Laura Anderko: Advancing the Values Based Health Care Agenda at GUMC

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As a young child, Laura Anderko, PhD, RN, discovered a valuable lesson about the inherent worth of each human being.

The Chicago native recalls walking down a city street with her mother. She soon found herself face-to-face with a homeless man who had propped himself up against a building. He had no legs and asked passersby for money.

“That man has no legs,” Anderko exclaimed to her mother while pointing her finger at the man.

“You never point,” Anderko remembers her mother responding. “He’s just as good as you are even though he doesn’t have legs.”

The lesson stuck. “I grew up with this sense of social justice,” says Anderko, who joined the School of Nursing & Health Studies in November 2008 as the Robert and Kathleen Scanlon Chair in Values Based Health Care.

Keeping social justice at the forefront of the health care field is a major purpose of Anderko’s new role at Georgetown. The endowed position was created through the philanthropy of Janet (NHS’75) and Brian Hehir in memory of Mrs. Hehir’s parents.

Anderko, who is also a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow, says she was attracted to the NHS position because it builds upon her professional experience, which has focused on health disparities, vulnerable populations, and environmental health.

At Georgetown, she plans to organize academic activities related to health care equity, launch new avenues for experiential learning for students, and help convene campus partners that have a stake in the improvement of health.

Colleagues say Anderko’s focus is a natural fit.

“[Laura’s] health care focus will help ensure that critical questions about health care access, delivery, and quality remain at the forefront of our academic activities,” says Kathleen Maas Weigert, PhD, director of the university’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service.

Environmental Health

Environmental health is Anderko’s academic passion. That interest emerged about two decades ago when she was director of a home health agency in Illinois.

“I would make routine visits to the patients that my staff was seeing,” she says. “I made a visit to a young lady who just had a baby. She was 16. She lived at home with her mom in this little house next to the river.”

“Her baby was born without a brain,” Anderko says. “She brought the baby home to die.”

However, something did not feel quite right with the situation, Anderko remembers thinking. The young mother had done everything right: She stayed healthy, eating well and taking prenatal vitamins.

“As a nurse, I counseled her,” she says. “But I walked out of the house thinking, ‘How could a young woman who did all the right things have a baby without a brain?’”

Anderko wanted to shed light on the mystery and discovered that—though never able to confirm cause-and-effect—the water quality in the region had been tainted by industrial pollutants, including neurotoxins.

The experience caused Anderko to think differently about environmental health and social justice.

“The fact is there are huge disparities in the quality of the environment in lower income communities,” she says. “If you live in the poor side of town, you’re more likely to have industry dumping toxins into your water and breathing in air with poor quality.”

Anderko currently serves on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. She says she will build upon her work in health care and social justice at Georgetown.

“The whole idea of having a strong set of values that the university invests in was appealing to me,” she says. “It is a serious commitment. Georgetown walks the walk. It doesn’t just talk the talk.”

By Bill Cessato, excerpted from the Spring 2009 (forthcoming) issue of Health Care Horizons