Aftereffect

On The Stakes podcast, host Kai Wright and team bring you more stories about inequality, health and justice... and more. In this episode: implicit bias in medicine brings life or death consequences for black moms and their children. A black woman in America is three to four times more likely to die than a white woman during pregnancy, childbirth, and in the year after the baby's born. As more and more black women share their near death experiences while giving birth, including world tennis champion Serena Williams, we see this reality affecting black woman regardless of education or wealth. So what are black women supposed to do with this information as they think about pregnancy? And can we really eliminate implicit bias? WNYC’s health coverage and The Stakes is supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jane and Gerald Katcher and the Katcher Family Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Rap star Prodigy is best known for The Infamous, an album he released when he was just a teenager as half of the venerable Queens duo, Mobb Deep. But as Mobb Deep took over the world, something was happening to Prodigy behind the scenes, a piece of his life set apart from his legendary lyricism and New York realness. A pain so excruciating it could make Prodigy feel like his bones were on fire; a pain that landed him in the Vegas hospital where he died last year. The Realness takes you behind Prodigy’s music to his life with sickle cell anemia, revealing how his condition touched almost every part of his life: from the sound of his rhymes to the circumstances of his death.

One day in February, a group of staff packed up Arnaldo's belongings, moved him out of Carlton Palms and into a three-bedroom house in a suburban neighborhood. On its face, it's the type of setting disability advocates strive toward. Arnaldo has his own bedroom, more autonomy, a staff that looks after him. At the moment, Arnaldo is the only resident. He'll eventually share the house with two other men, but just days before the first is slated to join Arnaldo, he dies - under suspicious circumstances in the care of Carlton Palms.

For decades, Carlton Palms' elusive founder, Ken Mazik, has wielded his power and influence to sway members of Congress and state legislatures into bending the rules in his favor -- from scuttling laws that would limit the use of physical restraints, to securing permission from the state of Florida to amass a fortune in Medicaid funding. As one of his former employees told us, "Ken Mazik made millions of dollars tying up little kids."

A cup of hot water thrown on a developmentally-disabled resident. Another kicked in the ribs. A tooth knocked out by a staff member. Carlton Palms is known for abuse and even death. So why is the state of Florida so reluctant to close it?