The LaShauna Matthews Center was founded in response to the preventable death of LaShauna Matthews—a tragedy rooted not in lack of medicine, but in lack of accountability, equity, and urgency.
Led by a mother, nurse, and patient advocate, LMC ensures that no family experiences harm or loss because their pain was dismissed, their voice was ignored, or their life was devalued in a healthcare setting.
We work at the intersection of patient advocacy, provider accountability, policy reform, and public education.
We don't just raise awareness - we change systems.
Supporting families navigating medical harm, severe injury, or death investigations.
Challenging unsafe practices, discriminatory treatment, and failures in care.
Advocating for laws that protect patients, mandate transparency, and ensure justice.
Equipping providers, institutions, and communities with tools to reduce bias and save lives. Providing community workshops and classes on health and advocacy.
Bias in healthcare isn't rare - it's deadly.
Every delay in care, ignored symptom, or dismissed concern compounds risk. When systems fail, communities suffer and people die. When accountability is absent, harm repeat
LaShauna Matthews Center exists to break that cycle.
Through Advocacy, Wholeness, and Elevation, we confront racism in health care and protect lives.
The LaShauna Matthews Center is guided by the A.W.E. Approach—Advocacy, Wholeness, and Elevation—and rooted in values shaped by lived experience, loss, and love. These core values define how we confront racism and discrimination in health care, empower communities to protect themselves, and hold systems accountable for harm. Grounded in compassion, integrity, and action, they ensure LaShauna Matthews’ life and legacy lead to justice, healing, and lasting change—not silence.
We believe health care is a human right, not a privilege—and every patient deserves the same level of care, regardless of race, ability, or background.
We believe in the right to equal and humane treatment in all health care settings. We will not rest until justice is the standard, not the exception.
We lift voices that have been silenced and fight for those who have been ignored. Using a holistic approach with laser-focused advocacy, we stand up and speak out through legislation, policy, education, and community action.
We educate our communities to know their rights, speak up, and protect themselves and their loved ones.
We hold medical institutions, professionals, policymakers, and systems accountable for their actions - and their failures. Real change begins with responsibility.
Through Advocacay, Wholeness, and Elevation, we lead with empathy, honoring the lives lost, and the families impacted. Our work is rooted in faith, humanity, healing, and hope.
The foundation of our work is truth, transparency, and an unwavering commitment to honoring LaShuana's Legacy.
We are doers! We turn pain into purpose, outrage into outcomes, and tragedy into transformations - on the ground, in policy, and in practice.
We build bridges - between patients, providers, policymakers, and communities - because this is not an easy fight. There have been casualties of war. To ensure victory and lasting change, it's going to take all of us.
LaShauna Matthews' life fuels our mission. We honor her by ensuring her story leads to change, not silence.
Despite advances in medicine, systemic racism and bias continue to shape who receives timely, adequate, and life-saving care in the United States. The LaShauna Matthews Center addresses these failures by grounding advocacy in facts, evidence, and lived experience.
Higher odds of death or serious complication in hospitals with higher proportions of black patients.
Black mothers over three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes.
Black patients are 35% less likely to receive pain medication compared to white patients
A 2016 medical training survey found that HALF of white medical trainees endorsed false beliefs, such as black patients feeling less pain.
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