For University of Chicago's Dr. Monica Peek, the mission is more than physical health
Talent is often said to be equally distributed, but opportunity is not.
For Dr. Monica Peek, her mission is far more than medical--she wants good health for her patients and equity, too.
"I've wanted to be a doctor for as long as I've known," said Peek. The University of Chicago physician believes it is her role to treat a patient's physical needs, obviously. But it is also about equal access to care and addressing mental and emotional needs.
"Because of structural inequities, things like racial residential segregation, policies that happened decades ago, that has led to things like differential access in the way that communities can navigate healthy living," Peek said.
Peek said this is especially apparent regarding the diabetes epidemic, where much of her work is centered.
"Diabetes is one of the chronic diseases that is not just about medical problems," Peek said. "Communities where there aren't as many parks and green spaces, where there's a concentration of fast-food restaurants, and a lack of access to fresh fruits, and vegetables."
Peek has dealt with her share of inequity, growing up in a primarily white neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee.
"We were one of very few Black families in our neighborhood, and people would frequently mistake my father for the gardener if he was out there doing the lawn or my mother for the maid," Peek said.
Her parents, the first in their families to go to college, taught Peek that education was an important "tool for freedom" for Black people. They also taught her that she could learn and do anything.
"Even though I was a girl, there's nothing wrong with me being interested in science," Peek said. "Whatever I dreamed I could make happen, and so that was the gift they gave me."
So Peek attended Vanderbilt University for undergrad and Johns Hopkins for medical school and a master's degree in public health. Then, she decided to go into internal medicine.
"I loved internal medicine immediately. It's like being a detective, or like the first one on the scene of a crime," Peek said. "People come in and go, 'Oh, I have these symptoms,' and you're the first one who is trying to sort out what exactly is going on.
"You can have longitudinal relationships over years; I've had patients for decades."
KimLeMay Woodfork-Moore is one of those patients. She's been with Peek for more than 20 years.
"Doctor Peek was my husband's doctor first, and he was crazy about her," Woodfork-Moore said.
But last year, Woodfork-Moore's husband, Les, died of cancer.
"She went through that whole transition with me," she said of Dr. Peek. "She was actually in the room with us when he transitioned. She's making sure that I'm taking care of myself and I am blessed to have her as a doctor, and I feel like she's also family."
So how does Peek want to be remembered?
"All of the people that I've brought into the world," she said. "All of the patients whose lives I've helped make a little easier."
Peek also has done extensive work on healthcare equity in breast cancer care.
She said she hopes more women and people of color enter the medical field because "we've got to shine our light on all of our flowers and we want them to grow."
