Anita Jenkins on how to be a community leader

Healthcare leaders are called upon to become community leaders during times of public health crisis. They must fulfill this duty in an equitable way that speaks to the health needs of everyone in their community.

Anita Jenkins, CEO at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., stopped by the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast" to discuss how to be a leader in the community.

Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast here.

Question: As you are currently on this journey as CEO at Howard University Hospital, what are you most focused on and excited about currently? What excites you the most?

Anita Jenkins: We were able to see healthcare disparity in a very different way. We are this historically, if you want to say, Black hospital, and I recall so distinctly one of our physicians came into my office door and said Black people are dying from COVID-19 more. We knew we had a different fight. Everybody remembers hearing that on the news. Are they dying more because they are Black?

No, they are dying more because of healthcare disparities. If you have got less healthy food, then less healthcare. They have got diabetes more, and then they have got hypertension and they have got heart disease; therefore, COVID-19 impacts them differently. We had to treat more and differently. The fight here was different at Howard University Hospital. I knew we had to work harder, and this post-COVID-19 work, we had to fight harder to get people vaccinated. I was one of the first people in Washington, D.C., to get vaccinated. We were talking to churches and having Zoom calls with groups and citizens in Washington, D.C. I remember being called out, accusing me of deceiving my own people because of the Tuskegee experiments.

We had to course correct very hard, even our own staff. I had meeting after meeting to convince, even staffers, that it's not Tuskegee this time. I feel as though it was very important for us to decrease misinformation and decrease healthcare disparities through COVID-19.

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