Black History Month: Honoring the Past and Looking Towards the Future

Throughout my career I have had the honor of working alongside many inspiring people, including physicians, nurses, community leaders, faith leaders, government officials, business leaders and hospital executives. Whether providing treatment for a person in need in an emergency department, developing policies and programs to expand access to care, or responding to a public health crisis, we’ve been?united in the powerful belief that quality of life and health should not be determined by gender, race, or zip code. This #BlackHistoryMonth, I am incredibly grateful for the people I’ve met along the way, and particularly the sung and unsung Black people who have done so much to make society a more equitable place.??

I think about my grandmother, who was orphaned at age six. She endured more trauma than I will ever know, yet still successfully raised nine children and instilled the values of education, faith and integrity in my family. I think about people like Richard Chenault, who helped build the University of Michigan Transplant program and provided me with great mentorship and my first clinical job in college. I think about Rob Gore, MD my faculty advisor during my emergency medicine residency training at SUNY Downstate/Kings County Hospital Center. Dr. Gore does so much to mentor physicians of color and to help fight violence in his native Brooklyn. I think about Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, the 18th Surgeon General of the United States who I had the honor of working with early in my career as I learned how federal public health programs are implemented. I think about Garlin Gilchrist, the first African American Lieutenant Governor of Michigan who was my fearless partner in assuring the pandemic response was equitable. And I think about the countless people I have had the honor to lead in various ways – the tenacity, grit and expertise of front-line health care and public health workers is tremendous.??

For over a year, I have been incredibly inspired and humbled to be the inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer at CVS Health. As we work to implement a comprehensive, data-driven health equity strategy, we are centering and elevating the voices and needs of those from historically marginalized communities. That is why we recently launched the CVS Health Community Equity Alliance, a coalition that will expand and support the community health worker workforce, address disparities in heart health and mental health, and help integrate and elevate the lived experiences of community members into our health equity strategy. Expanding access to care and centering the community are critically important.??

?As Black History Month comes to an end, we must continue to acknowledge the contributions and successes of Black people, but also acknowledge and work to address the ongoing inequities faced by Black people and other historically marginalized communities. I’m grateful to everyone who has been on this journey with me to create a more equitable and accessible health care system and look forward to what is to come. ?