Black Nurses in Public Health Today
Above: An African American nurse visits an adolescent and checks his blood pressure in Chicago, IL
School Nursing
Phyllis Pelt began working as a school nurse because she wanted to empower young people and families to make healthier decisions. She began working in Bellwood IL in the 1980’s, a community of Black and Latinx families, where she also lived. Pelt used her connections to the community. For example, she invited parents and grandparents to come learn about the sexual health curriculum that students would be engaging with, in order to create collaboration between educators and families in ensuring young people’s health.
Like the Black nurses who were described as troublemakers in the 1930’s, Pelt has been unapologetic in her advocacy for the communities she serves, especially schoolchildren. When she pushed to remove vending machines with unhealthy snacks from the schools because students were getting sick, she faced pushback from the principal who simply saw the vending machines as a moneymaker for the district. Pelt convinced the principal to remove the machines on a trial basis, and they discovered that, without vending machines, students’ attendance improved dramatically, which also earned the school funding from the district.
Pelt often had to overcome systemic racism that undermined her authority to do her work. In Bellwood, she created nametags for herself and the white clerks who worked for her, because parents always assumed that she was not the school nurse due to her race. Later, as the first Black nurse working in Oak Park, IL, where she often interacted with wealthy, white parents, she learned to post her diploma on the wall, along with a photo of her in a white nursing uniform.
Yet, like the many Black public health nurses before her, Pelt has often provided critical care to people who did not otherwise have consistent healthcare access. At one time, she urged a parent to take their child to the doctor to examine what turned out to be a cancerous lesion. Another time, she noticed that many students from the same class were suffering from breathing issues. She investigated and discovered black mold growing on a wall, which she then reported to the district, forcing them to renovate the classroom.
In 1998, Pelt helped create a virtual school nursing certification program through the University of Illinois at Chicago, one of the first programs of its kind, geared towards working nurses who might not otherwise be able to get specialized training, helping them to become leaders for public health in their school districts.
Nursing In Community Health Clinics
Mary Maryland, a participant in our Black Nurses in Chicago oral history project, completed a PhD before beginning work as a nurse practitioner.
Among the places she worked was a Mile Square Clinic, part of a network of federally funded clinics run by the University of Illinois health system. The clinics were founded in 1967 as part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty to provide care to residents of Chicago’s Westside, who had no healthcare access within a square mile of their neighborhood.
Maryland currently works as a nurse practitioner with mostly low-income senior citizens. She described how when she works with Black patients who are at an unhealthy weight, she is careful not to shame them. Instead, she gives them attainable goals in a supportive manner. She builds authentic relationships with her patients and their families, providing them with the same treatment as she would her own family members. She sees this as key to her success:
“My proudest moment…is when I connect to patients and they get why I'm asking them to do something that they really could live without. And they're going to do it or they've done it. That's where the sphere of influence in this job doesn't get better than that. When you get to impact a person's health and quality of life over their lifetime, it doesn't get better than that. And I get to do that every single day.”
Another oral history contributor, Pamela Pearson, also noted the importance of creating genuine connections with her patients. Pearson currently works at a Mile Square Clinic as a nurse practitioner and certified nurse-midwife (in addition to serving at the Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program at the University of Illinois in Chicago). She reflected about her mostly Black patients that:
“I just always made them not feel little, felt heard, that what they said mattered. That sometimes they would say, like, "You touch me. Some of the providers, they'll stand there and do whatever and they don't touch me." [I would tell them] You matter. You're important. What you have to say is important. Getting good treatment is important.”
Like many Black nurses before her, Pearson sees public health work as concentrating on both individuals and systemic issues. She is currently focused on the high rates of sickness and death for Black people who give birth. She received a grant to run a test program in which Black people who are pregnant will give birth with a Black midwife and will receive home visits from a doula for a year after giving birth. The goal, Pearson explained, is to try something new because “the model of care in place isn’t working.”
Despite her professional success, Pearson continues to face challenges as Black nurse. She recalled times when she was working as a nurse-midwife in the hospital with a white student, and patients assumed that the student was the midwife.
She continues to see how healthcare inequities impact low-income people of color, such as when patients miss important healthcare appointments because they could not find childcare or transportation.
Black Public Health Nurses & the COVID-19 Pandemic
The skills of Black public health nurses became more important than ever with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (Learn more about Black Nurses in Chicago during COVID here).
Pearson noted the level of distrust she saw when she went into Black communities to run COVID vaccine clinics. She stated that healthcare institutions need to build trust with communities, to show that they care and are willing to hear Black people’s concerns.
Karelle Webb, another participant in our oral history project, serves as the Director of Infection Control and Clinical Education at a network of community health centers. She discussed how challenging it was during the early months of the pandemic to witness the “sheer amount of illness and death in communities of color…that are all the result of systemic racism and structural barriers to care.” She also reflected on her identity as a Black woman in public health, such as when she presented about COVID vaccines to a group of people experiencing homelessness. She noted that “I don't think I realized how meaningful it probably was that I was presenting this information, particularly the clinical part, in a way that folks can understand.”
She noted that, as a Black nurse in the public health field, she has unique strengths and challenges:
“I'm now understanding…that I'm very gritty…I will research and look into and analyze the problem from multiple aspects and perspectives until I feel I understand it…that value my parents instilled in me, that grit, is the only reason I'm here…. And I'm grateful to my parents for that. It's shaped my entire life. I wouldn't be where I am without it. I say that with a grain of salt because grit can't get you anywhere or everywhere in a system that is not built for you.”
Are you interested in learning more about Black Chicago public health nurses? Check out our oral history page to hear the full story of the nurses highlighted here, as well as others who have improved the lives of Black Chicagoans for generations.