{"id":143183,"date":"2026-03-31T08:34:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=143183"},"modified":"2026-04-01T13:27:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:27:23","slug":"fifth-annual-rebecca-lee-crumpler-symposium-focuses-on-global-health","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2026\/fifth-annual-rebecca-lee-crumpler-symposium-focuses-on-global-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifth Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium Focuses on Global Health"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium panel participants (l-r): Sheila Chapman, MD; Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MA, David Henderson, MD, and Mardia Stone, MD\u201979, MPH.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRebecca Lee Crumpler<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Fifth Annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium Focuses on Global Health \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Speakers highlight the passion to heal others. <\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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March 31, 2026<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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Delivering the keynote address at the fifth annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium<\/a>, Mardia Stone, MD\u201979, MPH, praised the pioneering graduate of the New England Female Medical College, who in 1864 was the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca Lee Crumpler was a fearless trailblazer, confident in her pursuit of becoming a physician at a time when she was being told that she was not worthy of the profession she instinctively knew she was born for.<\/p>Mardia Stone, MD’79, MPH<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRebecca Lee Crumpler was a fearless trailblazer, confident in her pursuit of becoming a physician at a time when she was being told that she was not worthy of the profession she instinctively knew she was born for,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New England Female Medical College merged with Boston University in 1873, and Stone drew some parallels between Crumpler and her own experience as a Black woman graduate of BU\u2019s medical school who also forged a singular path in global healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I think of the legacy of Rebecca Lee Crumpler, I’m reminded of her passion, the gift she shared with women and children, and with her community of women in general, to mitigate the afflictions of the human race,\u201d said Stone, at the March 18 symposium held in-person and online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Keynote speaker Mardia Stone, MD\u201979, MPH, delivers the annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler lecture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stone, who was born in Liberia and spent her youth there, is senior advisor to the Division of Global Psychiatry at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, and senior advisor to the Liberia Center of Excellence in Mental Health and Psychiatry.  Previously, she served in the same capacity at Massachusetts General Hospital\u2019s Chester M. Pierce, MD, Division of Global Psychiatry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her introduction at the symposium, Sheila Chapman<\/a>, MD, clinical associate professor of medicine\/GIM, cited Stone\u2019s extensive national and international experience in executive level management, policy and program development, analysis and evaluation. In Liberia, Stone chaired Ellen Johnson Sirleaf\u2019s Presidential Transition Team on Health and Social Welfare. She served as senior technical advisor and chief of staff to the deputy minister of health\/chief medical officer as a Yale University-Clinton Foundation Senior Fellow in International Healthcare Management, and was instrumental in developing Liberia\u2019s first national health policy and national mental health policy, said Chapman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe’s the real deal and I’ve said this many times in many settings, she\u2019s absolutely the most effective public health physician I’ve ever encountered,\u201d said Crumpler symposium panelist David Henderson<\/a>, MD, professor and chair of psychiatry at the school, and veteran of global public health and mental health initiatives. He is co-director of the Charles M. Pierce Global Psychiatry Division at MGH and worked alongside Stone in Liberia to write the country\u2019s first national mental health policy and established the psychiatry residency training program at the University of Liberia\u2019s medical school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone went to Liberia from her home in the U.S. in 2005 to help rebuild a healthcare system shattered by a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands. After returning to the U.S. in 2013, she was immediately called back to Liberia in 2014 to battle the Ebola outbreak that was sweeping across West Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crumpler worked for the medical division of the United States Bureau of Refugees, also known as the Freedman’s Bureau, an agency which was established by Congress in 1865, during the reconstruction, to provide essential services for emancipated slaves and impoverished Southern white residents.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Freedmen’s Bureau was responsible for assisting more than four million slaves in their transition to slavery, from slavery to freedom, and citizenship,\u201d said Stone. Crumpler persevered despite a prevailing sentiment that thought women were too sensitive and too delicate to handle the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone was as determined as Crumpler to make life better and head off a humanitarian crisis in her native country. \u201cI felt a sense of duty, a sense of responsibility,\u201d she said in a prior article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, not much was known about Ebola, except that it was nearly always fatal if untreated and had a 50-60% mortality rate with treatment. Healthcare workers were dying; government officials and foreigners were fleeing the country. A law made it a crime to hide Ebola patients and there was rampant fear and distrust of the government and outsiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Stone was often working at an executive level, she also went to remote villages to assess their response capabilities, traveling with a security detail on unpaved, rutted, often flooded roads, where the villagers were suspicious of the disease and of strangers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberia\u2019s healthcare system was still recovering from the civil war and collapsed after Ebola struck.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a situation that Crumpler panelist Nahid Bhadelia<\/a>, MD, MA, also experienced when she decided to go to Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can say without any doubt that it changed the trajectory of my career, but also the trajectory of myself as a human being. I lost 60% of the patients I cared for; not because Ebola is a hard disease to treat, but because there were 100 or more patients and only five or six healthcare workers,\u201d said Bhadelia, an associate professor of medicine at the school and the founding director of BU\u2019s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. She served as senior policy advisor for global COVID-19 response for the Biden White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bhadelia said they lost scores of healthcare workers, EMS personnel, nurses and laboratory workers to the disease. \u201cThe last physician at Kenema General Hospital died under my care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone drew a direct line from Crumpler to the women physicians of today, adhering to that same passion to heal the afflicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRebecca Lee Crumpler was a phenomenal woman who, despite incredible odds, relentlessly pursued her dream of becoming a physician. At a time when a civil war was in full effect in this country, she was undoubtedly subjected to intense racial prejudices, sexism and insults about her intellectual capabilities. Yet she never wavered,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

View the event recording here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delivering the keynote address at the fifth annual Rebecca Lee Crumpler Symposium, Mardia Stone, MD\u201979, MPH, praised the pioneering graduate of the New England Female Medical College, who in 1864 was the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was a fearless trailblazer, confident in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":143193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"Rebecca Lee Crumpler","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[456,534],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[376,455,442],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[390],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143183"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143248,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143183\/revisions\/143248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=143183"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=143183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}