‘We just can’t give up’

Washington University physician Dr. Will Ross opened a seminar on public health and community engagement with a warning from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice of health is the most shocking and most inhumane.”

Ross displayed the quote — delivered by King at a 1966 press conference for the Medical Committee for Human Rights — at the start of his presentation last week, just before Black History Month ended.

He reminded the audience that King’s expanding advocacy for economic justice and health care helped lead the FBI under longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover to label him “the most dangerous man in America” in internal memos after the 1963 March on Washington.

Ross said he first shared King’s warning with colleagues in 2005 while discussing the civil rights leader’s effort to broaden coalitions advocating for adequate health care for Black Americans.

That mission, Ross said, remains unfinished.

He framed much of the talk around the region’s long history of racial disparities in housing and health care.

“What are we trying to do with diversity?” Ross recalled asking colleagues in 2005.

“Diversity is much more than recruiting students, much more than recruiting faculty,” he said. “If we’re going to bring people in and talk about changing, transforming America, we (must) think about how we’re going to get all these larger groups and address all these myriads of complex problems.”

Ross, associate dean for diversity and Alumni Endowed Professor of Medicine in nephrology at WashU, pointed to the formation of the United Welfare Association in St. Louis in 1915.

Organized by local real estate leaders, the group promoted racial segregation through efforts to restrict Black residents from moving into White neighborhoods. Although racial zoning laws were later declared unconstitutional, housing and health disparities persisted for decades.

Ross also revisited the opening of Homer G. Phillips Hospital in 1937, which replaced the segregated City Hospital No. 2 and served St. Louis’ Black population of more than 70,000 at the time.

Before its closure in 1979, Ross said Homer G. Phillips had become “far superior” to City Hospital No. 1 on Lafayette Avenue.

He also referenced St. Louis Regional Medical Center, which opened on Delmar Boulevard in 1985 and closed in 1997, leaving the city without a public hospital.

Ross displayed a slide of a 1995 commentary he wrote warning that the hospital’s closing would cause unnecessary harm to “the citizens of St. Louis, especially the North Side, both from the standpoint of quality health-care delivery and loss of jobs.”

His larger point was that Black residents have long borne the consequences of uneven access to health care in the region.

Ross also presented recent demographic estimates showing the city’s largest groups as Black (44.9%), White (44.5%), Hispanic or Latino (4.1%), Asian (3.44%) and two or more races (2.54%).

Despite those demographics, health outcomes can vary dramatically by ZIP code. Life expectancy in some inner-city areas of St. Louis is roughly 18 years lower than in nearby suburbs — a gap highlighted in the “For the Sake of All” report on regional health disparities.

Ross said improving those disparities requires a sustained focus on workforce diversity, program development, community engagement and population health.

He also outlined broader steps to improve health outcomes in the region, including speaking “as one voice,” developing a 25-year plan for neighborhood revitalization, creating a “Marshall Plan” for North St. Louis city and county, addressing the wealth gap between White and Black residents through targeted reparations, and investing in public schools, small businesses and efforts to attract more immigrants and Fortune 500 companies.

Ross also addressed growing pressure on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives nationally, saying institutions must continue defending those efforts even when doing so is controversial.

“I hate to say this, but many of my colleagues across the country have abdicated too quickly,” Ross said. “We cannot abdicate our responsibility. As an institution, we (must) step up and support it.

“When you’re under duress, you have to stand and fight. If we take a hit, we have to stand up again. We just can’t give up. There’s just too much at stake.”

Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.