“The universe placed you in a spot to take care of people who needed you,” said keynote speaker Beverly Coleman-Miller, M.D., at the 9th Annual Salute to Excellence in Health Care Awards Luncheon held Saturday by the St. Louis American Foundation in Downtown St. Louis.
Coleman-Miller, president of the BCM Group out of Washington, D.C., was speaking of the Foundation’s 2009 honorees whom she described as “warriors” because “they had to fight a system to get where they are.”
Pediatrician Homer E. Nash Jr., M.D., and operating room nurse and educator Dorothy “Dotty” Thornton, RN, received the 2009 Lifetime Achiever awards.
Eight other health professionals were recognized for their exemplary contributions to their profession and the community.
Coleman-Miller encouraged awardees and other health care practitioners and policy makers in the audience to “get their color back.”
“Color,” in this sense, had nothing to do with race.
Coleman-Miller used an analogy about tropical fishes that are taken out of their native environments to live in aquariums for businesses – only to eventually lose their color. Interestingly, when the fishes were returned to the merchant at their point of origin (for losing their color), Coleman-Miller said, their color came back.
“Getting your color back,” then, is getting back your creativity. In the current economic crisis, she said, creativity is particularly needed to access the funding necessary – and available – to deliver public health care.
“If you ever had a good, creative thought in your mind, there is money out there,” she said. “If you let this go, your legacy will be lost in this point of time at your smartest and most alert moment.”
Coleman-Miller also delivered sharp comments about a medical condition that plagues Americans and African Americans in particular: obesity.
“Obesity is a disease. Make them name it,” Coleman-Miller said. “Get the legislators in St. Louis to call obesity a disease. Then they can get treatment for it.”
Coleman-Miller reminded the audience that obesity is one condition that aggravates all the others. However, she said today’s environment makes it difficult for doctors to discuss weight issues with their patients for fear of getting sued.
When speaking about other chronic conditions that beset the African-American community, such as hypertension and asthma, Coleman-Miller suggested adding transcendental mediation to help bring down the blood pressure of African-American men.
“Transcendental meditation – no other – can drop it down by hundreds,” she said, though she urged patients to keep taking their current blood pressure medications. “Add that to the mix, and see what it can do,” she said of TM.
Coleman-Miller asked all in attendance to make the extra effort to become “health navigators” for others, whether they are family members, friends, co-workers, frat brothers or sorority sisters.
Patient health navigation is a concept developed by Dr. Harold Freeman of the Harold P. Freeman Health Institute in New York in 1990 to help “remove barriers to timely cancer screening, treatment and supportive care.”
“I think we should have this for every disease,” Coleman-Miller said. “Pick five people in your community and assign yourself to be their navigator.”
The 2009 Excellence in Health Care Awardees are Victoria V. Anwuri, project manager for the Program for the Elimination of Cancer Disparities at the Siteman Cancer Center; Kilinyaa Cothran, pharmacy manager at Walgreen’s; Cory Elliott, executive director of facility and support services for the North Operating Group of SSM Health Care; Dr. J. Langston Hoffman, who practices internal medicine at BJC Medical Group; Dr. LaToya Smith Wilson, a dentist at Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers; Dr. Brett Taylor, a surgeon at the Orthopedic Center of St. Louis; Kendral Smith, principal scientist at Pfizer; and Tonya McClelland, director of professional services at the North Operating Group for SSM HealthCare.
Hopewell Center earned the award as the Health Care Advocacy Organization of the Year. Hopewell provides behavioral health services to children and adults in North St. Louis.
