When Dr. Janet Kemei was a second-year nursing student in Kenya, a woman went into active labour just outside of her house while heading home from a market. The nearest health centre was five kilometres away, and there was no time to find help nearby. Armed with nothing but knowledge from her clinical placement, Dr. Kemei delivered the baby in the street.

 “That got me thinking: why was this pregnant woman – who was almost delivering – going to the market? Is there anything that could have been done differently?” the assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing told the Office of Research Services’ Research Recast(ed) podcast host Kelsie Johnston. “That’s how I started thinking about maternal health research.”

Her own experience as a pregnant woman coming to Canada revealed barriers with finding the right information and accessing care, reminiscent of issues she saw back in Kenya. While she scoured the internet for resources, Dr. Kemei – now the research lead for MacEwan’s Black Community Research and Innovation Group – knew that some other women might not know how to find the answers for their own physical and mental health needs.

Her exploration began with a scoping review of what literature is available that deals with mental health for Black women in Canada, after earlier findings revealed that women’s maternal and physical health is intricately tied with mental well-being. Then, the research team interviewed 20 Black women in Alberta to see how they currently accessed mental health supports and their experiences finding those supports and facilitators. 

“It’s unfortunate to say most of the information that the women were talking about was barriers,” she says. “It was mostly barriers around stigma – mental health is seen almost as a taboo within the Black community.” 

Dr. Kemei also found that many mental health services weren’t covered by insurance and having to pay out of pocket was an additional hurdle. The women reported that they sometimes weren’t believed or taken seriously by health-care providers who don’t share or understand their cultural background.

From there, she widened her lens to other vulnerable Black populations and how they access mental-health supports. She’s found that youth are turning to technology rather than pursuing traditional, in-person methods of health care due to ease of access and instantaneous feedback from tools like ChatGPT. 

And while there is a place for artificial intelligence, Dr. Kemei says, she warns that the lack of human understanding of emotions might result in inaccurate or even harmful advice. Instead, she recommends accessing resources like the Canadian Mental Health Association for vetted, reliable information.

But she also knows there is more work to be done in addressing the root causes of the barriers that both Black women and youth face when it comes to finding appropriate health-care services.

“The best way to do that is through policy,” says Dr. Kemei. “I'm hoping that my work will continue to contribute to that.”