Message from our CEO, Loretta V. Bush... | |
American Heart Month & More
As American Heart Month draws to a close, I remember the day that our staff, wearing red for women, had a few minutes of fun keeping red balloons up in the air. It made for an enjoyable social media post, but it did a good job of symbolizing our commitment to the “Wear Red” campaign. While it offered a few moments of levity and exercise, it was symbolic in that we’re all about keeping the movement for heart health going. As we increase awareness, behavior change, and better health programs, heart disease, particularly deaths, are declining. Despite the good news, heart disease is still the leading cause of death for American women, especially African American women.
This summer, we will launch a heart health ambassador program at Popoff Family Health Center. Patients will be recruited for a 12-week program four times a year. They will be encouraged to monitor and record their blood pressure and maintain a heart-healthy diet. Heart Health Ambassadors, trained lifestyle coaches from our community, will work with the patients to achieve progress. This is just one of the ways we’re bringing heart health into the community.
Finally, I was pleased to interview Dr. Alyssa Motzel, one of our pediatrics residents, for this month’s “In Good Health” video program. Dr. Motzel, who spent six weeks in Kenya providing medical care and education last summer, represents the heart of Authority Health. Her enthusiasm for the holistic well-being of people is remarkable. Not only are we, at Authority Health, concerned about caring for populations near our health center, but we want to do our part to help heal the world. We’re very proud of our medical residents.
In good health,
Loretta V. Bush, MSHA
President and CEO, Authority Health
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American Heart Month /
National Wear Red Day
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AUTHORITY HEALTH staff members participated in National Wear Red Day, a designated time to raise awareness around the fact that cardio vascular disease is the No. 1 killer of women. We want to help make sure that as many people as possible know the signs of heart attack and heart failure. We also want to help people and especially women become more aware of ways to keep their heart healthy and prevent heart disease. We wanted to start by getting our own heart rates up by moving our bodies! We had a blast doing it! | |
Reading, Writing, Math… and Health | |
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HEALTHY STUDENTS learn better. Conversely, unhealthy students struggle to learn. Keeping kids healthy results in improved academic performance, through improved mental acuity, increased immunization rates, and reduced absenteeism. The State of Michigan, which has promoted development of school-based health centers, has designed February “School-Based Health Care Awareness Month.”
In a proclamation designating this special observance, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer noted that there are over 300 school-based and school-linked health centers and programs in the state offering primary, preventive, early intervention, and mental health service for children in all grade levels in urban, rural, and suburban schools.
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‘Food as Medicine’ Hits Mainstream; but Still Needs to Hit Main Street | |
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FOOD HEALS. It comforts. It sustains. But good food is not found where many people who need it the most live.
At a recent healthy food preparation demonstration at our Ruby Cole Community Kitchen, Charles Jackson, Jr., an MSU Extension nutrition instructor, gave a simple but thoughtful explanation of why fresh food “from the soil” is better than processed food. Fresh food is prepared by people who know you and love you. Processed food is prepared by people who don’t know you or love you.
Poet Crystal Wilkinson, in her book Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, offers a lyrical perspective: “I eat for taste. I eat to remember. Food is a conduit to the past. I am thinking of healing. I am thinking of this notion of eating what the body craves come spring, a communal memory housed in the cells. Healing.”
In this land of plenty, children need to be fed in school, not just at lunch, but at breakfast. And not just during the school year. There is hunger in American in a culture that also is plagued with obesity. The disease of overconsumption is also a disease of malnutrition. And too many folks move from food deserts to food swamps, unable to find something good to eat at an affordable price.
Preparing fresh food not only provides nutrition, but also can offer a setting for conversation around health and well-being. Amanda Dawnrich, as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow at Authority Health, demonstrated that women — returning citizens — could find common ground through demonstrations of healthy cooking at Heartline in Detroit.
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Strengthening the Ties Between Primary Care and Public Health | |
Our primary care physicians suit up during the early days of the pandemic: Dr. Ernie Yoder (2nd from right) with residents preparing to conduct COVID testing at the Detroit Salvation Army shelter. Dr. Yoder has retired as director of Medical Director and Designated Institutional Officer of our medical residency. | |
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PANDEMICS, like wars and other catastrophic experiences, offer lessons that, when realized and learned, can improve the human condition. One of the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is the importance of the primary care provider in collaborating with public health officials to mitigate the effects of the disease outbreak. Primary care practices, such as Authority Health’s Popoff Family Health Center, are embedded in neighborhoods and connected to community through individual patients and community stakeholders. They assume additional risk to provide care, screenings, vaccines, and other community engagement and education. And during the lockdown and varying degrees of isolation that followed, telehealth capabilities came of their own in short-distance urban settings.
Michigan writers, in an article published in winter The Millbank Quarterly, argue that fostering greater collaboration between public health and primary care through the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, is a sensible way to advance community health. “Primary care emerged as central to public health’s pandemic mitigation strategies,” the authors contend. “Under very difficult circumstances, primary care physicians did an exemplary job in treating COVID-19 patients and participating in vaccination campaigns.” This brought to light the core value of primary care, especially as practiced among populations most vulnerable to the pandemic. “A key lesson from COVID-19 is that expanding the scope of primary care to include population health better aligns medical care and public health to improve health outcomes.”
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Strengthening the Connection Between FARM and COMMUNITY, URBAN and RURAL
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CREDIT GROUNDWORK Center for Resilient Communities in Traverse City for fostering the vision and advocacy to create a healthier environment based in the preservation and distribution of locally grown food. Authority Health and the MOTION Coalition supported its “10 Cents a Meal” program, which began as a way of incentivizing school systems to purchase Michigan produce. Schools receive financial support from the state to buy locally sourced produce: a win-win for child nutrition and the farm economy. In urban Detroit, where small-scale growers are struggling to achieve sustainability, this offered an additional market for their goods.
The nearly 30-year legacy of Groundwork, featured in a book entitled, Shared Abundance, inspired the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to create a “Farm to Family” program. Gov. Whitmer has proposed $4 million in the fiscal 2025-26 budget to fund this initiative which will “support regenerative farming, agriculture supply chains, and promote Michigan food products in the home through a cooperative, which will generate direct economic impacts,” according to Tim Boring, MDARD Director.
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| Addressing the Racism and Sexism that Persists in Medical Training and Health Care |  | |
IT'S DISTRESSING to learn from practicing physicians that racism and sexism continues to create a toxic work environment for professionals. A recent LinkedIn post involving the career choice of Uche Blackstock brought this festering problem to the fore. Dr. Blackstock, an emergency physician resigned her academic post to establish a consulting agency, Advancing Health Equity, focused on racial equity in the workforce and improved health care and community health promotion for people of color. Despite decades of progress in cultivating health professionals of color and promoting pipeline programs to help students prepare for rigorous health professional careers, the problems of racism and sexism persist.
Dr. Blackstock’s consulting is focused on training more Black physicians, but she says “We need physicians who are not Black to be able to adequately and competently care for Black people as well.”
Authority Health, which promotes an overall institutional commitment to health equity, has refined its curriculum in antiracism and social justice for its medical residents. Coupled with our extracurricular programs in population health and trauma informed care, our residency training responding to the needs identified by Dr. Blackstock and others.
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Out In The (Global) Community | |
Pediatric Resident Carries the Authority Health Teaching Health Center (THC) Mission Abroad | Above: Dr. Alyssa Motzel picture caring for newborn baby. Below: Motzel with health care professionals. | |
WHEN DR. ALYSSA Motzel was looking for a pediatric residency program, she wanted an experience in which she would treat all children. Through her training at Authority Health in Detroit, “I’m seeing the world of medicine, not just a pocket of medicine.” Literally.
Earlier in 2023, Dr. Motzel, together with recently-graduated Authority Health resident Dr. Sarah Harris-Kober and residents from Vanderbilt and Georgetown universities, completed a six-week clinical rotation in Mutomo, Kenya, through the Catholic Medical Mission Board. While medical care is a constant aspect of the experience, Dr. Motzel and her colleagues were there to teach and create a sustainable value for Kenyan clinicians. She provided three lectures per week, taught operating room procedures, provided laboratory training, and worked in the orthopedic, HIV, and tuberculosis clinics. She also participated in cancer support groups and went on field service trips throughout the country with Red Cross and UNICEF, helping provide vaccines and support for a measles outbreak.
Dr. Motzel experienced the “challenges and possibilities of caring for people with medical problems complicated by the social determinants of health.” Her challenge was similar to that working with children living in high-poverty areas of Detroit, except exponentially every social determinant was complex, from food and housing insecurity to transportation. These exacerbated the medical problems she faced.
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Reflections on Providing Clinical Care and Training in Mutomo, Kenya
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As we think about Black History Month a quote from the American novelist, essayist, and civil rights activist, James Baldwin comes to mind...
"History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history."
The line serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of knowing all of our collective history and understanding its contemporary relevancy because, as Baldwin seems to suggest, it is through our history that we come to better understand ourselves.
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Authority Health's 2022 Community Report | |
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Authority Health is a public body corporate serving the needs of the health care safety net. It sponsors the nation’s second-largest graduate medical education GME teaching health center and community-based wellness centers.
In addition, Authority Health facilitates access to health care services for uninsured and underinsured residents by providing Medicaid outreach and eligibility determination and navigation services.
Authority Health | 313.871.3751 | media@authorityhealth.org | www.authorityhealth.org
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