“10 Wellness Warriors on the Frontlines of Black Lives Matter”

These women are using their platforms to stand up to racial inequality in the health and wellness space.

As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to prevail nationwide, countless voices of change are stepping up to help guide the movement and send a message about racial inequality and injustice. In the health and wellness space, black women are at the forefront, using their expertise to explain how racism and race-related issues impact the physical, mental, and emotional health of women of color—as well as highlighting the bias that exists in the wellness industry today. From medical doctors to chefs to therapists, these 10 influential black women are using their platforms to educate and inform, and to remind the world that black women are a major part of health and wellness. 

CHRISSY KING: (@iamchrissyking) Fitness coach and motivational speaker Chrissy King is standing up to racial injustice and speaking out about the Black Lives Matter Movement. On June 2, King shared an Instagram post promoting a webinar she's hosting for health and fitness professionals that will focus on actively fighting racism in the wellness space. Her class will examine white supremacy, racism, and bias, as well as accountability. Learn more about the dates of her course and how to sign up on her website and Instagram page.

SOPHIA ROE: (Sophie_Roe) Sophia Roe has used her position as a prominent chef and wellness advocate to make the wellness world more inclusive and accepting. She founded Pillow Talk Sessions, a conversation series that provides an open, safe space to talk about food and health. Throughout the Black Lives Matter Movement, she's continued to speak out about these issues and discuss her experiences with racism in the wellness community. On June 1, she shared a powerful image of herself at a Black Lives Matter March, including a caption to explain that influential black women in the wellness space. "I’ve had so many white people ask me, 'Is it hard being one of the few black women in the wellness industry?' To which I say, 'EXCUSE ME?! BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE INVENTED WELLNESS!'" she wrote. "Who do you think grows, and sources all of your tea, herbs, tinctures, tonics, and broths for your 'wellness routine'? What cultures do you think started these rituals and remedies?"

T. MORGAN DIXON: (morgantreks) T. Morgan Dixon is the founder of GirlTrek, a public health and self-care organization for Black women. As a leader in the wellness community, she's been sharing information and posting in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement on both her personal account and GirlTrek’s Instagram account. "We must continue to pour into each other. Support each other. Love each other," she wrote in a recent Instagram caption. "Because, after all, we are all we got."

MAYA FELLER: (mayafellerrd) Maya Feller, MS, RD, CDN, a registered dietitian and New York City-based author, is speaking out about racial injustice and educating others as to how they can actively fight racism. In a recent Instagram post, Feller provided her followers with a handful of resources—including books, websites, and charities—that all advocate change. She also spoke about how the health care system needs to step up and change the way they treat black patients. "Healthcare providers need better training in anti-bias and anti-racism to deliver patient centered care," wrote Feller. "There are several cultural equity tools that can be used for provider self-reflection and in turn help providers equitably serve a multi-cultural patient community."

TABITHA BROWN: (iamtabithabrown) Actress Tabitha Brown, known for her vegan foodie Instagram account, has been committed to giving a voice to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Over the past few days, Brown has shared a handful of posts informing the non-black community of ways they can truly follow through with their commitment to racial equality. "Knowledge is power, and self-reflection can change the world," she wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday. "Love you all! Let’s come together and make a real difference in the world!"

DR. JOY HARDEN BRADFORD: (hellodrjoy) Licensed psychologist Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is the founder and host of Therapy for Black Girls, an organization that provides mental-health resources to black women. Thanks to her expertise and influence, she's helped black women find therapy resources throughout this time, and she's used her position to highlight racial injustice. Dozens of resources to help people cope with the current climate and learn more about racism are available on the Therapy for Black Girls website.

JOIA CREAR-PERRY, MD: (doccrearperry) Joia Crear-Perry, MD, is an ob-gyn and founder of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, an organization dedicated to black maternal and infant health. On May 29, Dr. Crear-Perry participated in a Zoom call with other doctors and health care workers, where they discussed racial health inequalities. She shared a screenshot of it on Instagram. "The policies and values of White Supremacy ideology that place Black people in harms way is why we have Racial Health Inequities," she wrote in her caption. "Y’all had 500 years to prove the theory of a White Supremacy. Let’s spend the next 500 working together for global justice and freedom. Healthcare plays a critical role in ending the belief in a hierarchy of human value based upon skin color."

NAJ AUSTIN: (najaustin) As the founder of Ethel’s Club, Naj Austin has been promoting wellness for people of color for years. The social and wellness club is focused on providing creatives of color with resources for mental, physical, and emotional health. Over the past week, the organization has been especially vocal about making sure that people of color get the support they need during this time. Austin also regularly promotes black-owned businesses, and she recently created Ethel's Club's parent company, Somewhere Good.

TAI IBITOYE: (taitalksnutrition) United Kingdom-based dietitian Tai Ibitoye is using her expertise to send a message about racism in the nutrition space. Ibitoye, a member of the British Dietetic Association (BDA), has spent the past six years educating men and women of all different backgrounds, ages, and races on how to eat healthier to prevent chronic illness. On June 3, Ibitoye shared a series of slides on Instagram that included ways to take action against prejudice in the dietetics industry. "I am glad to see certain organizations finding ways to raise awareness & support Black individuals even though they shouldn’t have waited for more lives to be lost to elicit change," she wrote in her caption. "However, I am grateful and hoping that this is a positive step to the right direction."

NIKIA PHOENIX: Atlanta-based writer and model Nikia Phoenix created Black Girl Beautiful, a blog celebrating black women's beauty. In the past week, she's taken to Instagram to support other women of color in the Black Lives Matter Movement. She's also raised her voice about the brands taking advantage of the movement and how that impacts the black community. In one Instagram post, she explained that she's seen plenty of brands publicly supporting Black Lives Matter, but their intentions felt inauthentic. "Think about this for a minute. If you have never seen any of these brands, companies, or influencers speak up about diversity or racial injustice before, do you really think they’re being authentic now," she wrote in her caption. "Also, why would any of them mute or 'blackout' when they could be the allies lending their platforms to Black voices. To these people, your intentions are not truly coming from a loving place and are not aligned with the people you claim you’re helping. Check yourselves."

BY: Christina Oehler, Health Magazine, June 04, 2020

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images - Art: Alex Sandoval

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“Woman Crush Wednesday: Dr. May Edward Chinn"

Dr. May Edward Chinn made significant contributions to medicine in both cancer diagnosis and as the ONLY woman doctor in Harlem in the 1920’s.

EARLY LIFE:

May Chinn (1896-1980) was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her father, William Lafayette Chinn, was a light-skinned slave who escaped from the Virginia Chinn Plantation when he was only 11. (The Chinn family of Virginia was from Scotland; this was the Americanized version of their name which was either deCheyne or Chein). He made his way to Massachusetts where he found work as a stable hand.


May’s mother, Lula Ann Evans, was born on the Chickahominy Indian Reservation near Norfolk, Virginia. She was of Native American and African American descent. She, too, moved to Massachusetts and met and married William.


William had trouble staying employed, partly because he drank. He decided work would be easier to find if he, Lula Ann, and their young daughter moved to New York City. Lula Ann quickly found a job as a housekeeper and cook.
Lula Ann was determined to provide May with a good education. She saved enough money to send her young daughter to Bordentown Manual Training and Industrial School, a boarding school for black children in New Jersey. However, May developed osteomyelitis (a bone infection) and had to return to New York to be treated. She then joined her mother for her recovery. Lula Ann was then employed at the Charles Tiffany Estate in Irvington, New York.

 

LIFE WITH THE TIFFANY’S:

The Tiffany family welcomed May as a member of their family. They included May in the Tiffany children’s schooling. She took music lessons just as they did, and she attended concerts and cultural events with the family.

When patriarch Charles Tiffany died, the estate was sold. Lula Ann and May moved back to the city and rented an apartment where William joined them.

Lula Ann continued to keep a watchful eye on May’s opportunities to learn. She knew white schools received better resources, so she often uprooted the family to move to a school district where May was likely to get the best education. May also continued studying piano.

In 11^th grade, May dropped out of school and took a job tying ribbons on calendars in a factory. Her mother must have been devastated that she left school.

 

SECOND CHANCE FOR EDUCATION:

When applications were due at Columbia University Teacher’s College, a friend encouraged May to apply. Even without a high school diploma, May was accepted and entered the university in 1917 as a music major.

Paul Robeson, an aspiring opera singer at the time, was among those who admired May’s gifted piano playing. One day his accompanist did not arrive on time, and he asked May to accompany him. After that, she often played for him at his concerts in New York City.

One of the music professors at Columbia took issue with May’s race, which lessened her pleasure in some of the music classes.  In her unpublished autobiography, she wrote: “Because I was of African descent, [he said] that unless I could afford to go to Europe for final ‘polishing’ in my music, I would probably end up singing in a cabaret in America.” This was not the career May had in mind.

Fortunately, May had a well-rounded schedule of classes. In a science class, she wrote a paper about sewage disposal that caught the eye of the professor. The woman encouraged May to change her major.  May heeded the professor’s advice and decided science—eventually medicine—might offer her a brighter future.

 

MEDICAL SCHOOL:

In 1921, she graduated from college and was accepted at Bellevue Medical School. She was the FIRST African American, male or female, ever admitted! In 1926, she was hired as an intern at Harlem Hospital. This, too, was notable, because at the time Harlem Hospital primarily served white people! They had NO black doctors!

Because black doctors were not given visiting privileges at any New York area hospital, a few doctors grouped together to establish the Edgecombe Sanitarium in Harlem where they sometimes saw patients. Dr. May Chinn became their junior member. This provided her with an apartment where she and her parents lived, but it gave her the responsibility of all night calls. It was an exhausting time.

While the Sanitarium answered some needs, the doctors also found it necessary to make house calls. Sometimes they needed to perform surgery in a patient’s home. May learned to carry a small lamp from her office with her. Performing surgery on a dining table or a bed was difficult; if the lighting was poor it was all but impossible.

Because medical care was not readily accessible to the black population, Dr. Chinn saw many patients with advanced stages of cancer. She determined to try to change their prognosis.

 

HOSPITAL BENEFITS:

Since African American doctors were denied hospital visiting privileges, this not only harmed their ability to serve their patients, but it cut off their access to more education. Hospitals often sponsored seminars for doctors, and the atmosphere around a hospital also permitted informal consultations with colleagues. Without a hospital connection, May Chinn and other non-white doctors lacked these opportunities.

Chinn was determined to learn, so when one of her patients needed to be seen by a specialist, Chinn went to medical appointments with them as the family doctor. On one of these visits to a hospital clinic, she ran into a professor who remembered her. He offered to teach her how to do biopsies. This broadened her opportunity to help her patients, and she soon began performing biopsies for other black doctors, so their patients, too, could benefit.

In 1940, Dr. Chinn was finally granted admitting privileges at Harlem Hospital after Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered hospitals to integrate. The Harlem Riots in 1935 spurred political pressure for the city to do so.

 

LEARNING ABOUT CANCER:

She became convinced that there must be ways to diagnose cancer earlier and possibly slow or cure it. In 1933, she entered Columbia University’s School of Public Health where she earned a Master of Science degree. Her studies there connected her to medical researcher and doctor George Papanicolaou. Papanicolau was developing cytological methods for the study of cancer, and May Chinn was among the doctors who contributed to his studies. (Papanicolaou established the parameters for the “Pap Smear,” a diagnostic tool that has improved the cancer prognosis for millions of women of all backgrounds.)

 

DR. MAY CHINN’S RESEARCH:

In her work, Dr. Chinn pursued two paths to improve the health of her patients. Based on her exposure to Dr. Papanicolaou, she studied what could be learned from exfoliative cytology (cells that are shed from the body).

Dr. Chinn also valued personal health profiles and documented the backgrounds of her patients to better understand factors that might indicate a tendency for cancer. She also pioneered ways to conduct physical exams differently. Even if patients were asymptomatic for cancer, Dr. Chinn always promoted cancer screening methods as part of regular medical care.

Dr. Chinn’s work caught the attention of the science board at Rockefeller University. However, after she was offered a fellowship by the University, it was quickly withdrawn when the administrators learned she was African American and not Chinese, as they had supposed.

 

DR. MAY CHINN’S LATER LIFE:

Dr. Chinn became a legend in Harlem, and did not close her private practice until she was 81. Even then she still volunteered at health clinics in Harlem.

Toward the end of her career, she received special awards from several schools. She accepted an Honorary Doctor of Science degree at Columbia University for her contributions to medicine. She was also recognized as a distinguished alumnus by Columbia Teachers College. The citation on her award from Columbia reads: “a brave warrior in the fight against sickness, poverty and injustice.” And New York University granted her a Doctor of Science degree for “long life service” for her pioneering work in early cancer detection and her dedicated service to her patients in Harlem.

 

OTHER CAUSES AND PURSUITS:

To Dr. Chinn, civil rights causes and greater justice in the medical world were important. Before 1920, she campaigned for women’s suffrage; later, she worked for civil rights. She was one of the founders of Susan Smith McKinney Steward Medical Society, which aided black women in medical school. In 1977, she expanded her influence by joining the Phelps-Stokes Fund, an educational foundation for medical students from Africa to come to the U.S. for medical school.

She was also an active member of Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority founded in 1913 to support educational excellence among African American women.

She died in 1980, but she left an unpublished autobiography, offering this advice: “Become involved with the problems of your Nation, your State, your City, and especially your immediate neighborhood. Help those with problems—help them to take the next step UPWARDS.”

Source: America Comes Alive! www.americacomesalive.com

Kate Kelly

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