A Personal Look at Public Health Through the Lens of Queen B: Honoring My Mother This Women’s History Month
As we close out Women’s History Month, I’ve been thinking a lot about the women whose names will never make it into a history book—but whose lives have quietly reshaped how we understand health, community, and leadership.
For me, that woman is my mother, Bonnie Easton, the “Queen B” in my life. Queens are known for their confidence, wisdom, and beauty. She is all of these.
She is also a former physical education teacher who retired as a social worker in the public school system, a lover of sports, a community volunteer, and now a woman living with Alzheimer’s for the past 20 years. Two full decades. I honestly hadn’t realized how much time had passed until I said it out loud recently—twenty years.
Her story sits at the intersection of health and leadership, and it keeps teaching me three big lessons:
How community can be a form of health care
How illness exposes the gaps in our systems—especially for Black women
How leadership begins with how we move through our own lives
Let’s take a closer look at these lessons from Queen B to invite you to Do Something with M.E. in her name.
1. My Mother as a Community Health Leader
Before I had degrees and titles in public health, my mother was quietly doing public health in the way she lived.
Movement as a Family Value
Growing up, we didn’t sit around the table having deep conversations about “wellness plans.” We had tennis courts, seats in the gym bleachers for Xavier games, and road trips to games in the sports leagues I played in.
I honestly never knew life without some sort of sport or activity. That’s just what we did.
As a physical education teacher, she knew and lived the importance of being active. She played sports. She organized things. Our family calendar revolved around practices, games, and community events. We’d go to the tennis courts. We’d go to the Xavier basketball games. We’d travel when I was playing in different leagues. Movement wasn’t an “extra.” It was our normal.
Looking back, I realize:
She didn’t lecture us about taking care of our bodies. She modeled it.
Stern, Xavier, and the Community
For years, my parents practically lived at Stern Tennis Center (now called Atkinson-Stern Tennis Center to honor Nehemiah Atkinson's contributions to the center during his tenure as manager and to the community). I used to joke that they were at Stern more than they were at home. Four to seven days a week: Stern.
Yes, there was tennis. But if you were to stand there and just watch, you’d realize it was so much more:
Friends ribbing each other
People talking trash, laughing loud
Friday nights with food (and beverages for the adults - wink)
Folks who showed up, not to play tennis, but just to be there—to sit, to talk, to reconnect
It was a clubhouse where family and friends gathered.
That rhythm of movement and community was a kind of informal public health practice. My mother was at the center of that—playing, watching, supporting, organizing, celebrating. She stayed physically active and socially connected, which we now know is a huge protector of cognitive health.
Long before I had the language of “social determinants of health” and “8 dimensions of health” my mother was living them through her insistence on the following in our lives:
Physical activity
Social connection
Joy
A sense of belonging
2. Her Alzheimer’s Journey and the Weight Black Women Carry
This year marks 20 years since my mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Twenty years of watching her decline in certain ways, and yet, twenty years of witnessing how much of her is still very much present.
“I’m Still Here”
The communication centers in her brain are challenged. Words don’t always come out the way she intends. Sometimes she uses phrases that don’t quite fit the moment. Sometimes she repeats things.
But her desire to connect is intact.
If I’m talking to someone, she will often start talking too—cutting in like, “I’m here, don’t talk around me.” If I tell her, “Mom, I’ve got to go upstairs and work,” she acknowledges that. She knows I’m there. She knows people are around her. She wants to be in the mix (that’s queenly after all).
Her life before Alzheimer’s helps explain some of that resilience:
She was physically active.
She had a college degree and a master’s, which likely reduced some economic stressors.
She had strong community networks and friendships.
All of that, I believe, has helped sustain her quality of life, even as the disease has progressed.
Doing Everything “Right” and Still Hitting Barriers
My parents did a lot of things “the right way.”
They bought long-term care insurance decades ago—late 80s or early 90s. They’ve paid into it for around 30 years. They were intentional and responsible. They tried to plan for the future.
And yet, when it was time to use that insurance, I found myself on the phone, frustrated, telling a customer service representative:
“I need help. I don’t need hurdles.”
The systems that are supposed to support aging adults with cognitive challenges are, in so many ways, not ready—even for the families who did everything they were told to do.
When I tried to actually use what they’d invested in, the process made me run in circles. That is not just an inconvenience. That is a systemic failure. This should not be, especially when they paid those premiums ten times over.
Black Women, Vascular Risk, and Heavier Burdens
What we know about dementia and connections to race is that Alzheimer’s Disease, for example, has a vascular component. And, in Black communities, we see higher rates of hypertension and diabetes. When you add in socioeconomic issues—less access to consistent care, more financial strain, fewer supports—the burden on Black families, especially Black women, is heavier.
A Special Report, Race, Ethnicity, and Alzheimer’s in America, by the Alzheimer’s Association, reports:
Racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, such as those observed during the pandemic, extend to dementia care. Stigma, cultural differences, awareness and understanding, and the ability to obtain a diagnosis, manage the disease, and access care and support services for dementia vary widely depending on race, ethnicity, geography and socioeconomic status. …(H)ealth and socioeconomic disparities and systemic racism contribute to increased Alzheimer’s and dementia risk in underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Older Black and Hispanic Americans are also disproportionately more likely to have Alzheimer’s and other dementias, as well as more likely to have missed diagnoses, than older White Americans.
As they found, the disparity isn’t just in who gets the disease; it’s in:
Who gets diagnosed at all
How early they’re diagnosed
How it’s managed
What kind of support caregivers receive
And we know that Black women are often:
The ones living with chronic conditions and
The ones doing the caregiving, care-coordinating, and advocating
My mother’s 20-year journey with Alzheimer’s is a very personal story. But it’s also a window into how our systems still fail to honor the labor, planning, and humanity of women like her.
Carrying Her Legacy Forward: Do Something With M.E.
All of this—the movement, the community, the long-term care fight, the racial and gendered burden—leaves me with one conviction: We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. So I want you to Do Something with M.E.
In honor of the Queen Bs in our families this Women’s History Month, we must move from watching from the sidelines to mobilizing for change.
What “Doing Something” Can Look Like
You don’t have to be a policymaker or a researcher to make a difference. Here are some ways to start:
Support Your Local Alzheimer’s or Dementia Organizations
Donate if you’re able.
Volunteer your time or skills.
Attend their educational events.
These organizations are often the ones on the ground, supporting families like mine.Participate in Research
When people hear “research,” they usually think “clinical trials,” and for many in the African American community, that can feel like a bridge too far, given the history of harm and exploitation.
But there are other forms of research that are critical:Completing surveys
Participating in interviews or focus groups
Allowing your experiences and perspectives to be counted
The Alzheimer’s Association shares information about trials on the Alzheimer’s Association website with resources for people of color.
The information is helpful in providing language to African Americans that helps assuage fears for clinical trials and data from our inclusion in clinical trials shapes:
How resources are allocated
How policies are written
What support services get funded
So participating in clinical trials is another impactful way to use your voice and influence how future families are treated.
Advocate for Better Systems of Care
Ask hard questions of your insurers and health systems.
Contact your elected officials about funding for:
Dementia research
Caregiver support
Long-term care reform
Honoring One Woman, Changing Many Stories
Women’s History Month tends to spotlight the “big names”—the women who held office, broke barriers, signed legislation, led movements.
But history is also made:
In PE gyms filled with kids running and laughing
On tennis courts that double as clubhouses
In living rooms where daughters fight with insurance companies on behalf of their mothers
At kitchen tables where families learn, slowly, what it means to live with Alzheimer’s
My mother may never see her name in a textbook. But for me, her life is the syllabus I keep returning to—for how we move, how we care, and how we lead.
This Women’s History Month, in her honor, I’m asking you to do something with me:
Move your body
Strengthen your community
Take at least one concrete step—however small—toward supporting Alzheimer’s research, care, or advocacy
Because the story of women like Bonnie Easton, my mother–Queen B–deserves our action.