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In This Issue:
If the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be determined to stop the genocide in Darfur.
That was the message Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, MD, delivered to BWH and Partners last Friday during “A Celebration of the Legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
“Our job, joining together, marching in the legacy of King, is to establish community there,” said White-Hammond, a pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center, one of Boston’s leading clergy members, an international humanitarian and a member of the BWH Board of Trustees.
Next week, she makes her ninth trip to Sudan, where the group she co-founded, My Sister’s Keeper, is helping women rebuild their communities. My Sister’s Keeper already has purchased two grinding mills to help Sudanese women prepare meals quickly and more easily. In three weeks, the group begins building an eight-classroom school with a cafeteria.
White-Hammond is optimistic about the future of Sudan. “I am so firmly persuaded that we are going to stop this genocide,” she said, calling individuals, groups and countries worldwide to act on behalf of the Sudanese.
“The legacy of Dr. King still exists,” said Lisa Ponton, JD, vice president of HR. “We have an obligation to finish what he started.”
Here in Boston, the black, Latino and other minority communities still face obstacles and prejudices. “But it’s the disparities in health care that—quite literally—add injury and illness to insult,” said BWH President Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA.
To eliminate disparities, BWH, among other efforts, is analyzing and publishing quality measures on patient satisfaction, length of stay and surgery statistics by race and ethnicity.
“Next month, we will begin gathering information from patients on their race, ethnicity, first-language preferences and other socio-economic indicators and reporting this data to the state and city health departments,” Gottlieb said. “It’s through these and other efforts that we strive to improve health care for everyone.”
The celebration was followed by a reception hosted by the BWH Association of Multicultural Members of Partners (AMMP), featuring a tribute to Mrs. Coretta Scott King.