Recognizing Black innovators across medicine, mental health, research and care

At OncoHealth, we embrace diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging within our workplace, as we hire and develop staff, and how we build our products and bring our services to our clients. We make a commitment to grow and develop our practices, so we can continue to best serve the communities who need our help most.

We also recognize the continued work that needs to be done to make health care more equitable, especially within the cancer care industry. While we look forward, let’s reflect back on some of the Black health care professionals who worked tirelessly to move us closer to a more equitable health care landscape.

Jessie Sleet Scales, 1865–1956

“Jessie Sleet Scales [was] a pioneer in culturally sensitive care, and the first Black public health nurse.”1

Jessie Sleet Scales spent her life caring for Black people and working to mitigate the negative social drivers of health that disproportionately impacted them.2 She graduated from the nursing school at Chicago’s Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses (the first Black-owned, integrated hospital in the U.S.) and continued her education at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., built in 1862 to provide care for the city’s growing Black community. Scales did some private duty nursing before heading to New York in hopes of becoming a district nurse, an early term for providers who provide care to people at home. Refused municipal employment because of her race, she was hired by the Charity Organization Society (COS) to care for the city’s Black tuberculosis patients in 1900, making her the nation’s first Black professional public health nurse. The COS quickly expanded her practice to include assisting with childbirth and caring for people with everything from chicken pox to cancer. Later, Scales helped launch Stillman House to provide healthcare and other services to marginalized New Yorkers.3

To learn more about Scales, watch this YouTube video: “Jessie Sleet Scales was a pioneer of public health nursing,” and this historical study from the Association of Black Nursing Faculty journal.

Dr. May Edward Chinn, MD, 1896–1980

“Dr. Chinn was the first African American woman to hold an internship at Harlem Hospital, [and] Dr. Chinn was the first African American woman to graduate from the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.”4

After graduating from the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, Dr. Chinn became the first Black woman to intern at Harlem Hospital, which at the time only treated white patients. Barred from practicing at city hospitals, she opened a private practice to serve the Black community. She noticed a high number of patients presenting with advanced cancer and began doing her own research. She continued her private practice after joining the Strang Clinic, a cancer research institute, where she created innovative strategies for the early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, including Pap smear. She was a member of the Society of Surgical Oncology and received a citation from the American Cancer Society and an honorary doctorate from New York University.

To learn more about Chinn, read a New York Times’ article on her life and career, “A Healing Hand in Harlem” and see her biography page within the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s “Changing the Face of Medicine” Exhibition.

Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, 1917–1983

“Dr. Clark researched child development and racial prejudice in ways that not only benefitted generations of children but changed the field of psychology.”5 ?

The first Black woman to earn a PhD in experimental psychology in 1943, Dr. Clark developed pivotal studies into children's attitudes toward race, beauty and self-identification. The research, sometimes conducted in collaboration with her husband, Kenneth, revealed that children from segregated schools preferred playing with and assigned positive attributes to white dolls over Black dolls. The Clarks established that Black children in America formed a racial identity by age 3, and that prejudice, discrimination and segregation fueled in them a sense of inferiority and self-hatred. Her innovative work advanced the field, and she became a frequent expert witness in many school desegregation cases, including the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision.?Her own experience with segregation and discrimination, including in the psychology community, motivated her civil rights and DEI work. She received the Candace Award for Humanitarianism from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.

To learn more about Clark, see her biography page on the National Women’s History Museum website, and review the American Psychological Association’s overview of Clark and her husband’s, Kenneth Clark, PhD, work together.

Dr. William Clark Jenkins, PhD, MPH, MS, 1945–2019

“His extensive knowledge of African-American history, considerable experience in activism and keen observation of organizational processes made him a highly effective strategic thinker and doer. The more one looks, the more Bill’s fingerprints show up on significant organizational advances in health equity.”6

One of the first black officers in the Public Health Service, Dr. Jenkins uncovered and publicized the injustices of the 40-year-long Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. His advocacy contributed to the study’s end and the creation of federal guidelines for ethical research. He also managed the Participant Health Benefits Program that secured medical care for the survivors.7 Jenkins later directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first community-based funding program for AIDS/HIV and studied the disease’s impact on the Black community. An eminent scholar, Jenkins was an effective activist for addressing health inequities perpetuated by structural racism. In 1991, he co-founded the Society for the Analysis of African-American Public Health Issues, which put racism and health disparities on the national public health agenda. He worked tirelessly to create opportunities for non-white people to study and work in public and minority health, biostatistics and epidemiology, launching programs at universities, particularly historically Black institutions, and professional organizations.

To learn more about Jenkins, see the CDC’s Bill Jenkins Lecture page, and read the tribute from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health upon his passing.

Bebe Moore Campbell, 1950–2006

"We need a national campaign to destigmatize mental illness, especially one targeted toward African Americans...It's not shameful to have a mental illness. Get treatment. Recovery is possible."8

Campbell was a passionate and influential advocate for the mental health needs of BIPOC communities. An author and writer, she chronicled the Black community’s shame and stigma around mental health issues, and barriers to appropriate and affordable care and medication. Campbell co-founded the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Urban Los Angeles, one of the first chapters focusing expressly on the needs of communities of color. She was instrumental in the creation of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, and in 2008, the observance was renamed Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month in recognition of her leadership and impact.

To learn more about Campbell, see her bio page on Mental Health America’s website, and read her memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing up with and without My Dad.

Dr. Paul Godley, MD, PhD, MPP, 1957–2019

“Dr. Godley was a major force in medicine and epidemiology whose work made a significant difference in oncology – specifically prostate cancer – and in reducing health disparities.”9

Dr. Godley was a leading researcher on prostate cancer and racial health disparities. He led The North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project, a multidisciplinary study of tumor-level, individual, and social racial differences in prostate cancer aggressiveness. Godley also led a study of Black North Carolina adults with prostate cancer, high blood pressure, and sexually transmitted diseases to isolate and reverse factors that disproportionately affect Black people. Godley directed the Program on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health Outcomes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which uses multidisciplinary research, education and training, and community partnerships to identify, understand and eliminate racial health disparities. He also served as the UNC School of Medicine’s Vice Dean for Diversity and Inclusion and co-founded The Academic Career Leadership Academy in Medicine program to provide leadership training and career development opportunities to faculty members, with a particular emphasis on those underrepresented in medicine.

To learn more about Godley, see his research contributions outlined within the National Library of Medicine and read the tribute written on The Cancer Letter after his passing.

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References

1.???????American Association of Colleges of Nursing. https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/News/View/ArticleId/24570/News-Watch-2-12-20. Accessed February 2023.

2.???????National Nurses United. Jessie Sleet Scales was a pioneer of public health nursing. https://youtu.be/DQEfSMI4OAM.

3.???????Wikipedia. Jessie Sleet Scales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Sleet_Scales. Accessed February 2023.

4.???????National Library of Medicine. “Changing the face of Medicine” Exhibit. Dr. May Edward Chinn.?https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_61.html. Accessed February 2023.

5.???????Rothberg, Emma. “Mamie Phipps Clark” National Women’s History Museum. 2022. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mamie-phipps-clark. Accessed February 2023.

6.???????UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Gillings School mourns loss of Dr. Bill Jenkins, advocate for minority health and witness against racism.” https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/gillings-school-mourns-loss-of-bill-jenkins-advocate-for-minority-health-and-witness-against-racism. Accessed February 2023.

7.???????CDC. The Syphilis Study at Tuskegee Timeline. https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm. Accessed February 2023.

8.???????National Alliance on Mental Health. “Learn About Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.” https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Bebe-Moore-Campbell-National-Minority-Mental-Health-Awareness-Month/Learn-About-Bebe-Moore-Campbell-National-Minority-Mental-Health-Awareness-Month. Accessed February 2023.

9.???????UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Remembering Dr. Paul Godley, a major force in medicine, epidemiology and health equity.” https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/remembering-dr-paul-godley-a-major-force-in-medicine-epidemiology-and-health-equity/. Accessed February 2023.