George Hill, Ph.D., left, Levi Watkins Jr., M.D., and David Satcher, M.D., at this week’s Levi Watkins Jr. Lecture on Diversity in Medical Education.
Photo by Neil Brake
Satcher connects civil rights, health care at Watkins Lecture
Harry Jacobson, M.D., left, Levi Watkins Jr., M.D., David Satcher, M.D., and Steven Gabbe, M.D., at this week’s lecture.
Photo by Neil Brake
David Satcher, M.D., former Surgeon General of the United States, was at Vanderbilt's Light Hall on Tuesday, making a connection between health care and civil rights to a full crowd of teachers, administrators, distinguished guests and medical students attending the Fifth Annual Levi Watkins Jr. Lecture on Diversity in Medical Education.
Satcher, also former president of Meharry Medical College and a champion in the fight against disparities in health care, came to Nashville to deliver the speech named in honor of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s first African-American doctor.
He said health is a civil rights issue and demonstrated how there could have been 83,500 fewer deaths in 2000 if African-Americans had equal access to health care.
Satcher's initiative, Healthy People 2010, has goals to increase life expectancy and quality of life while eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities.
Some major barriers mentioned in access to health care are the uninsured, underinsured, underserved, and a population of persons who are oftentimes untrusting due to past events, such as the infamous Tuskegee Study carried out in Macon County, Ala., from 1932 to 1972.
In that, the United States Public Health Service, while studying syphilis and treatment programs for blacks, withheld adequate treatment from a group of poor black men who had the disease as part of this study.
Satcher also has advocated for change in health care policies, saying a major issue is the “big gap” between science and the delivery of services, which he estimated is about a 17-year difference.
“This gap is a civil rights issue because it includes an investment of public and private funds into research,” Satcher said. “We swept the Nobel Prize this year but our health care system does not match the quality of our research.”
Satcher said he sees “tremendous progress” in Vanderbilt's medical school and a “clear commitment to diversity.”
“We started five years ago and have observed such a dramatic change in our School of Medicine,” Dean Steven Gabbe, M.D. said. “It was all there, people wanted to do this.
“And it took a leader like George Hill (Ph.D.) in our Office of Diversity, and school support, and you can see it all came together. This lecture, with Levi Watkins Jr. coming back and speakers like David Satcher, just reaffirms that what we are doing is important.”
Hill, the Levi Watkins Jr. Professor of Medicine, credits Gabbe and Harry Jacobson, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs, for their support in creating an environment that is “warm and sensitive to cultural differences.”
Satcher had an impact on some VUSM students in attendance with his message that called for action at all levels — families and communities, schools, worksites, health care, media and communications.
“What I took away from that is, 'How can I actually bridge that gap?' said fourth-year student Monica Giles. “I don't know what I could do, but you know it exists and I think it is a little extreme.
“I think it is important for us to be more politically active and make more of those changes to really make sure there is civil rights in medicine.”