A&I Honors Biden’s Equity ​“Visionary”

Public health and the arts working hand in hand in the quest for social justice.

Marcella Nunez-Smith operates on that vision.

And for that vision, she received the 11th Annual Visionary Leadership Award Thursday night from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

Nunez Smith, a Yale medical school professor who has become a leader in the national quest to address the disproportionate impact of ovid-19 on Black and brown communities, spoke of that vision during the award event, which was held online.

“I think of art as nourishing and curative and transformative. To even think about the important role arts can play in getting us to where we need to be on the social justice front is phenomenal. Because the power of art to help us have these difficult understandings and difficult conversations and discourse is invaluable” she said at the event.

The Visionary Leadership Award was established in 2010 in honor of festival co-founder Jean M. Handley, a local arts champion.

Nunez Smith has stepped into a national role since Joe Biden’s election as president. She co-chaired the Biden-Harris Transition Team’s Covid-19 task force. She now serves as chair of the Biden-Harris administration’s Covid-19 Equity Task Force.

Meanwhile, she has remained active at home, from her day job to a board leadership role at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. She has bounced between roles listening and answering questions on racial equity and Covid-19 at White House press briefings and then at local meetings and participating in local events like a recent sickle-cell roundtable and Tuesday night’s A&I event sometimes even hours apart.

She also served as community committee chair for the ReOpen Connecticut Advisory Group on behalf of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont. Her Yale School of Medicine positions include associate professor of internal medicine, public health, and epidemiology, and associate dean of health equity research.

In conversation at Thursday night’s event with immigrant rights and racial justice advocate Kica Matos (who has led a grassroots effort in Fair Haven to vaccinate people of color), Nunez-Smith said that the Festival of Arts & Ideas was one of the major draws that led her to come to New Haven when she interviewed for a Yale fellowship. ​“And one of the things that kept me going during my fellowship time was being able to participate in the arts in New Haven.”

Nunez-Smith spoke about growing up in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. ​“It took me a while to understand that in a place of such beauty and rich natural resources, we didn’t have as much opportunity as people in other places. To learn that we were medically under-served to understanding what that term meant. So, a lot of my early understanding of health and health care was shaped by being in what was a resource-constrained system.”

According to old family videos, Nunez-Smith knew she wanted to be a doctor since she was 6. Her mother was a nursing professor. As a child, Nunez-Smith would reach up to the top of the bookshelf to read her mother’s medical textbooks. ​“Oh, my God, I was such a nerd. I’m proud of it. My mom had a rule, she said I could read anything I could reach,” she recalled with a laugh.

Nunez-Smith also spoke about her academic journey, coming to the mainland U.S. for college when she was 16. As a Black female physician, she encountered patients who would not ​“retain or acknowledge” that she was the senior physician on the team. They would hand her trays.

“But the flip of that, if I had a dollar for every time a patient of color has just physically even just relaxed upon my entrance — like, physically — and said, ​‘I never had a physician or a doctor of color take care of me.’”

She said many of these patients of color ask to take pictures with her to send to their granddaughters or nieces. ​“So that is very joy-making and inspiring but it is its own sad narrative.”

With her work on the Covid-19 Equity Task Force, Nunez-Smith said, she aims to ensure access to high-quality healthcare for everyone. A pattern of racism and bias has caused communities of color to get hit disproportionately harder by the pandemic, and needs to be disrupted, she said. ​“One the most, idealistic outcomes is that my children, our children, will look back or study this time and think it is so peculiar that the zip code where we live is the most strong predictor of your health at all times, but again in the context of the pandemic.”

“This award so critically shines a light on the challenge and is a rallying call to action for all of us. This past year has forced a national reckoning. I invite each of us to think about ways we can individually hold this moment and center equity and justice in everything we do,” Nunez-Smith said.

Mayor Justin Elicker presented her with a proclamation for the award. He thanked Nunez-Smith for her work and highlighted the Festival of Arts & Ideas’ contributions to New Haven.

Elicker noted this year’s theme of ​“Imagine” for the festival: ​“I think that theme speaks to all of us right now. To imagine is to dream with a purpose and to picture a new future together. Now in this time of deep challenges, I think there are many ways we can imagine a future that is better and together.”

Visionary Leadership Award Event Chair Rev. Kevin Ewing thanked Nunez-Smith for ​“ensuring no community is left behind” through her service on the Biden administration Covid-19 health equity task force.

“I think we all agree that health inequities do not stem from the Covid-19 pandemic. But I for one, am confident that with continued leadership and scholarship from Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, we can begin to do the work to address health inequalities that have plagued our communities for far too long once and for all.”

Emmy and Grammy-winning Latin jazz pianist Ignacio ​“Nachito” Herrera opened the ceremony with renditions of ​“I Got Rhythm,” ​“Bach to Havana,” and ​“God Bless America” and closed with a self-composed piece.

Herrera wrote the piece from his ICU bed as he was recovering from a severe case of Covid-19. When he woke up the second day, someone was able to bring a keyboard to the room. ​“Obviously there was not very good control of your finger, and your muscles, but I was able to play something. And then this melody came to my head. I decided to call it ​‘Esperanza,’” English for ​“hope.”

Click on the above video to watch the full ceremony.