Chesapeake doctor starts nonprofit to help women of color pursue medical careers – The Virginian-Pilot

CHESAPEAKE —

Dr. LaVonne Hairston can’t recall ever seeing a female Black doctor or dentist as a child. The only Black provider she knew was her dentist in elementary school, a man.

Now an OB-GYN, Hairston is trying to change that picture for future generations.

Hairston, a Chesapeake resident, is founder of TIME4Her, a nonprofit that helps young women of color pursue careers in medicine. TIME4Her connects promising students with Black female physicians in their field of interest for mentorship and support.

The organization also hosts regular educational sessions on preparing for medical school, understanding the application, testing and interview process and navigating common challenges of training and practice.

“Often, our mentees just need to be empowered to believe they can do this,” says Hairston, 37. “That can be difficult if they haven’t encountered people who look like them in the physician role. They also think they have to be perfect, but no one is perfect.”

TIME4Her, incorporated in 2017, stands for Teach, Inspire, Mentor and Encourage. The nonprofit has 15 mentorship pairs, with hopes of growing that number to 20 by year’s end. Most mentees are college students or recent college graduates from Virginia, though several are from out of state.

One of Hairston’s goals is to increase overall diversity among physicians, which she hopes would also help reduce troubling racial health disparities and encourage wellness and trust in underrepresented communities.

Just 5% of physicians in the United States are Black, despite the fact that African Americans make up about 13 percent of the country’s total population, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Less than 3% of doctors are Black women.

One of TIME4Her’s first mentees, 26-year-old DeLia Kennedy of Indiana, will start medical school this fall at American University of the Caribbean. Kennedy hopes to specialize in forensic pathology or become a medical examiner.

TIME4Her gave Kennedy step-by-step tips on compiling a competitive application and arranged mock interviews for practicing answers and confident body language. “This is not taught in college,” she notes. “Meetings were filled with knowledge and networking opportunities.”

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A Martinsville native, Hairston moved to Hampton Roads in middle school with her mother and stepfather, who was in the Navy. She graduated from Salem High School, where she was a top student and played softball and basketball (despite being just over 5 feet tall).

Hairston majored in Exercise and Sport Science and minored in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She went on to graduate from Meharry Medical College in Tennessee and did her OB/GYN training at Ochsner Medical Center in Louisiana.

“I found I loved taking care of women,” she relates. “I grew up watching my mother and grandmother take care of everyone else but themselves, which is what so many women do. I wanted to be someone who put women first.”

While most of the thousands of births she’s attended have gone smoothly, those that haven’t are difficult for Hairston. “It’s very hard and heavy,” she relates. “You have to manage emotions and mental health with self-care. For me, that’s regular prayer, medication, journaling and a lot of exercise. I love my Peloton, and I’ve run several half marathons.”

Offering such perspectives to future doctors should help them succeed in the long-term, Hairston and other mentors at TIME4Her hope. For now, hearing that Kennedy got into medical school was a dream come true.

“It was such a proud moment,” Hairston says. “Sometimes you’re not sure if you’re making a difference, but that showed that we are.”

Alison Johnson, ajohnsondp@yahoo.com