So welcome to the African American member community member May session. Thank you all for being here. I am Mona Artani. I'll be your staff liaison for tonight. If you have any questions throughout the presentation or your session, just feel free to ask. Happy to help as much as I can. Just wanted to go over a few housekeeping notes from the Academy. The views expressed during the session are of those individual presenters and don't necessarily reflect the position of AAP Menar. We are committed to maintaining a respectful, inclusive, and safe environment according to our code of conduct and our anti-harassment policy. All participants are expected to engage professionally and constructively. Hold on. Just here. Let's see if we can do this. The session that you guys will be a part of today will be recorded, and it's going to be available on the online learning portal for the Academy. An email will be sent after the recording has been made and with the link. So then you'll be able to access it. And just to let you know, Dr. Jones, we'll trim the beginning of it. We'll start from the beginning of this session and trim the first 15 minutes when you and I were on. So for your best attendee experience, please mute your microphone if you're not speaking, just in case we don't hear any extra background noise. And you can use the raise your hand feature if you have a question or a thought that you would like to add to. And we can also use the chat feature to type in your question. And this is just a slight note that sometimes time doesn't permit for a Q&A at the end. But if you end early, we can always do that. But folks have been using the chat feature to type in questions as the sessions move along, just in case that's something that you're interested in. So with that, I will stop sharing my screen. And you can go ahead and start sharing yours, Dr. Jones. OK. All right. I think everyone should be able to see my PowerPoint. So good afternoon. Thank you for everyone to come out to our African-American community member may session. So this project that we're doing for our member way is a project of love that we put together where we thought it was important for us as a community to among ourselves, but also allow the greater a community to investigate more about the history of that physiatrist and their impacts on the world of PM&R. So the way that this session will go is that we are going to first talk a little bit about just the history of PM&R as a whole. And as an African-American community and our role here. And then we took an opportunity to highlight several members of the community that we felt grown in the past, present, and our future roles in PM&R. And so you will hear not only from myself, but several other members of our community who are part of this research project. As we talk about these highly important individuals in the field of PM&R. Our history of African Americans in the AAPMNR really reflects our significant contributions that have been made from individuals from the past, but also talks about some of the ongoing challenges that we have as members of this community when we talk about issues related to not only diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has been a big hot topic in the government and in the world today, but also how we incorporate those topics within taking care of our patients, but also taking care of our physicians and bringing up other physicians to be a part of this community as we see its importance in all that we do. So I just like to share this picture. This is a picture from AAPMNR back in 2022. So in order to provide support among our African Americans physiatrists, the AAPMNR went and established these member communities with the African American member community being an important part of this to support our Black and Black Diasporic physiatrists. Our community aims overall to address topics pertinent to our physiatrist members, our patients, as well as fostering a network of professional development and advocacy for the things that we felt were important to us. So as the years have gone, our membership has increased exponentially at times, and we continue to support students all the way down from the undergraduate level up to our senior physician level as they make the decisions to enter the field of medicine and then ultimately into the field of physical medicine rehabilitation. And we appreciate the support of the AAPMNR behind this and the initiatives that we go forth with. So with that being said, I would like to go ahead and move forward as we talk about one of our important members of the AAPMNR community. So I'll invite Sabrina Dunn, one of our students, to do our initial presentation on Dr. Carl Granger. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi everyone, I'm Sabrina. I'll be presenting on Dr. Carl Granger today. This presentation means a lot to me. When I was like a second year, I want to say, I showed up to like a PMNR, the AAPMNR African American community meeting just as like a curious second year med student. And Dr. Merritt told me to look into Dr. Granger, and that was just like the seed that started my interest in him. So today I'll be presenting on him. So this quote, As We Function, So Shall We Live, comes from an essay written by Dr. Carl Granger that was titled Lessons Learned Through Leadership. And this quote just meant a lot to me. I found it really inspirational, really important and passionate and kind of indicative of just like his perspective and how he navigated his career and really carried like the ethos of PMNR to me. So Dr. Granger was born in 1928 in Brooklyn, New York to two generations of black physicians. He followed in his father's footsteps by attending Dartmouth University before attending NYU for medical school. In 1954, he was drafted into the army and subsequently pursued a residency in PMNR at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland slash DC. And Dr. Granger went on to serve at the Letterman Army Hospital where he became an army major. After his military duty, he went on to prioritize a career in academics. He started at Yale University where he worked with New Haven Hospital for seven years before moving on to Tufts University as their department chair of rehabilitation medicine until 1968. In 1977, he moved on to Brown University to become a professor of family and community medicine and their director of Parkinson's Disease Association of Rhode Island. And in 1983, he set roots in Buffalo, New York, where he went on to develop the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation, also known as the UDSMR. He served as an advisor to multiple organizations such as the National Center for Medical Rehab Research, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute of Health. And he was a really prolific author. He authored over 270 publications and he co-authored 10 of the top 100 most cited articles and was the first author for five of them. So he was really significant academic and a really prolific author. Dr. Granger had multiple accolades. He served as the president of the Academy, the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He also served as the president of the American Association of Electromyography and Electrodiagnosis, and also served as the president of the International Federation of PM&R. He received multiple awards, including but not limited to the Frank A. Cresson Award from the Academy of PM&R, the Elizabeth and Sidney Lischt Award for Excellence in Scientific Writing, the Australian Faculty of Rehab Medicine from the Royal Australian College of Physician Fellows, and Distinguished Academia in the Association of Academic Physiatrists and Stockton Kimball Award are just some of them. When Dr. Granger traveled to Buffalo, he worked with the State University of New York at Buffalo to create one of the most renowned tools in the fields of physiatry. In 1984, Dr. Granger was a member of the National Task Force sponsored by the Academy of PM&R and the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine to create a more sensitive index to measure functional independence. The FIM instrument was created and consists of 18 items assessing six areas of function that expands beyond the domains measured in the Analysis Barthel Index, making it a much more comprehensive measure of disability. The FIM went on to become one of the most widely used functionality indices in the United States and in Europe, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services uses the FIM instrument and Medicare payment system for inpatient rehab facilities. Dr. Granger was a pivotal part of the development of the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation with SUNY Buffalo in 1987. The UDSMR is a non-for-profit company that functions to manage the data and information associated with the FIM instrument and the clinicians who use it. It covers demographics, length of rehab, clinical diagnosis are all components stored in the UDSMR. Since 1992, the UDSMR summaries have been included in the American Journal of PM&R. Today, the UDSMR is the largest database for medical rehab in the world. This is just a nice little timeline that highlights some of the things that I talked about with just the year highlighting that these events occurred starting from his birth in 1928 and ending in 2019 when sadly the world lost Dr. Granger. All right, now we'll turn it over and we'll talk about Dr. Lucille Gunning. Hold on, we're going to check for sound and see if we can get this going. It seems like there's an audio mute on your end. I'm checking my end, but everything seems fine here. It seems like his audio isn't connected for some reason because when he unmutes, we still can't hear him. Yeah, maybe you can join on your phone. You can use the same link and join on your phone as well. That might help. What I'll do is I will move forward and let him work on it. Can you hear me now? Oh, there it is. Yes, you can hear me now. All right, sorry about that. I just put some earphones in. I'm not sure what the issue was, but sorry about that. So I hope everyone's doing well today. My name is Chindon Wodebe, and I have the privilege of sharing a little bit about Dr. Lucille Gunning today. All righty, so Ms. Gunning's story starts in New York City. She was born February 21st, 1922 to two Jamaican immigrants. She is the eldest of two children, or she's the eldest of two children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a pharmacist in Jamaica. However, when they immigrated to the U.S., he was only able to work as a pharmacist assistant. She moved back to Jamaica when she was, she moved back to Jamaica when she was one years old, where she lived with her grandmother. And while she was in Jamaica, she often accompanied her aunt, who worked as a midwife on patient visits. This experience was her inspiration to be involved in patient care, but her path took her onto that of a physician. You can go to the next slide. So after completing high school in Jamaica, Ms. Gunning returned to the U.S. to attend NYU. She graduated in 1945 and matriculated into the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she received her medical degree in 1949. She completed her internship at Harlem Hospital Center and served as a chief resident in pediatrics at Harlem Hospital, as well as at Women's Medical College in Pennsylvania Hospital, which is where she completed residency. In 1953, Dr. Gunning became a pediatric cardiology fellow at Yale Grace New Haven Hospital. As you can see this photo of her from her medical school, her time in medical school. So early in her career, she opened a private practice in pediatrics. During this time, she served as a attending physician at various hospitals, pediatric departments, while in private practice as well, and also served as a child health physician for the New York Department of Health. In 1953, her interest shifted focus to that of rehabilitation of children with disabilities. In 1966, she established and led the Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation at Montefiore Hospital. And in 1971, she became the Chief of Pediatric Rehabilitation at Harlem Hospital Center. While here, she served as the Assistant Professor of Clinical Rehabilitative Medicine at Columbia University, and also created a developmental center for children with Down syndrome that worked very closely with the patient's parents to ensure positive outcomes and make sure the parents and mothers were integrated into the care and caretaking decisions of the children. In 1981, Dr. Gunning pursued a new opportunity. She was the Director of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the Children's Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. Here, she incorporated a multidisciplinary model for caring for children with disabilities and served as an Associate Clinical Professor of Rehabilitative Medicine at the Wright State University School of Medicine. During her career, she published numerous articles on child abuse, childhood physical and cognitive disabilities, pediatric rehabilitation, and the development of children with sickle cell anemia, all while advocating for psychiatric support of all these patients. Eventually, she became the Deputy Director of the New York, excuse me, New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. So for her legacy and impact, you can see that she was involved and had her hands in many aspects. She was involved in leadership. She had government positions. She was an academic, conducted research, worked in academic centers, and was also a teacher in the academic spaces as well. Dr. Gunning was a founding member of the Susan Smith McKinney Steward Medical Society in New York City, which was a group of Black women's physicians who mentored minority female medical students. She received the Physician's Recognition Award from AMA and the Charles Dupree Medical Society of Columbia University Honorary Award for her efforts. She was described as a true visionary and a catalyst for progression for the African-American doctors and in rehabilitative medicine for children by the Westchester Black Women's Political Caucus, which she was a member of. She was married to Dr. Carlton Blackwood. He was a chemist and with whom she had four children, Elaine Blackwood, JD, MBA, Alexander Blackwood, MD, PhD, Lydia Blackwood, PhD, and Anne Blackwood, MD. As you can see, her excellence also passed down to children who continue to accomplish great things as well. I see Dr. Gunning as an inspiration and someone that I aspire to be like. She is a leader in medicine and made her a huge impact in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation, especially at a time when doing so was hard for people like her. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Dr. Deborah Grinnell, and I've been a practicing physiatrist for over 30 years. I wanna speak to you today about the art and soul of the practice of medicine. I fear in this fast-paced high-tech information age of human history, the practice of medicine is being desensitized and dehumanized into cookie cutter and quick fixes to standardize what I feel will always remain an art of attending to the care of each unique patient. I believe using our medical art as the expression of our soul's creativity and imagination inspires our enthusiasm, energy, and vitality and prevents the ravages of burnout. We'll now have a presentation about Dr. Deborah Grinnell. Hello, everybody. Can you see me, hear me? Okay, all right. So I'm gonna be presenting to you all on Dr. Grinnell. Also a key reason why I came into the physiatry and my mentor, one of them who I'm so grateful for. So can we get the next slide, please? Okay, so Dr. Grinnell, her beginnings, she actually has wanted to become a doctor since she was three years old when she had pneumonia. And at that young age, she realized that doctors make people feel better and she too wanted to make people feel better and she knew she wanted to be the same. So that was where her motivation for medicine began. She went to Howard University and then later on matriculated to Howard University's College of Medicine where she did graduate from. And then she went to Sinai Johns Hopkins back when they had a combined residency. And back in those times in her residency program, there were two residents accepted for a year. Notably, she was the program's first black female resident. She was the second female that was trained and she was also the second black resident that was in the program. So I think this is very important for us to say and know and pay homage to even in today's age where we are continuing to have firsts. This was something that has been occurring and it's not new. So after she graduated from residency, she returned to Howard where she served as a associate professor. She was at Howard for five years while simultaneously running a part-time private practice. And then due to some changes in insurance and other things, she would then go on to run a full-time private practice at WellSpan and I will get into that very shortly here. A large part of physiatry for Dr. Brunel is she will tell you time and time again how physiatry is the best medical specialty is that she wanted to practice holistic medicine and medicine that really combines all aspects of the human being versus focusing only on one organ system or one set of problems. He really is very passionate about the whole entire person and how that affects not only our disease process but also how we journey throughout life. So next slide. During our interview, I asked her this question, which is, is there any advice you would give to your younger self going through residency? And you can see the quote here. She said, make sure you value yourself in everything you're learning. Don't look to others for validation. This quote rings so true, I think, especially in a field of medicine and in a time where it feels good to be validated. It feels good to get pat on the back. But this quote really speaks to the endless self-sacrificing that she has learned through the field of physiatry and that she still continues to choose through her service to the community, others, and also to her patients. Next slide. So going back a bit to her early career, you can see here, kind of hit on these points earlier. So back in these days when more people were in private practice before it was really becoming such a taboo now, some of the first insurance changes were HMOs and PPOs. And when that started, there was essentially a decrease in referrals. And this was really the start of when you only get to see certain doctors in certain networks versus having access to whichever doctor you wanted to see. So during this, she leaves Howard, starts private practice, and she goes on a job hunt for six months. And her job hunt was very, very, very specific. She had a list of 28 factors that she was looking for in her next job. And eventually, this job hunt is going on, there's no prospects. Eventually, she decreased her spills to three minutes. By the end, she actually ended up going on two interviews at the same place, which was WellSpan. And in her first interview, it was to become the medical director of physiatry spine. And in her second interview, as I talked about previously, super passionate about holistic health and all components that are involved with that, she had the foresight, even at that time, to know that she was gonna be the medical director of this place and she would need a strong team of people around her. So she met with multiple people, including physical therapists, lab technicians, nutrition services, people that were members of the Center for Mind-Body Health, behavioral health, et cetera, et cetera, which all go into the holistic practice. And that will ultimately help shape the care of her practice. So also on that second interview day, her husband was offered a job. So she ended up becoming WellSpan's first hired physiatrist and still to this day is their current medical director. So in her career, next slide, thank you. In her career, as she has developed, she continues to serve as the director of physiatry. She was recently certified in lifestyle medicine. And interestingly, she had been practicing all the elements of lifestyle medicine, even way back when she was in college, when she was in medical school. However, gaining that certification in lifestyle medicine and passing those boards, it really opened a lot of doors to access to additional resources so that she was able to, so that she's able to connect with life-minded people in lifestyle medicine, and also being able to take those ideas and bring them back to her practice and not have to spend time recreating the wheels, especially in certain things such as shared medical appointment. When it comes to her practice and spine care, she really has been drawn to treating back pain because it allows her to specialize in one part of the anatomy, while also allowing her to give focus to patients and also really is a huge gateway into lifestyle medicine with patients. And you can focus on emphasis on healing in that one area, but it also is applied to her entire life and to the life of the patients. So, next slide, please. Outside of medicine, she's involved in a lot of activities. This slide really does not give it justice. One thing that is super cool is she has been a yoga teacher for quite a while. And in terms of her approach and treatment to the disease, she believes in being involved in constant motion. This means not only traveling from place to place, but also dancing. She's super active. She's involved in passage of rights activities in the DC area. She's been the author of three books and counting. And her latest book is actually titled Self-Mothering My Mother's Counsel. If we have time here, I can read an excerpt from that. But overall, just a very active person and enjoys being in many activities. And they all speak to, once again, that focus on holistic medicine and also caring for ourselves and others. And over here, that's her, that's me. Next slide. So, next step. So, as she has been serving as the director of WellSpan for over the last 17 years and coming up on entering retirement, she's looking forward to continuing to develop shared medical appointments at her institution, also working on developing lifestyle medicine elective, developing a shared medical curriculum, and also continuing to be involved in her many activities. And one, which I did not mention earlier, was her practice of African Herbology and so many other things. And she's also a huge mother figure to many people and an active member of her sorority. So, all together, her service to her community, her service to others, and more, just really reinforces her commitment to humanity and also being able to do all that through the physiatry lens. And this is another quote at the top here that I have from our interview together. And I think the question here was, if there was one thing you would tell someone, what would it say? What would it be? And she said, I have the resiliency and tenacity to figure it out. And so, that's what I would like to leave you guys with when you think about Dr. Burnell. Think about always being of service and think about always being tenacious. Thank you. And this is the last quote for our community, which I really think we should probably, I don't know, put this on a website or something. But she said, this was one of the questions, what does a black physiatrist mean to you? And as I've said several times during this presentation, it is the best, talking about physiatry. Lifestyle medicine is a way to facilitate PMR. It is important because of healing. It is not what you think it is. It is important because of healing. It is not one and done. Life and healing are continuous processes. Engaging in physical self and being in tune to the process of rehabilitation. Getting self back and beyond is a process that everyone needs for their entire lifespan. Well, in this way, PMR combines lifestyle medicine, herbal medicine, only as avenues to do the work. We have to do our work. So, all right, thank you guys. Excellent, have to do that work. Oh, good, Kevin, next. Hi, so I will be presenting on Dr. Kevin Means. So, Dr. Kevin Means was born June 14th, 1955, and he grew up in the New Castle, Old Westbury area of Long Island. He told me that's also the same place that Dr. Merritt grew up as well. It's a small working class, African-American neighborhood in Long Island. His father was a postal worker who turned transit worker, and his mother was a clerk in the Nassau County office. He really highlighted during my interview with him, his active participation in the Boy Scouts as a boy. And as a part of the Boy Scouts, he was assigned a mentor that was an X-ray technician at the local hospital. And additionally, as a member of the Boy Scouts, they had these theme groups where individuals were allowed to explore different career fields, and he had been assigned the hospital explorer theme. And by participating in the hospital explorer theme, he was able to get exposed to various fields of medicine. And that was the initial seed kind of that was planted that eventually bloomed into his passion for medicine and eventual pursuit of medicine as a career choice. So he attended SUNY Binghamton as a member of the class of 1978, where he studied biology with the intention on pursuing medicine as a career. And he, like many pre-medical students, was initially discouraged from attending medical school by his pre-medical advisor. However, he took things into his own hands and kind of created his own DIY post-baccalaureate year to enhance his GPA, to take a couple more courses, to enhance his chances of getting into medical school. And during this year, he also worked as a patient care technician at a rehab hospital where he met with his eventual mentor, Dr. George Sanford, a physiatrist that continued to guide him and help him learn about rehab and eventually guide him in pursuing rehab as his career choice. He was subsequently accepted into Howard University School of Medicine as a member of the class of 1982, and subsequently continued to residency at the Rehab Institute of Chicago at Northwestern University from 1982 to 1985. Upon graduation, he joined the University of Arkansas as a founding member of the faculty of the PM&R department. He told me he was juggling a lot of different offers, but was really interested in helping to build something from the ground up and being a pivotal part of developing a curriculum with aspects that he really thought was critical and important for resident education. So he picked up on a lot of the things that he was learning in the course of his residency, so he picked up and moved to Arkansas, initially thinking that he would stay for a couple of years, but then he met his wife and the rest is history. In that role, he served as the residency program director, the medical director, and the chair of the department of PM&R. Additionally, he served as the medical chief of the VA, the medical director of Baptist Health Rehab Institute. And as residency program director in the South, he really, really valued the importance of diversity despite his surroundings. And he reported to me that during his time from 1995 to 2014, when he was actively involved in resident recruitment, he increased the number of minorities in the residency program, such that 25% of the recruited residents were underrepresented minorities. And that was something he was really proud of being able to accomplish in his time. Additionally, in 2002, he won the esteemed Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award, an award that is granted by the ACGME. And he also won the Chancellor's Teaching Award during the 2008, 2009 academic year. Those are just some of his career achievements that were most important to him and he really wanted me to highlight. I wasn't sure if this was a video. Okay. I'm Dr. Kevin Means and I work in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. When my patients finish seeing me, I insist that they understand what's going on with their condition, with their health, with their lives. One of the most fulfilling parts of my job is to see a patient who may start out at a very low level physically because of some kind of devastating injury or impairment. And to see that patient, I think the biggest inspiration for me in my job is making a difference in someone's lives. It's really the reason why I got into it in the first place. It's a challenge sometimes, but when you do it, it's a beautiful thing to see. The reason why I got into it in the first place it's a challenge sometimes, Hi, can you all hear me? Okay, good. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Ruth Imaku, and today I'm honored to share the inspiring story of Dr. Trudy Hall. She's a trailblazing leader whose journey from physiatrist to hospital executive really showcases the power, purpose, and representation. Next slide. So Dr. Trudy Hall currently serves as a vice president, senior vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at Tidal Health, which is a Maryland nonprofit corporation that was established in 1993. What really makes her story especially powerful is how her identity as a physiatrist continues to shape her leadership style at the highest level of healthcare administration. So Dr. Hall began her academic journey at St. John's University, where she graduated in 1987. She earned her M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, now part of Rutgers in 1991, and she completed her residency in PM&R at JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute. She was a practicing physiatrist for over 25 years, where she owned her own practice, a center for rehabilitation from 2008 to 2023. During her time as a practicing physiatrist, she was particularly drawn to brain injury rehab. Next slide, please. So going back to her origin story about how she got into medicine, as a young child, as many of us were, she was really engaged in the sciences, so medicine was a natural choice, but, however, PM&R, her motivation for that was pretty personal. You know, at a point of her life, her father survived eight strokes, and witnessing his road to recovery and the team effort that it took really led her to choose a field that prioritizes the whole person care and interprofessional collaboration. Next slide. So in Dr. Hall's own words, having the background of physiatry has always been about team basis and how we improve care, so she really brings that PM&R mindset into her leadership roles by actively listening, engaging across all disciplines, just learning more about her story and watching some of the interview videos that she's done. I really see how she, like, engages with members across the entire system, so she'll go rounding with the teams, she will engage with, like, janitorial staff as well, just to really understand some of the challenges they're experiencing within their roles, and she really talked about how it makes them feel more comfortable in approaching her if they have challenges. And now going into the next slide where we talk more about her leadership journey, so she's had an impressive range of roles, from founding her own rehabilitation center, as I mentioned earlier, to becoming a CMO at multiple institutions, so in 2023, as I mentioned, she assumed the role of senior VP and CMO at Title Health, but she previously served in leadership roles at the University of Maryland's Capital Region Health and other Maryland health centers where she oversaw major facilities, including a 345-bed COVID care site during the pandemic. And one thing that I think is striking is how she did not leave physiatry behind throughout her leadership roles. She really worked to expand it. Every step that she's taken has been about scaling her impact from individual rehab care to shaping systems that really serve entire communities. Next slide. One thing that I did want to highlight that I thought was really interesting in learning more about her story was her impact on health equity. At Title Health, one of the things that her organization identified within their Maryland community was that there was, like, an increased C-section infection rate among African-American patients, and so what their team did was they really responded with a targeted, culturally sensitive discharge instructions and really providing health care support, so they understood that the population that they were serving essentially had a different language understanding, so they made sure that education that was provided met, like, their educational level and also was culturally sensitive, and it was impressive that within one month infection rates dropped, and so it's just a powerful demonstration that equity should be measurable and made an actual priority. Next slide. So I'll talk just a bit more about her broader impact, and I'll leave with a quote. So she kind of talked about the difference between having a stethoscope and seeing one patient at a time, which I think is incredibly valuable, but the thing in that her role, she can impact thousands. That's really the essence of her journey from healing individuals to transforming communities, and so her story really reminds us that representation matters, that leadership rooted in compassion, collaboration, and a focus on community can truly drive systemic change. Thank you very much for listening. I am going to share my screen to talk about my mentor, Hannah Sanders. Let me get this on slideshow mode. So Hannah and I have been friends since I was in medical school at Howard. And she was an associate professor in physical medicine and rehabilitation, which she started right after her residency. But she had an interesting journey to get there. So her family encouraged her to become a nurse. And from the time she was young, she always wanted to become a doctor. So she was very unhappy and decided, married with a young son, to pursue medical school. And unfortunately, she did not have the support of her spouse in making these changes. And they ended up divorcing. So she trained at the University of California, Irvine. She did her residency from 1978 to 1980 at Irvine. And she was in the class of 1977 for her medical training. Then she got her license to practice in California, which she kept until 2024. She was active in the Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. And she was board certified. And that's when I met her. I was a student at Howard University Hospital. I was in my third year, really looking for a direction. I didn't like the things I thought I would. OBGYN, pediatrics, internal medicine didn't give me the sense of healing that I was looking for. Not just to be someone that was giving medication, but actually helping patients to heal. Luckily at Howard, they had a rotation through one month combined neurology, neurosurgery, and physical medicine and rehabilitation. And that's when I got to see Hannah in action and got to begin learning under her tutelage. Then she was involved with the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Residency Program at Howard. Unfortunately, that program didn't work out. But she was also involved with the National Medical Association and rose to the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Chairperson. One of her mentors was David G. Simons. He, Trevelyn Simons, wrote the book on myofascial pain and dysfunction and the trigger point manual. There's two volumes, and it's still a classic. So she became an associate professor from 1981 to 1986. She helped as I went off to do my training. We kept in touch. And she left as I came to Howard to work in 1986, taking her position, actually. And she went to pursue a private solo practice in Palm Springs until the pandemic. She was practicing. She was chair of PM&R for the National Medical Association from 85 to 1989 and twisted my arm to take over that position. She did some part-time inpatient rehab, electrodiagnosis, and really had hands-on training to do trigger point treatment. And when I was interested, she invited me to her home in Palm Springs. We would hang out at her pool. And this was where her office building was. But she taught me what was taught by her mentors, trigger point injections and spray and stretch techniques. So since that time, I have been involved in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the National Medical Association as well as the Academy and try to inspire membership in my mentees. But she was a wonderful teacher, very inspirational coach. She was very encouraging and sharing. And I don't know what I would have done without her mentorship and leadership. And I just advise everyone to look for mentors and to be mentors because there's always something at your level that you can share with someone else coming up. And when I asked her her mission, she said it was to be an upright person and help people as much as I can. Being a doctor is only one way I can fulfill this mission. And she has taught me loving leadership and personable service and the skills that I use to hopefully promote growth and foster the next generation of physiatrists. And this is me and her back in 1991, I believe, at a National Medical Association meeting. We were obviously going somewhere fancy to party and dance. All right, and for our last presentation, we're doing something a little bit different. We'll be talking about that release of merit. This will be a. Interview that she did that we are, I'm going to set up to play portions of that interview so that you guys have an opportunity to learn more about her and her journey. Into our so hang on for 1 2nd. As I get this set up. Let's see here. Hello. Actually, 1 of my classes got canceled because my professor had a. Get a government meeting that he couldn't cancel, or he couldn't schedule. So he canceled it and then I had my other food site. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, so the African American community on the. All these different special communities. Have lectures and I gave him with the aging. Aging attack or something last week. What a panel discussion that went good. What was the field like when you started out? Well, back in the old days, 1000 years ago. I mean, I looked at my board certificate, it's like 3000 and something that was like, less than 4000 in the whole country. There were fewer than 30 black in the whole country. It was really a different time and a different environment. And because of that. There was a lot of possibilities there were a number of foreign physical medicine. We have specialists that had been sort of imported in. Because the need was there, and it was growing, especially after the polio epidemic. In my training at the VA, I told people to serve how we were 1st, learning. We had this kind of contraption. It was like. Old school, and I mean, we had to actually measure manually the way forms that we had to. And now they have it all in the computer thing that to see, push a couple of buttons. So, the technology has very much involved. Many of us were the 1st people of color in our programs. The 1st or 2nd, I was the 2nd black person that my program at. And so we were constantly sort of making new ground and. Finding out and representing, I also helped to start the resident section of the specialty. It's called the resident physician council at that time, and the whole idea of residents being involved in leadership was also new. I gave 1 of the 1st, I think the 1st resident lecture. Lectures in Seattle was about, which was also. Pretty provocative at the time. I think that was 1 of the 1st lectures on that too. So, residents and medical students being able to come. That was 1 of the things we pushed for with the resident council to have greater inclusivity early on, because people need to know about the field and to prepare themselves well, and to build their skills. And to grow the field, we have over 10,000 physiatrists now. It's really wonderful. Although there's still a great need for us and our services. And there's a lot of sub specialization now. TBI, amputees. Cancer rehab, pediatric rehab. There's all these different areas of pain that people really want to go deeper into sports. Yeah, you mentioned. The, like, professional societies, like, the society, how did that, like. Come about, like, well. The American Academy of physical medicine and rehabilitation. I really should know this history more precisely, but I'm going to. Lead fuzziness I will say that as a specialty originated in the post war. Era, the Rusk Institute in New York, they were pulling together physical therapists and doctors. Looking at the veterans returning and studying. What happened if we got a moving sooner than just putting them in bed rest, which is kind of how. The previous thought pattern was also studying. What we have come to find is post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, but they didn't have the same terminology back then. So, they formed a society to begin to come together to me to share findings to make other doctors interested in this. Across the country, and it used to be that the. And the American Congress of rehab, which was the meeting for the physical and occupational speech therapy, the allied health professionals. We would meet in the same locale for our national meetings at the same time that continued hospitalization. Was really encouraged, but as both groups grew, they separated. And then it came along the American Academy of physical medicine and rehab on the. Which was born out of the desire to more congregate the academic desire. Which is doing more focus with some, we need more research. We need to legitimize what we had observed, but we need to study it and. We subjectify it so Dr. Carl Ranger, who was 1st. I think only black president of the was 1 of my mentors from Buffalo. Brilliant man, and he did a lot of work around looking at how to objectify to find our field. And outcomes research and uniform data sets. And the function of independence measure, you heard me talk about that as we're trying to work on finding ways to. Of the people in the clinic, so he was the architect of all of those things originally and a whole data set analysis. In a way to standardize numerically. People's strength, people's progress, people's functional capacities. Instead of the center for CMS medical services. And so that objectively became the way in which. The programs would be monitored and how they were. Managing patients, I wouldn't get paid achieving goals and things like that. Thank you. You mentioned, like, you're. You had a bunch of mentors because you, like, go into a little more about how. How, like, they impacted you and shaped your career. Oh, that's such a good question. Yeah, I'm so fortunate to have come up at a time when the field was in a very dynamic phase. I was at Baylor with Dr Marty gray voice. It was 1 of the incredible leaders of the field. We really saw vision and growing fields. And encouraged us when we were trying to start the resident section. A lot of the program chairs were discouraging that and. Residents normally weren't allowed to go to the national meeting and he helped to pay for it. He found money to send us because he knew that. Building future leadership would help ensure the sustainability of the specialty as a whole. And we had that vision. Richard Madison was also 1 of my mentors and. He was amazingly involved in Texas politics. Took care of a lot of high level people. I did for him when I was in residency because the loans had gone through. I'm just trying to pay down the interest. So those humans that were running at 19%. So, I work to do his set up his machine and his dictations on the weekends and stuff like that is. But he helped to put together the money and helped with the other work groups to really. Embed that academic interest by getting a national Institute for rehabilitation research. Created at the analysis of health, um, Dr. Finley, um, that's another incredible. Brain trust person was at my university, um, New Jersey medical center. And he had an endowed chair named in his honor. And, um, we actually did a lecture in the 90s at the about the importance of mentorship. And at that time, and I had about 10 or 15 different people that I could list. This is just for, but I also have people like Vivian pen. The National Medical Association, who was an incredible leader. They have a building named after the University of Virginia. She was the 1st head of the National Office of women's health. And what I appreciate about them all was. Their willingness to give freely of their time to give advice, to encourage you to help you to see where maybe we're heading the wrong direction. To not always agree with you to correct you and then it was your choice to decide to listen to them. Or to just be stubborn and then hit yourself against the wall when you could have averted that you just listen to the wisdom of your health sometimes. And also just by example, like, Vivian pen was just such a glamorous. Articulate well, respected, which was a pathologist was her train. She was all about thoroughness. She, she taught us at Howard as well. And she was really. Just a powerful person always still is this beautiful and she started the whole women. The medicine section, and when she was president of the, I helped to set up the resident section of the National Medical Association also. And she went with that with me as well, so I could go on and on, but I don't want to take up all my time. So I'm really lucky and grateful. And it's also Dr. Robert Austin, who was in Houston, who's a pediatrician. And he was the originator of the 1st concept on the medical home. If I did that, we have to wrap around care and deal with the cycle social. Social determinants of health was a pediatrician. And he was a beautiful spirit and he showed me by example that he started collecting kids from his practice. And meeting with them in his home to encourage them. And to cultivate their skills, and those kids went on to become doctors and lawyers and engineers and all this stuff and. There are futures and destinies otherwise might have been quite different. So he inspired me to service. All of them and how I started the multicultural health Institute to also increase the pipeline of future help. We will always encourage that Howard and these other places to give back. As we move forward, so important, that's what we're doing here. Remember this when it's your turn. Yeah. Okay, I was curious about how you mentioned that. Um, there's like, you helped there weren't like, and stuff at 1st and then. Like, all of a sudden, all these new technologies, like, maybe ultrasound, I think he said, got developed and I was wondering how these. Like, how they've changed your the entire field of. Oh, man, just think when I was in medical school, we didn't have MRI scans. We didn't have fax machines. Try to just attempt to manage imagine that we were just getting like, and stuff like a page. So, technology has been incredible as it's evolved over time and we used to have to memorize everything because you didn't have that way to easily visualize things with just. You know, being used with regularity. And MRI, I remember MRI started to become more commonplace. I still never tired of looking at and just being absolutely amazed and fascinated that you can see that's what I always wanted when I wanted to become a doctor. I always wanted to be able to know what was inside your body. What was in your skin? We didn't have these kind of computer visualizations and stuff. And an MRI, let's you see inside of a person. I'll just say, unless you see inside of a person, it's. It's a good question, Henry. Yeah, I was recently on the board of and. There are many challenges that I feel the number 1 being the encroachment by other specialties looking to grow. And the fact that there's so few of us still, and the need is so great. The Gemini study that that came out of something you can read up on. Shrink the physician workforce, because the fear that there'd be an oversupply of physicians. Now, we're scrambling to have enough doctors and we're in a deficit of all specialties and all positions. Across the country, so there's more of a use of physician extenders, nurse practitioners being trained in. To help us to be able to meet the needs and there's other clinicians from other specialties trying to do. What we do, but not understanding that we do have a specialized training and it's not easy to switch over unless we do additional training. In our fields, I think that the reimbursement challenges, it's expensive to rehabilitate people. It's expensive. To deal with very obscure diagnoses, Dr. McDonald is doing an incredible. Miraculous thing at UC Davis with the work on the treatment of muscular dystrophy, but. It's like millions of dollars in treatment, so these things. Make it a little challenging sometimes to navigate and not everybody has access to it, which is a little sad. So with that, I'd like to just summarize a few of the areas of focus that ended up that conversation from Dr. Merritt. So we talked about encouraging students to research the dramatic study on physician workforce trends. But also, she mentioned exploring opportunities for mentorship and involvement in professional societies for our students and then also just for the senior physician members as well. Also, we needed to continue to educate others about the value and complexity of PM&R, other physicians, but then also we're including individuals and government and other health care structures and supporting initiatives to increase diversity inclusion within the field of PM&R itself. And continuing to advocate for resources and recognition of PM&R's role in improving patient outcomes and reducing health care costs. So with that, I would like to thank all the members who contributed to our presentation today. Dr. Deborah Bernal, Dr. Lisa Merritt, Dr. Kamara Coleman, Chawindu Onuwembe, Sabrina Dunn, Ruth Emaku, and Henry Lin for doing our virtual presentation. So thank you all for being with us here on this evening for our member May session. We appreciate definitely the opportunity to tell you more about the history of what we as a community have done in the past and hope to continue to do in the future to expand our role in our presence within the AAPM&R and the field of physiatry as a whole. So with that being said, I think that will bring us to a minute or two before the end of our session. If there are any questions we can take before things end. I'd just like to say this was a great beginning of our archives. I really look forward to us exploring all of the history. We started with a couple handfuls and now it looks like we have expanded and our arms are embracing more and more. So I hope that this is just the beginning of looking back at our history and honoring our elders and paying their legacy forward by doing for others what they've done for us. Thank you all. That was beautiful. So if there are no further questions, then that is our time for the evening. Thank you, Vivante, for bringing this to the membership. And I really appreciate having it as part of the archives for the academy and having other people who weren't unfortunately able to attend to have access to this information. Thank you so much. Thank the academy as well. Thank you. Very welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening.

African American physiatrists

physical medicine and rehabilitation

Functional Independence Measure

pediatric rehabilitation

minority female medical students

inclusive mentorship

health equity

diversity

workforce shortages

patient care

professional development