© 2026 ABC News

Chapple said her work is focused on maternal mortality and trying to prevent Black women from dying as a result of giving birth.

\"One of the ways that we tell women that they can do to help address that is to advocate for themselves or to have an advocate there with them. So to now take this tried-and-true approach that we know helps in certain circumstances and be able to clearly see that it does not help when you’re Black and educated, it’s really a slap in the face,\" Chapple said. \"What else can you do to save your own life?\"

Christie VanHorne, a public health advocate from New York whose company, CVH Consulting, works to improve communication between patients and medical providers, said she felt so angered by Murphy's response that she wrote IU Health a message complaining that the hospital was \"victim-blaming\" Moore for the alleged inadequate care she received.

“It’s honestly a disgrace to the medical profession that they would blame the victim and the nursing team,\" VanHorne told ABC News on Wednesday. \"To say that the nurses were intimidated by the patient, it’s absolutely ridiculous when she was just trying to advocate for herself.\"

Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, a Black adjunct associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and former president of the American Public Health Association, and three of her medical profession colleagues wrote an op-ed piece on Moore's case that was published in the Washington Post on Saturday saying Moore's experience is more “confirmation” of racial inequities in the nation's health care system that have risen to the surface during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That system has a name: racism. No matter how well-intentioned our health care system is, it has not rooted out the false idea of a hierarchy of human valuation based on skin color and the false idea that, if there were such a hierarchy, 'White' people would be at the top,\" reads the op-ed Jones wrote with Aletha Maybank, chief health equity officer at the American Medical Association, Uché Blackstock, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, and Joia Crear Perry, president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative.

Black people have also been disproportionately affected and have died from coronavirus more than their white counterparts. An analysis by the Brookings Institution released earlier this year showed that the COVID-19 death rate for Black people was 3.6 times the rate of white people.

An ABC News investigation published in April found that Black people in coronavirus hot spots are twice as likely to die from the illness than their white counterparts.

“Dr. Moore knew that she was being mistreated. She knew she was being mistreated because she knew what she was supposed to be getting. So that makes her voice even more powerful when she was calling them out,\" Jones told ABC News on Wednesday.

Jones said IU Health has to acknowledge that systemic racism exists in its system before it can fix the problem.

“It’s not on one individual nurse to fix themselves or one individual doctor to fix themselves,\" Jones said. \"You have to engage a lot of people, understanding that racism exists, and that it’s a problem for the whole system.\"

What to know about the coronavirus:

","canonicalUrl":"https://abcnews.com/US/hospital-ceos-response-black-doctors-covid-19-death/story?id=74971005","legacySlug":"/news/story/hospital-ceos-response-black-doctors-covid-19-death-74971005","noIndexNoFollow":false},"publishTime":"01:57","publishDate":"12-31-2020","updatedTime":"12:10","updatedDate":"12-31-2020","socialImage":{"alt":"Dr. Susan Moore poses in this undated photo with her 19-year-old son, Henry Muhammed. Moore died on Dec. 20, 2020, of complications from COVID-19, after posting a video complaining she was treated improperly due to her race.","credit":"Courtesy Henry Muhammed","ratio":"16x9","url":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/moore-son-ht-ps-201224_1608842996687_hpMain_16x9_1600.jpg","width":992,"height":558},"datePublished":"12/31/2020 01:57:00 GMT","video":{"live":false,"id":74971005,"headline":"Backlash erupts over Black doctor's death","mediaAssetTitle":"BLACK DOCTOR UPDATE","description":"Dr. Susan Moore alleged mistreatment at an Indiana hospital before she died.","duration":"1:32","posterImg":{"url":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/GMA/default-img-undefined.png","width":608,"height":342},"video":{"feed":"https://service-pkgabcnews.akamaized.net/opp/hls/abcnews/2020/12/201224_vod_susan_moore3_,500,800,1200,1800,2500,3200,4500,.mp4.csmil/playlist.m3u8"},"playlist":["74969580","74969536","74947995"]},"relatedItems":[{"contentType":"story","date":"December 30, 2020","headline":"Vaccines delayed at nursing home due to outbreak","section":"news","slug":"/news/story/vaccines-delayed-nursing-home-due-outbreak-74969580","id":74969580,"image":{"alt":"Vaccines delayed at nursing home due to outbreak","url":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/Health/woodstock-nursing-home-01-ht-jt-201230_1609357480193_hpMain_4x3t_240.jpg","credit":"Google Maps Street View","ratio":"1x1"}},{"contentType":"story","date":"December 30, 2020","headline":"What we know about the UK COVID-19 variant now in the US","section":"news","slug":"/news/story/uk-covid-19-variant-detected-us-colorado-cases-74969536","id":74969536,"image":{"alt":"What we know about the UK COVID-19 variant now in the US","url":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/jared-polis-ap-jt-200718_1595106136211_hpMain_4x3t_240.jpg","credit":"David Zalubowski/AP","ratio":"1x1"}},{"contentType":"story","date":"December 29, 2020","headline":"A nurse who got vaccinated tested positive for COVID, but that's not unexpected","section":"news","slug":"/news/story/nurse-tests-positive-covid-19-shortly-vaccinated-74947995","id":74947995,"image":{"alt":"A nurse who got vaccinated tested positive for COVID, but that's not unexpected","url":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/Health/pfizer-vaccine-rt-jt-201229_1609274329697_hpMain_4x3t_240.jpg","credit":"Yuki Iwamura/Reuters","ratio":"1x1"}}],"relatedContentSection":"news","schemaContent":{"name":"Backlash erupts over Black doctor's death","description":"Dr. Susan Moore alleged mistreatment at an Indiana hospital before she died.","duration":"1:32","uploadDate":"12-31-2020","publication":"12-31-2020","images":"https://s.abcnews.com/images/GMA/default-img-undefined.png","url":"https://service-pkgabcnews.akamaized.net/opp/hls/abcnews/2020/12/201224_vod_susan_moore3_,500,800,1200,1800,2500,3200,4500,.mp4.csmil/playlist.m3u8","contentUrl":"https://service-pkgabcnews.akamaized.net/opp/hls/abcnews/2020/12/201224_vod_susan_moore3_,500,800,1200,1800,2500,3200,4500,.mp4.csmil/playlist.m3u8","link":"https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/hospital-ceos-response-black-doctors-covid-19-death-74971005"}},"playlist":[{"id":"132054443","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"132054798","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"132033010","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131912713","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131830583","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131834976","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131554765","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131554815","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131543053","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131432442","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131121474","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131247079","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131228784","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131178806","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131142257","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131046664","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131048076","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"131033212","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"130999943","contentType":"story","section":"news"},{"id":"130971027","contentType":"story","section":"news"}],"kvps":{"pgtyp":"article","lang":"en","sp":"goodmorningamerica","programmatic":"true","bundleId":"com.abcnews"}},"analytics":{"accountID":"wdgnewwdgnewgmaweb","ns":"gma","pageName":"gma:news:video","pageType":"video","globalSpecVersion":"v1.08","siteDifferentiator":"gma:site","tagID":"g_page01","userABCookie":"0","section":"news","title":"Backlash erupts over Black doctor's death","pubTime":"20:57","pubDate":"12-30-2020","modTime":"07:10","modDate":"12-31-2020","taxonomyTags":"none","id":74971005,"editorialOtherSubjects":"","wordCount":"none","columns":"none","authors":"","authorsUnit":"none","authorsBureau":"none","subBrand":"Good Morning America","provider":"Good Morning America","videoName":"Backlash erupts over Black doctor's death","mediaAssetTitle":"BLACK DOCTOR UPDATE","videoId":74971005,"mediaOnPage":"video","legacySlug":"/news/story/hospital-ceos-response-black-doctors-covid-19-death-74971005"},"taboola":{}},"request":{"headers":{},"httpVersion":"1.1","method":"GET","url":"/video/74971005","vary":{"host":"www.goodmorningamerica.com","cached":true,"path":"/video/74971005","forwarded-proto":"https","device":"desktop","userab":"0"}},"viewport":{"width":1260,"height":0},"user":{}};