Gillings School of Global Public Health, MPH Student & Preventative Medicine Resident
My name is Anne Berry, and I’m a 2nd year Preventive Medicine resident and MPH student in the Population Health for Clinicians concentration. After graduating from medical school in 2007, I completed residency training in Family Medicine with a focus in maternity care and women’s health. Then I worked in a community health center in Clendenin, WV and a small rural hospital outside Mwanza, Tanzania. Providing maternity care in the Caribbean immigrant community of Lawrence, MA, during residency, I first witnessed first-hand the shocking disparities in pregnancy and birth outcomes for people of color in the United States. In maternity care in Tanzania, I was confronted with the heartbreaking preventable deaths of birthing people. I also confronted the truth that no matter how good of a doctor I am, I may not be able to prevent even one of these deaths, alone. This realization made me even more determined to join the diverse community of people working in collaboration for improvements in public health and health systems on large and small scales, as I believe that only through collaboration can the lives of individual women and children be protected and honored. I joined the GCPR certificate to learn community-engaged research methodologies to allow me to share my skills and expertise when invited and invite the skills and expertise of communities, not out of tokenism but out of understanding that only through true mutuality can health equity be realized. I’m currently working on a collaborative project with Mobilizing African American Mothers for Empowerment (MAAME), a community-based doula organization in Durham.