Danforth Dialogues with Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG

COVID-19 turned life upside down for all of humanity literally leaving no one untouched or unimpacted. At the onset of the pandemic, Morehouse School of Medicine President and CEO, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, and her leadership team recognized that the health crisis would be the ultimate teaching opportunity for MSM’s students and staff. The school returned to on-campus instruction early in the pandemic because as future healthcare professionals, they felt the students should model behavior that will prepare them to be on the frontlines of any future public health crisis. Morehouse School of Medicine implemented rigorous testing and contract tracing programs which, over the course of the pandemic, kept the school’s positivity rate under 1 percent until the emergence of the omicron variant. The school also launched a community vaccination program and hosted a “Civil Rights Leaders” vaccination event to inspire Black Americans to get the shots.Given its unique role as a public health r