On Tuesday, May 4, the legacy of Dr. Arthur James will be honored with the presentation of the first Health Babies Healthy Start annual Arthur James Award. The award was created for James whose work in the field of maternal and infant health and for his unrelenting advocacy for the elimination of racial disparities.
The award will be presented during the program at 8 a.m. in the Bronson Gilmore Center for Health Education, classroom #7, 7 Healthcare Plaza.
“We want to give recognition to Dr. James for his inspiration, his leadership and for being an infatigable advocate for our most vulnerable citizens,” said Carmen Sweezy, program coordinator for Health Babies, Healthy Start.
“Among his many accomplishments, it is thanks to his dedication that Kalamazoo Healthy Babies Healthy Start Program was established more that 10 years ago. He set the path for many of us to follow,” Sweezy said.
In addition to award created in his honor, James will be presented with the “Resolution of Distinction from the Borgess Health Board of Trustees.”
This first annual Healthy Babies Healthy Start Arthur James Award will be presented to Dr. Michael Liepman, director of Addiction Psychiatry & Research, MSU, Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies, for the Mother Mind Matters Initiative. This initiative, had an unprecedented impact on perinatal depression screening and treatment improving the quality of lives of women and their families in our community, according to Sweezy.
The program also will feature the award winning presentation, “Racial disparities in maternal and infant health: Healthy Babies, Healthy Start, a success story,” by Cathy Kothari and Carmen Sweezy. Their research won the “Best Clinical Research,” award during the 28th annual Kalamazoo Community Medical Health and Sciences Research Day, Michigan State University, Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies on April 14.
Healthy Babies, Healthy Start is a program of Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services and is one of the many organizations who have honored James for his work and passion for saving the lives of babies. While James fights to battle the statistics of teen pregnancy and infant mortality of African Americans, it is his own life that is a real testament of battling against the odds.
Dr. James battles statistics
James’ own parents began their family together as teens and moved from the lazy bayous of Louisiana to the fast streets of Los Angeles.
Their hope for a brighter future would come crashing in like the ocean waves when the father died of leukemia. The mother determined to succeed achieved her own dreams of becoming a Licensed Practical Nurse. However, the unforgiving city streets would claim the lives of two of her sons to crack cocaine, and another to alcohol-related illnesses. Even a daughter, who would be the first in the family to attend college, would be struck down in the prime of her life with colon cancer.
The statistics, however could not have predicted that two siblings would stand to defy all odds stacked against them. They would be the youngest girl, Joy, and Arthur who was10 years younger than her. Young Arthur would have vague memories of his father who died when he was only 5 years old. And the statistics would again come into play for his own life as he became a part of one L.A.’s most notorious street gangs.
What happened next, not even Hollywood movies could not have predicted. That youngest child would become a doctor dedicated to improving the lives of teenagers, and young parents and their unborn babies.
Changing Kalamazoo
James came to Kalamazoo in 1988 with his wife, Janice who he met at Stanford University. The two decided to move to Kalamazoo after completing their residencies at the University of Texas at Houston, to raise their growing family near her family in Columbus, Ohio.
He was hired as a doctor at Bronson Hospital and would eventually serve as medical director of the Bronson Obstetrics Clinic (now known as Bronson’s Women’s Services). In 1990 he began working part-time at the Family Health Center and became its medical director in 1993. Two years later he moved his practice to Borgess Medical Center where he was the Chief of the OB/GYN Department from 2007-2009 (2 year term). He now practices at Borgess Women’s Health.
Through all his transitions, he has remained consistent in the focus to reduce teen pregnancies and infant mortality in Kalamazoo County, especially within the African-American community. The Teen Pregnancy Alert Coalition, an organization he helped spearhead, researched the social-economic and medical findings related to teen pregnancy in Kalamazoo County.
In studying data beginning in 1980, they discovered that the State of Michigan had the highest rate of infant mortality in African Americans in the United States, and Kalamazoo County had the highest rate of infant mortality for that same group, in the state. They also discovered 85 percent of the African American births in Kalamazoo County were funded by Medicaid. At that, he said poverty, quality of life and other issues came into view.
“It begins to raise a lot of questions about our community,” said James. “What’s going on in the African American community and what are we doing so well to protect the white component of our community and simultaneously do so poorly for the black community; particularly teens.”
In addition to his work to curtail infant mortality in Kalamazoo County, he was the first local obstetrician to provide prenatal care for HIV positive mothers and the first obstetrician in Kalamazoo to push for the development of programs to help mothers who use drugs during pregnancy.
He has been a key player in such organizations as Pride Place, a home for pregnant teenagers and parenting teens; and the Family Institute, an organization that was interested in preventing teen pregnancies, increasing access to prenatal care and improving parenting skills. He was also a founding board member of Project Motivate, a program developed with Michigan State University’s Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies to encourage and assist local minority college students interested in attending medical school.
He and his wife, Janice, also a pediatrician, financed and hosted a conference held at Western Michigan University to address issues of teen pregnancy and infant mortality in Kalamazoo. He is the founder and Medical Director of the Kalamazoo Fetal and Infant Mortality Review and also participated in the creation of the Kalamazoo County Abstinence Initiative.
Knowing the odds his parents faced in raising their family as teens with little education, James has a personal dedication to protecting the future generations by empowering them to love themselves.
“Infant mortality, the teen birth rate, and incidence of sexually transmitted infections, all of those things are a reflection of the quality of life in our community,” James said. “When one group is experiencing a substantially higher rate of infant mortality than another that data is telling us that quality of life for that group in our community isn’t what it ought to be. We need to pay attention to it; do the kinds of things necessary to address that to help eliminate the disparity.”
