HL20: Anne Brooks, DO—Caring for the Impoverished

In our annual HealthLeaders 20, we profile individuals who are changing healthcare for the better. Some are longtime industry fixtures; others would clearly be considered outsiders. Some are revered; others would not win many popularity contests. All of them are playing a crucial role in making the healthcare industry better. This is the story of Anne Brooks, DO.

This profile was published in the December, 2011 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

 "I set for myself a little higher standard and that is what I expect my patients to do."

Anne Brooks, DO, is a doctor, not an artist, but then again, maybe a bit of both. Too many of her patients at her small clinic in northwest Mississippi, she says, smoke too much—their skin wrinkled by years of tobacco intake, their lungs brittle. She tells each of them they are having too many cigarettes, and then she takes pad to paper. She sketches their heart and lungs, and writes how "tar," that toxic material, ravages both.

The patients look quizzically at her as she completes a drawing in the small office of the Tutwiler (MS) Clinic, the osteopathic physician says. It's not that kind of tar on those paved roads, she tells them, but it might as well be how thick it lays on your lungs.

"Do you see what this stuff is doing to you?" she asks. "It's not helping you (this smoking); it's doing far worse to you than you think.

"I draw pictures of the lungs and put tar on the alveoli where the air goes in and tell them if you put tar through the air sacs, how can you breathe?" Brooks says. "They look at me and we discuss what it means. It dawns on them what is happening to their lungs."

For 28 years, Brooks, a Roman Catholic nun, has practiced in one of the poorest areas of the country; that's why she went to Tutwiler in the first place. She spends morning and night working for her patients, and in the process has become a spokesperson for the country's needy and has been lionized by various groups for her efforts in helping the poor and improving the healthcare needs of diverse populations.

Earlier this year, she was among the invited speakers at the Martin Luther King Jr. Health Equity Summit in Washington, DC. After she received the invitation, she noted there were prominent speakers also invited, with fancy academic credentials, "then there was me, too."

Brooks opened the clinic in Tutwiler in 1983 with support from Catholic Extension, an advocate of missionary work in the U.S., and opened a satellite clinic in Glendora, MS, in 1995, which has since closed. The clinic operates through donations and continues to provide access to healthcare for some of the country's poorest residents, according to Brooks. The poverty level of the population in Tutwiler is 38.5%, compared to the national average of 12.5%, according to the Department of Labor.

In recalling how she tries to motivate patients to stop smoking, Brooks concedes that she's "tough" on them because she was a patient herself. She became a nun with the Sisters of Holy Names of Jesus and Mary at age 17. Within a few years, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lived with a back brace and wheelchair for the next several years until her condition was successfully managed.

That occurred when she was treated by a chronic pain specialist, who used osteopathic manipulation of her joints and acupuncture, as well as nutritional therapy. Eventually, she no longer relied on the wheelchair and was challenged by the specialist to become a doctor. She went to Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine and earned her doctorate at 44.To this day, she isn't sure if she had rheumatoid arthritis or not. It could have been a misdiagnosis, or untreated Lyme disease, Brooks says.

She begins each day at 5:00 a.m. and usually ends when she retires at 8:30 p.m. She sees her patients, but knows that she must take time off each day so her body recuperates. "I do see patients at the hospital, the clinic, nursing home, and occasionally make house calls. Then I go back to the clinic and finish working on my charts, and go home. I try to take my nap every day and eat smart," she says.

It’s been a tough time lately, as the recession rocked the area and left many residents without jobs or insurance for medical care. "People who lost their insurance, they aren't taking their medication. We are seeing many more of them," Brooks says. "There are people who don't live in the county and come here."

"Sometimes the disability is very simple, something that happened years ago, they had x, y, or z, an accident and it wasn't taken care of because they had no money, and so now they have arthritis or a bad knee or a limp and awful back conditions," she says.

As more organizations recognize her work, and ask her to speak at events, Brooks says she feels "surprised and incredibly honored."

"I set for myself a little higher standard and that is what I expect my patients to do," Brooks says. "I try harder and they try harder. I yell at them louder, and they laugh at me louder."

"Sometimes I get a little dramatic with them, and say, ‘What are you doing to me? They get the point."

This article appears in the December 2011 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.