Esther Bush, head of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, is just finishing her morning coffee, when she moves the fifth floor of the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall to listen to the speakers and panelists with the Personal Track at the White House Frontiers conference.
For two decades, Ms. Bush has been pushing people who are underserved across obstacles, helping them with housing, job opportunities, and educational choices.
She’s at the conference to continue her work of helping those who are invisible into new frontiers.
To unleash the power of medicine and healing for tomorrow, she knows that African Americans are going to have to be a part of research today.
Bush and the Urban League is a partner with the University of Pittsburgh’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), which works to improve the efficiency with which biomedical advances translate to improvements in community health.
Ms. Bush wants the improvements to cut across all communities. Many African American deeply distrust the medical system and research because of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which let the disease go untreated in the rural Southern community to study the effects of the disease on humans. Many African Americans died or were stricken for life.
To counter the mistrust, Ms. Bush is an advocate with CTSI, working to recruit African Americans to research and work to find ways to advance their comfort levels with scientific research once they get there.
“It’s important that we do this,” says Bush. “We can’t have a stronger future if all medical testing is on white males over 50.”
“I’m here because I’m a bridge to this research,” she says. “A bridge to the future. If I’m educated on these new frontiers, I can be a voice for the community.”
Check back throughout the day for more on the White House Frontiers Conference.
—Ervin Dyer