In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, a woman whose accolades include building a successful family practice during the 70’s, a difficult feat at the time for a woman and an African American, to becoming the first woman of color to hold the position of dean at an American medical school.
Dr. Lee tells us about growing up in Detroit as the eldest daughter of a large family, her discovery of osteopathy, and her amazing life journey that led her to the dean’s position at two osteopathic schools, Ohio University’s Heritage COM and NYITCOM.
We know that you will be inspired by Dr. Ross-Lee’s exceptional journey.
In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, a woman whose accolades include building a successful family practice during the 70’s, a difficult feat at the time for a woman and an African American, to becoming the first woman of color to hold the position of dean at an American medical school.
Dr. Lee tells us about growing up in Detroit as the eldest daughter of a large family, her discovery of osteopathy, and her amazing life journey that led her to the dean’s position at two osteopathic schools, Ohio University’s Heritage COM and NYITCOM.
We know that you will be inspired by Dr. Ross-Lee’s exceptional journey.
My name is Dr. Ian Storch. I'm a board certified gastroenterologist and osteopathic physician,
and you are listening to DO or do not. If you're interested in joining our team or
have suggestions or comments, please contact us at DoOrDoNotPodcast.com. Share our link with
your friends and like us on Apple Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We hope you
enjoy this episode. Hi, I'm Tiffany Carlson, a second year osteopathic medical student out
of the Midwest and you're listening to DO or do not. In this episode, I have the privilege
of interviewing Dr. Barbara Ross Lee, a woman whose accolades include building a successful
family medical practice in the 1970s, a time when it was difficult both as a woman and as an African
American to becoming the first woman of color to hold the position of dean at an American medical
school. Dr. Lee tells us about growing up in Detroit as the eldest daughter of a large family,
her discovery of osteopathic medicine and her amazing life's journey, which led her to be
who the dean's position at two osteopathic schools, Ohio University's HeritageCom and NYITCom.
We know that you will be inspired by Dr. Ross Lee's exceptional journey. Thanks for listening.
Thank you, Dr. Ross Lee for joining us on the DO or do not podcast tonight. We really appreciate
it. Well, thank you very much for inviting me to be involved. We're just going to start at the very
beginning. What was it like growing up in the Detroit Motor City area? In the 1950s and 1960s,
it was really great. The city was just like a big community. People looked out for one another.
Everybody knew everybody. So I have no complaints about the 50s and 60s in the city of Detroit.
I've heard Detroit referred to as the mean streets, but that was not my experience growing up at all.
What was your family like growing up in Detroit? Well, I'm the oldest of six children. And so,
to a large extent, we had a very extended family. There were always cousins and aunts and uncles
in our home. So from a family perspective, it was always a joyous time. My number one sister,
I'm the oldest, and my sister Diana Ross is the number two child. And my sister Rita is a community
advocate, and she's the number three child. And then my three brothers were all in the music
industry, one as a sound engineer, one as a performer, in fact, two others as performers.
So nobody followed in my footsteps in the family. How did you decide on what college to attend when
you were looking at schools? Well, I didn't have many options. Number one, it wasn't until I
started high school that I realized that we were considered poor. I hadn't had that experience in
my communities. And so when I graduated from high school, I had a full scholarship to Albion
College, full tuition scholarship to Albion College, but I couldn't afford the room and board.
And so I applied to Wayne State University, which is right in the city and is a commuter college,
to a large extent. And so that's how I chose the school that I finally graduated from,
in fact, received two degrees from, Wayne State University. When you were at Wayne State,
was that when you decided to become a physician? Actually, no, I decided probably in high school,
even earlier, I always wanted to be a teacher or a doctor, you know, and I was discouraged from
becoming a physician while I was attending Wayne State University, although my major was pre-med.
And so when I was a senior about to graduate and get my bachelor's degree, I changed my major to
biology and chemistry because there was no possibility at the time of me being able to
apply to medical school. So what did you do before becoming a physician? Well, with my bachelor's
degree, my first job was as a medical tech at a hospital. And that hospital happened to be an
osteopathic hospital. It was my first awareness of osteopathic medicine. And so after spending
two years there in med technology, I decided to go back to Wayne State and get a master's
degree in education because now my second option, since medicine wasn't working, my second option
was teaching. And so I went back to Wayne State and got a master's in education. Just as I finished
the master's in education, there was a brand new osteopathic medical school opening up in
the state of Michigan. It was the first publicly supported osteopathic medical school. And I was
contacted to see if I would be interested in applying. And that's the school happened to be
Michigan State University. And so I enrolled in MSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine in the fall
of 1970. What was your experience like there? It was wonderful. The entire profession in the state
was so pleased to have a brand new osteopathic medical school based upon what was going on in
the profession at the time, that they were very supportive of these brand new students. I was in
the second class and they were all committed to making the school successful and to making
the students successful. So it was a wonderful time to start a new school with that level of
support from the profession. And although it was a new school and they were just developing their
curriculum and their faculty, it was a good time for all of the students because we got all the
attention we could possibly want in the clinical environment in order to succeed. How did you go
about choosing your specialty and what was your postgraduate training like? Well, first of all,
in osteopathic medicine at the time, there were very, very few residency training programs.
In fact, at the time that I graduated, the only residency training program that existed was in
the state of Maine and it was in family medicine. So in order to get specialty training, you had to
apply to an MD program, an allopathic program. And so needless to say, those were very difficult
positions to achieve. So I decided I did apply and was accepted for a pediatric residency program
in Detroit, but it required that I repeat a year of my postgraduate work in order to do it.
At the time, I had two babies at home and I didn't want to spend any additional time in education.
So I decided to just go on out into general or family practice. And so there were about,
oh, I don't know, several physicians in the hospital where I trained that offered me physicians
in their practices. And so for about a year, I worked for other physicians and then I decided
that I wanted to go out on my own. So in, let's see, 74, in 1975, I started my own practice in
the city of Detroit. So you did your training in Detroit. You didn't travel to Maine then?
Oh, no, I didn't go to Maine. No, no, you know, when I started medical school, my daughter was a
year old, my son was three, and I was just finalizing a divorce. And so I didn't have the
resources to be flitting all over the place. I certainly had family support with my children,
but no, I was going to stay in the city of Detroit where I had support to be able to complete my
medical training and to start a medical practice. When you chose your first job working in private
practice, did you consider academics? Number one, I, after working for a year or two,
you realize that in other practices, you realize you learn the business of medicine. And then after
a year, I was comfortable and confident that I could run my own practice because the business
of practice is what we don't teach our students very well. But after a year or two in practice
in other group practices, I decided I could go out on my own and I started a solo practice.
And once I was in practice, I wanted to give back to the system that had educated me by serving as
a clinical preceptor or a clinical faculty. And so I joined Michigan State's College of Osteopathic
Medicine to accept the osteopathic students who were currently enrolled in their first and
their second and third years of training. So I became a clinical training site. In addition to
that, I also received an appointment from Mercy College for their brand new physician assistant
program. So I accepted students into my practice that were PAs as well as DO students. Sounds like
an interesting pioneering time for PA. Absolutely. That PA program was almost the only PA program
accredited in the country. So they were brand new. Can you tell us about your time at the United
States Department of Health and Public Service and what your roles were there? At that time,
there was a real concern in the country about a shortage of physicians. And the government had
established several grant programs to enhance the training of generalist physicians, like general
internists, pediatricians, family practitioners. And so I was a consultant on their grant programs,
grant programs that provided development dollars for undergraduate medical education
to influence students to choose family medicine or primary care as their specialty as they moved
into, at that time, residency training because residency training had grown rapidly since the
time that I graduated. I also was a consultant on geriatric education centers because that
represented a vulnerable population that was not being well-served. And so that was another way of
enhancing the care of particular health-vulnerable populations. I consulted on AHEX.
Can you tell our listeners what AHEX is? Area Health Education Centers. And they vary throughout
the country now. Initially, they were all funded by the federal government. But now some of them
provide clinical training. Some of them just provide health education to communities. And some
of them provide actual clinical service delivery for communities. But that was a way of making
health resources available to communities because many, many communities were underserved
or were not served at all. When did you or how did you decide to have a bigger role in academic
medicine? Well, based upon my work as a clinical training site, I had developed a reputation in
the college. Although I was in Detroit, the college was in East Lansing. I had developed a
reputation as a clinical instructor. And so the College of Osteopathic Medicine was looking for
a department chair. And the chair of the search committee got in touch with me to see if I was
interested in applying. And on a whim, I said, yeah, wouldn't that be great? I mean, with my
experience with the students who were coming to my clinic, I could see some opportunities to even
better expand their training for the kinds of populations that I served, you know, minority
populations and underinsured or uninsured populations. And so I thought that that would
be an opportunity to have a greater impact on health care. And so I applied and who knew? I
was selected to be the department chair. Now that meant I had five kids at the time. And that meant
I was going to have to commute from Detroit to East Lansing on a daily basis, which I did for
about six months until my older boys graduated from high school. And then I took my three
daughter, my three other children with me and we bought a second home in Okumus, Michigan. If you
are familiar with Michigan State, you know where that is. And so they went to school there. My
husband stayed in Southfield, Michigan. And so we commuted back and forth on the weekends. So from
my entry into academic medicine, I've always had a commuter family. My home has always been in
Michigan, but I've always had two or three other homes that I was living in as I pursued my academic
career. What was it like as one of the first African Americans as well as a woman in osteopathic
leadership? I will tell you a challenge that I hadn't anticipated. When you go through your life
being an ethnic minority African American, that tends to be your biggest challenge and hurdle as
you go through the healthcare system. But what I found that in practice being female was just as
challenging. Much of the training that I did in hospitals, they'd never had a female physician
before in the smaller community-based hospitals. And so there were no facilities for female
physicians. The doctor's lounge was essentially a man's locker room. So based on that, I did spend
a lot of my time in hospitals with the nurses. And it taught me an appreciation for nursing as
a profession at the same time. So once I entered into practice, the biggest challenge was getting
over the preconceptions of being a minority and being a woman. And I tell you, they were equal
in challenges at that time. I was advised many times what specialty I should go into because I
was a woman. I didn't get the pediatric residency program that I wanted because the program director
was afraid that I would quit and not practice. There was a general feeling being female that
you were going to get your degree, but you weren't going to practice medicine. You would
get married and have kids and that would be the end of it. And that was a bias that was held by,
oh, at least 70% of the male physicians that I interacted with. And I would say, quite frankly,
the white male physicians that I interacted with because there were very few black osteopathic
physicians and we all knew each other by first name. I think there may have been about 10
in the state of Michigan at the time. And so our opportunities were limited. When you were applying
for fellowships or things of that sort, even though there weren't residency training programs,
you were perceived as maybe not being as capable or as competent as your peers and your colleagues.
So yeah, it was interesting. At the same time, there were patients who did not want a minority
physician touching them or a female physician touching them. The reality is in my class of
interns and I was the best clinician among that entire group. And so my feeling was if they don't
want me, it's okay. The patient has the right to decide who they want to take care of them.
But the reality is it's their loss because I was good. I was better than the doctors they were
choosing. You became dean in 1993 and can you tell us all the mysteries of that office and what it
entails? It's funny because I ask students if they know what a dean does and they all say
that a dean is the one who kicks students out of school.
And do you know, that's probably the least as a dean, if anything, I spend my time saving students.
The dean is ultimately responsible for the mission and the vision of the institution. The buck stops
at the dean's office for the academic programs, all of the clinical programs, and for the research
programs. Everybody in a medical school or all of your administrators report to the dean. So the
dean is in charge and the students don't really understand that. They only see the piece that
impacts them. But the dean is in charge of the curriculum. The dean is in charge of the standards
and the policies and the procedures. The buck stops at the dean's office. What roles have you
played in the American Osteopathic Association and what importance did the organization serve
for you and the profession during the time that you served in leadership there? It's interesting
being a minority in medicine, being a female, which is also a minority in medicine, and being
a member of a profession that is a minority profession in medicine, okay? So I was lucky
enough to acquire a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow. And so I spent a year and a half
in Washington, DC, working in the Senate on the Finance Committee with Senator Bill Bradley at
the time from New Jersey. And what I found while I was there was that osteopathic medicine in the
policy arena, and it's the policy arena where policies get made that help the very populations
that I wanted to help, but osteopathic medicine was invisible. So after spending a year and a half
there, I returned to Michigan State and started talking to the American Osteopathic Association
about starting a fellowship program to train osteopathic physicians how to engage in health
policy. But it wasn't until I became Dean of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine
that I was able to launch that fellowship. That fellowship became, it's now 25 years old,
that fellowship became the leadership bench for the profession. Most of the members or past
president of the American Osteopathic Association, most of the deans of the osteopathic schools
began their careers in leadership with completing that health policy fellowship program that I
started. And so just based on that, that was a major contribution to the profession.
In addition to that, I served as chair of their accrediting body for a couple of years. I also
served as chair of the board of deans of all of the osteopathic colleges at one point in time.
And I was on the board for the Association of Academic Health Centers, which is a mixture
of osteopathic and allopathic institutions. And that provided us with a voice as a profession
in a larger organization at the same time. So that's kind of what my involvement has been
with the profession, fundamentally the fellowship program itself, but secondarily some of the
leadership positions that I was involved with, particularly related to education. Right now,
I serve as the president-elect of the American Osteopathic Foundation. So even though I'm
retired, I'm still doing this stuff. Can you tell us a little about the foundation
in the work that you do? The foundation provides seed money for grants that enhance patient care
activities. In addition to that, we also recognize major need leadership efforts by osteopathic
physicians nationally. We encourage and support a health policy fellowship program for osteopathic
physicians who are still in training, in residency training programs. So the foundation has been
instrumental in guiding the profession to a broader place for osteopathic medicine in the
country. You've lived in Michigan and Ohio. How did you decide to move east to New York?
Was this a difficult decision? And what was the difference between NYITCOM versus Ohio?
Well, fundamentally, I moved from Ohio because I was offered a position as vice president.
Of health sciences in New York, which meant not only would I be responsible for the medical
school, but I would also be responsible for the school of health professions, occupational
therapy, physical therapy, physician assistance, nursing, and clinical nutrition. And so it
allowed me to be the university person responsible for all of the health programs, both medical
programs, both medicine and health professions. Now, whenever over the course of the 10 years
that I was there, whenever we had to recruit a new dean or a dean left, then I would serve
as the interim dean of the medical school or the interim dean of the school of health
professions until we appointed a new dean. But my primary position was that of vice president
of health sciences. It's like a provost for health programs. Can you delineate the difference in a
role of a dean versus a vice president? The deans are responsible for the mission and vision of the
school and the strategic planning of the school that they're in charge of. The vice president,
the university itself, also has a strategic plan and a vision. And the vice president makes sure
that the deans of the school of health professions and the dean of medicine, that their vision,
their programs are aligned with where the university wants to go.
What are the things at NYITCOM that you developed the Arkansas campus?
Yes, yes. Well, I was at that time thinking about, because I was trying to commuting back and forth
between states and Michigan, I was thinking about retirement. And this opportunity, I was
contacted by two state universities, one in New Mexico and the other one at Arkansas State
University, because they were interested in starting a medical program at their institutions.
And so after discussions with my president, we decided, okay, I will remain as vice president
for the two schools that we have, but I would serve as the inaugural or founding dean of this
additional site in Arkansas. And so I started commuting between Arkansas, New York, and Michigan
for about a year and a half. But that school did open and they're doing very well. And I'm very
proud of it. There is such, such a need for physicians in Arkansas. And so I felt really
good about being involved in at least opening an osteopathic school there. Arkansas was one of the
few states that only had one medical school, and that was the University of Arkansas. And so by
starting the osteopathic school, we were able to meet more people and to address many in greater
depth, many of the health vulnerable populations in the state.
What do you think the major and lasting impact with Arkansas having a school has done for the
profession? The profession right now has a presence in almost every state. We just opened a school in
Utah. I was involved in trying to organize a school in Minnesota. That has not happened yet,
but it will. And Wisconsin and a few of the states in the Northwest, Idaho has opened a school. So
Arkansas was one of the southern schools. Osteopathic medicine really has had its base
in the Midwest and very little presence in the South. But that has changed over the last 10 years
that Arkansas and Louisiana were some of the last states that didn't have an osteopathic
educational presence, but now they do. And there's still a few states, but they're very few. Wisconsin
Minnesota and a couple of states in the Northwest that don't yet, like South Dakota and North Dakota,
they don't have osteopathic schools. But as a minority profession, the best way to
have an impact is to grow. And the profession has grown over the last 20 years.
Can you talk a little bit of Minnesota, just how people go about starting schools?
Well, it's not easy. It was going to be started as a private school,
which meant that it required a significant amount of fundraising in order to start it.
Starting a medical school, we're talking millions of dollars here. And everything kind of came
together and we were moving along well. And then we got hit with COVID and we had to back down.
Based on that, we just had to kind of slow down, close our doors, wait until we get to the post-COVID
world, and then somebody can pick up the reins and move forward with the project.
You mentioned a big capital investment. So how do...
So it takes a lot of planning and negotiating with hospitals and clinical structures up front
to assure your investors that you can indeed train and graduate physicians to practice.
And the other challenge of COVID is that it really kind of shut down hospitals to education
because they just didn't have the clinical faculty resources to be training for second,
third year students when they're dealing with COVID patients. Based on that, we had not
gone so far as to establish such a great debt that we couldn't just stop the project
and wait until after COVID and then start up again. Although I think at this point,
I'm tired of traveling, so somebody else will start it up again. I'll make sure of that.
So during your career, you've advocated for women in medicine, African-Americans in medicine,
and then osteopathic medicine as a whole. Can you give some advice to minorities thinking
about a career in medicine, specifically osteopathic medicine?
My thought is, particularly if you're interested in the primary care field of practice,
osteopathic medicine is kind of a logical choice. But at the same time, osteopathic medicine
has grown and thrived, survived and thrived based upon the health vulnerable populations
that we treat. We tend to be located more in urban centers, rural areas, frontier areas. That's where
you find the kinds of physicians that are attracted to osteopathic medicine.
And so if you are interested in those populations that are so underserved, osteopathic medicine is
the profession to choose. But the reality is from a medical standpoint, there is very little
difference between osteopathic and allopathic medicine from an actual licensure standpoint.
And right now, all of the specialty training programs, the residency training programs have
combined so that if you're a DO or an MD, once you graduate, you go into the same residency
training programs, unlike when I graduated. So the professions are coming closer together
with osteopathic medicine still producing more physicians who are practicing those underserved
populations and health vulnerable populations. You've done a lot in your career. What is the
achievement which you are most proud of? I'm most proud of the health policy fellowship programs
because I think that helped to change the profession and to broaden its vision on what
the profession could accomplish. And so I'm really feeling very good about the health policy
fellowship program that trained the leadership for the profession, as well as the fellowship
program for residents, because we graduate students who have no idea how health care works.
And that fellowship program has provided them with a stronger base as they go out into practice. So
those are the things that I'm most, most proud of. And it also has allowed me to make sure
that every one of these leadership training programs every single year, and they're year-long
programs, included a diversity of people. It wasn't just the same old white male, you know.
We had females, we had all kinds of minorities as a part of the fellowship program every single
year. And the program established such credibility that it allowed them to move into leadership
positions just based on the credibility of the program itself. Thank you so much for your time.
What's the best piece of advice that you were given by someone else that you always think of
and find it valued to pass on to students? The piece of advice that I share with students,
particularly minority students and women's students, is not a good piece of advice,
but it was a learning piece of advice for me. Right before I graduated from medical school,
the entire class was given the advice that you are what you communicate. And that sounds profound,
but the reality is if you're a female in a male society, or if you're a minority, when there are
no other minorities, what you communicate is like beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
that ultimately what you think you're communicating is not always what is received.
And that's part of the challenge of being a minority in any profession. And so you have to
you have to learn how to navigate those assumptions and those biases about what you're capable of
doing or what your potential is. The one thing I learned from that is nobody, and I tell my
students this, I don't know what you don't know. I only know what you need to know. You know what
you don't know. And so therefore, you have to make yourself better. You have to get what you need.
I can only tell you what you need. And I think that's important because ultimately,
I had to set my own standards for excellence. Because without setting my own standards for
excellence, I would have at best been a mediocre physician, and I don't consider myself mediocre
at all. And so that's the advice I give to students is set your own standard as to what
excellence is, and then work as hard as you can to achieve that standard. Because nobody is going to
be as critical of you or know what you don't know or give you what you need. This is a profession
where you have to be as good as you can be and not depend upon somebody to tell you when you are or
when you are not. Can you tell us how you overcame your advisor in your undergraduate saying,
no, you can't study human anatomy and how that has influenced your career?
Actually, I think it's a personality flaw. If you tell me I can't do something,
I'm going to do everything I can to do it. Within reason. Within reason. You know,
because they told me that they wouldn't give me the pediatric residency program,
and then Children's Hospital in Detroit reached out to me and wanted to give me a pediatric
residency training program. I think it's important to know that when you are good,
and you have to work hard to be good, and you have to do all that's necessary to be good.
But when you're good, you have to know you're good and not let other people put you down.
Because eventually in this profession, in medicine, being good is what patients want.
And that ultimately, you will do well, and you will help people, and you don't have to
wait for somebody to give you the stamp of approval. You just have to be good,
and you have to know it. And you have to be your own worst critic to make yourself better all the
time. Thank you so much for your time. This has been really inspiring for me, and I know our
listeners will really appreciate hearing your legacy and story. Well, I hope so. I hope they
will be able to smile in some of this as they listen to it as well. I don't take myself too
seriously. I just try to stay focused and be the best that I can be at what I've chosen to do.
Thank you so much. This was interesting. It made me think about my journey. So thank you very much.
If you enjoyed our podcast, please share it with your classmates and administration.
We have plenty of more interviews lined up, and we're excited to share them with you.
This is Tianyu She. Thank you guys so much for listening to Do or Do Not.