for the
21st Century
This piece is
one in an
ongoing series
of profiles on
the leadership
staff. They work
with dean
Donald E. Wilson
in executing the
medical school.
A passionate and committed amateur volcanologist, Dr. Claudia Baquet has seen up-close the dangerous beauty of an active volcano. She has watched as a village was destroyed by red-hot lava, all the while admiring—and respecting—the awesome strength of this natural wonder. “Active volcanos are breathtakingly beautiful,” she says. “They are destructive and life-giving at the same time. And beautiful—inside Hawaii’s Kilauea, the most active volcano on earth, is a tropical rain forest, black sand beaches, and an endangered species of geese.” Dr. Baquet has also learned to walk on hot lava, a skill which perhaps comes in handy in her other life as associate dean for policy and planning at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Dr. Baquet arrived at Maryland in 1994 for a one-year stint as the medical school’s health care policy liaison with Annapolis and Washington. She was due a sabbatical from the federal government (nine years at the National Cancer Institute and 18 months as deputy assistant secretary for minority health at the Department of Health and Human Services) and mentioned to her former boss and friend Dr. Louis Sullivan, Health and Human Services secretary under President George H.W. Bush, that she was looking for something to do. Dr. Sullivan introduced her to his friend Don Wilson, who suggested she spend her sabbatical as policy liaison at Maryland.
Nearly a decade later, Dr. Baquet is still on “sabbatical” at the medical school. At the end of her initial year, Dean Wilson realized that the position was needed on an ongoing basis and created the office of policy and planning. But the office’s mission has changed over the years from a strictly policy and legislative bent to one geared to outreach. According to Dr. Baquet, the office is a bridge for academic and community-based endeavors that address health-related disparities throughout the state of Maryland. Its mission is accomplished through the development, implementation and evaluation of culturally competent research, education, and service delivery programs for underserved populations in the state.
The community focus is truly where Dr. Baquet’s professional passion lies. Born and raised in New Orleans, Dr. Baquet says she grew up among “a cultural hodgepodge of American Indians, African Americans, French, and Spanish.” Her maternal great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee medicine woman who carried her medicinal herbs in a basket on her hip and traveled the Mississippi Gulf Coast to practice midwifery and heal the sick.
When Dr. Baquet was an infant, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Although surgery would be extremely expensive and disfiguring, and certainly no guarantee, Mrs. Baquet decided that her daughter needed a mother and underwent the surgery. “My mother’s surgery influenced my desire to go into medicine and research,” says Dr. Baquet. “She was a living example of the need for prevention and early detection. And because of my experiences with various cultures and native healing, I have a great deal of respect for indigenous healing.”After graduating from college, Dr. Baquet completed externships in the rural south during medical school. “I went to Alabama for an internal medicine rotation and in Tuskegee saw some of the remaining syphilis patients,” says Dr. Baquet. “In Hurtsboro, we did pap smears in barns, with chickens running around at our feet. In Union Springs, people came from miles away and waited in line wrapped in sheets for lack of clothes. So you can see that my rural focus comes from my past experiences.”
Armed with a medical degree from Meharry Medical College, Dr. Baquet did a pathology residency at St. Louis University, and then spent a couple of years in private practice. Next was a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins, which was her springboard to epidemiology and health policy work on the national level in Washington. In 1985, as director of special populations research for the National Cancer Institute, she spent time in Hawaii doing cancer research. “The Hawaiians have hidden spiritual values and I met some wonderful native healers (la’ au lapa au), like massage therapists (lomi lomi) and herbalists,” she says. They took me to places they normally don’t take tourists.” Like inside active volcanos. “I am very fortunate to have had a broad amount of experiences,” she says. “I have worked extensively with and have positive relationships with Pacific Islanders, American Indians and African Americans. I find it interesting to see cultural differences, and I have found that we are all far more alike than different.”
When Dr. Baquet arrived here nine years ago, she headed an office of one and had no grants. Today, according to the University of Maryland Baltimore Annual Report for FY02, Dr. Baquet ranks third in grants and contracts with $8.08 million in total funding. And she now oversees a staff of more than 30. Her purview has expanded to include the Maryland Statewide Health Network, which was established with cigarette restitution funds to reduce morbidity and mortality related to cancer and tobacco-related diseases; the Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research, which focuses on health outcomes studies, low literacy patient education and outreach, and rural health research; the Area Health Education Center, which provides community educational partnerships to enhance health care access in the rural underserved areas of the state; and the Maryland Special Populations Cancer Research Network, which addresses cancer disparities of minorities and medically underserved populations.
What will Dr. Baquet’s next “sabbatical” be? She says she wants to write a book on how to die with dignity. “People don’t know what care they are entitled to and what they can ask for at the end of life,” she says. “I want to tell them such basic things as how to demand better care, how to ask to see their charts—things that some of us take for granted as our rights as patients.”
It’s a sure bet that she will continue to work with underserved communities, and you had better believe that she will still be jumping into volcanos.