Twice as Hard by Jasmine Brown

Author:Jasmine Brown [Brown, Jasmine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

In 1986, after more than twenty-five years as a physician, Dr. Elders received a surprise call from the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. He asked if she would consider being the director of the Arkansas Department of Health. She was hesitant to agree because she was very happy with her job. She was a practicing pediatric endocrinologist who also conducted clinical research in pediatrics and taught medical students at the University of Arkansas. It was the career she had dreamed about since she had first met Dr. Edith Irby Jones. She didn’t want to leave her job. Because she respected Governor Clinton, she told him she would consider his offer if he met several conditions, including the ability to retain her position at the medical center and a 10 percent raise.

She thought these requirements would be too difficult for him to meet, so she forgot about his offer and was content to continue working in her position at the University of Arkansas. Two or three weeks later, Governor Clinton called her in the middle of the night to tell her that he would agree to her terms. He asked if she would accept his offer. Flustered and still half asleep, she began her response saying that she liked to keep her word. He took that as an acceptance of the position and hung up the phone before she could come up with a reason why she couldn’t take the position. After talking it over with her mother and some trusted colleagues, Dr. Elders became convinced that she could continue to make an impact in areas that she cared about, such as adolescent health and teenage pregnancy, if she led the state health department.

When she began her work as director, Arkansas had the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the country, high rates of AIDS, low levels of education, and high levels of poverty.24 During her first year at the department, she visited different counties in the state to better understand the problems. When she visited Governor Clinton’s hometown, Hope, where she spoke to a group of high school boys, she was shocked by their misconceptions around safe sex and family planning. They thought that they couldn’t get a girl pregnant if they had sex while standing up. They also thought that condoms would tighten around their penis and, if they used condoms too much, their penises would rot off.25 Due to these pervasive myths, many kids were having unprotected sex, making them susceptible to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Meeting the locals there, as well as in many other counties, convinced her that she needed to make strong efforts to address these issues.

Dr. Elders tells a story of a time, only three weeks into her job as director, when her unique methods of effecting change caused a stir. She was meeting with Clinton and several other leaders of the governor’s administration to discuss youth and families. When Dr. Elders was asked what the health department was going to do to help this population, she said that they were going to work to prevent teenage pregnancies.

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