On April 27, Freddie White-Johnson, founder of the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation, was honored with the 2018 Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute’s Minority Health Leader Award.
It was presented at the Marian Wright Edelman Distinguished Lectureship on the campus of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
A selection committee comprised of individuals representing the Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute, as well as other community-based organizations throughout Mississippi, reviewed the applications and selected the winner. Successful nominees are those who are directly responsible for promoting minority health leadership in the state.
The award is given to an individual who makes a notable contribution to health, healthcare, or a healthcare delivery system that has helped improve health outcomes in the state.
It is presented each year in April in recognition of Minority Health Month. Gordon C. Cannon, Vice President of Research at The University of Southern Mississippi, nominated White-Johnson for the honor.
In addition to her position with the FLHCF, she holds a Master of Public Policy and Administration certification and is director of the Mississippi Network for Cancer Control and Prevention.
In his nominee submission statement, Cannon declared White-Johnson’s many accomplishments, which included her efforts to promote cancer awareness in both the rural and urban areas of Mississippi and Alabama and recruiting and training one of the largest community volunteer networks that has ever existed in both states, specifically, more than 800 volunteers in the underserved areas.
He noted that it was her marked success that prompted USM and its Mississippi partners to form a separate identity that White-Johnson serves as director over, to continue cancer awareness activities.
Cannon said, “These trained volunteers played an instrumental role in changing breast and cervical cancer screening behavior.” Cannon added, “Together, the FLHCF (Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation) and USM (University of Southern Mississippi), through the MNCCP (Mississippi Network for Cancer Control and Prevention), have achieved considerable progress in addressing cancer health disparities that disproportionately affect minorities. None of this would have been possible without the leadership of Ms. Freddie White-Johnson.”
Cannon also touted the Mississippi Cancer Control and Prevention director’s accomplishments with the FLHCF, its fundraising achievements that support cancer education and outreach activities, in addition to addressing cancer health disparities that disproportionately affect minorities.
To further reinforce his case for nominating White-Johnson, Cannon chronicled her beginning as a poor sharecropper's daughter, who learned all too well about the health disparities suffered by many, particularly African Americans, seeing that White-Johnson’s father died of cancer when she was only 17.
He stated that the experience shaped her in many ways, most dramatically, near the end of her father’s life when he urged her to get an education and use it to "help people like us." A promise she has worked to keep, he said.
Cannon added that the volunteers White-Johnson has trained as director of the MNCCP have started a behavioral shift where men and women are getting cancer screenings for the first time. “Freddie’s efforts have received attention from governors, senators and officials at the National Cancer Institute,” Cannon concluded.
White-Johnson was recently asked to present the keynote address at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.
With regards to the designation, White-Johnson said, “I am very elated to be honored for such a prestigious award and very thankful to Dr. Cannon for recognizing and supporting my work in the rural Mississippi Delta.
She conceded that the accomplishments were not hers alone, “This award would have not been possible without the support of our community network partners and work of our 800 plus volunteers (community health workers/community health advisors), whom I supervise in the areas of breast, colon, cervical, and prostate cancer.”
In a written statement from the organization’s nominee package, the Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Mississippi State University stated that it is committed to improving the health, healthcare, and healthcare delivery systems that reach all Mississippians and ultimately impact the health of the United States and people around the globe, regardless of their status as a minority.
The statement reads that the institute admires individuals who share in its commitment and sometimes their work goes unnoticed, hence, the reason for the recognition.
Among other qualifications, the criteria for being selected for the leader award includes actively working to promote minority health through research, clinical service, outreach, or teaching, being directly responsible for advancing and promoting minority health and increasing the level of awareness of the need for health in minority communities in the state.
