“The DePaul way,” according to Donna Thompson, CEO of
Access Community Health Network (ACCESS) and twice graduate of DePaul University
(BSN ’86, MSN ’88), “is to really look at issues around health equity and look
at it through a social justice lens.”
Of the seventy-seven community areas in Chicago, Thompson
estimates that ACCESS serves patients from at least sixty-six of those areas.
Unfortunately, there is a large disparity in health outcomes among those
neighborhoods. “If we look at a community like Lawndale, and compare it to a
community twenty miles further north,” says Thompson, “There is a twenty-year
difference in life expectancy. Twenty years. I often say that there are two
Chicagos. Our role is to ensure that where you live, where you grow up, where
you worship, that these do not designate what your life expectancy will be.”
For Thompson, this often means taking underserved
patients on a journey of discovering what is possible. “Many of our patients,
if they had a grandmother or grandfather who lost their eyesight or a limb
because of diabetes, many of our patients think that that’s going to be their
legacy—that that’s what is going to happen to them.”
Thompson, for one, is not willing to accept that outcome.
“A large part of my job as CEO is to make sure that we look at the structural
issues in our society and address those so that we can have open and equal
access for our patients.”
Before embarking on the administrative path, Thompson
began her career as a pediatric nurse at Decatur Memorial Hospital after
graduating from that institution’s diploma program. “As soon as I got my
license,” Thompson recalls, “I was put on the 3-11 shift, and I was put in
charge. I was barely 21 years old.” At that time, physicians were mainly in
private practice, meaning that it was the nurses who staffed the hospital and
managed patient care. “Those early years really taught me the value of
teamwork, of relying on the team of people you work with for their expertise
and experience. If you’re going to get a job done and do it well, it’s not
dependent on one person but really the sum of all parts.”
It would be Thompson’s next job, as a Neonatal ICU nurse
who also did flight nursing at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, which truly
prepared her for a role in administration. “I learned not only how to utilize
my critical skills, but also how to listen and assess the situation,” says
Thompson. In flight nursing, “Many times what you were told by phone was not
what you saw when you got there. You had to quickly make decisions on your
feet, based not only on the information you had but also on the resources on
hand.”
Thompson would earn her Bachelor’s in Nursing and
Master’s in Nursing Administration from DePaul before eventually joining
ACCESS, first as Chief Operating Officer in 1995, then as Chief Executive
Officer in 2004. The decision-making skillset that Thompson picked up as a nurse
would serve her well at ACCESS, where each community displays entirely unique
needs.
As a direct result of the diversity of their patient
population, ACCESS focuses on reaching patients where they are, not just in
terms of location, but where they are in life. “All our neighborhoods are different,”
notes Thompson. “But what you do is you go in and find out what’s important to each
community and what you can align around and unify as a major voice. For example, we have strong relationships in
the faith-based community, and that is very intentional.”
In the early 2000s, ACCESS began a campaign to fight the
disproportionately high breast cancer mortality rates of African-American and
Hispanic women compared to their white counterparts in Chicago. During the 2003
gubernatorial race, advocacy and organizing helped ACCESS to secure $4 million
for the state of Illinois to support breast cancer screenings, regardless of
insurance status. In 2007, ACCESS started Pin-A-Sister™/Examínate
Comadre™, a faith-based approach that engages clergy in the community to help
educate African-American and Hispanic women about the importance of early
detection. Since 2004 alone, ACCESS has provided more than 175,000 screenings
for uninsured women.
Through ACCESS, Thompson also tries to educate patients
about how political changes can affect them. “When you work with an underserved
population, when the rest of the nation sneezes or gets the sniffles, our
population gets the flu or pneumonia. I say that because, many times the people
who have the least voice and are the least recognized are most affected by
legislation and policy changes.” To increase awareness and participation in the
political process, ACCESS’ online patient portal now includes a link where
patients can register to vote. “How we’re thinking about health and wellness
isn’t just around how do we prevent disease, but also how we can level the
playing field for our patients and better engage them as their own advocates.”
Over time, the face of the underserved has changed, and
ACCESS has changed with them, recently moving out into communities like
Arlington Heights, Bloomingdale, and Chicago Heights, where they are taking
care of working families. “One size does not fit all,” notes Thompson, and this
keeps ACCESS nimble, looking for new services that may help their patients.
Recently, ACCESS has begun a pilot to embed legal assistance into one of their
health centers for patients who have lost insurance benefits. “As the attorney
is working with our patients and families they can also document within the medical
record what some of the issues are and how they are working with our patients
to help address and mitigate legal concerns.”
This kind of inter-professional collaboration is needed,
and Thompson believes that DePaul is ready to meet this challenge. “One of the
things that I am most proud of is that DePaul has continued to be an anchor
around health sciences.” Thompson was impressed by the vision of Gerry Koocher,
Dean of the College of Science and Health, “not just for nursing but for all
the disciplines in health science. It really is about how we can coordinate
these teams of professionals to have maximum impact, not just on patients and
families, but on entire communities.”
Thompson advises students and younger nursing
professionals to “follow your passion for how you’re going to make a
difference. What I love about DePaul is not just the mission, but also the idea
of living by Vincentian values. I always say that if you live by your values,
that should be your compass. That will lead you to the opportunities that you
need to have not only to strengthen your practice and your skills, but also to
give what most of us have gone into nursing for – to really make a difference
in the life of our patients and families.”