Overcoming Generations of Unhealthy Lifestyles in Alabama

Celia Lloyd-Turney, M.D., couldn't help noticing the rich and fatty foods filling the tables of her deceased patient's home in Huntsville, Alabama. The patient's children had put together a feast in honor of their mother, who succumbed after decades of suffering from obesity-related diabetes. Unfortunately, Lloyd-Turney also noted, history was repeating itself-nearly all of her patient's children were severely obese and likely to experience the same cycle of illness and premature mortality, as had their mother.

"My interest is not only in the mother but also her children and her grandchildren," Lloyd-Turney comments, "As I look at that family I want to know where has my interest paid off and where has it failed."

A notable success was one of the woman's sons, also Lloyd-Turney's patient. "He got the message and changed his lifestyle and goes to the gym," she says. "He's the only child in that family who is not obese and doesn't have diabetes." The generational change extends to the son's children who are also slim and physically fit. "If we can begin to influence one person we may still make a significant difference on many others," she comments.

It was a moment of quiet satisfaction for Lloyd-Turney, a former NHSC Scholar, who has been educating, as well as treating, medically underserved patients since she arrived in Huntsville, a southern factory city, more than twenty years ago. She believes that prevention and lifestyle changes need to be an increasing focus of her practice as well as for other primary care clinicians. At stake, she suggests, is the sustainability of the medical system with its focus on "patching up" the damage already done. "If we continue at the rate we are going we will not be able to afford to take care of the people with just this one disease diabetes," Lloyd-Turney warns.

Lloyd-Turney traces her desire to help others to her upbringing on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. "My grandmother was very sick but we didn't have any doctors at all to help her," she recalls. That image of unwarranted suffering stayed with Lloyd-Turney when she later moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands to attend high school. "I got exposed to the idea of medicine as a career choice. My grandmother's situation motivated me to go into medicine so I would be able to go back and take care of her and others like her."

Her aunt helped Lloyd-Turney make that dream a reality. She had moved to the United States earlier where her husband graduated from dental school at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The aunt guided Lloyd-Turney to enroll at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in biology. She then went on to Meharry Medical College in the same city. While at Meharry, she applied for and won an NHSC scholarship that paid for her last two years of medical school.

Lloyd-Turney picked Central North Alabama Health Services, Inc. (CNAHSI) in Huntsville to meet her service commitment to the NHSC. CNAHSI was new and tiny when she arrived in 1983. "The practice was budding at that time, " she remembers. "It operated out of a little trailer and there was only one doctor." Prior to the clinic's opening, low-income residents in Huntsville had almost no access to health care, except for hospital emergency rooms. "Quite a few people told me, 'You're the first doctor I've ever seen'," Lloyd-Turney relates.

In the years since, CNAHSI has grown to encompass a modern medical system of three clinics, with seven doctors, a dentist and a nurse practitioner as well as a separate home health care agency. The system sees 30,000 patients each year, Lloyd-Turney reports. The practice serves a mix of public assistance and private pay patients, she notes, as well as a diverse balance of racial and ethnic groups.

Lloyd-Turney believes she has received back from her patients and their families as much as she's given to the community. When she arrived in Huntsville as a single parent, many people helped take care of her son. "The neighborhood I lived in had a lot of nice people who were very helpful and kind," Lloyd-Turney adds. When her busy practice schedule intruded on personal time, neighbors and patients helped by taking her son to and from school as well as in many other ways. That hospitality "made me want to stay" in Huntsville, she says. "I've really bonded with my patients. Most of my patients are now my friends."

Her patients also came to rely upon Lloyd-Turney for guidance in all their dealings with the local medical system. "If they get an opinion from another doctor, they'll come back to my office and ask 'what do you think?'" She has leveraged this large and diverse patient base to persuade specialists and other providers in the area to accept her referrals for needy patients. "They know that, because I see a lot of patients, if they see one of my non-paying patients I can send them three patients that will pay."

Lloyd-Turney lauds the team spirit among clinicians at CNAHSI who have included, over the years, other participants in NHSC's Scholarship and Loan Repayment programs. She strives to be a model of a health care provider with a long-term dedication to the medically underserved beyond the NHSC commitment period.

"When I get home in the evening, I feel I've done something worthwhile today," Lloyd-Turney reports about her career. "You have an ability to influence your generation" which is something many young clinicians find appealing. "They have stamina and ideas and you can in fact change the scope of medicine and fulfill the mission of the NHSC which is 'service to all and access to all'."

This dedication has won Lloyd-Turney recognition by the local community, including the Mentor of the Year Award by the Greater Huntsville chapter of 100 Black Men of America.

Learn about other NHSC success stories.