, incomprehensible set of neglect and negligence that you can imagine. Kira was allowed to bleed internally for more than 10 hours while myself and my family begged and pleaded the staff of Cedars Sinai to take action. Our pleas and demands and requests fell on deaf ears. And so for me, as I began to put the pieces back together, I got to be honest. And when I walked into that hospital that afternoon, Ebony, the thought that my wife would not walk out to raise her boys, it never crossed my mind. Keep on. This is 2016. I thought that what happened to Kira, I thought it was a freak occurrence. I thought she was an anomaly. But what began to happen was that I began to hear these other stories of women who had these traumatic birthing experiences, and I began to hear other stories of women who had made the ultimate sacrifice, giving the gift of life. And so at first, I was like, hold up. This is really just people's way of trying to connect with me, right? And trying to meet me at my point of grief and support me. So that's why all these stories are flowing my way. But I'm hearing story on top of story on top of story. And then I'm thinking, hold on. Something's not right. And that's why I began to do the research myself. And I came to understand what you so beautifully and eloquently set up, this conversation is that we are in the midst of. Of a maternal mortality crisis right here in the United States that is shameful. Shameful on a domestic scale and shameful globally. Right now, in the United States, more women die in childbirth than any other industrialized country in this world. What's more horrifying is we cannot have a substantive conversation about the maternal mortality crisis without being straightforward about the manner in which it is disproportionately affecting African American women. Not women of color. Black women. Black women, right.

Yes.

And the reality situation, African American women are dying five times as often as Caucasian women. We'll get into some of the causes for that, but so I decided that I had to do something about it. I felt like I owed it to my boys. I felt like I owed it to Kira. And so I founded a nonprofit organization, and I really like to refer to it more as a movement called 4Kira for Moms, in honor of Kira. But not only in honor of Kira, but every single mother that has made that ultimate sacrifice, giving the gift of life, every single family that has been dismissed, that has not been heard, that has not been prioritized, every single black woman that was brutally mutilated, experimented upon for the sake of research and medicine. And we are on a mission not to improve birth outcomes, Ebony. And as Armand knows is for us, there is no acceptable rate of maternal mortality.

None.

Right?

No, not at all.

We are on a mission to eradicate this, right? And y' all gonna get me going. And I'm a chill. Please go right? Y' all can get me going, man. This is what it's about. And what I'll say is this, and bear with me, because my heart is heavy and my heart is full because I have so much respect for Armand, and I get a lot of pats on the back for the. For the work that I do and the walk that I'm on. But when I think of it as heavy, I think about him, and I'm facing this, you know? And I'm responsible for the lives of two precious souls. This brother has a tribe under his roof. You understand me? And he does it with pride. He does it with his chin up and his chest out in a manner that's inspirational. And, you know, we have to. We have to. We have to recognize that, and we have to uplift him around that. And so what I was saying, though, and what I want to just pause and. And kind of allow y' all to steer this conversation, is that I want to be clear when we talk about this crisis and we talk about the manner in which we're intentional about going about it, I have no desire for sustainability of this work, of this organization. So people are like, what do you mean? Because People, when you talk about nonprofit, they're always talking about how you sustain. What I mean by that is ebony. I don't want to be marching with ribbons 20 years down the road like Susan.

He wants us to stop.

You understand me? We are on a mission to end this within three to five years. Eradicate it. Right. So that we can go on and fix something else.

Yes.

Right. That we can utilize our gifts and our talents and our bandwidth and our energy resources to do other things.

Absolutely.

Right.

Absolutely.

And that's what we're here to do. And we're unapologetic about it. And so when we talk about alignment, we talk about partnership, we talk about when my knees hit the floor. The first step that I take every single day is the direction of radical disruption. And if you're not about that life, I'm not the person and the partner for you.

That's right.

Period.

That's right. Very well said. Very well said and understood.

So, so powerful, man. Just the energy and the intensity you bring to this conversation because, you know, there's. For me personally, you know, you know, I was aware of the whole Serena situation.

Right.

You know, Yolanda was a doula.

Yeah.

And, you know, traditional midwife. You know, she worked in the community where she, you know, supported mothers into more of a traditional birth.

Yes.

You know, natural birth. Outside of the hospitals.

Right.

So none of her patients ever passed away.

Right.

I don't remember her ever telling me of any circumstances where she lost a mom.

Right.

You know, she would come home and told me, you know, horrific stories about births, but none of them ever resulted in mortality, you know, demise.

Yeah.

So for me, I was a little oblivious to it because outside of what I heard about Serena Williams and her. Her scare and, you know, I really wasn't aware, you know, of course, you know, we've heard stories in the Bible or in history books about, you know, mothers dying in childbirth.

Yeah.

But it wasn't until I actually experienced it.

Right.

When I actually sat there and watched my wife, you know, to the best. Actually. We, you know, we went to like you in a similar manner. We found the best doctor in the city when it came to, you know, childbirth.

Right.

You know, he's credential wise. He's, you know, the best. Right. Yolanda worked with him as an on call duel in his practice.

Like, yeah.

They had a relationship. Like, we had the guy like, yo, we're good.

You know, you had everything going for.

You for exactly everything. No, he was prenatal visits. You know, she was having twins you know, he's, you know, like I said, credentials at the wazoo, you know, the best natural, holistic doctor in the city. And to sit there and kind of similar to you and observe her deteriorate over a three day period and just observe the negligence, the lack of, you know, initiative, you know, with doctors making empty promises, you know, know, and, and sitting there and just watching this, you know, and for me, it was three days of watching her bleed to death. Literally sitting there watching her, you know, for three excruciating days, moment by moment, and just watching them just like look over her.

Like she just was, she was invisible.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's so bad. It's so infuriating, you know, as I think, you know, think process it back and, and revisit, you know, that experience. So it's, it's, it's just asinine that like you said, the most industrial, industrialized country on this planet, that our women, our sisters are losing their life for such a high rate. This is unacceptable. Like, like you said, there's, there's no longevity in this work. This has to stop immediately. Like, no fathers, no mother, no children should have to return home from the hospital without their mother, without their, you know, their wife. And, and it's just, it's, it's, yeah, it's, there's not even words. Right. I'm lost to words a lot of times when I even, you know, visit this conversation. So I appreciate, you know, all the work that you are out there doing, you know, to bring the light, to bring the awareness.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it, man.

No, you're, you know, you're, every time I see you, you're unapologetically, you know, full speed ahead. And whether it's, you know, your work with the government, you know, with, you know, advocacy at the highest level of government. As a matter of fact, I want to kind of get. For you to get into that.

Yeah.

Talk a little bit more about what you've done as far as advocacy at the highest level of government.

Yeah. So, you know, when I first started doing this, the big challenge was awareness. And the thing that was shocking for me when I discovered this and I had this epiphany that, yo, this is happening and that my wife wasn't just anomaly. I was shocked by two things on mine. I was shocked that, one, it was happening.

Yes.

And two, that it seemed like nobody was talking about how was this America's dirty little secret.

Right, exactly.

Right. And so the first thing was awareness. And I felt like I had to tell everybody, like, you know, like the little fable, right? The sky is falling. The sky's falling because nobody was aware of. Right. But so what happened quickly is after we begin to raise awareness, the subsequent byproduct was that women were horrified. It was like, oh, my God, I'm going to. I could die in chaos. I could lose my life. And women were telling me, oh, my gosh, I heard your wife's story. Yes, I don't even want to have children anymore or I've had children. And I don't want to go through that again because I wasn't aware. And so for me, that was hard, heartbreaking, because I felt like I was robbing women and families of this joy. And that was a tough burden. So I had to switch my orientation of my advocacy work from raising awareness. And it wasn't enough to just tell people that the sky was falling. What am I doing to hold it up? And so I pivoted towards how can I make institutional level change? And so I began to research policies that were being set forth. And I. In 2017, I found there was this one piece in the entire. This is a huge problem. There was only one bill in all of Congress that was taught that was speaking. This was called the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act. And so I began to write letters, make phone calls, and fly to DC on my own dime and just take meetings with anybody that would talk to me, not having a clue how to pass a bill, not having a clue how to get this, not knowing about committees of jurisdiction. I was just like, on my John Q. Shit, right? I was just out here, like, I was starting stalking people in the hall. And, you know, and I began to make progress. And so I won't give you all my war stories from D.C. but in 2018, we passed the first ever piece of federal legislation to prevent women from dying in childbirth. It's called the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act. And what that piece of legislation did is it allowed the CDC to provide funding to all 50 states to create what are called maternal Mortality Review committees. And it's a very interesting point that about. I want to circle back to that part of the conversation you and I had a couple of weeks ago about this. Armand, please don't let me forget that. Yes, because it's informed and it has shaped the way that I move forward, because I'm still learning and I'm still trying to improve myself. But so this piece of legislation created funding for all 50 states, create what are called Maternal Mortality Review committees. So what happens is, anywhere in the United States, if a woman dies from childbirth or childbirth related complications within a minute to a year after delivering that baby, there is a committee that investigates all of the factors surrounding her demise. Was this her first birth? Was this her eighth? Was this a natural birth? Was a cesarean? Did she have public insurance? Did she have private insurance? Did she have hypertension? And they collect that data, Right? So one of the challenges we have is we had all this data, but nobody was collecting it. Right. It was funky. So that was. It was an important first step because of the first time that our country had recognized that this was a crisis and invested resources towards doing something about. Was an important first step. But it was just a first step. And so I was like, all right, cool. What are we gonna do Next? So in 2021, I laugh about it because I think about how difficult it was to get that done. I was like, all right, we got it done. Now we gonna go back. Now, let me say this, let me take a step back. One of the beautiful things about getting that done is you gotta keep in mind, this is 2017. So this is the midst of President Trump's first term. It's the most politically divisive time in our lifetime. Right, Exactly. And everybody told me two things right? Now, mine knows this. People told me two things, and they told me, look, one, this will never get done because politics is too divisive. And they told me that women's health issues just aren't a priority, or black.

Women'S health issues go there.

Right? So they talk about. And so I was. I kept on doing it, kept on pushing. We got it done. So we went. So I got that done, like I said. And I was like, let's go back with something. Let's go back. Let's go back with something bold. Let's go back. Something that's gonna shake it up. So in 2021, I laugh about it. I went back to Congress with a comprehensive package of bills. Not one, not two, not five, but 13 different pieces of legislation.

Wow.

And drop them.

Thirteen.

All in Congress simultaneously, called the Momnibus. Wow. Right. Making up a $3 billion federal investment in black maternal mortality. Right. And I have to make this caveat for the listeners. Right. And not so that our listeners will ask, but somebody might ask, if you are listening, if somebody ever asks you, I want y' all to tune in, why we need legislation or why we need policy specifically for black women. The simple answer is, is because when we fix it for black women, we fix it for everybody. Exactly. Right.

Right.

And so this, and you can go to, you can research the mom, the bus, you can go to 4care4moms.com but this has pieces of legislation that address social determinants to health. Right. What good is having health care coverage if you don't even have the transportation to get there or if you have food insecurity? What good is having health care coverage if you have, if you're in Flint, Michigan, you don't even have clean water. Right. The issues, climate change affecting moms. We have a bill that addresses the issues. Increase the specific issues affecting incarcerated mothers. Because as recently as 2020 we had women in ICE detention facilities right here in Georgia getting forced hysterectomies, sterilized. Right. California, 2019, the same thing. Right. Not on my watch. We have bills that address, you know, that are studying the impacts of COVID vaccines on mothers, things that aren't being told and how they're disproportionately, proportionally affecting all this. And there's, there's a bunch of different pieces of legislation. One is that we are going to expand Medicaid and Medicare for all mothers in this country from six weeks to a year postpartum for everybody. Because what we're seeing is not only that provide the physical, but also provide mental health services.

Yeah.

For you. Because when we talk about postpartum depression, we talk about cardiomyopathy and we talk about these things that were, that would be hypertension. And what's happening is that after six weeks these mothers are out here and they don't, they're paying out of their pocket.

Right.

Yes. So, and, and also within that package of bills is the Kira Johnson act, which is named for Kira. And it does a lot of cool things that we're really proud of, including creating social accountability mechanisms for providers.

Okay.

And it's also going to provide funding, funding to diversify the perinatal workforce. Make sure that, that black and brown women have passed to midwifery, that have passed to doula care. It's also going to provide funding specifically for black women owned and led community based organizations. So these are the sisters in the community that are doulas that are catching the babies. These are the black women that run the WIC programs that traditionally have not had access to federal funding. For the first time in history. History, they're going to have it.

Wow, wow, wow.

And so it's, it's, so it's, so it's, it's, it's a lot of cool stuff. And I won't bog down the time.

With my litany of no, but that is awesome. Thank you. As a black woman, let me say thank you.

No, it's my honor.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. And we are going to break. And we will be right back.

Sam.