Primarily Caring Winter/Spring 2022

Caring PRIMARILY

WINTER/SPRING 2022

A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E M O R E H O U S E S C H O O L O F M E D I C I N E

The Other Pandemic

Mental Health Fear, anxiety, isolation, grief: understanding the factors that have entangled a community and nation, and how we get out

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CLINICAL Medical science still struggles to improve maternal health in the U.S.

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Dispelling the myth of absent Black fathers RESEARCH

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COMMUNITY How MSM managed and eventually found School of Medicine its footingMorehouse amid a pandemic

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Our City IN MOTION. The 22-mile stretch on the Atlanta BeltLine

connects residents and communities across the city: from art to exercise, from dining to entertainment. In the historic West End, near Morehouse School of Medicine, it offers opportunities to walk, ride, and play, all vital to achieving work-life balance.

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Primarily Caring

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Caring PRIMARILY

WINTER/SPRING 2022

A PUBLICATION OF THE MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Contents FEATURES

Maternal Health 16 Medical science still struggles to improve maternal health outcomes in the U.S., and Black and other minority women fair worse.

A new center at MSM seeks to change that.

The Other Pandemic 26 MSM is tackling the mental health pandemic with a multi-faceted approach that includes policy, clinical care, and community relations.

On the Record 35

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How one of the nation’s leading health equity institutions responded to — and became transformed by — a global pandemic: A first-person account

RE S E A RCH

Fatherhood

An MSM behavioral scientist is dedicating her career to studying the engagement of Black fathers in the lives of their children, families, and communities.

Morehouse School of Medicine

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WINTER/SPRING 2022

Contents NEWS & NOTES

News Briefs 6

Joseph A. Tyndall, MD, An interview with

Executive Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean of Morehouse School of Medicine

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INTERVIEW

Joseph A. Tyndall, MD 12

SPOTLIGHT

Student Profile: Jamil Joyner 14

SCHOLARSHIP

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SPOTLIGHT

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COMMUNITY

Faculty, Staff, and Students 43

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CLINICAL

PRIMARILY CARING | WINTER / SUMMER 2022 | Volume 2, Issue 2 PRESIDENT AND CEO

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD

Jenifer Cooper, Cooperworks, Inc.

EDITOR

WRITERS

Claire Abel KreativTouch Group Arvin Temkar

David Hefner, EdD

David Hefner, EdD Amanda Magdalenski Peggy Pusateri Angela Wimes

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Angela Wimes

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COVER ILLUSTRATION

Gérard DuBois

Primarily Caring magazine is published twice a year

by Morehouse School of Medicine, 720 Westview Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30310. ISSN 2690-098X. All submissions, letters to the editor, and other editorial content should be emailed to: PrimarilyCaring@msm.edu. This publication was funded in part by Title III funding.

Arvin Temkar

A Letter from the President

The art and architecture in the Historic West End, where Morehouse School of Medicine and the Atlanta University Center schools sit.

D Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD

President and CEO, Morehouse School of Medicine

espite the pandemic that took us by surprise and all the overwhelming physical and mental health effects that came with it, Morehouse School of Medicine continues to thrive and make a difference in the lives of those we educate and train in Georgia, the nation, and the world. Morehouse School of Medicine is no stranger to providing solutions to the underserved and we are thankful many companies, community organizations, foundations, government entities, and individuals have come to realize the need to collaborate resources for the communities that we serve.

The support and partnership received has been enormous and we can only see the continuance of these endeavors by those who have expanded their focus to include health equity and taken steps to incorporate it in their goals and missions. As you turn the pages you will read about the work we have done during this pandemic that remains, the focus on maternal health equity, and our partnership that is helping us address health disparities.

The effort we have put forth thus far has permitted us to return to in-person engagement.

This allows for quicker response to social needs, provides us all an opportunity to meaningfully

contribute to activities, and gives us the skill and confidence we need. Businesses have returned to their operations, there has been an uptick in travel allowing families and friends to reconnect, and my excitement is the return to convene in person with colleagues in the medical profession.

The work we do as medical professionals is vital to the need for care in the world, and on July 30, 2022, we are extremely excited to welcome the National Medical Association to Atlanta for their annual convention and scientific assembly!

There is no better time than now to return to the circles of our craft to deepen our knowledge and establish new conversations that science has shown us.

It is my hope that as you continue to read the contributions, that you can sense the passion of our professionals in education, research, and patient care who contribute to Primarily Caring as a way of informing our communities around the world. Knowledge is wealth and we all must do our part to ensure health care is distributed in a way that fairness is the focal point for the moral lives of all. There’s room for all of us to benefit from the achievement of health equity.

Thank you, Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD

Morehouse School of Medicine

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NEWS BRIEFS

Amerigroup Foundation Grants Morehouse School of Medicine $1.725 Million to Support Narrowing the Maternal Health Inequity Gap through Training Program

Morehouse School of Medicine Receives Nearly $9.7 Million Grant from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to Build COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) has received a nearly $9.7 million grant from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create HealthWorks, a program to increase vaccine confidence in Georgia and Tennessee through targeted, culturally competent, and outreach education, with a focus on communities of color.

Morehouse School of Medicine received the award from the HHS Health Resources and Services Administration as part of its Community-Based Workforce for COVID-19 Vaccine Program. Arletha W. Livingston (Lizana), PhD, MPH, MBA, director of MSM’s Innovation Learning Laboratory for Population Health and an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine, will lead the project as principal investigator.

HealthWorks aims to reach individuals in the most vulnerable and medically underserved communities, which often have high levels of COVID-19 infections and lower-than-average vaccination rates. Over the next nine months, the initiative will utilize thousands of community outreach workers, including public health professionals, patient navigators, and social support specialists for outreach efforts.

MSM, UAB and Tuskegee University receive $18 million grant to reduce cancer disparities

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Morehouse School of Medicine is pleased to announce it has received a grant of $1.725 million to be awarded over the next 36 months from the Amerigroup Foundation. The grant will help fund Morehouse School of Medicine’s (MSM) Narrowing the Maternal Health Inequity Gap through Training program. The initiative will reach more than 127,000 pregnant and parenting Black women and their families, with the goal of narrowing maternal mortality and maternal morbidity disparities through enhanced communication, reduced bias, clinical care coordination, and improved performance for marginalized communities. Specifically, the grant funds Enhancing Communication and Respectful Care Training, Training of Perinatal Professionals, and a rural maternal health residency program to expand the maternal health workforce in Georgia. The initiatives will be led by MSM’s Center for Maternal Health Equity.

The National Cancer Institute has collectively awarded the Morehouse School of Medicine’s Cancer Health Equity Institute, University of Alabama at Birmingham’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Tuskegee University’s Multidisciplinary Center for Biomedical Research a five-year, $18 million grant renewal to study and address cancer disparities in underserved communities across the South.

The grant will focus on intervention and prevention for these communities across the South, particularly in Georgia and Alabama — areas with some of the highest cancer mortality rates in the United States. The grant will enable researchers from the institutions to focus on implementing precision cancer medicine, cancer research, education, and training programs to try to understand the cause of cancer disparities. Researchers will also engage the community to identify other research and education areas and assure evidence-based cancer prevention and control strategies. This tripartite research effort, initially funded by NCI as a cooperative grant in 2006, pairs National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers such as the UAB O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center with institutions, such as Morehouse School of Medicine and Tuskegee University, that work with underserved populations.

Winter/Spring 2022

Morehouse School of Medicine Appoints Cindy Lubitz as Chief People Officer Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Cindy Lubitz as the new Chief People Officer (CPO), who joined the institution March 21, 2022.

In this critical role, Lubitz will work with Morehouse School of Medicine President and CEO Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG, to create and drive an overarching human capital strategy for the institution. She will lead the human resources function and operate as a strategic partner in a highly innovative environment, aligning business and talent strategies as well as partnering with many different stakeholders, employees, and leaders.

Lubitz is the founder and managing director of inTalent Consulting Group, LLC, an Atlanta-based human resources strategy-consulting firm that works with leaders to improve their human capital efforts. A seasoned leader with 20-plus years’ experience leading human resource functions for Fortune 100 companies, Lubitz focuses on growing and scaling businesses, and aligning integrated talent processes to add velocity to business growth strategies.

Lubitz earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia before earning a Master of Science in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. She is viewed as a critical business partner and strategic advisor to senior leaders in the areas of CEO succession, HR strategy, organization effectiveness, leadership development, and talent acquisition.

Dr. Barney Graham Joins Morehouse School of Medicine Faculty

Meghan Frost Joins More in Common Alliance as System Vice President, Philanthropy and Campaigns

Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) is proud to announce that esteemed clinical trials physician, immunologist, and virologist Barney Graham, MD, PhD, has joined the MSM faculty as a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Biochemistry, and Immunology (MBI) as of May 1, 2022. In addition, Dr. Graham will serve as senior advisor for global health equity in the Office of the President and CEO. After over 20 years as an investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Graham retired in September 2021 as deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center and chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory. He was recently elected into the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Earlier this year, Dr. Graham received the NAS 2022 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science, which acknowledged his “groundbreaking work on vaccine and monoclonal antibody development for COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, HIV, and other emerging viruses.”

The More in Common Alliance welcomes Meghan Frost as system vice president, philanthropy and campaigns. She will lead fundraising efforts to support the More in Common Alliance, a historic partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health, aimed at addressing the underlying causes of health inequities, including lack of representation among care providers.

Announced in December 2020, the More in Common Alliance will address critical gaps in care and increase representation by expanding undergraduate and graduate medical education opportunities, supported by a 10-year, $100 million fundraising campaign.

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NEWS BRIEFS

Recognized Leader in Health Disparities Veronica Mallett, MD to Join The More in Common Alliance Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health announce that Veronica Mallett, MD, a healthcare industry veteran whose career has focused on eliminating healthcare disparities, was selected as chief administrative officer for the More in Common Alliance. In this role, she is dedicated to supporting the partnership between the two organizations which was launched in December 2020 as a 10-year, $100 million initiative to increase cultural competency and expand representation in medicine.

In this role, Dr. Mallett will help steer the future of the partnership, working closely with leadership to identify, build, and expand Undergraduate Medical Education, Physician Assistant, and Graduate

Medical Education programs to address the ongoing shortage of physicians nationwide, especially in underserved and rural areas.

Dr. Mallett joins the More in Common Alliance from Meharry Medical College, having served in various leadership roles with the country’s largest private, historically black academic health sciences center. Most recently, she served as president and CEO of MMC Ventures, an investment and innovation company dedicated to partnering with businesses whose missions center on eliminating health disparities in Middle Tennessee and beyond. She concurrently served as the executive director at Meharry’s Center for Women’s Health Research, where she led the charge to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity for women of color. In addition, Dr. Mallett served as senior vice president and dean of the school of medicine at Meharry.

“In my career, I’ve seen the positive impact on outcomes when patients have a provider that looks like them. It’s critical that we support pathways to increase the number of Black and underrepresented providers,” says Dr. Mallett. “This is the mission of the More in Common Alliance and I am honored to help lead our efforts to ensure a future where more patients feel seen and represented by their providers.”

Morehouse School of Medicine Launches “Danforth Dialogues” Podcast Featuring Leadership Insights Learned in the Pandemic Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) has launched the “Danforth Dialogues” podcast, which will be hosted by Morehouse School of Medicine President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice and feature leadership lessons from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been an historic challenge to the worldwide healthcare system, but it has also given us the opportunity to implement new and innovative ways to mitigate disease and respond to a global health crisis,” says Dr. Montgomery Rice. “Through Danforth Dialogues, we want to bring some of the leadership lessons we learned in the pandemic to not only the healthcare community, but a broader range of industries and professions in hopes that we might help others as they face challenging circumstances now and in the future.”

To listen and subscribe to the Danforth Dialogues podcast, visit https://omny.fm/shows/danforth-dialogues/playlists/podcast.

For more information about the Danforth Dialogues leadership series, please visit: www.msm.edu/about_us/office-president-ceo/DanforthDialogues.php.

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Outgoing CommonSpirit CEO Lloyd Dean and MSM President Valerie Montgomery Rice

Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice Appointed to President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science MSM President and CEO Valerie Montgomery Rice has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science.

Dr. Montgomery Rice has received numerous honors for her leadership and service, particularly on the issue of health equity. She currently serves on the Georgia Commission on Women, chairs the Georgia Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 Health Equity Council, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

The President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science evaluates nominees for the National Medal of Science, a Presidential Award to recognize individuals for their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering, social, and behavioral sciences. Since its establishment, the National Medal of Science has been awarded to 506 distinguished scientists and engineers whose careers spanned decades of research and development.

“The State of Black America and COVID-19” Details Health Care Inequities in Black Community During Pandemic Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and its fellow members of the Black Coalition Against COVID (BCAC) released The State of Black America and COVID-19, a groundbreaking report that details health disparities that have persisted and intensified during the coronavirus pandemic.

The research focuses on how longstanding inequalities that Black Americans have experienced in terms of health care access, quality, and affordability have increased over the past two years, leading to higher-than-average rates of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in Black communities. The report was commissioned in January 2022 as Black Americans were hospitalized for COVID-19 at the highest rate since the pandemic began.

COVID-19’s toll on Black Americans is ongoing. This report draws attention to the continued disproportionate burden experienced by members of the Black community and will help guide advocacy and policy efforts to address these inequities — both during the current pandemic and beyond.

The report can be found at https://www.msm.edu/RSSFeedArticles/2022/March/ stateofblackamericareport.pdf.

MSM Holds Groundbreaking for New Calvin Smyre Education Conference Center In a “surprise” ceremony, MSM held a groundbreaking for the new Calvin Smyre Education Conference Center, named in honor of MSM Board of Trustees member and Georgia State Rep. Calvin Smyre, who recently retired as the Georgia legislature’s longest-serving member.

Elected to the Georgia State House in 1974, Smyre was very instrumental in helping the medical school secure the state funding that was vital to its initial accreditation. He has been on the MSM board for 41 years. President Joe Biden has nominated Smyre to be the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

“From Day 1, Calvin Smyre has been an extraordinary supporter of Morehouse School of Medicine and it goes without saying that he was extremely instrumental in helping the school get the state funding it needed to open our doors more than 45 years ago,” says MSM President and CEO Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG. The new 52,300-square foot building, scheduled to be completed in early 2024, will contain conference and education space, group workspaces for students, outside relaxation space, and office space. The $45,000,000 facility was designed by Lord Aeck Sargent along with MSM leadership.

Morehouse School of Medicine

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to COVID-19

Lack of childcare

Lack of transportation

Inability to take time off

NEWS BRIEFS

Access barriers impact groups that are already likely to be more vulnerable National survey conducted by the Morehouse School of Medicine and Teva Pharmaceuticals shows intensified impacts among vulnerable populations driven by lack of access to care A new national survey, State of Access to Healthcare in America, released by Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE and TASE: TEVA) in collaboration with the Morehouse School of Medicine uncovered that access barriers due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted groups that are already likely to be more vulnerable, with caregivers (58 percent), women (54 percent), patients (74 percent), BIPOC (45 percent), and those with anxiety (29 percent) and depression (25 percent) reporting greater difficulty with healthcare access.

Existing Access Barriers Alongside Fear of COVID-19 Exposure Caused Healthcare Consumers to Delay Care

Among healthcare consumers, 50 percent say they postponed or canceled healthcare services since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Routine exams, annual health checks, and dental care are most often avoided. Some 64 percent of healthcare providers also report that patients postponed or had to delay seeking healthcare due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those facing access issues are far more likely to delay or cancel a healthcare consultation for an adult or child in the household (cancel or delay an adult visit 70 percent - 77 percent; child visit 72 percent - 77 percent) compared to those who do not (cancel or delay an adult visit 36 percent 49 percent; child visit 47 percent - 53 percent). Consumers who delayed care cited exposure to COVID-19 as the primary reason, but other reasons include inability to take time off, lack of childcare, or lack of transportation, especially for younger, Hispanic and lower-income households.

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74% Patients

58%

Caregivers

54% Women

45% BIPOC

29%

Patients with Anxiety

25%

Patients with Depression

More than 4 out of 5 doctors report depression) are reported more among uptick in mental health diagnoses Hispanic adults, women, younger adults,

Economic barriers were also a factor for BIPOC with 25 percent receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Notably, one in 10 consumers also report challenges with of healthcare providers prescription access84% or medication shortages, report an increase in mental and this is a greaterhealth problem among younger diagnoses since the healthcare consumers, urbanites, pandemic beganparents, and nearly 65% report worsening conditions and BIPOC. among existing patients “The survey results are clear: COVID-19 has widened the chasm,” says Morehouse School of Medicine President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice. “This should further our resolve to address and eliminate health disparities in underserved communities, improving access to and the quality of care, as well as continuing to diversify the clinician workforce.”

adults residing in lower income households, or those with lower education.

Mental health conditions (anxiety & depression) are Digital is Increasingly Important for reported more among Hispanic Healthcare Needs, But Not Accessible adults, women, younger adults, to All and telehealth adults residing in lower to be a Looking ahead, is expected income households or those prominent approach addressing healthcare with lowerfor education

needs and gaps to healthcare access, with 58 percent of consumers saying they are likely to use telehealth to see/visit their doctor or healthcare provider after the pandemic.

Like healthcare consumers, three fourths of physicians and over half of pharmacists say they are likely to continue offering telehealth consultations even after the pandemic.

More than 80 percent of Doctors Report However, telehealth is still not accessible by Uptick in Mental Health Diagnoses everyone, with more 3 physicians and %than 1 in % % While 47 percent of physicians say their about half of pharmacists noting that most of of healthcare providers say that consumers are practice experiencedof ahealthcare decrease in routine visits, the patients they serve are from low-income low-income households have likely to continue telehealth visits 59 percent report increases health households and do not have the means to easily limited access to telehealth (e.g., even after in themental pandemic lack ofThree-fourths Wi-Fi/computers home) consultations. A vast majority of physicians access telehealth. ofatphysicians (84 percent) report an increase in new and 50 percent of pharmacists intend to provide diagnoses of mental health conditions since virtual consultations even after the pandemic These findings show we must take the pandemic began, with nearly two in three ends, but one third of healthcare providers report action to address healthcare (65 percent) also mentioning worsening that access to telehealth is still limited for patients barriers patients. magnified with during COVID-19 conditions among pre-diagnosed low incomes.

Mental health conditions (anxiety and

Digital healthcare is increasingly important for healthcare needs, but not accessible to all

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Together, a #PathToEquity is possible

(L-R) President Valerie Montgomery Rice with Ambassador Andrew Young and his wife, Carolyn Young

Morehouse School of Medicine Raises More Than $3 Million at 12th Annual Hugh M. Gloster Society Celebration Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) secured more than $3 million to further its vision of leading the creation and advancement of health equity at the 12th Annual Hugh M. Gloster Society Celebration on Thursday, April 21, 2022. During a ceremony for both

MSM, HBCU Medical Schools, and NFL Launch Initiative to Increase Diversity in Sports Medicine

in-person and virtual guests, some of MSM’s most significant partners were recognized for their contributions to the institution and its past, present, and future endeavors.

“The 12th Annual Gloster Society Celebration was an incredible success. This was our first in-person event in two years, and we took advantage of the opportunity to honor the benevolence of Morehouse School of Medicine’s many champions and supporters,” says Harvey Green, senior vice president for the Office of Institutional Advancement. “We raised the

most sponsorships and unrestricted funds of any Gloster Society Celebration in our history, invigorating our fundraising efforts and MSM’s dedication to our mission.”

The evening’s largest donation came from Morehouse School of Medicine Founding Dean and President Emeritus Louis W. Sullivan, MD, and his wife E. Ginger Sullivan, to establish an endowed professorship that MSM will name in their honor. Dr. Sullivan served as MSM President from 1981-1989 and as the 17th US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1989-1993. He returned to lead MSM once more from 1993-2002 and has also been chair of the US President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and co-chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS. Among the Gloster Society Celebration’s top sponsors were The Home Depot, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Chick-fil-A, and Southern Company Gas. In addition, the UPS Foundation expanded its support for the UPS Scholars program, which awards scholarships to MSM students who commit to serving patients through primary care specialties.

Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and the nation’s three other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) medical schools have teamed with the NFL, the NFL Physicians Society (NFLPS), and the Professional Football Athletic Trainer Society (PFATS), to announce the launch of the NFL Diversity in Sports Medicine Pipeline Initiative, which will provide medical students with the opportunity to complete a clinical rotation with NFL club medical staff. This initiative aims to increase and diversify the pipeline of students interested in pursuing careers in sports medicine to help make a positive impact in the field and, over time, help to diversify NFL club medical staff.

Medical students interested in primary care sports medicine and/or orthopedic surgery from Morehouse School of Medicine, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Howard University College of Medicine, and Meharry Medical College will be selected by their respective schools to complete one-month clinical rotations with NFL clubs during the 2022 NFL season.

A total of 16 students will participate in this inaugural season, two students each at eight participating NFL clubs: Atlanta Falcons, Cincinnati Bengals, Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers, Tennessee Titans, and Washington Commanders.

In 2023, the program will expand to recruit students from additional academic institutions and medical disciplines and place those students with medical staffs at more NFL clubs.

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WITH DEAN ADRIAN TYNDALL

By David Hefner, EdD

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A year ago, Dr. Adrian Tyndall took the helm as executive vice president of health affairs and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine.

The emergency medicine physician, trained to work fast and precise in high-pressure environments, arrived at a time appropriate for such skills. MSM was entering into an unprecedented partnership with CommonSpirit Health, redefining its learning and clinical training environments. The clinical practice plan, Morehouse Healthcare, was entering a new era and seizing new opportunities in patient care, framed in part by the global pandemic.

Student enrollment was soaring as the number of degree programs increased. And the appetite for new and innovative partnerships had never been higher.

Against that backdrop, we sat down with Dean Tyndall one year later to hear how things have unfolded. In this Primarily Caring Q & A, he discusses his major takeaways, leading transformation, Morehouse Healthcare, and what drives him.

On July 1, you celebrated your one-year anniversary as dean and executive vice president of health affairs. What are your key takeaways to date?

The mission of Morehouse School of Medicine is tremendous and the resilience of the faculty, staff, and students during a year of new challenges and new opportunities is a testament to what we can collectively achieve. Morehouse School of Medicine has an outstanding talent pool within, and a mission that is of the highest priority that is an unwavering stamp on our institution’s legacy from the very beginning.

Our mission is recognized by all of us, faculty, staff, and students, as the most powerful driver of why we do what we do. Our mission is the glue that keeps us together, is the key to loyalty to our institution and is the ingredient that keeps us moving forward. The academic, research, and clinical missions, coupled with our external alliances, has created a vibrant infrastructure on which to build. We have the means and motivation to execute on the mission to lead the creation and advancement of health equity.

In the next three years, MSM is poised to significantly increase its student enrollment, launch satellite campuses and new residency training sites across the nation, and develop new degree programs, including more online degree programs. As dean, how are you preparing the faculty and staff on the academic side for this kind of transformational growth?

MSM is indeed poised for dramatic growth in the immediate future. Much of this growth has been fueled by the More in Common Alliance and our incredibly important relationship with CommonSpirit Health. When Dr. Montgomery Rice and Mr. Lloyd Dean (CEO of CommonSpirit) dreamt about what can

be done together to achieve the vision of Morehouse School of Medicine — advancing equity — it was clear that the key contribution from Morehouse School of Medicine would be to develop the workforce of the future.

Expanding to eventually five regionally accredited medical campuses and 10 graduate medical education programs in multiple states is an ambitious plan to spread the impact of equity.

The clear commitments of our CommonSpirit partners have been incredible and we are well on our way. The need to expand faculty is critical to the success of our missions. We are seeking clinicians, teachers, as well as researchers and scientists, who will boost our missions and support our overall growth. We are recruiting new academic leadership. We are reviving and modernizing critical infrastructure to support faculty hiring, faculty success, and student success. I am excited by where this is all going.

How has the pandemic effected or changed the learning and clinical care environments at MSM? What are the lessons learned on the academic and clinical sides?

The pandemic has had a huge impact on our learner environment. So many of our students have expressed feelings of exhaustion and isolation. They speak of experiencing guilt for choosing to spend time with loved ones rather than studying or working. Recognizing burn out has been a big issue. Because of the composition of our student body, the pandemic has had a dramatic and disproportionate impact at MSM when compared to other majority institutions. We have seen and felt the impact of this and our hearts are broken.

What is important is that we at MSM have to innovate even more in the learning environment in order to support student success. We have to double down on our learning community

infrastructure and ensure even more access to resources to support both student success and student wellness. Being physically disconnected was a huge blow to the way we educate at MSM. We are an in-person, high-touch environment that has been an incredibly important part of our educational culture.

We need to continue to pioneer new ways to engage with our students and not lose what has been so important to the MSM culture over the last 40 years.

What are your three biggest priorities for Morehouse Healthcare, our clinical practice plan?

We need to expand our clinical faculty, including our faculty who provide subspecialty services.

We need to build and expand our ambulatory clinical care capacity so that we can provide more efficient and effective care to our community in so many areas in medicine beyond our main focus of primary care expansion. We will be integrating new technology platforms in our care missions to increase access to our services and will also partner with organizations of significance who share our desire to achieve health equity in the communities we serve.

What should people know about you that is not widely known yet drives or has uniquely prepared you in your position as dean and executive vice president for health affairs at MSM?

There are probably two things I would point out about me.

1. I deeply believe in values-based leadership, where the principles of humility, true self confidence, balance, and self-reflection are key to personal growth and team building. I believe in the building of teams where people contribute equally in driving towards a common goal.

I aim to lead from behind, to ensure that my team members cross the finish line before I do, even if I have to pull them along and then cheer them on.

2. I am quietly persistent and relentless in achieving shared success. Like a cyclist climbing a steep hill, quitting is never an option, or you go backwards. You have to dedicate all of yourself to reaching the summit, pulling everyone behind you all along the way. Perseverance has always been my superpower.

Morehouse School of Medicine

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STUDENT

Jamil Joyner 2022 MD Class President

Claire Abel

Jamil Joyner is the newly elected Student Government Association president at Morehouse School of Medicine, but he is so much more than that. He is an Atlanta native and the youngest of three brothers.

He is in the last year of an MD/MBA program on which Morehouse School of Medicine collaborates with Georgia Tech. He is a self-professed sports head, nature lover, and newly minted photographer, although his photographs do not seem those of an amateur at all. His eye is that good. He is also a second-generation Morehouse Man as his dad moved to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College in the 1980s.

Here’s a special story that brings a smile: Jamil’s dad, Dorian Joyner Sr., started a family while at Morehouse College and wound up not finishing. Years later, however, he went back to complete his degree, graduating from that revered institution with his son, Dorian Joyner Jr., in 2013, the year Jamil started.

Jamil describes himself as a big introvert who loves family, friends, and hard work, whether that hard work pertains to physical or more cerebral labor. “When I am not in my bubble,” he offers, “I am kind of relaxing, thinking, meditating, reflecting or in nature, I love to be around people, helping them or enriching them in a way that helps them along in their journey whether it has anything to do with me or not.”

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SPOTLIGHT

In answering the question, why Morehouse School of Medicine, Jamil says that where you choose to be is not necessarily because of the external accolades, prestige factor or even the material as the material is the same regardless of the institution. The difference-maker, he states, is the people who inhabit a particular institution. How does that environment make you a better person, a better student, a better student-physician?

“These places know us; they are us, and they know how to make the best of us,” he emphasizes.

That statement is particularly poignant as Jamil freely admits that he did not enjoy the academics of his first year, but attended class every single day regardless, because he knew as soon as he got to campus, he wouldn’t be able to walk five feet without coming into contact with

“What is going to make someone the best doctor is being the best you.”

someone who made him smile, who uplifted him, which is how he got through those first two years. That he knew things would be exactly like that may speak to some kind of prescience, but it was merely that from the first time stepping foot on the grounds of Morehouse School of Medicine, it just felt like home, he said.

“What is going to make someone the best doctor is being the best you. The only place that can bring the best you out of you is being somewhere where you feel at home and Morehouse College and Morehouse School of Medicine have always been home to me.”

In terms of reading, Jamil says he likes a lot of history, which speaks to his desire to know the history of… just about everything from basketball to early human history as the book he just finished was Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Jamil says his agenda includes reorganizing and restructuring SGA from the bottom up, bringing in his newly-acquired business experience and acumen and his past experience with SGA at MSM. “MSM has expanded, really exploded, in the last 10 years in terms of increased student population. Thus, the scope of what SGA needs to cover now is different from when there were smaller class sizes. It is no one’s fault, of course, but we need to have the organizational capacity to do many of the things that SGA needs to do NOW. My goal for the 2022-2023 SGA is that the 20232024 SGA will be the best ever!”

Claire Abel

— Jamil Joyner

Morehouse School of Medicine

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Morehouse School of Medicine’s Dr. Natalie Hernandez, executive director, Center for Maternal Health Equity 16

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The Center for Maternal Health Equity Looks for Answers to a Persistent National Problem

Claire Abel

M H

CLINICAL

By Peggy Pusateri

Tackling Racial Disparity in Maternal Health If the past 35 years are an accurate indication, medical science still struggles to improve maternal health outcomes in the United States. In 2020, the nation recorded 861 maternal deaths and an unexpectedly high maternal mortality rate (MMR). In 1987, when the CDC began keeping tabs, the overall MMR, across all races and ethnicities, was 7.2 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Since then, the rate has climbed steadily, to an MMR of 23.8 in 2020. Researchers estimate about two-thirds of those deaths are preventable.

Noting possible reasons for the long-term rise, the CDC points to several factors, including computerization of birth and death records, changes in the way deaths are coded, and the addition of a pregnancy box on death records. What cannot be explained by more sophisticated recordkeeping is the unyielding disparity in maternal mortality rates between different racial groups: Black and other women of color fair far worse during and after pregnancy. In a period from 2014 to 2017, the MMR for non-Hispanic Black women was 41.7, compared to 13.4 for non-Hispanic white women.

In 2020, while the rate for white women increased to 19.1, it spiked dramatically for Black women, to 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Approximately 50,000 additional women suffer serious pregnancy complications each year, and again, Black women represent a disproportionate share of those severe maternal morbidity numbers.

“There are significant and persistent racial disparities in maternal health outcomes,” notes Dr. Wanda Barfield, director of the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. “American Indian, Alaska Native and Black women are 2-3 times more likely to die, respectively, from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Inequities are also present at all education levels. Black women with a college degree are five times more likely to die due to pregnancy-related complication than white women with a college degree.”

Enter Morehouse School of Medicine, with its ongoing commitment to eliminating health disparities. Founded in 2019 with a grant from the state of Georgia, its Center for Maternal Health Equity is leading the charge to reduce the number of maternal deaths and serious pregnancy complications, especially for women of color. The only academic institution tackling the problem of maternal health disparity in the United States, the center conducts research to uncover the root causes, engages in community advocacy, and trains health professionals.

Turning Research Into Action The center’s translational research seeks underlying causes of maternal outcome disparities.

Research results shape the organization’s other efforts: community outreach and professional training, explains Natalie Hernandez, PhD, MPH, executive director of the center. One dynamic research

Morehouse School of Medicine

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“What we realized was that women were being sent home with discharge papers and that was it.

No one was following up with them.”

— Natalie Hernandez, PhD, MPH

effort underway is the Maternal Near Misses project, which gathers the stories of women of color who experienced near-death events during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum.

Already, that research has generated a new community outreach initiative.

“So far from these stories, we found out that there is a lack of clinical coordination,” Dr. Hernandez says. “That led to an idea to develop a patient navigation program in which we’ll be training women with lived experiences to serve as navigators to help with that clinical care coordination, to give (patients) the respectful maternity care that they need, to be the social support system that (the navigators) felt they were lacking during and after their pregnancies. So, already, the data is informing the programming the center is focused on.”

Conducted in partnership with Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University, another Center for Maternal Health Equity research effort is testing a mobile technology application designed to improve postpartum care. The Prevent Maternal Morbidity and Mortality using Mobile Technology project (PM3) was co-created by Black, indigenous, and Latinx researchers. Additionally, a focus group of

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Black patients and their clinicians offered insight into patient needs as well as barriers to receiving postpartum healthcare. PM3 was designed by and for women of color.

“What we realized was that women were being sent home with discharge papers and that was it,” Hernandez says. “No one was following up with them. No one was really talking to them or providing detailed information about the risk that exists when you do go home, where most of maternal deaths happen in the postpartum period. We wanted to … deliver that information in a way that really focused on the women themselves.”

She points out that 40 percent of women do not attend postpartum care visits. Her center is testing the PM3 app in three rural areas of Georgia to see if it can change that statistic.

Patients are given blood-pressure cuffs as well as wearable trackers that monitor sleep patterns and heart rates. Data is transferred to medical professionals, who keep an eye on patient vital signs between appointments; this is particularly important in rural areas where OB/GYN providers might be few and far between. The PM3 app sends postpartum care instructions, reminders and tips to women via mobile devices. Targeted messages include

educational information, links to mobile health applications, and links to social services. Instead of searching online for answers, women get a one-stop shop with all the postpartum healthcare information they need.

Healthcare Access is a Key Factor Geography plays an important role in maternal health outcomes. Dr. Roland Matthews, professor and chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at MSM, says rural hospital closures can make finding appropriate prenatal and postpartum care difficult. Where hospitals remain open, an obstetrics department might close, and many rural communities don’t have a single OB/GYN provider practicing in the area. A 2020 March of Dimes Report, titled Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts across the U.S., notes that seven million American women live in communities with limited or no access to maternity care. In 2017, roughly half of all counties in the nation lacked a single obstetrician.

Each year, more than half a million babies are born in communities designated maternity care deserts.

Location is just one of the social determinants that impact maternal care access. Dr. Franklyn Geary, Jr., a professor of obstetrics and gynecology

The numbers tell the story

The overall, pregnancy-related mortality rate has tripled since the CDC began recording it in 1987. While improved record keeping explains at least some of the rate increase, what remains more elusive is the persistent disparity between racial groups: Black women, especially, continue to experience much higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates than do white women.

861

In 2020, 861 women were identified as having died of maternal causes in the United States, compared with 754 in 2019. In 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.9 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women.

Source: CDC, National Center for Health Statistics

Percent of pregnancy-related deaths

Causes of pregnancy-related death in the United States: 2014-2017 16

Percent

15.5

Source: CDC

14

12.7

12

11.5

10

12.5 10.7

9.6

8

8.2

6.6

6 4 2

0.4

0 Other Infection cardiovascular or sepsis conditions

Cardiomyopathy

Hemorrhage

Thrombotic pulmonary or other embolism

Cerebrovascular accidents

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy

Maternal mortality rates, by race and Hispanic origin: United States, 2018–2020 60

55.3

50

Deaths per 100,000 live births

5.5

44.0

Anesthesia Other noncarcomplication diovascular medical conditions

2018 2019 2020

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality

37.3

40

30

20

Amniotic fluid embolism

17.4

20.1

23.8 14.9

17.9 19.1

18.2 11.8 12.6

10

0

Total

Non-Hispanic White

Non-Hispanic Black

Hispanic

Morehouse School of Medicine

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In February, MSM received a $1.725 million grant from the Amerigroup Foundation to fund several of the center’s initiatives. Among those initiatives is a rural maternal health residency program, which will place 100 residents in rural areas where health inequities are high.

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at MSM and the associate dean of admissions, specializes in treating patients with high-risk pregnancies. He notes that medical risks are compounded by factors such as transportation, housing insecurity and education. Women in low-income brackets are more likely to struggle finding transportation to and from medical appointments or to lack childcare options, meaning they are more likely to miss appointments.

“Since I am taking care of patients who have high-risk medical problems, especially diabetes and hypertension, when they don’t come for an appointment, it’s very challenging to manage their blood sugars if they are diabetic,” Dr. Geary explains. “It’s difficult to manage their hypertensive medicines if they have hypertension.”

The Center for Maternal Health Equity has an initiative to address the geography problem, too. In February, MSM received a $1.725 million grant from the Amerigroup Foundation to fund several of the center’s initiatives. Among those initiatives is a rural maternal health residency program, which will place 100 residents in rural areas where health inequities are high.

Pandemic effect The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic brought worsening maternal mortality rates for Americans of color. Hernandez says the bad news was not unexpected, considering Sars-CoV-2 hit communities of color hard in terms of hospitalizations and deaths.

NEAR MISSES PROJECT Gathers Personal Perspectives on Maternal Morbidity

In May 2014, Nupur Modi Murali was a healthy 27-year-old expectant mother. She exercised regularly and was physically fit. Everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly, until she nearly died.

At 29 weeks of pregnancy, eclampsia triggered a seizure, and she slipped into a coma. As doctors at a Princeton, New Jersey hospital prepared for surgery, they asked her husband if he would rather they save her or the baby.

“I was almost dead at a very young age,” she recalls.

“They didn’t know if I would come back, if I was brain dead. I went through five days in ICU in a coma.”

Stories like Murali’s happen about 50,000 times each year in the United States, and they happen all too often to women of color. Working to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity, Morehouse School of Medicine’s Center for Maternal Health Equity last summer launched its Maternal Near Misses project, collecting the narratives of minority women who suffered life-threatening complications during pregnancy, child birth or postpartum. An ambitious project, it aims to create the largest repository of such stories and to shape clinical health policy in communities where change is needed most.

“A lot of people were focused on when women die; there are women who are alive that can really tell us what actually happened,” explains Dr. Natalie Hernandez, executive director of the center. “There’s so much value in sharing stories … and telling it in their own words. This is a way to recognize

that patients’ experiences are legitimate

sources of data.”

“Because COVID-19 was so high in Black and brown communities and, in particular, really affected Black women, we knew that would relate to some of the maternal deaths,” she explains.

Additionally, the pandemic compounded problems accessing perinatal and postpartum care, as the number of missed and cancelled appointments skyrocketed. For many patients, entire support systems were disrupted. Social distancing and the closure of childcare centers and schools were cited as possible factors in exacerbating challenges to maternal care access, according to the 2020 March of Dimes report.

Economic factors took a toll, as well, with the shutdown bringing loss of employment, loss of

The effort gathers stories from a number of states with high maternal mortality rates. Project staff expect to collect 120 narratives by the end of 2022 and continue accepting them indefinitely. Dr. Hernandez says the center hopes to index the testimonies in the National Library of Medicine. Long-term, the idea is for the stories to inform future clinical policy and training for medical professionals.

The Power of Being Heard From the narratives recorded so far, a common theme emerges: the frustration of not being heard or believed. When healthcare providers dismiss patient concerns, a dangerous delay in care can result.

A video produced by the center features women asking doctors, nurses and other providers to listen to patients, trust them to know their own bodies, and believe them.

Murali understands that frustration. Eight years after her near-death event, she and her son are both healthy. But the story could have ended differently, and maybe it didn’t have to happen the way it did.

There were signs. Murali saw them. Sometimes medical professionals saw them, but each time, the red flags were dismissed.

“At my 26-week appointment, I clearly remember my blood pressure being 120 over 80. Normal, right?

But here’s the thing: Everything that may seem normal for someone may not be normal for them,” she explains. “My blood pressure until 26 weeks was always about 105 or 110 over 65. The nurse, when she marked it down, said, ‘Hmm, it’s a little higher than I’ve ever seen it for you,’ but the doctor said, ‘No that’s still normal.’”

It wasn’t normal, not for Murali. Because her pregnancy was not considered high-risk, she wasn’t due

health insurance and heightened food insecurity — all situations disproportionately affecting communities of color and all contributing to higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.

Already at higher risk of complications, Black women were less likely than white women to have access to the telehealth options that became commonplace since the pandemic’s onset.

“Services that were readily available for other populations, like telemedicine or telehealth, weren’t situated in a lot of lower income communities, so they didn’t have those opportunities to still have access to care,” Dr. Hernandez explains.

The Center for Maternal Health Equity stepped in to help find solutions, partnering with the University of North Carolina at

I want to spread this out as much as possible so that what I went through, somebody else doesn’t go through it, because it definitely leaves a PTSD scar forever.”

— Nupur Modi Murali

for another checkup for a month. Over the next three weeks, alarming symptoms surfaced.

There was severe edema. Her face was swollen, and at 26 weeks, she had already gained 45 pregnancy pounds. By 29 weeks, she gained 35 more.

And there was dizziness. One Sunday she went for a walk with her husband and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. “The whole world was spinning upside down for 10 minutes,” she says. When she called an emergency line to report the problem, a nurse assured her that dizziness is normal during pregnancy and that Murali probably was just hungry.

Then, at 29 weeks and 4 days, came a headache so severe it left her numb. “The headache was so bad I was slurring. I couldn’t talk,” she remembers. She tried to sleep that night but couldn’t. Spots began to flash across her vision. At 7 a.m., extremely confused, she got up for the day. She couldn’t remember how to make coffee or toast; she put her hand — not bread — in the toaster. She forgot how to walk or get down the steps of her home.

At her OB/GYN office that day, medical staff discovered her heart rate was 200 over 150, and there

Chapel Hill and numerous other organizations, including the National Birth Equity Collaborative, the National Perinatal Association, and the Georgia Health Policy Center. Through the federal CARES Act of 2020, UNC-Chapel Hill received a $4 million grant to increase access to maternity health services in communities already struggling with high maternal mortality rates and hit hard by COVID-19.

The center’s first assignment for the Maternal Telehealth Access Project (MTAP) was research to understand the challenges women faced in accessing telehealth services and the difficulties providers were experiencing.

Next, Hernandez and her team directed grant funding to entities already dedicated to the

was protein in her urine. Recognizing she was at extremely high risk of heart attack or stroke, they told her she needed to be admitted to a hospital immediately. But, instead of calling for an ambulance, a nurse suggested Murali’s mother drive her.

“By the time we got to the hospital, I’m half dead,” she recalls. “I can’t respond. I can’t get out of the car.”

Most of what happened after that she learned from her husband and mother. After she went into a coma, doctors delivered her son, who weighed only 2.2 pounds, and kept Murali on a ventilator. For a couple days, she didn’t respond to questions, and medical staff didn’t know if she had brain activity until she emerged from the coma.

Reflecting on her story, she sees all the things that could have been done differently. A nurse or doctor could have called an ambulance instead of suggesting her mother drive her to the hospital.

Emergency call-line staff could have taken her severe dizziness more seriously. OB/GYN professionals could have seen a red flag that she had gained 45 pounds by 26 weeks, and they could have scheduled weekly, instead of monthly, appointments once her blood pressure rose.

Murali has told the narrative many times. It’s a big part of her life story. Yet when she learned of the Maternal Near Misses project, she was eager to tell it again.

“I want to make an impact. I hope my voice is heard. I want to spread this out as much as possible so that what I went through, somebody else doesn’t go through it, because it definitely leaves a PTSD scar forever.”

Morehouse School of Medicine

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health of mothers and infants. MTAP grants went to large organizations, such as hospitals and universities, as well as small, local groups, many with a particular focus on the needs of communities of color. The money was used to train doulas, midwives, nurses, and community health workers to offer prenatal and postpartum telehealth services. It funded the purchase of remote monitoring equipment such as scales, blood pressure monitors, smart phones, and tablets. In addition, grants paid for laptops, WIFI equipment, and Internet access.

“People think oftentimes of just rural communities as having access barriers to Internet connections, but we know in a lot of lower income communities, that’s still a huge barrier, because those bills are really expensive, or people just can’t afford to have a computer or

$1.725 MILLION AMERIGROUP FOUNDATION GRANT

Multi-Faceted Approach A close look at the Center for Maternal Health Equity uncovers a multitude of initiatives underway simultaneously. It undertakes lab research, fertility projects, and efforts to increase access to doulas. It currently is testing a remote blood-pressure monitoring plan to determine if it can improve outcomes related to preeclampsia. A nutritional project conducted with the Georgia Dept. of Public Health — Dads Involved in Nutrition Education —

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initiatives targeting at-risk populations, MSM’s center also works on improving the training that perinatal providers receive. The idea is to mitigate some of the intangible forces at play.

“You have the structural determinants of health that contribute to these issues, like structural racism, implicit bias, policies that disenfranchise communities,” Hernandez says.

“We know it’s so much bigger than what the facts say.”

She points to evidence that Black women with higher levels of education still have worse maternal health outcomes than white women who dropped out of high school.

“There’s something about toxic stress,” she says. “There’s something about these structural and social determinants that do contribute to leading causes of death for women.”

The grant will help fund MSM’s Narrowing the Maternal Health Inequity Gap through Training program. The initiative will reach more than 127,000 pregnant and parenting Black women and their families. Through the Perinatal Professional Training Program, doulas and lactation consultants will be trained to support more than 8,500 pregnant Black women in Georgia. The rural residency program will serve 14,450 Black women over the course of the project, aimed at reducing maternal morbidity and mortality rates.

access to those things,” Hernandez says.

Some MTAP grants allowed patients to access the Internet at central community locations so they could talk with maternity care providers.

Others funded drive-up blood pressure monitoring sites and drive-up checkup locations for pregnant women. In all, the year-long MTAP project directed maternal health funding to 91 organizations across the nation.

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engages fathers in efforts to increase breastfeeding rates and improve maternal health by reducing nutrition disparities.

The center is taking pre-conception counseling into local communities in Georgia and South Carolina. Maternal health education takes place in community-based settings, instead of clinics, “meeting women and their partners where they are and addressing a lot of those underlying health conditions before a woman gets pregnant,” Hernandez explains.

One outreach initiative in progress is the redesign of educational materials distributed to pregnant and postpartum women.

“We see ourselves as an information resource hub,” Hernandez explains. “A lot of the information that exists, to a certain degree, is not culturally centered or relevant to the

Winter/Spring 2022

unique needs of black women and other women of color. It doesn’t really reflect communities of color.”

The center is creating a library of online, print and video communications designed to resonate with women of color, through both images and language.

“A lot of this is done through our research with Maternal Near Misses and other projects to (find out) what’s an easier way to (reach) Black women to talk about preeclampsia or gestational diabetes,” Hernandez says. “We know that culturally people refer to that as ‘the sugar.’ Do we talk about it in that context? Do we take music and make information in a way that’s uniquely positioned to be more relatable to women?”

Shaping Provider Training While researching underlying causes of maternal health inequity and creating outreach

Many of the women participating in the center’s Maternal Near Misses project reported feeling that their health concerns were ignored by doctors and other medical professionals. In response, the center is developing curricula on implicit and explicit bias for training current and future perinatal care providers, including midwives and community health workers.

“We are a medical school, so we are focused on the training of future leaders,” Hernandez notes. “We are developing different programs, such as the Respectful Maternity Care Simulation Model.” The center created patient scenarios touching on common pregnancy concerns and including patients from a wide variety of racial, socio-economic, and family backgrounds.

Pre- and post-tests identify changes in provider knowledge and patient experience, and the center’s staff conduct observations to evaluate the impact on patient/provider interactions. In addition, evaluations performed both by providers and

by patients help determine if the simulations are moving the needle on doctor/patient interactions. The center is evaluating the model right now at Grady Memorial Hospital.

“We’re hoping it can be something that can be nationally implemented.” Hernandez says. “The scenarios are pretty unique. We’re trying to be very inclusive and think about the intersections that our populations experience.

Everything is not heteronormative. Everything is not black and white. Everything is done with intent and it’s based on evidence-informed and evidence-based research.”

Patient Advocates: Medicaid Extension It’s difficult to overstate the role insurance coverage plays in determining maternal health, particularly in regard to postpartum conditions. Many women who qualify for Medicaid coverage during pregnancy lose that health insurance 60 days after giving birth, placing them at risk of having postpartum problems go undiagnosed and untreated. Among recommendations for improving maternal health made in the 2020 March of Dimes report is the extension of Medicaid coverage to 12 months postpartum.

Such coverage is critical to improving maternal outcomes for minority women, especially when they have complicating medical conditions, says MSM’s Dr. Geary.

“There are diagnoses we make during pregnancy that don’t end when the pregnancy ends,” he explains. “These patients need to get continued care well beyond their six-weeks postpartum visit. Just because the pregnancy is done, they still have those medical conditions. Diabetics may be able to attain good glucose control during pregnancy but then postpartum, if the same amount of effort is not spent to control blood sugars, they’re going to have disease progression. They’re going to have heart disease, they’re going to have renal disease, they’re going to have the other things that accompany chronic diseases. We know that with hypertension and pre-eclampsia, there are implications for the cardiovascular system, so those patients

really need to follow up with cardiologists.

The reality is, they have to have some source of payment to be seen.”

In Georgia, the Center for Maternal Health Equity played an instrumental role as part of a committee on maternal morbidity and mortality that worked to get 2020 legislation passed extending Medicaid coverage to six months postpartum. The committee continues working toward the legislative goal of 12 months postpartum Medicaid coverage.

Power Partnerships The Center for Maternal Health Equity builds momentum for its projects by partnering with national and local institutions working toward the same goals. Partners such as Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, HealthConnect One, Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, and Healthy Start Initiative all focus on improving maternal and child health.

The center also partners with academic institutions and is part of an HBCU maternal health alliance. In addition, it works with corporate health initiatives, secures grants from a wide variety of funders and is deeply connected to researchers, clinicians, policy experts, and community leaders.

“A big aspect of the center is that we have tremendous partnerships with leading organizations across the country,” Hernandez says.

“With collective impact, we can address these issues, and the center has been the connector of everyone working together.”

One local partner is an Atlanta organization that adapted its original focus of delivering food to elderly people. In a one-year pilot project, Open Hand Atlanta is testing whether it can contribute to better maternal health outcomes by delivering meals to women who either have gestational diabetes or are at risk of developing it. In addition to providing meals, the project connects pregnant women with a dietitian.

For Open Hand Atlanta and a number of local organizations, the Center for Maternal Health Equity conducts process evaluation,

collecting project data and evaluating outcomes to learn whether the innovative efforts are successful and can be repeated elsewhere. In this case, the center measures outcomes, asking questions such as: Did the dietitian increase participants’ health knowledge?

Did participants change their behavior? Did the program increase participants’ physical activity? With evidence to document project success, local groups can more successfully secure grant funding to continue or even expand their initiatives.

“We know a lot of the solutions lie in the community,” Hernandez says. “Sometimes organizations have good ideas but they don’t know how to demonstrate that the program worked. What I love about Open Hand is that they took something they already do really well and are adapting it to fit the needs of birthing populations. That was really innovative. We were so excited to partner with them to be able to help them with their evaluation.”

With so many projects underway and so many innovative ideas to support, the center’s partnerships are touching the lives of pregnant women of color all across the nation, Hernandez points out. “The small investment that the state made into Morehouse School of Medicine has quadrupled in terms of initiatives and funding and things that we’re able to do with the seed funding from the state.” M

Morehouse School of Medicine

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RESEARCH

DISPELLING THE MYTH OF ABSENT BLACK FATHERS

By David Hefner, EdD

At the turn of 21st century, the absence of Black fathers dominated the news and became another ominous stereotype in American life. The rise of drugs and gun violence in Black communities in the 1980s and 1990s fueled the proliferation of Black males in prison amid policies such as three-strikes-you’re-out. The absence of Black fathers — so called “dead beat Dads” — had become the presumptive norm rather than the exception and, when true, had profound consequences for the children left behind.

Josh Levs’ book, All In, suggests that 2.5 million of 4.2 million black fathers — nearly 60 percent — live with their children. They may not be a married partner to the mother, but they are very involved with their children.

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Today, however, things have taken a significant turn as Black fathers were found to be the most involved among all fathers, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Latrice Rollins, PhD, a behavioral scientist at Morehouse School of Medicine, is dedicating her career to studying the engagement of Black fathers in the lives of their children, families, and the African American community.

Rollins recently received funding through a collaborative grant that provides $1.8 million per year over the next five years to establish the National African American Child and Family Research Center, which will study ways to better serve African American families and children in programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Head Start, and childcare assistance. Black fathers are a central aspect of her research. Such research is vitally needed to inform policy, funding, and services needed to address issues and opportunities to strengthen African American communities, families, and children.

“We really want to be transformative,” Rollins says of the impact of the collaborative grant. “Fathers are not the whole thing, but it’s critical that fathers are engaged at this stage.

So they are a part of these programs.”

Research suggests that children significantly benefit when fathers engage in their lives. They graduate from high school at a higher rate, have better social skills, closer family ties, and fewer risky and delinquent behaviors. They also tend to be healthier. Conversely, when fathers are absent, children can have a myriad of negative behavioral outcomes at all levels of development, according to research reported by the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse under a study supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In the Community In the African American community, the issue of fatherhood is both significant and sensitive as studies find that roughly two-thirds of Black children live in single-parent households, the majority of which are headed by mothers. Such statistics have been linked to many challenges facing Black children, thereby making Rollins’ research of Black fatherhood particularly important. Moreover, the legacy of American slavery, the pernicious history of lynching, killing, and mass incarceration of Black males provide the context that makes her research particularly compelling.

Claire Abel

Latrice Rollins, PhD, assistant professor, Community Health and Preventive Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine

“It’s historic,” says Rollins, a Spelman College graduate who received her doctoral degree in social work from the University of Georgia.

“Not only the myth, but the whole issue of mass incarceration that removed fathers.

There is this perception that African American fathers do not want to be in their children’s lives. It’s a terrible myth that people just run with, even our people. And it’s hard to shake.

It’s very frustrating when a father is met with cynical views or resistance to providing resources because folks just assume that they are not deserving of resources. They feel that fathers do not deserve as much attention as mothers or children.”

Rollins has seen this play out in real time.

After earning her doctorate, she worked for the Georgia Office of Child Support Services and then for a state fatherhood program, where she observed the challenges that made it difficult for fathers to receive needed resources to be involved in their children’s lives. Fathers, she said, were defined solely by their ability or inability to pay child support.

“Fathers had to pay child support or go to jail, and there were no programs to refer them to,” she recalls. “During that time, there were

wanted ads with fathers’ pictures on them in the child support office. But that idea of the criminal nature of fathers, even if they are not paying their child support, not even considering that they may have job issues or education issues. It portrayed them as criminals.”

For the last two years, Rollins and her team in MSM’s prevention research center have held numerous events, workshops, and panel discussions on Black fatherhood and the critical role fathers play in sustaining communities, families, and children. Her efforts have led to her recent induction into the National Partnership for Community Leadership’s Spirit of Fatherhood Hall of Fame. She is also the first person to receive two awards in one, the Vicki Turetsky Woman in Fatherhood and the Ronald B. Mincy Research Scholar Award.

“We really have to keep telling this story,” Rollins says. “We really have to show the reality.

When fathers need resources and services, they should be available to them just as they are for moms. And we know when we have strong families, we have strong communities.”

M

Morehouse School of Medicine

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COVID

FINANCIAL INSTABILITY

VIOLENCE

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

HEALTH INEQUITIES

RACISM

COMMUNITY

The Other Pandemic

Mental Health MSM’s Office of Global Health Equity and Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity Seek National and Global Answers to Soaring and Disparate Rates of Behavioral Health Challenges

By Peggy Pusateri Contributer: Amanda Magdalenski

Morehouse School of Medicine

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Whatever metrics one uses to examine mental health in the United States, the picture is troubling and has been worsening for years. Mental Health America’s 2022 State of Mental Health in America Report reveals worrisome data: In 2019, almost 20 percent of U.S. adults experienced mental illness.

The national rate of suicide ideation among adults has increased every year for the past decade.

More than half of adults with mental illness do not receive treatment.

“This issue of mental health is a huge area of need and has been for a really, really long time and has not had nearly the amount of visibility and prioritization in terms of funding as it needs,” notes Gigi Bastien, MA, PhD, associate director of the Office of Global Health Equity at Morehouse School of Medicine.

An assistant professor in MSM’s Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Bastien researches global mental health issues, including those surrounding disaster, trauma, and migration.

Add to the long-term mental health picture the toll of a global pandemic and repeating societal shutdowns, and the snapshot is alarming.

Fear, uncertainty, isolation, financial instability, illness, grief, overdose deaths: All have increased during the past two years. A 2021 survey by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found nearly half of participants reporting symptoms of a mood disorder within the previous two weeks; 30 percent of respondents said they were unable to get mental health support during the pandemic. In addition, more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdose in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The COVID-19 pandemic took “preexisting challenges and just exacerbated all of them beyond what I think we even fully appreciate at this point,” says Dr. Bastien. “There are huge areas of need at individual levels, at family and community levels, at a national level, whether it’s the opioid crisis and substances, whether it’s issues of social isolation and depression and anxiety.”

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Rates of substance abuse are increasing for both adults and youth.

As it does with general health, inequity plays a role in shaping the mental health landscape. The NAMI mood disorder survey revealed greater challenges for people of color, especially Hispanics and Asian Americans, who were more likely than other groups to label their mental health as poor; people in those communities faced greater stigma and were less likely to access treatment. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Black people face additional suicide risk factors, including experiences of racism, higher unemployment rates, financial and food insecurity, and limited access to care.

Youth in crisis The mental health of young people is of particular concern. In the fall of 2021, a coalition of pediatric health professionals declared a national emergency in child and adolescent behavioral health. Then in December, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the youth mental health crisis. Even before COVID-19, children were in trouble: During the decade prior to the pandemic, suicidal behaviors increased among high school students, and the percentage who reported persistent feelings of sadness or helplessness rose by 40 percent. Between 2007 and 2018, suicide rates among people ages 10-24 spiked 57 percent.

Again, disparity is a factor, with Black youth facing an alarming scenario. As of 2018, suicide was the second leading cause of death

for Black children ages 10-14 and the third leading cause of death for those ages 15-19, according to the NIMH. The pandemic created additional obstacles for children, disrupting critical social networks and access to healthcare, food, and housing and in some cases robbing them of a parent or other caregiver. The 2022 Mental Health America (MHA) report notes 15 percent of the nation’s youth experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year. More than 2.5 million youth have severe depression, with multi-racial youth at greatest risk. Youth of color are far less likely to receive mental health treatment than are their white peers.

Claire Abel

Dr. Gigi Bastien, associate director, Office of Global Health Equity, Morehouse School of Medicine

faith partners “We often have the right message that folks need, but we’re not necessarily the best messengers to carry that work forward. Our faith partners have been really important champions and ambassadors for us, particularly in the global context, but we’re also using that strategy here.”

— Dr. Gigi Bastien

Diverse groups, important perspectives Equity must be at the center of efforts to improve mental healthcare, or real progress will remain out of reach for too many. Morehouse School of Medicine is immersed in national and global efforts to tackle both the mental health epidemic and inequity with a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach encompassing government policy, clinical care, and community relations. Since 2015, its Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity, part of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at MSM, has been conducting research, producing academic material, and promoting policy — all designed to improve outcomes for traditionally vulnerable populations. Another of the center’s chief tactics is convening unique leadership groups to examine problems from new perspectives and bring the voices of unheard people to the table.

“Often, a lot of the same people get an opportunity in a platform to speak,” explains Madhuri Jha, LSCW, MPH, director of the Kennedy-Satcher Center. Her office brings together a diverse set of individuals, among

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next level preparation “How do you take the professionals in the health workforce and provide them at least a base level of understanding and training around mental health and mental illness to be able to address an initial line of need before folks are elevated to the next level?”

— Dr. Gigi Bastien

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them healthcare providers, policymakers, and those who live with mental illness every second of every day.

The inclusion of patients allows group discussions “to thoughtfully tackle how complicated mental health equity is, including prioritizing the experience of people with lived experience, which is really important to me,” Jha says. “From a policy-making perspective, it is the most grossly neglected piece, and yet that is the person affected by the policies we create.”

This year, the Kennedy-Satcher Center conducted a series of webinar roundtable discussions to address inequities facing currently and previously incarcerated individuals and others convicted of criminal behavior.

Because crime often stems from untreated mental illness or drug addiction, treating the problem at its root reduces repeat offenses.

“I have seen first-hand how invisible and neglected this population is by our healthcare system and yet how much potential there is to reduce recidivism if approached thoughtfully,” says Jha, who also is a practicing clinician with years of experience treating patients with complicating challenges in very demanding environments.

The roundtables drew hundreds of listeners from across the globe. Panelists hailed from healthcare, patient, and law enforcement communities, which allowed care providers, policy makers, and legislators to meet with patients and people who are creating local solutions.

“The Kennedy-Satcher Center makes those introductions, connecting people from all parts of the perspective wheel,” Jha notes. “We had sheriffs of major cities come together with folks who were formerly incarcerated, with physicians who are on the frontline advocating for criminal justice and correctional health reform, leaders of mental health spaces like the CEO of Mental Health America, policy directors from organizations such as the SPLC.” Convening such diverse groups offers benefits on many levels, Jha notes.

“One, it uplifts the visibility of those who are the most marginalized,” she explains. “Two, it

normalizes and destigmatizes our own conversations and addresses our own biases: Even if we are leaders in the field, we all have them. And, it creates a safe space where we can be the facilitator for that. We have a big platform at Satcher Health Leadership Institute and at Kennedy-Satcher Center. The least we can do is uplift those folks who deserve to be given a voice. There are some amazing people who don’t get the credit they deserve. That’s a huge part of the behavioral health piece. Some of the most effective work has been grassroots, local-driven, that is super culturally responsive — people just building their own coalitions to figure solutions out.”

Access to care Ensuring patients from marginalized communities have access to mental health treatment is one of the priorities of the Office of Global Health Equity, and a critical step in the process is spreading the word about available options. One successful tactic has been engaging the participation of local religious leaders who often know the individual challenges their congregants face but might not know how to help.

“A huge partner for us has been the faith community, working with churches and religious leaders to increase their understanding and mental health literacy, to familiarize them with existing supports and arm them with the resources they need to be part of a referral pathway,” Bastien explains, adding that religious leaders can be highly effective in taking essential mental healthcare messages to audiences that most need to hear them.

“We often have the right message that folks need, but we’re not necessarily the best messengers to carry that work forward,” she says of healthcare professionals. “Our faith partners have been really important champions and ambassadors for us, particularly in the global context, but we’re also using that strategy here. One of the things the Office of Global Health Equity has been working on for the past four years has been a collaboration

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V I OLENCE

COV I D

FINANCIAL INSTABILITY

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

HEALTH INEQUITIES

RACISM

with local churches in the Atlanta area who serve large Haitian-American congregations.

This is a community we know has been challenged particularly by trauma-related issues that stem from the never-ending string of disasters back home … and also trauma inherent in the migration process. That work of partnering with faith-based organizations and equipping them with the right messaging and information has also been a critical avenue for addressing issues of stigma.”

Claire Abel

Madhuri Jha, LSCW, MPH, director, Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity

988 dialing code “Our current psychiatric emergency response system fails to adequately meet the needs of our most vulnerable. For Black, indigenous and people of color and other historically marginalized communities, 988 is an opportunity to ensure our system is saving and treating lives the way all humans deserve to be treated.”

— Madhuri Jha

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Equity in 988 In addition to stigma and problems accessing treatment, individuals in need of mental healthcare face inadequate or inappropriate response by emergency professionals, which increases trauma for patients in crisis. All too often, historically marginalized communities are the ones who suffer.

“Over the years, I have seen people of color dismissed and not get the care they need or deserve,” says Dr. David Satcher, former 16th U.S. Surgeon General and founder of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute. “Our crisis and emergency response system simply does not know how to respond to diverse needs or is just negligent at times.”

Jha also has seen firsthand the results of inappropriate intervention.

“I have been witness to a 911 call going badly for someone in crisis,” she says. “It is the type of mental image that stays with you forever in this line of work.”

This summer, the national 988 dialing code went live. Devoted to psychiatric response and preparedness, it connects callers to the National Suicide Prevention Line and offers professional assistance with mental illness and substance abuse, especially for people in crisis.

Equity in response is a critical part of creating an effective 988 system.

“Our current psychiatric emergency response system fails to adequately meet the needs of our most vulnerable,” Jha notes. “For Black, indigenous and people of color and other historically marginalized communities, 988 is an opportunity to ensure our system is continued on page 34

HB1013

Interview By Amanda Magdalenski

Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D), House District 82, Georgia

Georgia’s New Mental Health Parity Act

Takes Big Strides Toward Improving Treatment Primarily Caring sat down for a conversation with state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D), of House District 82. A veteran lawmaker with 35 years in the Georgia General Assembly, Oliver was one of two co-sponsors of the critical legislation.

What is the current picture of mental health in Georgia? The state currently ranks 48th in the nation in access to mental health.

Our mental health system is weak. We spend less money on mental health than almost any other state, per capita, so our statistics are bad. More importantly than that, the speaker [David Ralston,

Georgia House Speaker (R)] talked about this and I experienced it, individual family members who are constituents coming to me. David Ralston told one story about a lady who came to him and said her son had committed suicide, and they didn’t know how to cope and they didn’t know where it was coming from. Then six months later she came

to [Ralston] and said her husband had committed suicide because he couldn’t deal [with the grief ]. Those are the kind of stories every member of the General Assembly is listening to.

All of a sudden, the legislation hit pushback in the hearings, but getting it across the finish line, what did that

feel like?

It’s an amazing amount of work. I don’t think people outside the political world know how hard you have to work.

And the session is so compressed. It’s just 40 days.

And the players are so diverse — big and little.

An 80-page bill that really goes after big-business insurance interests, has significant moving of public money around, and has some controversy issues, is going to be followed by lots of people.

We had 10 hearings. The House process was very substantive. We accepted over 50 amendments.

Organizing the incoming 50 to 100 suggestions was a huge amount of work. Then we got to the Senate and there was this explosion of fringe groups [protesting]. The things they said were so preposterous, yet the Senate was scared about this incredibly visible activity. But it was countered by activity of people who wanted [the legislation]. The show of support that was organized from the advocates in the medical community, the psychiatrists and the hospitals, CHOA (Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta), it was just unbelievable support. The fact, though, that it passed with

unanimous votes in both chambers was a real shock to me, a happy shock.

What is this going to mean for people experiencing mental health challenges? Also, we are training the next generation of healthcare professionals. How does this change the calculus and the situation?

We have short-term and long-term goals to implement. Parity has been part of the federal law since 2008. It has not been enforced. Our bill was using that federal bill to implement measures and logistics and operations so that we could enforce parity. That’s huge. The insurance industry has fought that tooth-and-nail since 2008.

The other thing that is long-term is $10 million of loan forgiveness for those going into mental health services. We are a dramatically underserved state. We have counties with 2,000 people and we have counties with a million people, and we have a mental health system that is not consistent across those. The long-term loan forgiveness, which enhances opportunities for people to practice in underserved areas, is huge.

Organically, police agencies across Georgia have been implementing co-responder

programs, making mental health workers a part of the 911 screening system and part of police teams.

Picking someone up in the middle of a psychotic crisis and taking them to jail helps nobody and costs money.

Co-responder programs have been very successful in other parts of the country.

That’s what the data is showing us, so we set up a whole system of co-responder funding and structure and data collection.

What about people who are uninsured? Will the new law help them?

Uninsured people are being taken to jail now.

Uninsured people receive mental health services in the form of the police right now. Co-responder programs and other crisis mental health programs recognize that a person has to be taken to a crisis mental health system, and nobody’s asking if they have insurance on the ground. Once the crisis is over, then the question of who is going to pay becomes relevant.

HB1013 Requires private insurers to provide the same level of benefits for treating mental illness and substance abuse as they do for other medical conditions.

Encourages growth in the ranks of Georgia’s mental health professionals with $10 million in loan forgiveness for people studying to enter the mental healthcare field.

Creates co-response teams of law enforcement officers and behavioral health professionals to answer emergency calls involving people experiencing a psychiatric crisis.

Prevents insurers from collecting higher deductibles or copays for behavioral health treatment.

Adds mental health crisis beds across the state.

Passed unanimously in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly.

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saving and treating lives the way all humans deserve to be treated.”

Toward that end, the Kennedy-Satcher Center partnered with Beacon Health Options, a leading behavioral health services company, to present a policy brief with concrete recommendations for equitable and effective administration of the 988 system. In June, they released Embedding Equity into 988: Imagining a New Normal for Crisis Response.

Among the recommendations is that law enforcement be deployed in psychiatric emergency situations only when necessary.

With 75 percent of the nation’s counties lacking mental healthcare services, police officers without mental health training become first responders in psychiatric emergencies. Too often, a crisis becomes escalated, leading to avoidable arrests, unnecessary use of force, and casualties, particularly for communities of color and other marginalized groups.

The policy brief ’s other 988 equity recommendations include: • Uplift groups that historically have been excluded or inadequately reached by psychiatric emergency services. This includes BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals as well as immigrants, non-English speakers, the disabled and people who are neurodiverse, homeless or formerly incarcerated.

• Psychiatric crisis response teams should include licensed mental health professionals such as psychiatrists and nurses. The policy paper suggests medical translators be part of effective response teams in areas with large populations of non-English speakers. Additionally, it recommends the inclusion of peer recovery specialists whose lived experiences build trust with those in crisis.

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• Mobile response units should be placed at local medical and mental health clinics. The brief notes that existing local clinics as well as LGBTQIA+ organizations and homeless housing agencies are appropriate and effective host sites for response teams.

• Because culture plays a critical role in ensuring appropriate and equitable response, key crisis response personnel should undergo comprehensive training to prioritize skills

that contribute to more equitable outcomes.

• Allow callers to opt in or opt out of a geolocation feature that identifies their location. Providing an option offers anonymity protection, something that makes many callers feel safer accessing services.

Jha has high hopes for the 988 system, especially for youth, who make up the largest population of people already using the national suicide prevention line. “I won’t be surprised,” she says, “if a lot of our investments (in the 988 system) are most effective for kids.”

An expanding challenge Adequately staffing the needs of mental health patients is an ongoing struggle, and recent forces — some positive, some negative — are driving additional demand. Heightened consciousness of the importance of mental health is leading more people to seek care. At the same time, pandemic aftermath and societal influences create a greater need for that care. Behavioral health professionals, already in short supply, become overwhelmed and step back from the profession, exacerbating the provider shortage.

“I am often amazed at how many (mental health professionals) have had to take a timeout over the past couple of years, just in terms of being overwhelmed with the magnitude of need in the midst of a pandemic and all that we’ve

been grappling with in terms of racial issues in the country,“ Bastien says.

Filling the provider gap takes a creative approach. Just as the Office of Global Health Equity works with local faith leaders who serve as referral pathways, it has found success implementing a similar tactic with healthcare professionals outside the mental health field. The strategy of task shifting, Bastien says, is gaining traction globally.

“How do you take the professionals in the health workforce and provide them at least a base level of understanding and training around mental health and mental illness to be able to address an initial line of need before folks are elevated to the next level?” she asks. “That involves training primary care providers, training nurses and midwives to be able to look for these things.

Folks will not necessarily call a psychologist or psychiatrist. They often will share some challenges with their family physician, with their nurse. The strategy of ensuring those folks have at least a certain level of preparation to address those needs is one that has been a focus of our work, both locally and outside of the U.S.” M

How one of the nation’s leading health equity institutions responded to and became

TRANSFORMED BY A GLOBAL PANDEMIC

By David Hefner, EdD

I

remember it as if it were yesterday: Our board room had turned into a makeshift war room, but the enemy was unknown … novel. It was early March 2020, and President Valerie Montgomery Rice had called her executive leadership team in an emergency meeting to discuss what we knew, what we did not, and how we were going to respond.

The World Health Organization had not yet declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, but we all knew it was coming.

One colleague even said, “Eventually, we’re all going to get infected,” a thought that, at the time, seemed hyperbolic.

But at Morehouse School of Medicine, with its vast array of extraordinary infectious disease, public health, and medical experts, the knowledge of such historic public health crises was well known, yet none of us had lived through anything quite like this.

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COMMUNITY

The “War Room”

What followed that initial “war room” meeting was the execution with extraordinary precision of a widely successful campus-wide response to a global pandemic from one of the leading health equity institutions in the nation. Though there are hundreds of accounts of how institutions of higher learning and others responded to this public health crisis, it is perhaps insightful to understand how we at Morehouse School of Medicine responded. Just 48 years old, MSM is home to two U.S. Surgeon Generals, a secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not to mention the countless members of the National Academy of Medicine, former CDC experts, and countless other luminaries.

MSM has been committed to health equity since before the term existed in the contemporary vernacular. With our sister institutions, Meharry Medical College, Howard University School of Medicine, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, MSM has helped produce a disproportionate number of the nation’s African American physicians. In concert, we have championed the need to address crippling health disparities that lead to people of color — regardless of income — living sicker and shorter lives. The pandemic exacerbated this reality and, perhaps unlike anything before it, opened the nation’s eyes to systemic inequalities in health and health care. And many of the physicians whom we have trained were caring for those COVID patients in the communities that our institutions serve.

It is against this backdrop that this account emerges. As MSM was tackling the pandemic in the hospital, we were also trying to care for and address the needs of our employees in a way undergirded by our deep understanding and sensitivities to this long-standing challenge. In our Summer 2021 issue of Primarily Caring magazine titled, “Boots on the Ground,” we told the story of how MSM physicians were on the frontlines of the pandemic, caring for patients at Grady Memorial Hospital and other clinical sites. This account provides a first-person look at how we responded as a business of more than 1,110 faculty, staff, students, and trainees. Indeed, our MSM family.

THE DAYS OF MARCH 2020

The MSM Executive Leadership Team at the start of the pandemic (from left to right): Monique Guillory, Bennie Harris, Michael Rambert, Martha Elks, Gregory Antoine, President Valerie Montgomery Rice, John Case, Alecia Bell, Goldie Taylor, Daniel Dawes, Sandra Harris-Hooker, and David Hefner MSM clinicians and volunteers prepare to administer the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccination in the Winter of 2021

Day 2

Day 3

Day 6

Ga. Gov. Kemp calls late evening press conference announcing the first two COVID-19 cases in Georgia

MSM begins developing plans for students and employee cases, establishing a task force including infectious disease experts

Floyd County hospital reports preliminary patient case of COVID-19

MSM’s mobile security app is updated to include CDC COVID-19 updates

MSM announces cornovirus grand rounds at Grady Hospital MSM begins updating its emergency operational plan MSM president sends first campuswide COVID-19 update to MSM employees and students

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“Even during these scary times,

RESOLVE RESILIENCE RETURN REIMAGINATION REFORM

beautiful and inspiring things are happening all around us.”

— Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice

“Morehouse School of Medicine is a leading health sciences center, but we are more than that,” says President Montgomery Rice. “We are a family passionate about what we do and with whom we do it.

We know that it’s the people at MSM who make this institution great.

And our crisis response to this pandemic is indicative of the care we have for each other.”

The Five Rs

On March 23, 2020, soon after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the global consulting group McKinsey & Company pinned an article titled, “Beyond the coronavirus: the path to the next normal.” In it, authors Kevin Sneaker and Shubham Singhal listed five steps companies would invariably take in addressing the COVID-19 crisis, and how their businesses would be impacted. The steps were categorized by five Rs: Resolve, Resilience, Return, Reimagination, and Reform.

These five Rs are a fitting format for detailing how MSM managed and eventually found its footing during the last two years. Here are a few highlights to consider and of which we are proud: No MSM employee lost their job as a result of the pandemic.

Though the early months of the pandemic were touch and go in terms of understanding how the pandemic would impact the financial solvency of companies, it was a primary goal of President Montgomery Rice’s that no one would lose their job. And that goal was accomplished.

Day 9 MSM begins updating its business continuity plan Fulton County becomes the first school system to announce school closing; other school systems will soon follow suit

MSM’s average COVID positivity rate was less than 5 percent throughout the pandemic. Amid multiple spikes in the positivity rates in metro

Atlanta, MSM’s positivity rate averaged less than 5 percent throughout the pandemic. How did we do it? By implementing a campuswide — building by building and office by office — social distancing plan, enacting a robust employee testing cadence, and ensuring that no more than half of our employees were on campus on any given day during the height of the pandemic.

MSM scaled its telehealth program to continue critical patient care.

Prior to the pandemic, MSM had begun a strategic focus on telehealth, launching a telehealth program and investing in a software platform.

So when the pandemic hit, we were extremely well-positioned to expand the program as patients grew leery of in-person visits.

MSM hosted twice-a-week town halls to provide transparency and answers to employees anxious of the unknown. Before the end of

March 2020, soon after the city ordered its shelter-in-place executive order, MSM began hosting twice-a-week town halls to ensure we addressed the concerns of employees anxious for answers. This was done in real time, even as questions were raised faster than answers were known. These town halls continued for several months, until uncertainty gave way to relative calm.

With its vaccination Saturdays, MSM was one of the early public locations for vaccination shots. Very soon after vaccinations were

approved, MSM begin offering vaccinations on Saturdays in its

Day 10 Grady Hospital, where MSM physicians provide patient care, confirms first COVID-19 case

Day 11 World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a global pandemic The National Basketball Association suspends its season The United States declares a national travel ban

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“The financial impact of the pandemic in 2020 was the biggest unknown any institution had seen in years, if ever.”

— John Case, EdD, chief financial officer

parking garage and later in its new Lee Street clinic. We leveraged the expertise of our clinical faculty, students, and employees who volunteered. Moreover, as an academic health center, MSM was one of the early institutions of higher learning, in particular, and companies, in general, to require employees get vaccinated, with appropriate exceptions.

Today, MSM’s employee and student vaccination rate is 98 percent.

Resolve: Determining the scale, pace, and depth of action required at the business level The pandemic caught everyone off guard. Businesses, of course, were not immune. One of the first actions we took was reviewing and updating our business continuity plan and determining exactly how it would be implemented if the state and city were shut down. One of our paramount concerns was the well-being of our clinicians and residents seeing COVID patients.

As it were, the timing was less than ideal. In the community of academic medicine, March is when fourth-year medical students find out where they will go for their residency training in a process called Match Day. We also had student exams nearing and were preparing for commencement ceremonies.

During this period, it became clear that the scale, pace and depth of necessary actions were vast and all-encompassing, impacting every aspect of the business. We quickly prepared ourselves for this reality by preparing our contingency plans for our students, faculty, and administrative staff. By the end of the month, after the city declared

Day 12

a shutdown and it was clear that we were in for a long road ahead, we had identified an intuitive educational platform for proctoring student examinations; had begun twice-a-week town halls via Zoom to communicate with our entire community; and had moved all our meetings to a remote format.

“Even during these scary times, beautiful and inspiring things are happening all around us,” President Montgomery Rice wrote in a March 27 letter to the MSM community. “I’ve been inspired by the solidarity of us as a community, a family. I’ve received countless emails from MSM faculty, staff, and students with ideas of how to cope, unite, and become stronger during this time of uncertainty. You’ve stepped up to ensure that the mission of this school continues, but most importantly you’ve stepped up to support each other.”

Resilience: Understanding whether a health crisis would turn into a financial crisis It took time to understand the financial implications of the pandemic.

Our approach, however, was to prepare for the worst yet hope for the best. The president and the finance team quickly developed a number of contingency plans depending on a number of financial variables, none of which we could control entirely. Would enrollment drop? Would state funding and appropriations buckle as businesses and schools close and state revenues dramatically decreased? Would private support freeze until more was known about the virus and its impact on the financial markets? No one knew the answers to these questions but financial forecasting was required for businesses to persist.

After analyzing various scenarios, the president prepared the campus for the worst: A potential significant shortfall of funding from various sources that would require an across-the-board decrease in our pay checks. In addition, each unit was asked to prepare for reductions in their operating budgets, and each unit was asked to identify how they were going to accomplish their reductions. It was a frightening but necessary undertaking. The president took these steps to ensure that no employee lost their job.

So, at the beginning, it was clear that the health crisis could very well turn into a financial one, and we prepared ourselves for that possibility.

Day 13

MSM cancels all in-person classes and cancels its annual Hugh M. Gloster fundraising dinner

MSM president and executive leadership team hold meeting to discuss business continuity plan in anticipation of impending viral spread MSM announces first virtual COVID-19 town hall meeting on March 16, which led to virtual town halls twice a week — Mondays and Thursdays — for the next several months

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Day 15 MSM begins daily MSM @ Grady and MSM @ the VA campuswide COVID-19 updates

MSM provider administers vaccination shots to Atlanta residents while President Montgomery Rice and CNN medical correspondent Sonja Gupta get vaccinated live on CNN as a way to promote the safety of the new intervention.

“The financial impact of the pandemic in 2020 was the biggest unknown any institution had seen in years, if ever,” says John Case, EdD, who served as chief financial officer at the time and is now executive vice president of operations. “MSM quickly developed scenario modeling so the executive leadership team could review all the options. That was a painful process, and it led to data-driven financial decisions, which was critical to success.”

In the end, our worst projections did not occur, thanks to the significant response from the federal government and the U.S. Congress. By June 2020, the U.S. Congress had authorized roughly $3 trillion in coronavirus relief in four separate bills. They included $217 billion to state and local governments; $312 billion in public health, including hospitals, clinics, and research; $513 billion to all businesses; and $810 billion to small businesses.

Moreover, as the nation began to see stark disparities in coronavirus infections and deaths within communities of colors, coupled with the firestorm in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, MSM’s value as a health equity leader became clear and undeniable. Consequently,

Day 16 MSM begins transitioning to remote meetings MSM announces campuswide its business continuity plan, workplace policies and processes, and flexible work arrangements

MSM was awarded millions of dollars to help address the pandemic both then, now, and beyond, and our partnerships with some of the nation’s leading companies expanded. By Fall 2020, it was clear that we would remain financially solvent, so much so that the president paid all MSM employees back the money they lost as a result of the pay reductions.

“We were extremely pleased to be able to provide this good news to our employees at a time when anxiety was high and good news was perhaps far and few between,” President Montgomery Rice says.

Return: Reassessing the business system and plan for contingent actions to return to business at pace and scale

By June 2020, just three months into the pandemic, MSM’s employees returned to campus under a meticulous plan that we loosely called a “social contract” with ourselves. The contract was simply our commitment to one other and our collective health during the pandemic. Undergirding the contract was a plan in which every room was labeled with occupancy limits; social distancing requirements were implemented by roping off chairs and tables; a mask mandate was issued; a COVID testing

Day 17 Morehouse Healthcare, MSM’s physician practice plan, begins robust transition to telehealth services Grady Hospital announces the immediate withdrawl of 3rd and 4th year medical students, including MSM med students

Day 18 MSM announces campuswide Covid-19 protocols and symptom checklist MSM announces guidelines for its residents, fellows and resident programs MSM officially cancels Match Day, announcing that Match letters will be announced at noon on March 20 President and executive leadership team meet to discuss potential campus closure and shelter-in-place protocols MSM closes campus to all visitors MSM delays in-person student exams for 1st and 2nd year students as it moves to an online exam platform Morehouse School of Medicine

39

An MSM staffer prepares patients in the predominately Latino community to receive their vaccination shot.

protocol was established, which eventually included an automated daily symptom tracker that all MSM community members had to take; and only half of our employees were on campus at any given time. MSM was the first institution of higher learning in Georgia to return its employees back to campus, albeit in a hybrid format. And we enrolled another class of students in our then 12 degree programs with an increased total enrollment.

“I think it went very well,” says Tony Collier, executive director of campus operations and auxiliary services at MSM. Collier’s team was responsible for placing occupancy and 6-feet social distancing signage throughout our main and off-site campuses. “We had buy-in from the employees because it was personal to everyone. We were all in it together.”

In returning to campus, we instituted two committees: the return to campus committee, and the COVID science committee. The return to campus committee was charged with developing the policies, protocols and processes to safely bring employees back to campus; and the COVID science committee was charged with staying up to date on the latest COVID data and science to advise the president and other leaders on

Day 19 MSM moves all non-essential employees to flexible work plan, allowing employees to work from home The City of Atlanta closes bars and reduces restaurants to only carry-out orders

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decisions, based on science, that they deemed were best for our community.

“It was important to establish these committees to determine where we were and where we were going in the future,” Marla Thompson, who coordinated the work of the committees, says. “Consequently, it seemed like we were always one step ahead. And that’s because the right people were at the table.”

As was the case with all education sectors, our entire 2020-2021 academic year was hybrid, with most first- and second-year MD classes being taught remotely. As conditions allowed, MSM researchers and their students returned to their labs. And, through it all, MSM clinicians and residents remained fully engaged in care delivery.

By January 2021, after the FDA granted emergency use of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations, MSM launched vaccination Saturdays, inviting Atlanta’s most vulnerable populations to come to our campus to get vaccinated. The first shots were conducted in a drive-in format in our parking garage, and the second shots were conducted in our newly minted Lee Street clinical site. We later expanded vaccination shots to other groups as approved by the CDC.

Day 23 U.S. Sentators Cory Booker and Doug Jones urge support for $1.5 billion in support for HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) amid COVID-19

Day 25 MSM releases funds to expand its telemedicine program amid fear of in-person patient visits MSM launches fundraiser to support families at its adopted elementary school, Tuskegee Airmen Global Academy

“We had buy-in from the employees because it was everyone.

We were all in it together.”

— Tony Collier, executive director of campus operations and auxiliary services

At the same time, we partnered with our Atlanta University Center institutions to help bring their faculty, staff and students safely back to campus. Using our Return to Campus model, Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University opened their campuses back up in January 2021, and we expanded our automated daily symptom tracker to include their campus communities.

Reimagination: Making the most of better insight and foresight to succeed amid change Remarkably, the business of MSM was fairing well as the nation came to grips with the reality of decades of health disparities that were now made abundantly clear. The value proposition of MSM in particular and HBCUs in general began to crystalize in ways that it had not before. By March 2021, MSM launched a subcommittee to examine the lessons learned during the pandemic to determine, as the McKinsey article termed, its next normal.

Also in March 2021, we underwent the reaffirmation process for our regional accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). In higher education, the 10-year accreditation process is as arduous as it is high-stakes.

Institutions that lose their regional accreditation invariably must close their doors. Thus, amid all the stress and anxiety of the pandemic, MSM faculty, staff and students were also preparing for our March 2021 virtual site visit.

Remarkably, at the end of the two-day site visit, the SACSCOC site committee recommended MSM receive full reaffirmation with no

Day 26

Day 30

The U.S. Senate passes $2 trillion emergency COVID-19 stimulus package

MSM celebrates Doctor’s Day 2020, providing lunch to MSM physicians and fellows on the front lines of the pandemic

MSM holds faculty seminar on managing stress

findings. In other words, we effectively received an A-plus score in our education, research, clinical, financial, and administrative operations. It was an astonishing feat that few institutions enjoy and made clear the excellence of the MSM community (read: family). SACSCOC later officially reaffirmed our accreditation status for the next 10 years.

“Of all the successes we’ve had over the last several years, this was perhaps the most rewarding and significant,” President Montgomery Rice says. “You can’t achieve this level of excellence by accident. It requires tremendous work and dedication at all levels of an institution. As president, I could not have been prouder.”

By this point, MSM had effectively transformed. Our research awards had tripled; we signed a $115 million partnership with CommonSpirit Health, expanding MSM’s footprint across five new regional medical campuses and 10 new residency training sites; our online degree programs were in high demand; and we had begun partnering with some of the nation’s most profitable and influential fortune 100 companies.

And we did all this during the nation’s worst health crises in a century.

Reform: Anticipating popularly supported change to policies and previous norms A few things have become clear in the last two years: First is that teaching and learning within medical school education are best done in person, particularly during critical components of the medical school curriculum. Second is within the graduate school, the appetite for hybrid learning and online degree programs is skyrocketing and can and has been done effectively over a number of years. Third is that patient care is evolving, and telehealth is here to stay. Fourth is that technology and automation are critical to understanding what’s next in medical education, patient care, and healthcare analytics. And last is that the way companies operate having learned the lessons from the pandemic will vary based on the company, industry, and business model. At MSM, we are working through these and other key lessons, committed to our students, patients and employees — both faculty and staff. It will be that delicate balance among those key stakeholders, driven primarily by the needs of our students, which will define the scope and scale of our next normal. M David Hefner is vice president for strategy and institutional effectiveness at MSM and editor of Primarily Caring magazine.

MSM delivers groceries to 11 families of Tuskegee Airman Global Academy elementary school

Morehouse School of Medicine

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To help us make an impact, visit

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Primarily Caring

Winter/Spring 2022

SCHOLARSHIP

• Recent Publications (• Co-authored) • Recognitions • Grant Award • Appointments • Activities Tabia H. Akintobi, PhD, MPH Chair/Faculty, Community Health and Preventive Medicine

LaTasha Bogues, MD Faculty, Pediatrics

• Growth and Development sections in Nelson

• Appointed to the Board of Society of American

•

•

•

Essentials of Pediatrics, 9th edition, published February 2022 with David Levine Selected at Leader of Wellness Collaborative for COMSEP (Council on Medical Student Education in Pediatrics, July 2021.

Co-presented workshop, Finding Joy Throughout Your Medical Career that was accepted for COMSEP annual meeting, March 2022

• Keynote Speaker at Harvard Medical School

Blavatnik Institute of Biomedical Informatics, presentation entitled Race/Ethnicity and Community/Patient Centeredness: The Path Forward in Realizing the Vision of Precision Medicine, September 2021

Shayna Braithwaite, MD Faculty, Surgery/Division of Vascular Surgery

• Awarded

through the Research Supplements to Promote Diversity grant for the following project: Decreasing Dialysis Initiation via Catheter Among Veterans; Veteran Affairs Office of Research Development $200,000 over two years, March 2022

Carey Roth Bayer, EdD Faculty, Community Health and Preventive Medicine & Department of Medical Education

Shaakira Ford, PhD Faculty, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

• “Navigating COVID-19 Through Diverse

Student Learning Communities: Importance & Lessons Learned,” Health Education, Vol ahead of Print, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1108/ HE-01-2021-0012 with Mitchell, A., Lovejoy Mork, A., and Hall, J. • “The Youth HIV Policy Advisors Program: Creating Change Agents and Shifting the HIV Policy Landscape in Atlanta,” Health Education, (online ahead of print, 2021) with Grose, R., Halden Brown, E., and Paulk, E. • “Responding to Youth Opinions on Vaccination with Better Interventions,” Journal of Adolescent Health, 69(6), 1048, 2021 with Reid, R., and Williams, A. • “Whose Line is it Anyway: Dismantling the Foundations of Rape Culture,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10508-022-02294-8 with Williams, A., and Reid, R. • “VR Simulation for Sexual History-Taking Practice: A Bridge to Patient Access, Privacy, & Inclusion,” AAMC Group on Information Resources, June, 2022 Roth with Thompson, D., Belton, A., Legister, A., and Zheng, J. Kenya Debarros, Student, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Immunology

• Anne S. Chatham Fellowship Winner, 2022

Shaneeta Johnson, MD Faculty, Surgery

• First Black person to be the president of the •

Georgia Society of Clinical Social Work, July 2022 First Black vice president of the Georgia Society of Clinical Social Work, July 2021

Sarah Greene, PhD Faculty, Pathology & Anatomy

• Promoting cultural awareness, professionalism, and communication skills in medicine through anatomy: The Deaf Culture Session, in the September 2021 edition of Clinical Anatomy with Jessica A. Scott

Kisha Holden, PhD Faculty, Community Health & Preventive Medicine & Psychiatry

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

•

• Chairperson-Elect, 2023 American Psychological Association Health Equity Committee

• Chair, Lee Thompson Young Foundation • Committee Member, Diversity Research Program, Emory University

• Committee Member, National Community Mental Health Equity Alliance

• Advisory Board, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)-Georgia

• Committee Member, American Psychological

•

Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, April 2022 Women Leadership in Surgery Society, September 2021 National Academy of Medicine – Action Collaborative on Decarbonizing the US Health Sector Committee Novartis/MSM Beacon of Hope – Environmental Justice Collaboration Committee American Surgeon, Surgical Endoscopy and Journal of Surgery editorial boards Inducted as an Associate Member into the American College of Surgeons Academy of Master Surgeons Gastroenterology and Urology Devices Panel, Federal Drug Administration Named Georgia Trend Top Doctors, 2022 Satcher Health Leadership Institute Excellence Award Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons inaugural Social Justice and Health Equity Award National Medical Association Climate Change and Health Equity Fellowship Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract Visiting Professorship Medical Consortium on Climate Change Champion of the Month National Medical Association Resolution: “Climate Change, Health and Equity”, Accepted 2021 Visiting Professorship/Grand Rounds/Invited Lectures: Brown University, Israel, Oxford University, Mayo Clinic Johnson SM, Stewart JH 4th. 21st Century Lens on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Surgery Antiracism Symposium. Am Surg. 2021 Aug 17:31348211038589. doi: 10.1177/00031348211038589. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34402678 Dawes DE, Dunlap NJ, Johnson SM. The Surgeon’s Role in Addressing Racism and Achieving Health Equity. Am Surg.

2021 Aug 20:31348211038562. doi: 10.1177/00031348211038562. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34412516 Tracy BM, Paterson CW, Torres DM, Young K, Saxe JM, Kinstedt DP, Zielinski MD, Camazine M, Yeh DD, Gelbard RB; EAST Retained Common Bile Duct Stones Study Group*. The effect of prolonged antibiotics on postoperative complications for common bile duct stones: A post hoc analysis of an EAST multicenter study

Association Committee on Population Health

Morehouse School of Medicine

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•

J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2021 Jul 1;91(1):234240. doi: 10.1097/TA.0000000000003203.

PMID: 34144566 Tracy BM, Poulose BK, Paterson CW, Mendoza AE, Gaitanidis A, Saxe JM, Young AJ, Zielinski MD, Sims CA, Gelbard RB; EAST Retained Common Bile Duct Stones Study Group. National Adherence to the ASGE-SAGES Guidelines for Managing ‘ Suspected Choledocholithiasis: an EAST Multicenter Study. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2021 Nov 22. doi: 10.1097/ TA.0000000000003466. Epub ahead of print.

PMID: 34813581

Doug Paulsen, PhD Faculty, Pathology and Anatomy

• Histology and Cell Biology: Examination and

Board Review, Sixth Edition: 9781264269921: Medicine & Health Science Books. This is the sixth edition of a textbook originally developed as a workbook for early students of the original School of Medicine at Morehouse College.

Rakale Quarles, PhD Faculty, Community Health and Preventive Medicine

• Named Associate Director of the Prevention Research Center, 2021

Krystal Mills, PhD Resident, Internal Medicine

• American Gastroenterological Association

(AGA) Institute Investing in the Future: Advancing Diversity in GI Training program • AGA Poster of Distinction for the abstract Fact or Myth: Black Patients Do Not Want to Participate in Clinical, DDW (Digestive Disease Week Conference), 2022

Stephanie Oliver, Staff, Office of Institutional Advancement

• Selected for the 2021-2022 Leadership Clayton Cohort

Michael Rambert, JD General Counsel, Office of General Counsel

• Presentation on Real Estate Transaction in

Health Care-Issues that health care attorneys must be aware of when engaging in complicated real estate transactions, American Health Law Association, April 2021

Brian Rivers, PhD Faculty, Cancer Health Equity & Community Health and Preventive Medicine

• The Cancer Health Equity Institute has been

awarded a grant through the ACS Diversity in Cancer Research (DICR) program. Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) along with three HBCU medical schools, including Charles Drew School, Howard University, and Meharry Medical College, were selected by ACS for the new DICRIDG program

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Primarily Caring

Winter/Spring 2022

Rick Roberts, Staff, Neurobiology & Neuroscience Institute

• Selected to serve on the Research Administration Certification Council

Brittany D. Taylor, PhD Staff, Community Health and Preventive Medicine

• Appointed as a co-chair for the National

Community Engagement Group for the RE COVER Initiative by the National Institutes of Health; also jointly appointed to the Steering Committee for the RECOVER Initiative Luis Villacorta, Faculty, Physiology

• Chair, Career Development Awards Program, Basic Sciences Committee, American Heart Association

WELCOME

N AT I O N A L M E D I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

Annual Convention and Scientific Assembly J U LY 3 0 – A U G U S T 3 , 2 0 2 2 V I SIT US AT BOOT H #503

Congratulations to Dr. Montgomery Rice on your Lifetime Achievement Award

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Nonprofit Org US Postage

PAID

Atlanta, GA Permit #3416

Morehouse School of Medicine 720 Westview Drive SW Atlanta, GA 30310 www.msm.edu

Dispelling the myth of absent Black fathers, Page 24

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