LaShauna Matthews Center

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When Health Care Fails: Recognizing When Standard Procedure Is Not Followed

How Can You Fight a Battle Without Weapons?

At the LaShauna Matthews Center, our workshops are weapons in the war against racism and discrimination in health care.

Through the A.W.E. Approach - Advocacy, Wholeness, and Elevation, each workshop is one weapon that brings us one step closer to eradicating discrimination in health care. With each workshop you build your arsenal and our community becomes stronger and safer as we navigate the health care system.

LaShauna Matthews Center is fighting for every patient to be SEEN. HEARD. TREATED.

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Behind every statistic is a person. Behind every number is a family.

Equity in Health Care is not a Privilege, but a Protected Right

The LaShauna Matthews Center is a nonprofit dedicated to preventing injury and death caused by racism, bias, and discrimination in healthcare—especially in Black and marginalized communities.

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Our Mission

Who We Are

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.

What We Do

We don't just raise awareness - we change systems.

Patient & Family Advocacy

Supporting families navigating medical harm, severe injury, or death investigations.
Provider & Institutional Accountability

Challenging unsafe practices, discriminatory treatment, and failures in care.
Policy & Legislative Reform

Advocating for laws that protect patients, mandate transparency, and ensure justice.
Education & Training

Equipping providers, institutions, and communities with tools to reduce bias and save lives. Providing community workshops and classes on health and advocacy.

Why It Matters

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.

About LaShauna Meet The Team

OUR CORE VALUES

The A.W.E Approach

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.

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Equity

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.

Justice

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.

Advocacy

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.

Empowerment

We educate our communities to know their rights, speak up, and protect themselves and their loved ones.

Accountability

We hold medical institutions, professionals, policymakers, and systems accountable for their actions - and their failures. Real change begins with responsibility.

Compassion

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.

Integrity

The foundation of our work is truth, transparency, and an unwavering commitment to honoring LaShuana's Legacy.

Action

We are doers! We turn pain into purpose, outrage into outcomes, and tragedy into transformations - on the ground, in policy, and in practice.

Partnership

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.

Legacy

LaShauna Matthews' life fuels our mission. We honor her by ensuring her story leads to change, not silence.

Stats

The numbers don't lie.

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.

LATEST INSIGHTS

What's new at LMC

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February 27th, 2026

Founder's Statement

LaShauna Matthews was my daughter. She was brilliant. Compassionate. Determined. She had dreams, purpose, and a future filled with promise. She should still be here.

#racialjustice

#healthcarereform

February 6th, 2026

Communities United: Raising the Stakes 2025 — An Honor to Stand Together

Some moments remind you why this work matters. Some gatherings restore your energy. Some invitations feel like an affirmation that you are exactly where you’re meant to be. Communities United: Raising the Stakes 2025 was all of that, and more.

#event

February 6th, 2026

Welcome to the LaShauna Matthews Center

Welcome to the LaShauna Matthews Center. We are a nonprofit created to confront and eradicate racism and discrimination in healthcare—but at our core, we are about people, dignity, and the belief that everyone deserves to be cared for with urgency, respect, and compassion.