It Takes A Village: Sharon West
“Asheville is a resource-rich community and if people reach out to each other it will help to educate about disparities.” – Sharon West, Nurse Administrator
By Miley White
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| Sharon West, Executive Director of ABIPA |
It is unusual to think that one of the most influential leaders in the local nursing arena started out by giving her grandfather his four o’ clock medicine every day after school.
Sharon West, currently the Nurse Administrator at Buncombe County Health Center in Asheville, NC recalls being called into the counselor’s office in high school and being told that she had been given a scholarship and could go anywhere she wanted. “My grandmother said, ‘Wherever you go, you should pursue nursing.’ And I said ‘Why nursing?’ and she said ‘because you helped your grandpa with his medicine’ and so that was the beginning of my nursing career,” West said.
West
went on to study nursing at Winston State Salem University and then
continued her studies at UNC Chapel Hill graduate school in Public
Health Administration and is currently enrolled in Western Carolina’s
program for Emphasis on Cultural Ethics.
However, the
passion that began with a small cup of pills for an ailing relative has
now become a dynamic influence on the African American Community,
specifically in Buncombe County.
West is an
author, lecturer, historian, and a free-lance columnist, the president
of three different organizations that deal with increasing knowledge of
health disparities, an adjunct faculty member at Asheville-Buncombe
Community College and the Duke University End of Life Institute, and
the mother of three children that are soon to all be in college at the
same time. One is compelled to ask, “How do you do it all and still
have time to sleep?”
West answers,
“All the things I do are a passion and even if it appears busy to
others, if you have a certain passion about that thing, it doesn’t seem
busy… this is what we are called to do.” West’s passion lies in
finding and working towards a solution to the health disparities that
are rampaging communities all over the world, not excluding our city of
Asheville.
“I realized what
was happening here, right here in Buncombe County. So then it became a
passion to work toward … to achieve parity in every area, not only in
health but housing, for education, in public policy.”
West comments
that while the disparity that we have the most information about is of
health, the community suffers in many other respects. “It’s like
comparing apples to oranges,” West says, “because when I look at
African American housing, there are very few African Americans that own
their own homes compared to their white counterparts. When I look at
education, I look at African American males that are not graduating
from high school. So education in its own world is a disparity.”
According to the 2007 Asheville City School Board, 60-70% of African
American males drop out of high school.
West lists some
of the most common health problems that occur more often in African
Americans than in Whites, which are cancer, Breast cancer for women,
Prostate cancer for men, HIV AIDS, and infant mortality. “Why are our
babies dying more than white babies in 2005, 2006, 2007?” she asks.
West comments that stereotypes help feed into treatment options in the
health field. “African Americans are referred less frequently to
specialists because of the stereotype of non-compliance or
non-adherence,” says West.
West comments
that she first became aware of these inequalities while working under
Charles Blair, founder of the Asheville Buncombe Institute of Parity
Achievement or ABIPA. The organization was begun in 2002 for the
purposes of addressing the plight of African Americans and disparities
in health in every area and in 2004 became a non- profit organization.
It was in 2005 that Dr. Blair asked West to take on the presidential
rank. ABIPA is not the only organization aimed at improving the
conditions for African Americans in the health arena.
West is also a
member of Chi Eta Phi, an international nursing sorority that is active
in conducting monthly blood pressure checks, serving the community,
participating in health fairs, and being a resource for people for
various health issues. “Chi Eta Phi is really important to me because
these are African American nurses who could not join the American
Nurses Association many years ago even though these registered nurses
were very professional in every way, but we were not allowed because of
the color of our skin to join,” West said.
West is also
president-elect of Sigma Theta Tau, another international nursing
sorority that conducts research on topics related to the global impact
of nursing and what it will accomplish internationally. She seeks to
bring these two groups together in order to blend professionals
together annually.
However, it has
not been the easiest road for West. She says that, “It’s always a
pleasure but there’s been easier times. Any time you’re breaking
through ground it’s going to be difficult. It’s like a seed that you
plant in the ground and when it takes root, the hardest part is when it
breaks through the soil and that’s the way I look at ABIPA. It’s like
we’re breaking through the soil and that soil would be people not being
aware of disparity.”
West argues that
if someone is not affected by a disparity then they don’t care that one
exists and fail to understand that all members of a community are
affected by each other. “If the system is working for you, it’s not
your concern what disparity is, or that 15 times as many African
Americans are dying from HIV AIDS in Buncombe county or that 2 times as
many babies are dying,” West says, “It’s affecting the whole community
because it lets us know that we’re not healthy.”
West remembers
growing up in a community that looked out for each other. “I feel like
I’m giving back to the community, my community that nurtured me growing
up. Growing up I was in a segregated community where everyone’s mother
was your mother.”
“It was a good
watch program for children. We are so spread out now, we don’t have
that, but being able to come under the heading of ABIPA and changing
the African American community it’s like giving back to my community, I
want those people who nurture me to help nurture somebody else and to
know the information I know and to be healed.”
It was while
giving back to the community, working in the hospital for years, that
West became aware of another issue that prompted address. “When a
person comes into a hospital, they must be asked ‘Do you have any
living will or a health care attorney or an advanced directive?’ What I
realized was that people were being asked this question but most people
didn’t know what an advanced directive was,” said West. After learning
that there was no follow-up training to help explain to patients what
an advanced directive was, she went straight to the ministers in
Asheville.
“In the African
American community… whenever there is a crisis of any type, the first
person to be called is the minister. I don’t care if is 2 o’clock in
the morning or whenever, they’re going to be called and they have to
show up,” West said. West questioned them about how they advise their
members when they are called to hospital beds. She recounted their
advice: “‘We believe God that God will give us instruction on what to
do as a family on how to make decisions and secondly to listen to the
doctor and do what the doctor says to do.’ And the latter is really
what got me because most times when you come into an emergency room in
a crisis situation, that doctor hasn’t seen you before, they don’t know
you. They don’t know who you are.”
So she founded
IMPACT or Inter-denominational Minority Pastor/ Parishioner Advanced
Care Training to assist in the education of ministers of all
denominations about advanced directives and how to advise their
congregations about such matters. West hopes that when Impact
coordinators leave, church authorities are educated enough to carry on
their knowledge to help families to make better decisions in the
hospitals.
“That way when
they have to make that medical decision in that crisis situation, it’s
already been discussed. In a medical emergency, that’s a crisis time
when one can’t think clearly,” West says.
IMPACT has
increased the knowledge of pastors and paritioners by 40% in 6 months
and is currently seeking funding to gain national status. So where does
West go from here? “There’s a book that I’m in the process of writing,”
she says. “It’s being edited right now and it will talk about health
care for African Americans in Buncombe county from 1890-1960.” Access
and Availability will show that some of the health issues African
Americans faced during this time period are still being faced today.
West is still
not done influencing her community and encourages others to do the
same. West says “A lot of the good things that can happen to us we can
initiate ourselves. If we are empowered enough as a people to know
what’s important, to make the right decisions, to be empowered to say
‘I felt that was inappropriate, the way I was treated’, to be empowered
enough to address that issue so that someone else who comes after you
does not get that same treatment.”
One change West
would like to see in our community is the incorporation of what Ronald
Barrack calls “cultural congruence” or making sure an organization’s
members reflect the characteristics of those they are trying to serve.
“When we have more people to reflect the African American community,
the Latino, the American Indian, the Asian community, that is when
people come into that institution. They feel more welcome and they feel
like this is of importance for an institution to have people that look
like me,” says West.
West comments
that Asheville is a resource-rich community and if people reach out to
each other it will help to educate about disparities.
West’s hope for
the community is furthered by her spirituality. “A part about culture
with African Americans is that our hope comes from our spirituality.
Spirituality is the only thing that is larger than many of the
situations that we face. And that goes way back to days of slavery and
I think that resiliency has a strong spiritual group. So it’s very
important,” she says. As a parent of three young adults, West
understands the pressures of raising a family in this society.
“When you get
off of work at 5, when have to go to a meeting by 5:30, when you get
home around 8, when kids are at athletic events, husband is at
meetings, we’re eating so late at night-we just really need to bring it
back around the dinner table, even if we can only do it one day a week.
Of course, for me it’s making sure that spiritual connection is there.
I grew up in a Christian home and that’s our route still” says West.
Even though West
was born in Brooklyn, NJ, she has lived in the Asheville area since she
was three. She says, “Every town’s going to have bad situations but
there’s something about the genuiness of the Buncombe county people
that lets us know that there’s hope for us that we can come together…
I think Asheville can set the standard. We can be the flagship for
community relations and I feel really hopeful that that can happen in
my lifetime.”
