There is a long-standing concern that in American society, historical roots, structural racism, and systems of power have perpetuated the spectrum of negative health outcomes in communities of color. As the status quo is maintained, policy and public opinion reflect the continual oppression of minority families. Through my research, I created a visual and multimedia project that will identify the relationship between public policy and the social determinants of health, and how these factors have affected different communities of color within Washington state and the national level. I conducted extensive library research, analyzed and interpreted data, and utilized GIS technologies to visualize the placement of different communities. This work includes identifying historical background information, past U.S. policies, and relevant literature. In this visual and multimedia project, I displayed four puzzle pieces representing different communities (Asian, Native American, Hispanic, and African Americans) on a map, and examined public policies implemented by European colonizers that racialized minorities in unique ways. This chronological project displayed contemporary policies in housing, economic, employment, education, and criminal justice. Overall, I looked at each group's distinct experience of racial health disparities and will use this platform for dialogue to emerge for students and community members on these topics to prioritize the needs, barriers and solutions to confront racism.

Jim Crow era legalized racism denied Black women the freedom to exercise control over their childbearing and childrearing; specifically, by restricting their access to necessary medical care and sufficient resources to care for their families, and by constraining their autonomy and agency. As a consequence, Black women experienced uniquely poor reproductive health and family outcomes compared to all other racial and ethnic groups (Eichelberger et al. 2016); these racial disparities persist today. This study applies a reproductive justice framework to understanding Black women’s lived experiences of systematic raced and gendered oppression, as well as their forms of resistance when caring for themselves and their children. Reproductive justice is the personal right to control one’s body, have children under the conditions that we choose, and parent those children in stable communities (Sister Song 1997). Thus, we ask how did gendered racism impact Black women’s experiences of reproductive justice and what strategies of resistance did they devise in response? We used Dedoose, a cloud-based mixed methods software, to conduct a content analysis of oral histories from two oral history repositories. These primary sources were excerpted and coded for common themes including racism’s influence on childbearing and childrearing, socioeconomic experiences, access to medical care, and protective factors. We have three preliminary findings that contribute to existing literature: 1) when women required more medical care than midwives could provide, they experienced numerous barriers to accessing such care, 2) Black women experienced multiple levels of social control that undermined their childrearing, and 3) women devised strategies of resistance to care for their bodies and their children, including collective childrearing, resource sharing, and instilling a sense of self-worth in their children.