BETH MULBERRY: Excellence in Health Care | Inspire

Not surprising since “Dr. Beth,” as she’s known in Greensboro’s Cottage Grove neighborhood, is a physician, who did residencies in pediatrics and internal medicine.

What might be more surprising is that she believes “health care is only one part – a relatively small part – of somebody being able to live a healthy life.

“You need to talk about the social determinants of health,” she says. Safe and affordable housing. A good education. Access to healthy food. Child care. All of these things and more make a difference.

And Dr. Beth, the News & Record’s choice for Excellence in Health Care, makes a difference, too, through her work at Mustard Seed Community Health.

Mulberry started talking about the concept behind Mustard Seed with her friend and pastor, Julie Peebles in 2013.

She wanted to build relationships with other service groups, partners in making the community healthier. She also wanted to open a clinic that offered both primary health care and behavioral care.

“And we would have to be in the community that we’re serving. That helps with the transportation barrier.”

In 2016, Mustard Seed opened as a five-day-a-week clinic on South English Street. It rents a townhouse nearby, primarily for health outreach and counseling sessions.

“Anybody in East Greensboro can come here,” Mulberry says. “It doesn’t matter if they’re insured or not. If you live in Guilford County and you’re living at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and uninsured, you can come here.”

The clinic uses the Guilford Community Care Network’s Orange Card sliding scale for payment based on income.

Mulberry is the medical director and only physician.

Sarah Sagerdahl, who nominated her for News & Record honors, writes about her “unfailing dedication not only to the health of the whole person but also to the whole community.”

But Mulberry says: “I don’t want to come off like I’m riding in on my white horse. … How do you develop a good relationship with the community where they trust you and they don’t look at you as ‘Oh, yeah, here’s another person coming in to save the day’?”

Mulberry has found some answers in bits and pieces of her past.

She moved here in 2000 with her husband, Earl Wang, and they have a son, Eli. Before Mustard Seed, she worked for Eagle and for HealthServe.

But her first job as a physician was at a hospital in Alaska, serving 50 Yup’ik Eskimo villages – some as far as 200 miles away by plane.

The hospital had a health aide program, as a trust builder and a practicality, she says. They trained people from each village to do assessments, checking with doctors daily by radio.

She saw the wisdom in doing something similar for Cottage Grove; residents are mostly African-American, but also include a diverse refugee and immigrant population.

The result is the Health Outreach Team, made up of residents, staff, and health-and-human-service interns. Members deliver food, take residents to appointments, advocate for solutions to neighborhood problems.

It’s a big part of Mustard Seed, she says, “probably the part that makes it different from other clinics.”

And Dr. Beth digs deeper into her background for motivation – the Central Illinois farming community where she grew up and always felt safe.

“They taught me to care for other people,” she says, “and that’s what I’m doing here today.”