SPEAKIN’ OUT NEWS
“While we celebrate our history, we’re equally focused on our future.”
With those words, Dr. Karen Frith, dean of the University of Alabama in Huntsville College of Nursing, opened the second annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Breakfast, setting the tone for a morning centered on service, equity, and action.
The event, titled “Shaping the Healthcare Community of the Future,” was held on Wednesday at UAH and featured keynote speaker Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, along with a panel discussion that included Dr. Leon Lewis of Huntsville Hospital.
The breakfast explored Dr. King’s leadership principles while highlighting individuals and institutions working to build healthier and more equitable communities.
Frith emphasized the role of higher education in advancing community-based health care, announcing that UAH’s Neighborhood Nursing initiative will launch in two weeks. The model brings health care, education, and policy engagement directly into underserved communities.
“We’re going where people live, work, play, and pray,” Frith said. “The vision is to build a sustainable program that other schools across Alabama can replicate.”
Flowers drew on her roots in Lowndes County to underscore the urgent need for access to health care in rural Alabama. She recounted returning home with a medical team and discovering raw sewage, hookworm, and other parasitic diseases once believed eradicated.
“When we connected the sanitary conditions to health issues, people listened,” Flowers said, noting that COVID revealed how quickly local problems can become national crises.
During the panel discussion, Flowers stressed that prevention begins with access.
“The reason I’m 67 years old is because of access to health care,” she said.
Lewis, an OB-GYN at Huntsville Hospital, echoed that message, calling community health workers “the pipeline to health care” and urging proactive approaches to wellness.
Despite federal health care cuts, Flowers said collaboration remains essential, pointing to NASA’s waste-recycling research as a potential model for addressing wastewater challenges in rural communities.
When asked for final advice, Flowers offered one word: “Vote.”
Lewis followed with another: “Organize.”