Dr. Crista Johnson-Agbakwu leads efforts to serve marginalized communities in Greater Worcester, becoming a leading voice for health equity.
As the first executive director of the Collaborative of Health Equity at UMass Chan Medical School, Johnson-Agbakwu has advanced partnerships and created initiatives toward this work, specifically focused on women and reproductive health. For 25 years, she has served as an OB-GYN physician, working to provide care to underrepresented populations.
“I remain committed to serving and elevating voices and advocating for policies and practices that center the voices of those most marginalized,” she said. “Especially during the current environment as we are immersed in right now, where we see right before our eyes daily, the impact of policies on those most vulnerable.”
In her role as director of health equity, a core pillar of her work has been advancing maternal health equity. Over the last two years in April, she and her team raised awareness across Worcester by engaging in educational outreach and community advocacy for the national Black Maternal Health Week. From partnering with the City of Worcester to host community forums or with local community organizations like the YWCA Central Massachusetts, she has mobilized the community to learn about issues facing Black mothers.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen somebody come into a new community and be as immediately and deeply both embraced and embedded in the work,” said Tiffany Moore Simas, chair Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UMass Memorial Health. “Crista is somebody whose heart is deeply embedded to where she is.”
Johnson- Agbakwu strives to hear the voices of the members of the communities she serves, which drives her work, Moore Simas said.
“If we just look at the diversity of the team that she’s put together, the diversity of the community organizations she convenes to inform the work that is being done to address health equity, it’s truly remarkable,” Moore Simas said.
As professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UMass Memorial Health, Johnson-Agbakwu works to educate learners and support faculty in their work of leading health equity initiatives too.
Growing up in Hartford, her parents were dedicated to community service, advocating for educational services, citizenship, and other social needs for immigrants. Despite being embedded in the local Caribbean American community in the city, as a second-generation American and a Black woman, she said there was not a lot of representation of physicians of color.
This upbringing had a profound impact on her life, she said. She found the importance of mentorship and representation in health care and became the first physician in her family.
One of her role models is Claudia Thomas, the first Black female orthopedic surgeon in the U.S., who Johnson- Agbakwu shadowed during her undergraduate years at John Hopkins University. Thomas told her countless physicians do good work, but Johnson- Agbakwu needed to set her sights on something higher and work to impact entire populations.
“Those are words that she gave me as I was graduating from Johns Hopkins back in 1996, and it’s literally been my guiding light that has literally guided the entire trajectory of my career,” she said. “The responsibility to lift as I climb and reach back and bring others along, just as she and others have held me up and supported me.”
Johnson-Agbakwu became involved in refugee and migrant health in medical school and served populations of newly arrived immigrants from countries where female genital mutilation was common.
“This is when I first found my voice in terms of advocacy for disenfranchised, underserved, and vulnerable populations,” she said. “I saw the impact of our health system and some of the challenges providing … trauma-informed care for these communities.”
Before returning to her roots in New England, she spent 15 years of her career building the first clinic of its kind to serve refugees and migrants in Phoenix. She served 16,000 patients and built a workforce of community health workers, who had shared lived experiences and spoke the languages of the patients.
Outside of her medical accomplishments, Johnson-Agbakwu serves on the Worcester Refugee and Immigrant Support and Empowerment board, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s maternal task force, and hosts conversations on Worcester Unity Radio’s Talking Wellness.
