MHQP’s Natalya Martins Discusses Project to Advance Equity in Endometriosis Care on WGBH’s “All Things Considered”
(March 2025)
Black women with endometriosis are often dismissed, misdiagnosed, and denied high quality and equitable care. Their experiences, shared in a recent segment on WBGH’s All Things Considered, underscore the urgent need for systemic change.
The conversation between host Arun Rath and Natalya Martins, MHQP’s Vice President of Programs, sheds light on the disparities Black women face in seeking diagnosis and treatment and discusses the work MHQP recently completed in partnership with the Endometriosis Association to develop a research agenda to advance equity for Black women living with the disease.
In this project, MHQP and EA convened Black women living with endometriosis, along with providers, researchers, and health plan representatives, and heard firsthand about experiences in a healthcare system that is “failing Black women living with endometriosis.”
For far too long, the lack of research into and understanding of endometriosis has left healthcare providers without the tools or training to deliver effective, evidence-based care. The consequences are inadequate treatment, denial of coverage, and diminished quality of life – challenges that Black women with endometriosis disproportionately face. This project seeks to alter that trajectory through the publication of a new Patient-Centered Research Roadmap to Advance Equity in Endometriosis Care for Black Women, which MHQP and EA released last month.
“We started to focus our attention on endometriosis because it’s a very painful disease that’s often underdiagnosed. It’s diagnosed late and undertreated, particularly for Black women,” says Martins in the interview. “On average, it takes about seven to 10 years after the onset of symptoms to get a diagnosis of endometriosis, and Black women are statistically less likely to actually get diagnosed. And, when they are diagnosed, on average, they’re diagnosed at ages 2.6 years older than White women.”
There are 6.5 million women in the U.S. alone who have been diagnosed with endometriosis,” she continues. “The funding allocation from the NIH, the National Institute of Health, was $29 million in 2023. In comparison, that same year, Crohn’s disease — that’s a chronic inflammatory condition like endometriosis that affects approximately three million people in the U.S. — received $92 million in funding, so that’s over three-fold the funding allocated for endometriosis.”
Rath responds that these findings are “stunning” because not only are Black women with endometriosis diagnosed later, but once they are diagnosed, they frequently receive inferior care.
Martins concludes the segment with a vision for a better future in which “Black women with endometriosis don’t have to fight to be believed.”