“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
As our world, and our profession of healthcare in particular, still grapple with the strain of a global pandemic, our country now faces another distressing challenge. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery quickly escalated the boiling and tumultuous waters of racism within our country and our culture.
Today, we find ourselves confronted with the urgent need to engage in conversations about awareness as we learn, listen and seek to understand each other in the fight against racism in America. As Christians, we need to do something, and we need to do something now. As an organization, we want to be part of the solution, specifically for our profession in healthcare.
What is CMDA doing to confront this issue?
CMDA condemns racism in any form, and we believe there is no place for racism in the world, in healthcare or in the lives of our leadership, members or staff. We believe Scripture clearly communicate God’s will for mankind to treat people everywhere in all circumstances with love, humility, kindness, compassion and self-control.
CMDA will continue seeking to oppose racism in healthcare and society and pursuing justice in access to healthcare and equitable outcomes. We will also continue striving for racial diversity in our leadership nationally, regionally and locally, in our commissions, board, staff, membership and in all aspects of our many ministries.
Resources from CMDA
Radical Inclusion: A Chapel Presentation by Trish Burgess, MD
Chapel presentation on Racism - Love One Another with Gene Rudd, MD and Paul Montgomery.
Is My Neighbor Among The 'Least Of These?': Social Inequality & the Christian
Watch this webinar with a panel of healthcare professionals who answer discuss how to use our calling from God to reverse racism’s effects on health and healthcare.
Read CMDA’s Public Policy Statement on racism, which includes a list of specific Scriptures denouncing racism in our world.
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Additional Resources:
R²ed Team
Racism and Reconciliation, Equality, and Diversity
Dr. George Gonzalez is one of 9 children from a Mexican-American family. His mother was born and raised in Mexico. His father was born and raised in the border town of Nogales, Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Orphaned as a young child in a border town, his father worked odd jobs throughout his childhood but excelled academically and dreamed to be a doctor. This dream came true and Dr. George Gonzalez was born while his father was doing his surgical residency in Youngstown, Ohio. His family then moved back to Arizona and lived in a middle class mostly white neighborhood where he personally experienced racism as a Mexican-American.
Dr. Gonzalez has served on medical missions in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean where his Spanish speaking skills could be used in leading teams for CMDA’s Global Health Outreach and MEI. He more recently, worked in Africa partnering with a PAACS-trained surgeon in remote Northeast Congo. He has enjoyed serving on more than 50 mission trips and worshiping with those who loves Jesus, who speak different languages but are indeed our brothers and sisters in Christ. This also drives his passion for serving on the CMDA R2ED Committee.
Dr. Charles Jaiyeoba practices gastroenterology in Livonia, Michigan. Dr. Jaiyeoba received his medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine and completed his residency and fellowship at Detroit Medical Center. He is board certified in Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine.
Dr. Jaiyeoba has an unceasing desire for unity among groups--and wants to see this done God’s way, especially in the church which requires constant work. The Bible makes it clear that as followers of Christ we are the light of the world. Dr. Jaiyeoba believes that the biblical worldview on race relations, especially unity among believers, should be a light in the current gloom. He also serves on the CMDA R2ED Committee. Dr. Jaiyeoba is married with four children.
Nicole D. Hayes is committed to serve as a vessel of compassion, instruction, love and truth for Jesus Christ. She is the founder of Voices Against the Grain, a bold counter-culture media and teaching ministry established in May 2013 to help audiences successfully navigate societal issues through the Word of God. Nicole serves as the Washington, D.C. Area Director and Director of State Public Policy with the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) where she serves healthcare professionals and students in the Greater Washington, D.C. area and advances life-affirming, biblical principles of CMDA ethical positions in states across the country. Nicole serves on the CMDA R2ED Committee to advance biblical principles to improve the quality of lives for all created in God's image. Nicole received her Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and her Master of Public Administration from Regent University in Virginia Beach.
Dr. Omari Hodge is a family physician in Northeast Georgia where he also serves as faculty in a residency program. As a Christian and Black male physician, Dr. Hodge has learned that the way to view something is directly correlated to the angle from which you stand. This can be at times humbling, at times humiliating and still at other times awe- inspiring.
Dr. Hodge and his wife Kiera of 23 years have found that their faith in Christ and dedication to his work have both sustained and provided for them. Reconciliation is at the heart of God's call for their lives. In all that they do their first priority is helping people reconcile to Christ and secondly to their neighbors, especially those of different ethnicities and cultures. Dr. Hodge serves on the CMDA R2ED (Racism, Reconciliation, Equality and Diversity) Committee to advance biblical principles to improve the quality of lives for all created in God's image. He enjoys missions trips, travelling and spending time with his wife and four children.
Dr. Andrea Johnson is an OB/GYN faculty member at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where she completed both medical school and residency training.
Dr. Johnson enjoys training physicians from a framework based in truth, compassion and excellence and advocating for family, reproduction and sexuality according to God’s perfect design. She has been exposed to many different church denominations and traditions which has given her the unique ability to value others’ cultures, differences and even opposing practices. She is thankful to recognize the intrinsic value of each person created in God’s image and longs to see oneness reflected in Christ’s Bride, His Church within the context of His undeniable truth. While having faced difficulties as an African American female in academic medicine, it is primarily Dr. Johnson’s heart for Church unity along with justice and wholeness for every individual that our Father loves that leads her to serve on the CMDA R2ED committee.
Dr. Brenda Abraham practices Family Medicine and Sports Medicine in Minnesota. Her parents were born in rural Canada, and she grew up in southern Minnesota. After college, she lived in south Minneapolis (two blocks from where George Floyd was killed) and attended nearby Park Ave Methodist Church, one of the most racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse churches in the country. There, she developed friendships with many people who didn’t look like her, and loved the diversity in skin color, music and background but worshipping the same Heavenly Father and united in faith. There, she met her husband Mark who is African-American. They have two young adult children and have been married for 28 years.
Dr. Abraham served on the CMDA Racism subcommittee and developed the organization’s public policy statement on racism. She now serves on the R2ED Committee and has been involved with CMDA locally, with the women physicians group in CMDA, as Minnesota state representative, on GHO mission trips, and on the CMDA Board of Trustees.
Dr. Warren Yamashita is a fourth-generation Japanese American whose great-grandparents and grandparents were interned in WWII prison camps according to America's shameful Executive Order 9066. Yet, what the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good. Dr. Yamashita became the first in his family to trust Jesus as Lord and Savior at age 18, followed by his brother and father. He also became the first physician in his family.
Dr. Yamashita completed his family medicine residency in Hilo, Hawaii and is an Addiction Medicine Fellow at Stanford University. He also served as CMDA's National Western Region Student Representative from 2015-2016, where he caught God's vision for CMDA's transformation. He is excited to serve on CMDA's R2ED (Racism, Reconciliation, Equality and Diversity) Committee, desiring to lead in Jesus's work of breaking the chains of racism in America one heart, relationship and community at a time.
Dr. Dan Rahn is a semi-retired academic physician. His career has included private practice, medical education, clinical research, academic health system administration and serving as the CEO of two different major, public academic health science universities, the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He currently holds the position of Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and has a part time appointment as a Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the Medical College of Georgia. He received his undergraduate and medical school education and both residency and fellowship training in internal medicine and rheumatology at Yale University. He has served in multiple short term medical mission trips to South America and Nigeria and just completed serving a term on the Board of Trustees of CMDA. He and his wife, Lana, live in Evans, Georgia. Dan currently serves as a member of the CMDA R2ED Committee and is committed to demonstrating Christ’s love through addressing inequity and injustice in society and its impact on individual and population health of marginalized people among us.
Dr. Joy Walton, MD is dual-boarded in internal medicine and pediatrics. After completing medical school at The Ohio State University and residency at the University of Rochester in upstate NY, she practiced as an IM/peds Hospitalist in Dallas, TX before returning home to Ohio. She currently splits her time as an adult hospitalist with OhioHealth and a pediatrician for children and adults with medical complexity at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She serves on various committees including ethics, anti-microbial stewardship, and medical peer review. She completed an accelerated fellowship for quality and safety and is currently pursuing her Masters of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Walton co-founded and leads a local Women Physicians in Christ chapter and serves on the local city council for CMDA. She enjoys discipling medical students and residents on a one-to-one basis. She serves on the Racism Reconcilation Equality and Diversity Committee, where she is passionate about the lament of the American church’s complicity in perpetuating racism and the embrace of a fuller gospel through the practice of biblical justice. She also longs to see increased representation and diversity through multiethnic churches.
Dr. Walton is a second generation Korean-American and daughter of missionary parents, with whom she has co-labored as a worship leader in a campus-based church for the last 20 years. She resides in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and three children.
Adrienne Thorne is a Lead Nurse Practitioner for inpatient Cardiology in Newark, Delaware and also works as a practitioner at a medically supervised weight loss clinic. She is the Chairman of the Coalition of Christian Nurse Practitioners and a proud Board of Trustee member of the Christian Medical and Dental Association. She is also the President of the Sigma Theta Tau chapter of Wilmington University in Delaware. She recently obtained her Doctorate of Nursing Practice from Wilmington University and is dual certified as an Acute Care Adult Gerontology and Family Nurse Practitioner. Adrienne is bi-racial and has a passion for working for those that are underserved. She has attended medical mission trips to Ecuador and the Dominican Republic and looks forward to further trips in the future. Her dream is to own a mobile medical van to care for the poor and underserved and spread the love of Christ to those in need.