A Conversation on Mentors, Culture and Community
Dr. Gwendolyne Jack remembers meeting Dr. Erica Phillips about seven years ago, not long after Dr. Jack joined NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center as an endocrinologist. She also had a master’s degree in public health and wanted to continue her work partnering with community-based organizations and engaging with the community.
“Someone said to me, you have to talk to Dr. Erica Phillips,” remembers Dr. Jack. “I think our first introduction was at a community engagement event.”
“I saw Dr. Jack’s passion, and I was more than happy to help her grow,” says Dr. Phillips, who has spent more than two decades as an internist and health services researcher at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and has dedicated her career to helping address the health care needs of community members.
The two physicians now talk several times a month, and Dr. Jack recently took over a faculty development program Dr. Phillips launched five years ago. To mark Black History Month, they sat down together for a conversation about mentors, carrying on a legacy, and their commitment to helping the next generation.
On mentorship…
Dr. Phillips: The most important thing for me about mentorship is learning how to get out of the way of your mentees and allow them to lead. The biggest goal is to be able to see people grow into an expertise, and you’re then able to turn the platform completely over to them. And the mentors that I look to, or the mentor that I try to be, is not someone who is boxed in. Sometimes, ironically, it’s about advising people away from things that may be placing them in a box that will be hard to get out of.
Dr. Jack: It is helpful to have mentors in different spaces. I’ve had wonderful mentors from different walks of life in research, clinical medicine, community engagement, outside of academia, and all provide different perspectives. So when we think about mentors now, I think it is actually much more expansive, and also much more malleable.
On the best advice they’ve received…
Dr. Phillips: One of my dearest mentors, Dr. Susana Morales, says these really simple words: ‘You are a goddess.’ It really is about positive energy. Those few words resonate, because without that positive energy, everything is more difficult.
Dr. Jack: I have these grand visions and dreams, and Dr. Phillips and Dr. Morales told me to ‘dream big, but start small’. There is so much work to be done, and I feel like I want to do everything at one time, which is not really realistic. That is what I am learning.
On being native New Yorkers…
Dr. Phillips: My parents immigrated from the Caribbean and raised me in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and I just love the city. Now I’m doing work in my backyard, but it’s not the only place. In lectures to students, I always joke, ‘I’m probably in two or three boroughs a day because of the work that I do in the community.’ I love working outside the hospital.
Dr. Jack: My experience growing up in Washington Heights and the Bronx are part of the reason I chose an endocrinology fellowship and public health — hypertension and diabetes are quite prevalent, as are housing instability and food insecurity. Even though I am not practicing in Washington Heights or the Bronx, I am still seeing patients who remind me of my community, and my community engagement initiatives extend beyond the walls of my clinical practice and into the Bronx. In that sense, I feel like it is a full circle moment, because I’m having an impact on the same people who inspired me to pursue medicine to begin with.
On family history…
Dr. Jack: My father is an OB-GYN, and I thought I would become an OB-GYN, but in medical school, I had so many powerful patient encounters in internal medicine. I also have a family member with diabetes. Because I had a personal connection, I decided to focus my clinical work on diabetes and weight management. Both of my parents are Nigerian. For me, there’s an intersection of being Nigerian and understanding how culture plays a role in health care. People have different backgrounds, and that perspective has helped influence the conversations I have now with patients.
Dr. Phillips: Definitely, I agree. My cultural background plays into everything that I do — why I love my work, how it informs my research and the programming that I develop.
On reaching the next generation…
Dr. Jack: An overarching goal is addressing food insecurity in perhaps more creative and innovative ways. In collaboration with the NewYork-Presbyterian Division of Community and Population Health, I am launching a screening initiative which identifies people experiencing food insecurity and connects them with meal delivery systems and additional resources. The endocrine fellows are an integral part of the process. I also think community gardens are such a great resource. I was recently selected for a United Hospital Fund fellowship, where I am working with a community-based organization in the Bronx to develop a curriculum that teaches students about the nutrients in the foods they are growing and how that can reduce the risk of cardiometabolic disease.
Dr. Phillips: One of the programs I’m developing is a cancer science curriculum that will be delivered in 10 New York City public schools over the next several years. Our four focus areas are Central Brooklyn, Northern Manhattan, South Bronx, and Western Queens. One high school in Brooklyn is painting a mural that is thematically tied to cancer prevention. They presented a draft to me last week, and then we had a conversation about it. Absolutely an amazing bunch of students.
link
