Melody of hope in the birthplace of the Delta Blues
Anne Brooks, D.O., says the “blues” got its start in Tutwiler, Mississippi. Near the turn of the last century, she recounts, legendary bluesman W.C Handy heard a local field hand playing and singing at the Tutwiler railroad depot as Handy was passing through on his way to Memphis, where he unleashed the blues onto the American musical scene.
In 1983, Brooks, a former NHSC Scholar, set up the Tutwiler Clinic in an abandoned medical facility just a short distance from the old depot. There’s still plenty of reason, then and now, for her patients to sing the blues in this small Delta community in the Deep South. Median family income in Tutwiler is at the Federal poverty level, the little bit of local industry fled years ago, “and 82 percent of my patients don’t have any insurance,” she says.
However, Brooks—who is also a Catholic nun—isn’t deterred by Tutwiler’s grim circumstances and past. Instead, she rises early and eagerly, inspired by the determination and faith of the individuals who flock to the clinic every day. “I’m nourished by them,” she finds. “I look at them and I say, ‘How could I ever do that?’ I see their daily lives and see how they don’t give up.” She adds: “It’s also fun—it’s not a drag to get up in the morning. I love what I’m doing.”
Brooks heard about NHSC when she was considering a medical career, after many years as an educator, and then an administrator at the St. Petersburg Free Clinic in Florida. “I had a good friend who, as an osteopathic physician, started the clinic in St. Pete,” she recalls. “He encouraged me to become a doctor and I told him he was nuts, because I hated chemistry and, besides that, I couldn’t pay for it because Catholic Sisters take a vow of poverty.”
Her religious order was willing to pay for Brooks’ premed schooling, but she needed to get a scholarship for medical school. That happened when her colleague from St. Petersburg introduced her to the dean of the osteopathic medical school at Michigan State University. The dean suggested she apply for an NHSC scholarship. “I applied and hoped like the dickens I would get it. It worked out and it was a very wonderful thing for me,” she says.
Brooks’ energy and leadership has forged a miracle of sorts since her arrival in the Mississippi Delta. As executive director of Tutwiler Clinic, she and her colleagues, including several other Sisters, have spent the last 20 years building a community health system that sees more than 8,800 patients a year, and provides many other outreach services. It includes two clinics, a staff of 27 and a new 17,000 square-foot gym, which is part of the Tutwiler Community Education Center. She has also worked closely with Habitat for Humanity, which built 21 homes for low-income residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the clinic.
“I have a holistic dream,” Brooks explains. Instead of focusing only on medical problems, she believes in developing opportunities and resources for all aspects of community life. In Tutwiler, that dream is a necessity, she finds, because “we’re the only show in town and have to do it all ourselves.”
Tutwiler Clinic and Brooks have drawn extensive coverage in the local, regional and even national press—including a brief segment on “60 Minutes”—resulting in an influx of donations. About 80 percent of the clinic’s operating budget is supported by such gifts, she reports. “As the publicity has come and gone, we have been able to receive donations which have kept us going.” In 2002, the clinic raised over $700,000 in charitable giving.
Brooks points to other signs of hope and encouragement. “We have programs for diabetics and hypertensives where we use case managers. They help people remember how to check their sugar and maintain the right diet. We also have a counselor on our staff, which is a major thing since there is an enormous amount of abuse here, emotional as well as physical. People come in with a bad back and they don’t get better and that’s because of the stress.” The counselor has been successful working with area teens to the point where some are going on to college “which was almost unheard of around here,” she notes.
Tutwiler received a grant from the Kellogg Foundation to refurbish an empty building as a community center, which is separate from the clinic. The new gym, which is housed at the center, has a former Olympic medalist directing recreation programs at the facility. Those include exercise programs for Brooks’ patients, homework and computer clubs, and a host of other community-enhancing activities.
She has also established a good working relationship with other doctors and health professionals in the surrounding region, which led to her service as chief of staff at the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center from 2000-2002. “When I need help for my patients, I holler,” Brooks laughs, and she’s able to get help from medical specialists. She finds that most doctors, even in private practice, provide a lot of unpaid care that goes unnoticed by the public.
Brooks’ main advice to new clinicians interested in careers in primary care medicine is to “listen to your patients all the time. You learn by listening.” One of her patients came in tormented by flea bites. While treating that acute problem, Brooks noticed that, as the woman talked, “about every three or four words she was gasping for breath.” That symptom, plus the woman’s history of a heart murmur, led Brooks to set up a cardiac evaluation for her patient the next day at the nearest hospital. Testing showed “she had a clot in the bottom of her heart and also had terrible cardiomyopathy,” Brooks says, adding that the patient is now undergoing regular outpatient treatments for her condition.
In a recent issue of Tutwiler Clinic’s newsletter, Brooks wrote to her patients and friends in the community: “There is a special feeling connected to the doctor-patient relationship. It is one of trust, and I think it is one of the highest gifts that can be shared with another. Being the recipient of that gift over and over again during these past years is indeed a privilege for me.”
