Dr. Desi L. - Facilitator

And then if you could just pull this up a little bit. Yeah, you might not have. There you go. Okay.

Is that good?

Yep.

I see how close you got yours.

Yep. That's perfect.

Okay.

So you're doctor Levy.

Mm hmm.

But you were gonna start telling me how you got into health and wellness.

Okay. Well, to go back quite a few decades, I got involved in health as a college student. I was majored in nursing. I became a registered nurse in the early eighties, but at the same time, I came from a neighborhood, the 53206 zip code area. I was fortunate to come from a dual parent household. My dad was a blue collar worker working at Bersia's Erie as the first black crane operator in Muskego, Wisconsin. And then my mom was an educator. So again, they had to balance the life of.

It was five of us at some point in time. I went through a health battle as a young child and decided that through my hospitalizations and multiple surgeries, I wanted to become a nurse. I changed and said I wanted to go to medical school. But then I was impregnated, my husband and I, at an early age, right out of high school. He was a few years older than I was. But anyways, long story short, went on, got the support of my family and his family. We married. Our daughter was four at the time, and I was still in college, taking my nursing curriculum, and the rest became.

So even as a young mom, you stayed on the track of going to college?

Going to college. It was my destiny, should I say, to make sure that I do that. And just ended up changing my major at the time, not understanding the conceptual framework of academic moving from undergraduate to graduate and going to medical school. My nursing degree could have gotten me into taking the MCAT and moving on, because a lot of my colleagues now actually have gone that pathway. So with that being said, it became a best interest for the family because husband and I married, and he continued to work and take care of us, and I was continuing school, got the first job in the hospital, but just to backtrack just an inch or two. What inspired me to become a nurse was my late mentor, Justine McCourt. Justine was the first black nurse that I had ever laid eyes on because of my multiple hospitalizations. She went from taking care of me to.

And I didn't know at that point in time that she was one of the nurse leaders. So I was, like I said, about 1314 years old when all of these incidents occurred and was just really encouraged and intrigued by seeing a woman of color. We wore white back then, and all white. And I said, if nothing else, I want to do it because I want to wear a white uniform. So my career catapulted itself, went on, and did all of my clinical experiences in the areas. I think the biggest eye opening experience that got me into the area of community engagement was working for United Methodist Children's services as a nurse practitioner for women's health and infant health. And it was community based over on 24th and keys. We were literally a grassroots organization that was providing parenting classes, parenting skills, and just everything for single moms inside of the city of Milwaukee.

And so what happened to that mission? Cause I know UMC's is still around, he's still around, and it's now known as rooted and rising. But that mission of being like grassroots parenting classes on 24th and Kyiv, when did it trend? What happened to that?

It. Well, our late executive director, Perry Hite, was the executive director. And you may remember a name, I don't know if you're old enough, but Joseph Winston, he was the founding director, executive director of Northcott Neighborhood House.

Okay, so I was a Northcott daycare attendee then.

You were part of the United Methodist mission.

Got it.

Because both organizations came out of the United Methodist Church.

Got it.

And so it was about 1990. About 1990, the board of directors came up with this vision to develop a housing unit.

Got it.

That would be extend the services to young moms inside of the city of Milwaukee to help them develop, to be productive moms and, you know, employed inside of the city. So we ended up purchasing the building that is on the corner of 40th and Lisbon.

Yeah, that's where it is now.

That's where it is now. But the extension wasn't there. It was literally a three floor winged apartment building there. And so downstairs, I opened up the clinic for making sure that children had their immunizations, making sure the moms received annual physical checkups, depending on if they were going to work, going to school, things of that nature. So that was in my early years of practicing and continuing to do some, lots of community education, whether it was on food, diet, healthy ways of feeding your children on a shoestring budget, all of that. So what happened after that? I was summoned away, back into the workforce, and began to develop in terms of my professional career. And I served over at Aurora Sinai Medical center in the area of women's health, continuing to do community outreach, particularly with women and women of color, black and brown communities. Main focus of the Ob Gyn clinic.

There was really to look at individuals and how they were impacting utilization of the ER. So that led to, you know, serving. I did that for a long time. I can't even remember how many years. But anyways, then I was called to lead the nursing and School of Health Sciences at Milwaukee Area Technical College as the first black dean of nursing for Wisconsin. And really just understanding and knowing the need for our nurses to look like the communities that we're serving instead of coming in, doing your thing and going out. Because a lot of my colleagues in nursing school literally use our hospitals and clinics, et cetera, for I'll get my one year of experience in a high risk setting, and then I'm going home, wherever home was, but it wasn't in the city of Milwaukee. So to that end, taking that vision and motivation, I took on the challenge of the deanship and really had to address the decline in the pass rates for the programs, because at that time, it was clear segregation of our nursing students.

A few students would get accepted at Marquette, a few students would get accepted at UWM. All of the students, black and brown, would go to MATC. MATC had an extremely long waitlist at that point in time. So I was in the process of going through with my dissertation and decided to do my study and my research background on perceptions of success and how. What does it take to be successful? Not only enter, but complete and matriculate into a four year nursing program and pass the licensure exam. In between, there, less than 40% of our graduates, Aziz was completing successfully and passing the licensure exam. They would be put on the waitlist. It was an infamous waitlist of over 12,500 names that people, if you were number 12,000 and number ten had not been admitted, you literally had to wait until all of those other people.

So people had began to transfer, find other programs, et cetera, et cetera. It was literally even people that had passed away on the waitlist, so. But they're holding up spots. The study ended up revealing that we needed to have a criteria or admission, because that's what Marquette was doing. UW Madison, uw Milwaukee. What is the admission criteria that opens the door for students to get inside of a nursing program and then not only get inside, but really, what does it take to complete those three basic courses of anatomy and physiology, biology and pathophysiology were the key to successful completion of the program and passing the licensure exam.

Organic chemistry was the one that shook me up.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And organic. Organic chemistry was there. But if you had the foundation of those three, you could pass organic chemistry with a c and continue forward. Organic chemistry comes in, and I'm side barring, I'm sorry, but organic chemistry comes in because of the pharmacology. And so, you know, you want to make sure that you know what you're administering, because once you inject it or ingest it inside of someone's body, it's hard to get out. You're facing a sentinel event. So, anyways, that is where my passion continued to grow for the community, but I think for me, all of the.

So you did your PhD after some of the work time that you had put in?

I finished my PhD at. Oh, yeah, in 2010.

Okay.

I enrolled in 27, finished in 2016. Would you do your program at Cardinal Stridge?

Okay.

And I tease people because, you know, PhDs can take a long time, but scientists by heart understand these data statistics and all of this other kind of stuff. Three months, two weeks, and a few days. I think it was six, to be exact. From the time I walked in to the time I walked across stage, I wanted to get it done.

How long?

Three months. I'm sorry. Three years.

Yeah. You said three months, and it blew my mind.

Three years, six months.

But that's still fast.

But it's still fast.

Yes.

Yeah. So, with that being said, I wouldn't have been able to do it. People ask me all the time how you do it. My husband, my husband, it was like, you know, he was supportive of every educational endeavor that I took on. And when I told him I wanted and I need to finish my PhD or start my PhD and finish it, we agreed, because we were a family. All we had, three children had started to be grandparents, and he was like, well, honey, if you really want to do it, he said, you do it, but I don't want you to take a lifetime to do it. So I committed on behalf of my family to get it done. To get it done.

And so. But my passion for doing this work came with our ministry. My husband was a pastor, and he was also president of the General Baptist State Convention, which made the connection. When he was elected president in 2011, he was asked by our national body to identify an individual that would be able to take on what is now known as the National Baptist Convention, Health Outreach, Prevention Education ministry, and tag, honey, I need you to do this. Nobody, everybody else can. I need you to represent. So that's how I got started in terms of really looking at how we educate, promote, support, and be inclusive of our communities where we serve across the country with people of color, as it relates specifically to addressing social determinants of health and health disparities. So when we talk about the passion for doing it, of course, that's one of the number one ministries of the church.

And so I know in my life what 95% of the organizations that I worked for had a faith based foundation. It didn't necessarily have to be denominational, but it was built on the principles of our faith. And so I found myself excelling in those types of environment. And I think that's what has brought me to the point of where I sit today. So, needless to say, I say he was my husband because he succumbed to stomach cancer. And this year it'd be two years, and we were married for 40 years. Next month, we would have celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary. So one of the conversations we had, he wanted.

He said, honey, I want you to live because we are young, and. But I do want you to do what, you know, your missional assignment is, and it's beyond the four walls of our church.

So how long, uh, before he passed, had you all kind of known that was. Was the cancer terminal when it was diagnosed?

No, he was diagnosed on February 11, 2020, just before COVID Okay. I woke up that morning, and we always look in each other's eyes. I check them up and down. Love you. And I never drove anywhere. Disease. My husband took me everywhere, and everybody teased me about it. Even now, they're like, doctor Levy, we didn't even know you could drive.

I seen you pull up and what? You pulled up.

We thought Reverend drove you everywhere, you know, so. And he did. But that morning, I woke up, and literally, he was yellow. And I knew. My intuition was that something is going on, and it was liver related, because that's what happens. The sclera turns yellow, your nail beds, et cetera. And he was like, I asked him, I said, do you feel sick? And he was like, no. And I was like, well, we needed to go to the emergency room.

Cause literally he was standing like, our bedroom walls was white, and he was standing against, like, facing. His back was against the wall. I'm looking at the wall, and he had this yellow halo. So we went to the emergency room, and we waited about 4 hours inside of the emergency room. They took him back right away. And this is why I advocate for equity in healthcare. You don't know anything about me, but you're making me wait with something that, you know, we didn't even know what it was because he said he wasn't hurting, no pain or anything. The ER physician came in, well, Reverend, you have cancer.

What? How are you gonna tell him he have cancer? We here in the emergency room and nothing is whatever. Well, we did, you know, this, and your levels are this, that, and the other. So I started crying. He was like, no. He said, we're not going there. He said, we will follow the process. And so we did go see it. Oncologist, world renowned cancer surgeon.

And they thought it was stage one from the emergency room visit to when we saw the first oncologist. And so I ended up transferring him from one healthcare system out to freighter medical college. And that's where we met our surgeon. And he said, well, we are going to treat. We have to treat it first. Burn it, you know, make sure that it's contained and they treat it on with radiation and chemo. The week of surgery, they called us in and said he was inoperable, so we had to make a decision. He said, well, I'll continue the chemo.

He said, I'm a young man and I want to live, you know, if that's what the Lord has for me to do. So we opted to continue the chemo. He did excellent. From July of 2020, I think it was all the way until the week three weeks before he passed. And that day he woke up, he said, honey, he said, I'm sick. You need to take me to the hospital. And the cancer center has an emergency. A cancer center has an emergency room.

You don't go to the emergency room at freighter. And we went there and he stayed for two weeks. And they called us together, me and the kids, and told us that they had did Everything that they could possibly do and we needed to consider making them comfortable. And he looked at me, he said, honey, I want to go Home. So I took him Home and he last another seven or eight days. And he was walking and talking. The morning that he passed, he was adamant that I go to the beauty shop every Saturday. I have to go get my hair pretty for him.

And I went to the beauty shop that morning, and when I came back, he had been asked, he says, well, where's my wife? Where's my wife? He was telling the girls and they called me and I told him I was on my way. I got to the door and he was like, he said, you so pretty. And I was like, I said, well, I went to get it done. I said, what's wrong? I said, tammy and Ari said this, that. And he said, he said, I just wanted to see where you were, type of thing. We laid him down and he just went into, like, a raging, unable to cough or gurgle. So I called the hospice nurse, and he came to the house, and he was just, you know, he was just, like, holding on, and he was just like, oh, Lord, help me, help me. And then the nurse asked us to help turn him because he was going to, you know, suction him and just kind of wipe his back and stuff.

And when we turned him, he just. He called on the Lord, and he left, and that was it. So he. We had a chance to do some long conversations about life with me being here by myself. So I'm just trying to do what our request was. You know, this is supposed to be my stage of life, where we're doing things for retirement, traveling, continuing to travel, see the world or whatever. But my kids, they tell me I've come a long way because I literally, I just went into that space. I can only imagine, you know, one man, one life, 40 years.

The Lord blessed us with 45, with our oldest daughter type of thing, but. Yep. So if I never be anybody else's wife, the Lord blessed me with being his wife. And he said I was the best wife a man could have. So that's why I tell you, don't go to sleep angry, because that was one thing he was adamant about. We had been married 17 years before he was called into the ministry, and I didn't understand it, but I remember I said, I told my mom, I said, I think Gary found him another woman. She said, girl, gary don't want nobody but you. And I said, I don't know, he want to talk to me.

And it was the fact that he had been praying and meditating on accepting his call. And that's what it was. And I didn't even tell him what I thought, Aziz, because I wanted. I felt this big, number one, because how dare the devil get in me to mistrust my husband, who had never did anything like that? And so it was some years before I confessed that I was upset. He said, I knew you was upset. He said, but what God got for you is for you, right? So the rest is history.

So now just kind of one. Thank you for sharing that, because you dropped a lot. We could probably spend another 5 hours.

Okay.

Just on some of these other topics. But I want to talk about how did you get involved then with becoming a facilitator for the evidence based programs?

So our ambassador program, and you don't have to use the recording stuff about what I talked. We could talk only about this because I actually forgot this mic was on. But the ambassador program is a certified national program, a product of the National Baptist Convention USA. And what we do is train ambassadors. Our original goal was to train at least one health ambassador for each National Baptist church across the country. And that was when we started in 2011. So each person that goes through the first phase of the certified training takes a series of modules talking about community health, social determinants of health, but also intertwining our faith in terms of what the Bible says about health and wellness, healing, and just advocating for community. That model has since grown from its inception.

We did it in 2011, and so we just met 1013 years. It was embraced by President Obama's administration. We went to the White House, met with first lady Michelle Obama about the food desert issues and teaching across the denomination. Our national Baptist is the largest african american denomination in the country. We have over 7.5 million members, over 33,000 churches that have grown with the history of being Baptist in the United States of America. So with that, that platform has allowed us a structure for teaching and educating inside of the communities that our churches are in living, praying, and staying in. And so when the opportunity came for this, we were, we had already had a relationship with Wisconsin Institute for Healthy Aging, and especially during COVID They found out about our program and we made the connection with their previous executive director. Did a lot of teaching and promotional information about COVID during the act of COVID the importance of immunizing not only for Covid, but influenza.

And we catapulted and grew that into shingles, pneumonia, and some of the other.

Were you leading the national health portfolio?

Yes.

This whole time?

Yes.

You heavy?

Yes.

Okay, 1 second. Doctor Levi. Raven, can you come here? This is Doctor Levy.

Hi, how are you? Good, good.

This is who I'm marrying in August. Oh, yeah, it's okay.

He gonna edit it. Cause I done told him all my business. Okay. Hi, nice to meet you. I was just sharing with him. I don't want you all to go to bed angry at not one single night. I told him, the Lord has blessed me to be married over 40 years, and my husband recently passed away. And so these early years, when you think that you want to go put him out, don't do it.

And when he think he gonna tell you he gonna sleep on the couch, don't do it. It's not worth it. So. But congratulations, and hopefully you all prayerfully will have many years of happiness. That's what we're looking forward to. Yep.

Okay. I go to therapy every week and I actually, my I just realized it's 03:00 okay. Would you be able to finish the interview? Okay.

Okay.

I'm sorry to have.

I'm just glad I got a chance to meet.