Research and Advocacy
– Janice Phillips“We’ve got enough descriptive work.
What else can be done, from a system perspective or a structural perspective?…
That was the missing piece. It was the policy piece.”
Health inequalities are systemic problems requiring systemic solutions meaning that nurses cannot change these realities simply by changing how they care for patients or how they teach there students or colleagues. Many of our oral history participants have also become researchers and advocates, in the hopes of creating changes that can impact entire medical systems or government policy.
Deborah Bump worked with the University of Chicago Doula Project in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, in which she supervised doulas working with mostly Black and some Latina pregnant women living on Chicago’s Southside. The doulas supported mothers about six or seven months into their pregnancy and provide them with education and support until they gave birth. Bump and the doulas would then visit the mothers three months after they gave birth to try to understand how the doula’s work had impacted the mother-child relationship. Pamela Pearson, the Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program at the University of Illinois in Chicago, is currently piloting a similar program, in which Black pregnant people give birth attended by a Black midwife, and receive home visits from a doula for a year after giving birth. The goal, Pearson explains, is to test an entirely new model of care that other health systems might use, which could improve the maternal health crisis for Black mothers.
Janice Phillips conducted research for her PhD to try to understand why low- and middle-income Black women are statistically more likely to avoid breast cancer screenings. Medical literature at the time claimed that Black women were simply poor and uneducated. Phillips was not ready to accept this. She dug deeper and found that Black women, even when they were educated and could afford care, were very fearful about getting a breast cancer diagnosis because they tended to believe that they were unlikely to survive, even with treatment. Her research was so significant that she has since traveled the world lecturing on the issue, even working for the American Cancer Society and the National Institute of Health.
As Black women continued dying from cancer at high rates, Phillips felt that there had to be more she could do, beyond just describing the problem. Armed with data, experience, and a passion for health equity, Phillips headed to Washington D.C. In 2010, she was accepted to the very competitive Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowship, and she worked in the office of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV for a year on issues like prescription drug abuse and the Affordable Care Act. In June 2023, Dr. Phillips was appointed by Governor Pritzker to lead the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) as its new Assistant Director. Dr. Phillips will “focus on the elimination of health disparities and inequities through the establishment of new and strengthening of existing collaborations between IDPH and external community partners across the state.”[1]
Dr. Barbara Norman worked as the Deputy Commissioner of Health for the City of Chicago during the administration of Harold Washington (1983-1987), where she focused on public health initiatives to support Chicagoans throughout the city. Reflecting on her life’s work and on the many health inequalities that still exist, Dr. Norman stated:
“So, yes, have I made a difference? I believe I have. Am I done making a difference? No. Do I enjoy doing it? Yes. Do I believe in other challenges? Always. When you challenge one and get one challenge corrected, the ramification create another challenge. And that's part of our obligation, our responsibility, and recruiting others to share what we have… You know how they do the relay races? What do they do? They pass it on.”
Learn more about Black nurses’ role in the Future of Care here.
[1] https://dph.illinois.gov/resource-center/news/2023/june/illinois-department-of-public-health-names-healthy-equity-champi.html