Title
Diversity at MD Anderson
Files
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Identifier
BrewerC_03_20190620_Clip05
Publication Date
6-20-2019
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Transcript
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
I have no doubt and I—you didn’t sneak this by me. You did this fancy footwork about how there was a big story with the institutional diversity program, and I get that I’m sure that’s a very complicated discussion. But I wonder if you could comment because we, I mean, haven’t talked about the issue of promoting diversity within MD Anderson and your commitment to that, so—and you’re looking at the clock because—(laughs).
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
No, no, no, no, no, not that. The clock is not an issue for—I’m sorry.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
No, no, no, I just wanted—no. And so maybe you’re feeling like that we hadn’t given that short trip, but we can stay a little bit later than 4:30, too, if you want. What was that piece? You weren’t just moving into an outreach department; you’re moving into a diversity department here. So what was that commitment, and what was the institution’s approach and commitment to developing streams of individuals from diverse backgrounds into oncology and into MD Anderson?
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
I think the institutional commitment at the time was very high. First of all, it’s committed to creating its own separate institution department. I believe now it’s integrated with the human resources, but at the time, it was an independent department. And the director—excuse me, the head of the diversity program was—he held the title vice president, and he sat in the executive branch.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
And who was this?
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
Harry [Gibbs?]. He passed away several years ago but he—and he reported directly to the president. So the institution held diversity at a very high level as you can see by having that level of assignment of an exec—of a vice—of an executive vice president for diversity who sat on the executive council for the institution.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
What were some of the problems with diversity that you were seeing in with your various roles to the institution. Being promised with promotion, I mean what were some of the issues that this new attention was intended to address?
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
Well, I think some of the issues that had to do with diversity in the institution was different from my job at the community partnership. Because I wasn’t dealing with the same issues as the institutional diversity—directly as the institutional diversity office was dealing with. My approach was I focused on community partnerships and reaching a lot of the underserved community, if you will, but not necessarily all underserved, and that’s kind of like throwing the baby out with the wash. I dealt with some very challenging students in the community. Some of the ISDs had very big challenges with lack of exposure to the students. Like I said, I would go to a place and say MD Anderson is so near these ISDs but light-years away. Many of these students had never heard of the Texas Medical Center. They had never been to the medical center. They never leave out their own little community. It was those type of challenges that I was facing in creating this partnership and exposure for MD Anderson.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
In some of these communities was there a mistrust even of health care institutions or medical? I mean, I’m thinking of some other conversations I’ve had with folks where there had been difficulties in getting health care to some these communities. There’s not necessarily, oh, my god, the doctor’s coming to help us kind of approach. So that’s why I’m asking that question.
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
I think that it’s very difficult, and I think it’s all of the above. And you go out into communities, stigmas about oncology, about cancer is still there.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
For sure.
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
Like I said light-years away from their community, lack of resources, poor, very poor neighborhoods, lack of money.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
Well, and the whole health disparities issue.
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
All the disparity issues. And when you go out into the partnership, you bring—you—so we were carrying not only exposure about various careers, but we are also teaching about oncology and trying to change the face of oncology as maybe the community was perceiving it to be and—
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
What were some of the attitudes that you were—from the folks that you were talking with both the students and maybe the administrators and teachers in the schools? What were you up against?
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
I think the attitude was thank you for coming, thank you for caring enough to talk to my students. We would talk to some of the—no one had come to our before. They always want to talk to the high-academic-level students, or no one thought about this level of students to be exposed. We would talk to them at their level. Maybe you can’t be a doctor, maybe you can’t be a nurse, maybe you can’t be a physical therapist, a pharmacist or maybe you can’t be an administrator, but maybe you can be a police officer, maybe you can be a housekeeper, maybe you can be a dietary person, they all work in the hospitals.
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.
Well, you went through that process yourself. I mean I’m remembering our conversations in the first session where it took people saying to you, “Wow, you’re smart. You could do x, y, and z.” Suddenly, you think in a new way.
C.C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS
Right, and that’s what we took to the community and the partnerships. As we grew the program, we started identifying all of these issues, and we had developed strategies on how we’re going to approach these issues, and we had developed programs to meet the particular need of that particular group. So one week, I might be speaking with the first, the second, and third graders at some school in Galena Park, fifth and sixth graders, and next week is the middle school kids in Fort Bend ISD, next week is the health care studies program in Cypress-Fairbanks, then the next week, we have the graduate students for the summer. We got the predoctoral program for students, so all these different pieces we are managing and exposing all levels, so we don’t forget the least of our society.
Recommended Citation
Brewer, Cecil C. RN, BSN, MS and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Diversity at MD Anderson" (2019). Race, Gender, & Work @ The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Triumphs of Houston’s Leading Hospital. 52.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_racegenderwork/52
