Grow Brown Skin Matters

Brown Skin Matters was born when I became a mother to a biracial child in 2018. When he was an infant, I noticed a scaly patch on his skin, and, as mothers in today's world do, I googled "eczema on infant." I instantly realized that none of the photos were on skin like his. I searched for other skin conditions and found the same to be true. I scrolled through hundreds of search results looking for just one photo of common conditions on brown skin. Even adding clarifiers like "eczema on brown skin" hardly improved the results.

I searched the published literature on the topic and found that the problem had been noticed and quantified. Medical students are poorly trained in recognizing skin conditions on people of color, and therefore people of color experience delayed diagnoses, and worse disease outcomes. Though this has been acknowledged, I couldn't find any major attempts to address it.

I was appalled that in 2018, some of the best medical systems on earth were still so ill-equipped to treat my child with the same ability and expertise that any other parent could expect. I decided to try to make some kind of a dent in the problem, and began Brown Skin Matters.

BSM is a community sourced and supported project addressing this stark lack of dermatological reference photos on skin of color. The dearth of representation extends from resources for lay people (like parents), to teaching materials in medical schools. This lack of adequate training leads to a delay in proper diagnosis/treatment in people of color and therefore worse outcomes.

BSM received attention beyond my wildest hopes, and has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, The Lancet, Washington Post, NPR, Yahoo News, and others. Working together as a community, we are making true change. I receive messages every day from physicians and average human beings telling me how the project helped with a diagnosis or with increasing representation in their medical training.

But what I have so far is not enough. I want Brown Skin Matters to be able to stand alone as a strong and reliable resource with an easily searchable database, expert input, videos discussing common topics, a handbook, and more. To do do more, as with so many projects in life, I need funding.

 

The cost of a web development help will be several thousand dollars by itself. So, funds raised here will be used to turn our website into a standalone resource, pay for legal support, create an editorial board of dermatologists, create educational YouTube videos, work towards putting together a handbook, and to compensate the people who spend their time on this project.

My dream is that one day I can send my son out into the world knowing it's equipped and prepared to treat him with the same expertise and wisdom as anyone else... and that you can too.