Uncovering Lost Legacies: A Day Honoring Untold Stories in Health Equity
Whose stories become part of our history? What can we learn from the stories that have been ignored? These are a few of the questions Heather Butts, JD, MPH, MH, encourages her students to explore in her course The Untold Stories in U.S. Health Policy History, taught at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The course explores the stories of healthcare leaders whose legacy is yet to be written, and the impact of their absence from our historical narrative.
This February, the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) partnered with Columbia’s African, Black, and Caribbean Employee Resource Group (ABC ERG) to welcome Dr. Butts in a special event titled “Untold Stories in Health Equity: Lessons from Cancer and Beyond.” Dr. Butts provided an overview of her course in a special lecture highlighting pioneers in healthcare history whose stories were lost or remained untold. Dr. Butts shared different sides to these stories, including the perspective of the family of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line which is still used in research today.
The lecture was followed by a “fireside chat” with Dr. Butts and Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and assistant director at the HICCC, on the importance of collaboration in research as well as the benefit of knowing our complete stories. The event, organized by HICCC Program Manager, Darlyncia Nobrun, MS, culminated in a reception catered by Harlem’s iconic Charles Pan-Fried Chicken.
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