This platform highlights powerful stories shared directly by patients, offering unique insights into their healthcare journeys. By amplifying these voices, we aim to inspire meaningful change, helping providers better understand and address patient needs while driving quality improvement across Wisconsin.
We offer discussion guides for each set of brief videos for training purposes and staff onboarding to further improve care.
Loss and Recovery: A Continuum of Care & How My Doula Changed Everything
Santina shares her deeply personal journey through her birthing experiences, highlighting the significant positive impact of support and environment. During her third pregnancy, she voiced concerns about her health and the baby’s health during prenatal visits but felt unheard. Santina courageously shares the tragic experience of delivering a stillborn, her perspective of what led up to this loss, and what clinicians can do to improve outcomes for Black women like her.
In her subsequent pregnancy, Santina had a doula and midwife for support. The presence of these advocates made a world of difference. The doula not only provided emotional support but also educated her on her rights during pregnancy and labor. This empowerment ensured that Santina’s voice was heard throughout her birthing journey, contributing to a more positive and supported experience.
Possible Topics for Discussion
How Birth Plans Matter in the Delivery Room & Pregnancy in Your 30’s: Advice for a Successful Birth
Porchia discusses her birthing experience with a doula and the differences she observed between giving birth in her 30s compared to her 20s. She highlights how having a doula made a significant difference in the delivery room. With the doula’s support, Porchia felt more informed about her rights and choices, enabling her to create a detailed birth plan that helped her to feel heard, respected, and ultimately positively impact her delivery. In contrast, her previous deliveries without a doula left her feeling disregarded, with staff rushing the process rather than allowing her body to progress naturally. Porchia underscores the significance of having a united front among the doctor, nurse, patient, and support team.
Additionally, Porchia reflects on the differences between birthing in her 30s and 20s. She stresses the importance of self-care through meditation, exercise, hydration, and nutrition. Porchia advises against letting external stories influence one’s birthing experience and emphasizes maintaining a positive mindset.
Possible Topics for Discussion
The Realities of Some Hispanic Families & How to Improve Access for Hispanic Families
In this video, Francisco, a Health Coverage Navigator and Community Health Worker serving the Hispanic population in Central Wisconsin, discusses the challenges immigrant families face in accessing vaccinations. Francisco explains the unique cultural dynamics to healthcare seeking practices and barriers these families encounter, particularly when parents are undocumented, their children are born in the United States, and families are paid with cash. These families often lack vaccination records, paperwork for financial aid, may not have a regular entry point into the healthcare system, and frequently rely on emergency rooms for care. Additionally, insurance issues create significant financial burdens, as families prioritize their immediate needs.
Francisco emphasizes the importance of understanding the differences between immigrant and citizen families. He calls on health systems, schools, health departments, and community partners to be aware of and address these disparities to improve healthcare access and outcomes for immigrant families.
Possible Topics for Discussion
What is going into my child’s body & Vaccine Hesitancy: I want the best for my child
In this video, Sheyenne, a mother of two from the Milwaukee area, shares her concerns about understanding the ingredients in vaccines as she makes decisions about what goes into her children’s bodies. She expresses her feelings of being unheard or potentially dismissed due to her age, race, and gender when seeking information. As a mom, Sheyenne is responsible for her children’s well-being and believes that if her voice is suppressed, she cannot fully advocate for them.
Joining her is Ramona, a Community Health Worker and Community Engagement Coordinator in Milwaukee’s Lindsey Heights neighborhood. Ramona discusses the mistrust she encounters in her work related to vaccines, exacerbated by the spread of false information. Both Sheyenne and Ramona highlight the importance of being heard and making informed decisions about vaccinations for children.
Possible Topics for Discussion
In this video, May June, a Parent Educator for Myanmar refugees, discusses the significant differences in vaccination experiences in refugee camps and the United States. She highlights how mistreatment and broken trust in refugee camps affect refugees’ perceptions and decisions about vaccinations upon arriving in the U.S. May June explains that the vaccination guidelines in the U.S. differ from those in refugee camps, and cultural and language barriers can further complicate understanding the impact of vaccines on children. She emphasizes that parents may feel overwhelmed with information and stresses the importance of considering these factors when discussing vaccinations with refugee families.
Possible Topics for Discussion
The Good intentions of Caring & We Might Not Believe the Same
In this video, Hohaapjikereiga: Ho-hump-jee-ka-dang-ga (Lanette), talks about her tribal community’s concerns around the long-term effects of new vaccines on children. She explains how in her belief system, the intentions of the healer are imbued into every step of preparing a medicine, and how prayers play an important role in healing. This “unseen” way of medicine, she acknowledges, can clash with the necessary “western” biomedicine approach where many people are involved in developing and administering medications. She questions did they all have good intentions? Did they even have intentions?
According to Hohaapjikereiga, this “unseen” part of healing, the intentionality, and the prayer, is what is often not talked about or understood by care teams. Hohaapjikereiga calls for her people to share, and for clinicians to take the time to ask what Native practices, if any, are being integrated to create a common understanding and respectful collaborative approach.
Possible Topics for Discussion
The Undiagnosed: Rural access and what we need & Problem Patient: Even the little things are harmful
In this video, Abbie talks about her experience living in the rural Midwest and the challenges of growing up with undiagnosed mental illness. She speaks frankly about the need for mental health screening in primary care and the lack of access in small towns.
In this video portrait Abbie addresses the lack of empathy and dignity that people living with addiction experience in the healthcare system. She details the impact that subtle negative clinical interactions had on her self-worth, help seeking, and recovery.
Possible Topics for Discussion
No Light/Light: How one provider can make the difference &
Born to be Real: Listening to the voices of lived experience
In this portrait, Rene recites one of her poems, a reflection of her experience surviving a recent suicide attempt. She speaks of the failures of forced psychiatric holds and the mental health system, and of how one mental health provider intervened to empower Rene to make her own choices. Rene’s story fundamentally illustrates that one person can make all the difference.
Rene talks vulnerably about how she recovered from her internalized stigma and self-loathing around having a mental illness. She describes how she learned to accept what was her illness and identify what was essentially the “system’s fault”. This portrait elucidates the power of peer support in recovery.
Possible Topics for Discussion
Noncompliance: There is more than one way to be okay &
Beyond Validation: It’s about empathy and understanding
In this video portrait Imani candidly talks about the impacts that traditional treatments had on her self-understanding and identity. She explains how her therapeutic noncompliance labeled her as the problem rather than the treatment, and the lasting effects this had on her dignity and confidence. Imani speaks to the idea that there is “no one right or wrong way to recovery”.
Being seen and heard can be a powerful source for personal transformation. In her video portrait, Imani shares how having someone “just listen” can alter the course for someone facing the challenges of mental illness and substance use. She talks about how peer support helped her to catalyze change.
Possible Topics for Discussion
Please trust us: We ask for help in different ways &
Teach me: So I don’t have to stay stuck
In this video portrait Richard talks about his experience of being traumatized as a young child and how that transformed him into a violent man caught in the justice system. His message is clear, people cry out for help in different ways. Richard talks about being a young black man and how this has impacted his experience seeking mental health treatment.
In this video portrait Richard talks about his experience with medication treatment. He asks that clinicians “work with” patients and “trust that patients know their bodies” well enough to know what they might need. Richard advocates for patient empowerment through health education and collaboration.
Possible Topics for Discussion
The Power of Diagnosis &
Words Matter: Are we perpetuating or challenging stigma?
Peggy illustrates how diagnosis can collect in one’s medical record. She conveys the difficulty of not only removing diagnoses when they are no longer relevant, but also the challenge of which one to work with in any given moment. Which one is valid? How does one understand themselves when they have multiple diagnoses over a lifetime of inpatient and outpatient care?
Peggy talks about how the language around mental health has changed over the decades. She critically challenges whether the well-intentioned attempts at destigmatizing mental illness through patient centered terms are really beneficial. Peggy deconstructs “recovery” and “mental health consumer” in thought-provoking ways.
Possible Topics for Discussion
