Health

This topic focuses on the ways women negotiate their physical and emotional well-being both in their personal and family lives and in relation to the public institutions that make up our health care system. It seeks to learn about how women view, care for, and project their bodies and minds introspectively and in relation to the outside world.

Christian Williams

Professor, Assumption College

I certainly wish that along the way someone would have said to me all those feelings sometimes are normal....you will grieve sometimes...And that's a normal feeling and take care of yourself.  And this is how you handle it.  Because I think that is definitely something that's missing in the field..the understanding that we are human doing this job and it will take a toll.

Christian Williams is a graduate of Assumption University and is now a professor at the University as well as a practicing psychotherapist specializing in trauma, resilience, grief, and substance abuse.  In this interview she talks about the feeling of community at the university, how she took some time off to have her child, and how she came to the field of social services. She describes experiences she's had in the field as well as the advantages and challenges.

Interview Date: 
Sun, 04/28/2024
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Williams

Temperance Staples

Professor, Researcher, Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester

I think one of the biggest events of my life that really seriously wove me into Worcester's community was running the vaccine clinic when Covid happened.  I was working for the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester where I still am and one of my very good friends from grad school was the project manager for the commissioner, Dr. Castiel.  She's our Commissioner of Health and Human Services.......I basically got "voluntold" that I was going to be running the logistics of our vaccine clinics and that was a year of getting up at like 1:00 am, driving to Worcester, picking up these vaccines at this, you know, super secret location, and then rolling out these neighborhood church driven, community driven vaccine clinics where we were going into grocery stores--all this stuff and by doing that I met everybody.

Temperance Staples was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts and currently lives in Somerville.  In this interview she describes her work with Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester and how it has connected her to the Worcester community, her graduate education at Clark University, her work during the Covid pandemic, and the current state of access to healthcare.

Interview Date: 
Fri, 04/05/2024
Interview Language: 
Name Sort: 
Staples

Ashley Carter

Farmers' Market program Coordinator, Regional Environmental Council

From a very young age, I had connections to outdoors and to growing plants and animals… I loved those things…That love for nature and farms, that started at a very early age. I had my first garden when I was really little. [My advice] is make your own space, be free to be a woman. Make sure to have fun and find love and enjoy your life…Be willing to ask for help, too…We should be helping one another, it’s not a sign of weakness.

Ashley Carter was born in March, 1984. She lives with her two daughters and husband, Royland, who she met while abroad in Nicaragua. Ashley works for the REC [ Regional Environmental Council] as the Farmers’ Market Program Coordinator. She grew up in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, with her parents and siblings. From a very young age, she had a love for plants, animals, and nature itself. Her life experiences, including being a mother, struggling with mental health issues, and being involved in the community have shaped her into the person she is today.

Interview Date: 
Tue, 02/21/2023
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Carter

Kellie Hamilton

RN; Holistic Nutrition Coach, A Better Path to Wellness

Kellie Hamilton is a Worcester, Massachusetts resident who was born in 1991. She is originally from East Brookfield, Massachusetts. She attended David Prouty High School in Spencer, Massachusetts. She grew up with her younger sister, mother, and father. After graduating from high school in 2010, she attended Worcester State University where she earned a degree in nursing. She is currently working as a registered nurse at UMASS [University of Massachusetts] Memorial Medical Center, a hospital where her mother and father previously worked. After reading a book on holistic nutrition, she became fascinated by the subject. As time passed, individuals started coming to her for advice about holistic nutrition, and she started a Facebook page, A Better Path to Wellness. In the early months of 2021 Kellie decided it was time to grow her passion and make it a business. Hard work and dedication fueled her efforts to become an entrepreneur. Kellie is an extremely passionate individual. She is an inspiration to many women around the country and continues to work toward leaving her own legacy.

You always have options and that was a thing that my parents really tried to drive home for me, is that just because there is a roadblock there’s a way around it, that you always have options, you just have to search for them, and that’s what I did.....I want to say it to a lot of the younger women that I hope listen to this someday, I want you to be inspired, and educated, and motivated to do the ideas in your head that you think will make a difference....If everybody inspired somebody to do one thing that they were passionate about, think of how much better the world would be.

Interview Date: 
Fri, 02/17/2023
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Hamilton

Nicole Bell

Founder and CEO, LIFT

I think about when I first got out, sitting in the jail cell, I never imagined I would be sitting here with you, holding my child, I never believed I would be allowed to be near my children.  I thought the best-case scenario I was going to get benefits and live out my life in a crappy rooming house.  I never believed I could do any of these things.  But also when we lean into people’s strengths and skill sets instead of their worthlessness I believe people can accomplish so much.  And I think of all the women around me who do this work every day, most of them began as participants or survivors in our programs, to now watch them really use their power...It’s really hard to undo all of the messaging of worthlessness and things like that that you’ve received your whole life.  But again, it’s leaning into your strengths and capabilities instead of that old story of incompetence and all you’ll ever be is a body for men to abuse.  That is not true and for me, I think there’s many paths to recovery, many paths to exiting prostitution.  My pathway out was social justice work and finding that I could make change for others and demonstrating that that is possible and true.

Nicole Bell was born in 1980 in Dorchester, MA.  She is the founder and CEO of LIFT [Living in Freedom Together] a nonprofit in Worcester, MA that runs several programs addressing the ending of prostitution and promoting recovery from trauma, substance use disorder, and mental health disorder. In this interview, Ms. Bell shares her own experiences with drug use disorder and her years as a prostituted woman which led to her finding her voice and becoming an outreach worker to other women.

Interview Date: 
Mon, 11/21/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Bell

Germaine Lambergs

Registered Nurse; Lactation Specialists; Member of Worcester Institute for Senior Education

So, a little mini history on breastfeeding.  Well because it used to be the norm, way back like when your grandmother might have breastfed, or her mother may have breastfed, but then mothers were taught that formula was just as good as breast milk.  And why would you want to look like a cow to have a baby--I’m just giving you a shortened version--to have a baby sucking on you when you can go out and be yourself and have someone bottle feed the baby. It also came around during the wars when mothers had to leave the children with—they didn’t really have nannies back then, but you know the nanas, and they went to work in the factories. Who’s going to feed their babies? So, Enfamil, Nestle, all of those, the pediatricians started to fuel that this is just as good. They were never trained. One of my positions at MGH [Mass General Hospital] was teaching residents how to breastfeed because it wasn’t taught in nursing or medical school. It is now, they have a two-second course, but the younger physicians now are very aware of the importance and value of a mother’s milk. To me it is a miracle fluid. I used to tell mums, “You look at that formula and it’s the same, the same, the same. It comes from a cow.  The animals feed their babies and a mother feeds her baby cow’s milk? She should be feeding her milk that’s natural.  And they would ask mothers, “Do you want to breastfeed or do you want to bottle feed?” And the pediatricians would say, “Don’t breastfeed, it takes too much time. Oh my God, just bottle feed.” So, it took me some time, to be honest with you, it took me quite a bit of time to re-educate in a gentle way because you don’t want to embarrass anyone if that’s their belief that breast milk and formula are the same. To understand the value of a mother’s milk. My youngest granddaughter is being breastfed and I just love it. Oh, she's just growing and when you understand what it does to a newborn baby, right when it's born for God sakes, it protects the kid’s gut. And it enables that baby to be bonded with the mother because having the baby in the nursery is what we used to do. They took the baby right away put it in the nursery and the mother couldn’t see the baby. Now when the baby is born, it comes out of the vagina and they put it right on the mother’s chest, naked, which is where it should be. And the mother’s breath initiates the baby to breath, the mother’s body, the antibodies she produces in that breast milk specifically for that gestational age for the baby, because it changes.

Germaine Miller Lambergs is a Canadian woman born in 1945. Germaine moved to the United States at a young age where she attended school in the Boston area now known as Newbury Street. It was here Germaine met her husband, with whom she has been with since she was a teenager. Together, they now share seven grandchildren and three children, all who live in the Northeast.  Germaine attended nursing school and worked in the nursing profession for many years.

Interview Date: 
Wed, 10/09/2019
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Lambergs

Ellen More

Professor Emeritus and Founder and Head of the Office of Medical History and Archives of the University of Massachusetts Medical School

And in 2004 I became a visiting professor at UMass Medical School in the psychiatry department. And that was because they had at the time, I’m not sure if they still do, a division which was extremely interested in medical ethics and one of the things I had done at the Institute for Medical Humanities was to teach medical humanities and medical ethics as well as history of medicine so it was a very good fit. And I was there as a visiting professor for a year and a half. I learned that although they didn’t have the medical history or medical humanities department, they had an expressed need to do two things. To create an archives; they didn’t have one. And this medical school started, well they opened in 1970. This was 2006, and they did not have an archive. And one reason they became aware of the need for an archives was that the first generation of founders were all retired, some had died. People were leaving, taking their papers with them, and the chancellor at that time, Aaron Lazar, he wanted a history of the school. So, they wanted someone to start to build an archives. They also wanted someone to write a history of the school. You can’t really do that without having an archives because what records will you use?  I negotiated with the head of the library and of the school and they created a position as head of the office of medical history and archives and in 2006 I started officially, and my faculty appointment simultaneously was professor in the department of psychiatry and I spent the next ten years launching an archives and writing a history of the medical school.

Dr. Ellen Singer More was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1946 and earned her advanced and medical degrees from University of Rochester, NY. She is Professor Emeritus and Founder and Head of the Office of Medical History and Archives of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  In 2003 she received the Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize from the History of Science Society for Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995.

Interview Date: 
Fri, 10/19/2018
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
More

Karyn Clark

First Female Director of Public Health for the City of Worcester

The biggest thing about public health is [that] it’s complicated. It’s really a huge topic. It can be anything from West Nile Virus and mosquitos that are biting people to our homeless population. There's a lot of folks that have Hepatitis A so we’re trying to vaccinate them. To flu shots, to medical marijuana dispensaries, to doing food inspections, to preparing for emergencies. So it’s very broad and it’s so interesting and all of the people that I get to work with are so committed to making sure that our residents and our community, and really the region [itself], really has the best possible public health services provided to them and their families.

Karyn Clark was born in 1974 in Lancaster, Massachusetts and later raised in Leominster, Massachusetts. She went to Framingham State College for her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Counseling Psychology. She later put that career path aside after she met her mentor, Jill Dagilis, who saw a great deal of potential in her and gave her the exposure to the field of public health. She fell in love with the field as she started working in the field in 2000. With many years of hard work, she became the first female Director of Public Health for the City of Worcester.

Interview Date: 
Wed, 10/03/2018
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Clark

Donna Crocker

Teacher; Member of Worcester Institute for Senior Education

Be yourself. Be strong. [laughs] Be ready and don’t be too hard on yourself. I think that women are coming to a point where they can feel stronger and express that. I would say also have a sense of humor; don’t expect to be perfect. Realize that most of the time life is good and do your best.

Donna Garrison Crocker was born in San Antonio Texas in 1944.  She moved around quite a bit as a young girl growing up, as her father was in, what was referred to at the time, as Army Air Corps during World War II. She and her family ultimately settled down in Weymouth, MA where she would later meet her husband. Donna now lives in Uxbridge, MA with her husband and the two of them regularly attend WISE [Worcester Institute for Senior Education] classes at Assumption College in Worcester.

Interview Date: 
Thu, 10/03/2019
Interview Language: 
Name Sort: 
Crocker

Shirley Carter

First African American to graduate from the Worcester City Hospital School of Nursing

It was early ‘20s they had this nursing program at Georgetown University Hospital.   My father had moved to Washington D.C. and I lived with him and his fourth wife temporarily until I got my own apartment then on 2727 P Street in Georgetown.  Worked with the Georgetown University Hospital... got the heck out of Worcester.  They had this wonderful earn and learn plan where you could get your degree in nursing by going to Catholic University and then make sure your classes and your nursing assignments would blend together well.  And I got this grant at Catholic University. And the nursing arts people said, “We don’t accept colored students, you all have to go to Maryland.”  Catholic University would not accept black students in the 50s. And for me to go to Maryland and then work the job it was not possible. So my dreams were dashed.

Dr. Shirley F.B. Carter was born on October 26, 1931 and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. Shirley discusses how she and her sister were the first African Americans to graduate from the Worcester City Hospital School of Nursing. She is a bright, lively, and well-educated woman who has an Ed.D. in Instructional Leadership. Shirley reflects upon her experiences and the sexism and racism she faced as an African American woman. Shirley worked multiple jobs for almost her entire life in order to first support her family when she was just a child, and then her children as an adult.

Interview Date: 
Thu, 09/21/2017
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Name Sort: 
Carter

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Health