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Note: This is the third of a six-part series on Meharry Medical College and the work it is doing to end health disparities.
Health policy scholars gather with their director at the Center for
Health Policy at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. From left
are: Ballington Kinlock, Janie Charleston, Lakeisha Tillery, director
Daniel L. Howard, Lamercie Saint Hilaire and Kyle Adam Gardner. A UMNS
photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
A UMNS Report
By Kathy L. Gilbert*
6:00 A.M. ET Feb. 8, 2012
What will it take to put an end to
health-care disparities?
The answer might come from health-care professionals who are also
scholars of political science and economics with a passion for clearing
the way for all to have quality medical and dental care.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
a national health-care philanthropy, has invested $18 million to create
a breeding ground for health policy experts, and housed the effort in a
university historically committed to serving the underserved — Meharry Medical College.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Center opened
on the campus of Meharry in 2010 and is a partnership between the
historically black United Methodist-related college and Vanderbilt
University.
One of the first graduates, Dr. Eleanor Fleming, is now an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta with her eyes on Washington.
Fleming would like nothing better than to take the issues of access to
health care and higher incidences of disease or mortality out of
academic circles and into offices where public health policy is being
decided.
She graduated from Meharry as a licensed dentist with certification in
health policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health
Policy. She also holds a bachelor, master and doctorate degree in
political science from Vanderbilt.
Daniel L. Howard, executive director of the health policy center at
Meharry, said like the other scholars in the program, Fleming “had a
plan.”
All her experiences came together with the health policy certification, he said.
The Robert Wood Foundation Center for Health Policy is an ambitious
program with a goal to increase the number of African-American scholars
committed to research and public policy that will identify and eliminate
health disparities. It is a natural pairing with Meharry’s tradition of
serving the underserved and researching the root causes of health
disparities.
After a nationwide search, Howard was named director in 2010. “Health
disparity is a relatively new term. I have always been interested in
black-and-white differences in health,” he said.
The Meharry center is the first of its kind to focus on educating and
recruiting African-Americans. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also
established a similar center in New Mexico that specializes in
health-care disparities among Hispanics and Native Americans.
For the student trained as a medical doctor or a dentist, training in
health-care policy has the advantage of not just thinking of one patient
but laws or programs that impact many patients, Howard said.
“You are not moving away from treating folks, you are just trying to
figure out ways to treat them better that goes beyond the clinical
approach. That’s the added value that the certificate program brings.
“Good policy comes from good research,” Howard added.
Policy mixed with passion
In her role at the CDC, Fleming says she is like a CSI professional looking for the sources of disease.
“EIA officers do the surveillance, assessment and public health work to
come up with a solution to any public health issues,” she said “My work
largely focuses on issues of health equity and social determinants of
health (how your race/ethnicity, gender, income, education level, and
where you live, work and play affect your health). Most of my attention
is on sexually transmitted infections, primarily syphilis, gonorrhea and
chlamydia.”
Fleming became interested in oral health disparities when she heard Dr.
David Satcher, a former surgeon general and Meharry president, talk
about children dying from lack of access to dentists. “He talked about
people dying from teeth that needed to be extracted and it just haunted
me.”
After completing her degrees in political science, Fleming started
looking for a way to combine that knowledge with her passion for
providing suffering people access to quality dental care.
“I enrolled at Meharry, and I thought I would be a community health
dentist and I would be working in an underserved community, chair-side
seeing patients. But the more that I realized the scope of the problem
our nation is facing, to me one dentist in one community is good, but I
could do much more being that I understand policy and political
science.”
Scholars at the Meharry Health Policy Center are encouraged to look at
the big picture and see how seemingly unrelated facts are linked, she
said.
“So, with my work, I consider whether or not a woman has access to
transportation and can afford to take leave from work … how that may
affect her seeking treatment for a sexually transmitted infection.
“On the surface, transportation would not matter in a disease outcome.
But, in the case of certain communities, especially those with lower
incomes, it matters. When I work now, I think about the totality of
issues and constantly take an integrated approach to my epidemiologic
research,” she said.
Different approach
The public health approach is a different perspective from the medical approach, Howard said.
African-American women are more likely to get breast cancer than white
women — that’s a health disparity, he explained. The data suggests
African-Americans get breast cancer at a younger age and in a more
serious form.
National guidelines now suggest women older than 40 get their first mammogram.
“Maybe for African-American women, it needs to start at age 30,” he
said. “That’s the health policy — coming up with some intervention based
on the data and the research. So it works hand in hand.”
While Fleming first dreamed of working “chair-side” with patients, now
she is looking at everything through the lens of what she learned at the
health policy center.
“In 10 years, I see myself in Washington, D.C., sitting at a table with
the surgeon general, members of Congress, the secretary of health and
human services, and I am making presentations that will shape our
nation’s oral health.”
It is her goal that every American can receive medical and dental care.
“That is my hope, that somewhere between now and 10 years, I would have won that battle.”
Gilbert is a multimedia reporter for the young adult content team at United Methodist Communications, Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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