As a parent and as a professional advocate, Jacqui Getfield has seen firsthand how Black communities
struggle to access adequate healthcare. She’s working to bridge those gaps.
Feb. 27, 2025
Updated July 25, 2025 at 2:12 p.m.
5 min read
Contrary to the sentiments driving much recent pushback against DEI, inequality is not an abstract concept for those who experience it firsthand.
By Sarah Liss Special to the Star
Last year, the journal Public Health published the results of a survey of more than 2,000 Black Canadians aged 14 and older.
Nearly a third of respondents said they had experienced “major racial discrimination” in accessing services and navigating healthcare settings.
Those negative encounters had repercussions: participants reported having a greater mistrust of medical advice and reduced uptake of COVID vaccines, for instance, which directly affected pandemic-era mortality rates — as well as a spike in depression, anxiety and other negative mental-health outcomes.
This issue is compounded by a lack of culturally informed care providers.
While 5.3 per cent of Ontario’s population is Black, according to the latest census, “only 2.3 per cent of the province’s doctors” are Black, the Canadian Medical Association noted in a recent article.
That can make it challenging to reach people who have had negative experiences; representation matters because shared languages and lived experiences can go a long way to rebuild trust.
Jacqui Getfield is trying to address this from all sides.
The Toronto-based researcher, consultant and scholar is an adjunct professor at York University and the University of Calgary and project manager for the Caribbean African Regenerative Medicine Network (CARM).
In addition to her academic background, Getfield has a keen sense of how inequalities play out in day-to-day life: She is a single mother of twin boys, now in their teens, who were diagnosed with autism as toddlers; her commitment to inclusion and systemic change is rooted in her experiences navigating healthcare and educational settings as an advocate for them and for herself.
Here, she touches on the purpose of her work and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
Bridging cultural divides
Drawing from personal experiences, Getfield approaches her work from the perspective that many of the challenges Black people encounter in the healthcare system are rooted in failures to understand culturally specific norms. In addition to her project manager role at CARM, she works as a DEI consultant, training students and medical professionals to provide services that are more inclusive. One of her aims is to help trainees understand that their own perspectives are not representative of universal truths.
“When I came to Canada from Jamaica, I lived with an aunt who’s in her 80s now. She had three children with sickle cell disease, which comes with a lot of pain that must be managed with seriously heavy drugs — so I witnessed firsthand what it means to have a health condition you have to deal with every day.
“I know what it feels to go to the hospital and be looked at with suspicion, as though you are a drug addict just waiting for the next hit.
“We just had a DEI session with transplant fellows, and I showed them a man’s death notice. Essentially it said John Doe died, leaving his wife, four children, girlfriend, two children, baby mothers, 10 children, brothers, cousins, etc. These are international fellows at UHN, from all around the world.
“One guy was affronted — ‘Hey, that’s so terrible!’ And I said, ‘That’s one way of thinking about it is, are there any others? My brother looked at this and suggested the reason they put all those details in was to let you know how great this man was.’ This work teaches us about intersectionality — we learn that there’s no single axis.
“The reason I bring up that death notice is to educate and make doctors, clinicians, researchers aware that there’s a whole life outside of what they know to be true and effective for the health of certain groups of people, beyond what they believe to be ‘normal.’”
Raising awareness
Research shows that Black patients aren’t accessing healthcare in ways that white patients are. At CARM, Getfield is working with both patients and medical practitioners to improve lines of communication and build understanding around gaps in care.
“We started with a core aim to make Black people aware about regenerative medicine. But it’s also important to help white people, affluent people, doctors understand that African, Caribbean and Black community members have needs that must be addressed.
“We have the next generation of doctors coming up. We’re training the Black ones to have a voice — because when you’re the only Black doctor in a room of 10, your brilliance can be hidden because you don’t want to be thought of as the person who is always argumentative and non-compliant, all of which will get your ass fired.
“It’s so important to develop the ability to speak your own truth and to learn. When we’re talking about the most elite students, you don’t know about the impact of racism; you don’t always have the vocabulary to explain what you’re feeling, and what changes you’d recommend so that your needs, your community’s needs, can be considered.”
Re-establishing trust
There is a long history of medicine disrespecting and exploiting Black experiences and bodies — from the unethical Tuskegee syphilis study conducted on African American men between 1932 and 1972 to the case of Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cells were harvested without consent after she died of cervical cancer in 1951 and to the fact that even today, Black mothers are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. Getfield hopes to tackle that history head-on with CARM, reestablishing trust by building solid relationships.
“We acknowledge that there is distrust. We acknowledge that there has been significant harm done to Black people around the world in the name of medicine and research.
“Some of CARM’s events are targeted at African, Caribbean and Black communities, but we also invite healthcare professionals. We talk about chronic diseases — diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol issues.
“Then we move into regenerative medicine — what it is and how it can be used to treat or cure illnesses. The point is to get the word out so (regenerative medicine) becomes a household name. Stem cells are collected (from donors between) 17 and 35 years old, so we need young people to understand why it’s important.
“Right now, (African, Caribbean and Black) donors account for between 1.5 and 2 per cent in the stem cell registry. That’s why we cannot easily find matches. And the worst time to be looking for stem cells or donors is when you’re sick.”
Getting a detailed picture
A conundrum in improving health outcomes for racialized individuals is the dearth of concrete information. Currently, age and sex are the only demographic elements captured when medical data is collected; existing healthcare registration systems in Canada are typically not set up to allow patients to input such characteristics as socioeconomic status or ethnic background. In theory, this is meant to prevent discrimination; in practice, as Getfield notes, this means that systems fail to account for the varied needs of different populations.
“Canadian education and health systems are afraid the data might be weaponized against the same people it should be helping. But it means the people whose data you don’t have don’t matter — they are not included in the conversation.
“We cannot keep disregarding those that don’t align with the norm; we cannot keep normalizing the ways of being and thinking and the needs of one particular group. So how do we make it more inclusive?
“You have to include racialized people, disabled people, gendered people so that you have their voice. You can open your minds to the possibility that what you believe to be true, to be valid, may not be true and valid for someone else.
“I really do believe that at the systems level, at the structural level, there needs to be much more engagement of a variety of people. I believe you need to have robust policies and regulations around the use of data.
“If we don’t find a way to ensure that racialized people have control over who uses their data, when it’s used, how it’s used, why it’s used, and how it’s going to benefit the community, we’ll continue to have problems.”
Sarah Liss writes about technology for MaRS. Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, has partnered with MaRS to highlight innovation in Canadian companies.