There are roughly one million practicing physicians in the US and less than 6 percent of those physicians are African-American.[5] Meaning that for the 44 million black residents of the U.S., there are about 60,000 black practicing physicians. That is one black doctor for every 700 black patients. This is not to say that only African-American physicians can treat African-American patients, but distrust in healthcare institutions could potentially be alleviated by having providers be of the same ethnicity as the patient...One way to understand the causes of racial health disparities, and the role of women in health care, inside and outside of black churches, is through oral histories, such as the interviews I conducted among lower-income women from a small congregation in southeast Texas.