When the U.S. Senate wanted to learn how it could close racial disparities among COVID-19 patients, it called on one of the experts: Dr. Consuelo Wilkins, senior vice president and senior associate dean of health equity and a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Having devoted her career to closing health care gaps, Wilkins explained how COVID-19 disparities stem partly from upstream factors that health care providers have no control over — factors such as crowded housing and the inability to work from home, which “are themselves the result of social inequalities produced by social systems reinforced through policy,” explained Wilkins, who has witnessed these inequalities firsthand.
Dr. Consuelo Wilkins at the U.S. Senate's Committee Hearing,
“I had lots of grandparents,” she says of her neighbors. “They were so caring and I just really enjoyed spending time with them.”
But, with only one nearby hospital — that would proceed to close after she graduated high school — and with nearly half of the people in her hometown living at or below the poverty level, Wilkins witnessed those she loved struggle with limited health care options.
“Over time I realized I really wanted to take care of people like those older adults that I grew up with in this small little town that only had one hospital,” she says. With that path in mind, she knew exactly where to go after high school: a historically Black college or university. Her mother and brother had graduated from one, her dad had attended one and “they were sources of pride that I heard a lot about,” she says. Noticing that many of the famous people she admired — such as the innovative surgeon Charles Drew — had attended Howard University in particular, she set her sights there.
Even with high expectations, Howard didn't disappoint. Wilkins says it was just the nurturing, eye-opening environment she needed to earn her bachelor’s in microbiology and then her medical degree from Howard’s College of Medicine.
