ERIE, Pa. — Dr. Ala Stanford’s path to a career in medicine, and to a post at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she served as a regional director, overseeing all federal health programs in five states and the District of Columbia, began at age 8.
“In Philadelphia, when you are an impoverished kid, everyone goes to the health center,” Stanford said. “We went to Public Health Center No. 5. There was a doctor there who was a Black woman, and she seemed so relaxed. She seemed happy and put-together. She had on nice clothes.
“I had never seen someone like her before,” she said.
Stanford decided she would attend college. She enrolled at Penn State Behrend and went on to earn a degree in biology from the Penn State Eberly College of Science. She earned her medical degree from the Penn State College of Medicine.
She was the first Black female pediatric surgeon to be trained entirely in the United States.
Stanford, a 2022 Alumni Fellow, recently returned to Behrend as a featured guest in the college’s Speaker Series. She discussed her work with the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, which led to appearances on CNN and in USA Today, and her role at the Department of Health and Human Services. She also appeared on Chancellor Ralph Ford’s podcast, “Behrend Talks.”
She founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, she said, because residents of Philadelphia’s minority communities were not receiving adequate medical care. At the time, just three of every 1,000 residents had access to COVID testing.
“I was the doctor people could reach,” she said. “They were all calling me, saying, ‘Ala, I think I have COVID. I’m going to the hospital.’ And the hospitals were sending them home, saying they weren’t sick enough, or their doctor wasn’t on staff at that hospital.
“I started calling the hospitals,” she said. “I asked them, ‘Are you really turning people away?’ And they said, ‘We have to. We’re swamped.’”
As a surgeon with a private practice, Stanford had access to masks, gloves and surgical gowns. She had accounts with lab companies that could provide testing kits. She began to make house calls, offering on-the-spot COVID tests.
Her husband drove the van.
“We went door to door,” she said. “People would come out on their porch. I would do the COVID test, put it in ice, and then we were on to the next house.”
She administered 12 tests on that first day. It wasn’t nearly enough. She decided to ask her pastor for help.
“I went to the city website, and I could see the ZIP codes where the positivity rates were the highest,” she said. “We started reaching out to churches in those areas, asking, ‘Can we have your parking lot, some electricity and a restroom for our staff?’ And we built triage hospitals right there in the parking lots.”
It worked. Within the week, with help from a growing pool of volunteers, she was screening 400 patients every day.
“It wasn’t just churches,” she said. “We were at mosques. We were at union halls. We were at parks and recreation centers. We were on street corners.
“With any public health strategy, regardless of the group you are serving, you need to understand what people need and who they trust,” she said. “I don’t believe that people showed up because I was a Black woman doctor. They didn’t know who I was. But they knew that church, and they knew that pastor. And because the pastor said it was OK, they trusted us.”
Her work with the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium thrust Stanford into a public spotlight, and into a continuing discussion about public health. CNN called, and Forbes, and USA Today. She received the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Award.
She used her new platform to expand the work of the consortium, forming the Dr. Ala Stanford Center for Health Equity. She wrote a book, a memoir-manifesto titled, “Take Care of Them Like My Own.”
In October, she launched a congressional campaign.
“My default is to serve,” she said. “That has been my entire life. And the more I have given, the more I get back. Now that I have this platform, and when I talk, people listen, it seems like this is the path to have the most impact for my community.”
To listen to the full recording of Dr. Ala Stanford’s discussion with Chancellor Ralph Ford, visit the “Behrend Talks” archive.