“While we celebrate our history, we’re equally focused on our future.”

With those words, Dr. Karen Frith, dean of the UAH College of Nursing, opened the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Breakfast.

The second annual event, “Shaping the Healthcare Community of the Future,” was Wednesday at UAH and featured keynote speaker Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and a panel discussion with Flowers and Dr. Leon Lewis of Huntsville Hospital.

The breakfast helped to explore King’s leadership and service principles and highlight those in the community working to build a healthier, more equitable tomorrow.

Emphasizing the importance of education’s involvement in community healthcare, Frith said UAH’s Neighborhood Nursing will start in two weeks. The community-driven model brings care, education and policy insight directly to the people who need it most.

“We’re going where people live, work, play and pray,” she said. “The vision is to build a sustainable program that other schools across Alabama can replicate and learn how to be compassionate and loving and advocate effectively.”

Flowers, “just a country girl from Lowndes County,” reached back into her background as she stressed the importance of healthcare in rural Alabama and America.

It was a return to her home county – between Selma and Montgomery – with a medical team that opened her eyes and shocked her.

“There was raw sewage flowing down a hill and there were cases of hookworm,” Flowers said. “I thought that had been eradicated.”

She said they discovered there were other tropical parasites, likening the area to the poor villages of Brazil.

Before the visit, doctors had been unable to help treat people there because there was “something in the community that doctors aren’t prepared to look for.”

“When we connected the sanitary conditions to health issues, people listened,” she said. “One of the things COVID taught us is what happens over there can happen over here.

“The next outbreak may not necessarily begin in China. It could originate in Lowndes County or Tanner.”

In the panel discussion with Lewis, Flowers said the key to prevention is to have a strong healthcare system and everyone has to have access to healthcare.

“The reason I’m 67 years old is because of the access to healthcare,” she said.

Lewis, an OB-GYN physician at Huntsville Hospital, is a Fellow with the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology. He also served as chair of the Huntsville Hospital, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and was chairperson of Quality-of-Life Health Services, Department of OB-GYN.

He echoed Flowers’ comments on access and cited community health workers as “the pipeline to health care” and stressed the importance of proactive action to keeping healthy.

Despite cuts to healthcare by federal agencies and saying there’s no “magic bullet yet” to deal with healthcare issues, Flowers insisted that federal help and communication are key.

“The people are making decisions (about community needs) but have never been through the communities,” she said. “Having a working relationship is vital.”

She gave NASA’s waste recycling program on the space station as an example of federal help in solving a problem.

“We’re hoping to work with NASA to come away with ways to treat wastewater to help communities,” Flowers said.

To close out the discussion, Flowers and Lewis were asked their final words.

“Vote,” said Flowers.

“Organize,” Lewis said.