{"id":78324,"date":"2020-01-24T13:20:14","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T18:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=78324"},"modified":"2020-01-24T14:45:18","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T19:45:18","slug":"campus-celebrates-the-legacy-of-mlk-with-thea-james-md","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2020\/01\/24\/campus-celebrates-the-legacy-of-mlk-with-thea-james-md\/","title":{"rendered":"Campus Celebrates the Legacy of MLK with Thea James, MD"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Dr. James speaking at MLK celebration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hiebert Lounge was filled with Medical Campus community\u00a0members celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Thursday, Jan. 23.\u00a0This year the\u00a0annual event was hosted by BUSM\u00a0Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion\u00a0John I. Polk, MD, and featured guest speaker\u00a0Thea\u00a0James, MD, Associate\u00a0Professor of Emergency Medicine and BMC\u2019s Vice President of Mission and Associate Chief Medical\u00a0Officer.<\/p>\n

Dr. Polk welcomed attendees and briefly reflected\u00a0on the life and legacy of Dr. King. He shared his favorite Dr. King quote, \u201cInjustice anywhere is a\u00a0threat to justice everywhere.\u00a0We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment\u00a0of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,\u00a0affects all indirectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

BU\u2019s Associate\u00a0Chaplain for\u00a0Episcopal Ministry\u00a0Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman opened the\u00a0event with an invocation,\u00a0\u201cHeavenly God of all\u00a0creation, in your divine providence and\u00a0wisdom, you have called us your people,\u00a0to be living witnesses to your truth, love and justice in the world \u2026 You give\u00a0us the grace and strength to be\u00a0instruments of your mercy and compassions in\u00a0the world that is often filled with hatred, bigotry and indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The invocation was followed by a performance by the BUMC\u00a0student\u00a0dance troupe Kulture.<\/p>\n

Former BUSM Associate dean of Diversity & Inclusion\u00a0Dr. Rafael Ortega then introduced Dr. James. \u201cIt is a great honor to welcome guest speaker Thea\u00a0James.\u00a0Thea\u2019s\u00a0passion for public health both domestically and internationally is simply\u00a0extraordinary.\u201d He added that her experiences and accomplishments were\u00a0too many\u00a0to summarize. \u201cLet me end by saying that because of her expertise Thea has been\u00a0deployed after 9\/11 to New York City, to New Orleans after\u00a0Hurricane Katrina, to\u00a0Iran after the 2003 earthquake and to Haiti after the earthquake of 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greeted with warm applause, Dr. James said, \u201cIt\u2019s indeed a privilege to share this time with you today to honor\u00a0the\u00a0legacy of the great Dr. King whose impact on our country has been profound.\u201d<\/p>\n

She began by discussing her upbringing in the Washington, D.C.,\u00a0area when it was more than 70\u00a0percent\u00a0African American. \u201cI grew up seeing a majority\u00a0population that was African\u00a0American and African American\u2019s who were thriving,\u201d adding that her parents\u00a0never discussed race. \u201cIn\u00a0retrospect I\u2019ve tried to\u00a0sort of unpack that a little bit and I think it was\u00a0because they didn\u2019t want me to be entertaining these notions of limitations and\u00a0glass ceilings and things like\u00a0that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. James projected some family photos onto the screen, including\u00a0one of her great grandmother who grew up during a time of slavery and lived to\u00a0be 108.<\/p>\n

Dr. James\u2019 father served as her mentor. \u00a0\u201cHe would never allow me to judge people,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we encountered a cashier in\u00a0a fast food place who was not\u00a0exactly rude, but maybe not overly pleasant, and I\u00a0commented on that while we walked away from the counter, he would stop me\u00a0right there and say \u2018you\u00a0have no right to say that; you don\u2019t know that person\u2019s\u00a0story.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She shared how her father\u2019s wisdom still affects her work in the\u00a0ER. \u201cI always felt that I needed the whole story and I also needed to know what\u00a0it\u00a0would take for this\u00a0to\u00a0never\u00a0happen again,\u201d said\u00a0Dr. James adding,\u00a0\u201cthe answer to that question was always in the whole story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elaborating, she discussed how health cannot be prioritized for people\u00a0making tough decisions about how to manage life with limited resources.\u00a0\u201cPerpetual cycles of ER visits, hospital admissions, poor health outcomes and\u00a0high costs persist because these are just downstream consequences of root\u00a0causes upstream like insecurities in income, educational attainment and housing,\u201d\u00a0said Dr. James. She noted how discouraging it is to repeatedly treat\u00a0people \u201conly\u00a0to discharge them back to what you know is causing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. James explained\u00a0how this connects to BMC\u2019s mission to decrease costs and\u00a0improve outcomes by focusing on social determinants\u00a0of health. \u201cWe are working\u00a0upstream targeting root causes to identify opportunities for economic mobility,\u00a0self sufficiency and independence, and the ability\u00a0to thrive for our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted that\u00a0this task cannot be accomplished by hospitals alone and partnerships are\u00a0necessary to pool or share resources and assets. She explained\u00a0that with the\u00a0creative opportunities comes the mindfulness not to recreate structural\u00a0barriers, \u201cMany of these systems are old, restrictive, and they create structural barriers to us thriving as a safety net health-care system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. James\u00a0concluded by challenging doctors to ask their patients how they can address what\u00a0matters most so that they can thrive. \u201cI think that\u00a0question of \u2018what\u00a0would it take?\u2019 and what would it take for this to never happen again is an\u00a0invaluable question that we should be asking our patients and\u00a0asking each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To\u00a0view photos from the event, visit our Facebook album<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the medical campus community gathered in the Hiebert Lounge to hear this year\u2019s guest speaker, Dr. Thea James.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=78324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78344,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78324\/revisions\/78344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}