The Detroit Medical Center: Race and Renewal in the Motor City

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy The Detroit Medical Center: Race and Renewal in the Motor City A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Jessica Nickrand IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Dominique Tobbell, PhD May 2019 © 2019 Jessica Nickrand Acknowledgements It is possible that these acknowledgements will be the longest section of this entire dissertation. I was in graduate school for a whole decade, and that requires an awful lot of thanks. But beyond my time in graduate school, this work is really a culmination of the guidance and generosity of so many people throughout my life, and I need to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge all of them. First, I am of course indebted to the University of Minnesota and the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine for taking the chance on this first- generation college kid with a lip ring so many years ago. My adviser, Dominique Tobbell, challenged me to produce the best work I could, and her intellectual leadership and guidance resulted in the scholar I am today. Especially toward the end of this journey, she provided prompt feedback and incredible access, and helped me “climb the mountain” and get this thing done. I will forever be grateful for her support. Jennifer Gunn served as a co-adviser for the beginning part of this work, and is the Chair of my committee, and has been such a force of good in my career as a historian. In addition to her feedback, support, and guidance in my academic life, Jennifer also let me housesit the summer I was leaving a terrible marriage and somehow found research assistantships for me to survive that year and stay in school. Her capacity to see me as a fully formed individual is something that I will always remember and try to duplicate as my career grows and I manage my own workers. Sally Kohlstedt was the first faculty member I met in this program; she talked to me for a long time at an HSS I went to my senior year of college when I was trying to figure out what this field was and if it was my future. She i has since tried her best to keep me on task with gentle nudges and genuine curiosity about my project that resulted in conversations that helped to illuminate where to take this work. Jennifer Alexander is the woman I want to be when I grow up. Her confidence and brilliance exist in tandem with her kindness, willingness to help, and grace. As a woman of deep religious convictions myself (so few of us exist in academia, it seems) I have always respected her openness about her faith, and appreciated how it provides her guidance on everything she does—something I hope I model in my own life as well. I am so happy she agreed to serve on my committee. Susan Jones is maybe the nicest person I have ever met in my life. I loved her immediately when we first chatted when she had her “DGS hat” on during my first visit to Minnesota, and thoroughly enjoyed the courses I’ve taken with her and have always left motivated after our conversations. During one conversation after I defended my prospectus, I told her I felt overwhelmed and unsure if I belonged here anymore, and she assured me I did, citing my capacity to work. I’ve heard those words in my head several times toward the end of this project, and I will always be grateful she agreed to serve on my committee. Although not on my committee, I would also like to thank Mark Borello, who served as DGS in this program during a particularly challenging point in my life. He was helpful and supportive in ways that I will always be thankful for. And of course, the administrative staff in our program have saved my life multiple times. Thank you so much to Barbara Eastwold, Julia Knoll, Mary Thomas, and Emmie Miller, all of whom have done the legwork I should have done myself to make sure I could stay in school, get paid, and graduate. And finally, thank you to the staff of the Wangensteen Library for providing a respite from my office—Elaine Challacombe, ii Lois Hendrickson, Christopher Herzberg, and Emily Beck have long been some of my favorite people in Diehl Hall. I had a lot of financial help that got me through graduate school, but nothing was more helpful or transformative that the Diversity of Views and Experiences (DOVE) Fellowship I received from the Graduate School my first year. I am pretty sure my admittance did not come with a funding package, and so if I did not receive this fellowship, I would not have been able to attend this program. This fellowship placed me in a group of people called the “Community of Scholars Program,” during which I met lifelong friends and people whose work I admire greatly, most notably my dear friend Jacob Chin. While at the University of Minnesota, I also received financial help from the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine through various teaching and research assistantships which I appreciate tremendously. I also received a Wangensteen Fellowship, and the faculty nominated me for a Dissertation Development Fellowship which I received from the Graduate School to continue work on writing my dissertation. In addition, I received a travel grant from the program which allowed me to conduct my dissertation research in Detroit and Ann Arbor. Externally, I am grateful for the financial support from the Bentley Library at the University of Michigan and the Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor. Without these funding opportunities, I would not have been able to finish. I was fortunate enough to receive a Mirzayan Fellowship at the National Academies to help jumpstart my career in health policy. I am grateful to my cohort for iii their friendship and support, and to the staff of the National Academies, especially Anne- Marie Mazza. I worked full time the last four years of writing, which has made life busy, but I am so grateful to have had the opportunity at the workplaces I’ve been (and the permission to commit time theft to write this dissertation when I could). At Notre Dame, I am grateful to the graduate students who provided a community for an awkward staff member, but also to my colleagues Tori Davies, Jessica Baron, Don Howard, Gary Lamberti, Jay Malone, Mindy Gormley, Katherine Brading, and the best boss I’ve ever had, Anjan Chakaravarrty. I spent a year at Urban Homeworks, a nonprofit in North Minneapolis. While there, I gained a deeper understanding of race and my role as a white person in social justice work, and that helped to shape this dissertation tremendously. I am grateful to my colleagues and friends Ethrophic Burnett, Shannon Lundquist, Lindsey Hunter, Barbara White, Joyce Thomas, Chad Schwitters, Ben Post, Kali Torres, Paul Bauknight, Anna DeCrans, Jon Lundberg, Lissa Grabowski, and Denise Fosse. I have spent the past two years working at the American Academy of Neurology, where I learned even more about health policy and the way that these regulations affect patients and physicians. I am grateful to all of #HPNation, especially my team Amanda Becker, Brandon Magliocco, Mel Johnston-Gross, Laura Sutter, Becky Wolf, Luana Ciccarelli, Daniel Spirn, Matt Kerschner, and Kylie Botchway. I am also thankful for the AAN physician members who I work closely with that have been interested and supportive of my progress on this project. iv This journey started a long time ago, and it would be disingenuous to not use this space to thank those who shaped me long before this dissertation even became a possibility. I am grateful to have been raised in a faith community that emphasized social teaching. Without the foundation provided to me by the community at Christ the Good Shepherd Parish in Lincoln Park, Michigan, I would have never found my vocation, nor learned how to use my voice and talents to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Thanks are especially owed to Fr. David Buersmeyer, Fr. Bob LaCroix, and Sr. Becky Vonderhaar—their teachings provided the footing for my academic career and this research. I have been lucky to have exceptional teachers in my life that have nurtured by interests and challenged me in ways that prepared me for higher education, but I still rely on the teachings from four of my high school teachers every day. Mr. Chris Timmis was the first person I ever met who was working on a doctorate degree. He taught me about academia and made me realize that postgraduate work could be a possibility. Mr. Timmis was excellent about helping talk through my college choices (although he wanted me to go to Kalamazoo College, not MSU), and I am so grateful for his guidance. Mr. Eric Hood taught his English class like a college seminar and prepared me more for higher education than almost anything else I encountered in high school. He humbled me (a much-needed thing when I was 16) and taught me how to think critically and question authority. Ms. Catherine Russell is sort of responsible for my entire career. My senior year she stopped me in the hall and asked why I wasn’t in her AP Bio class, and scolded v me when I told her I didn’t think I needed science any more because I knew I wanted to study policy.

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