April 3, 2001 — About 200 health care professionals gathered at an all-day public health conference at Palms Court Harborview Hotel on Tuesday to observe National Public Health Week in general and to honor Dr. John S. Moorhead in particular.
The 95-year-old Moorhead, the Virgin Islands' first appointed commissioner of Health, was clearly the hero of the day, though he was not able to attend the ceremony.
At the appreciation luncheon in his honor, his son Shelley Moorhead proudly accepted his father's national and local health-service awards.
With a smile, the younger Moorhead, an investment broker, said, "He is extremely grateful, and he wanted to be here, but he said his knees wouldn't be able to carry him here and carry him out."
The old Municipal Hospital complex across from Lionel Roberts Stadium is being named in Moorhead's honor.
Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, Lt. Gov. Gerard Luz James II, Sen. Douglas Canton, chairman of the Health and Hospitals committee, and Dr. Alfred O. Heath, former Health commissioner, spoke at the luncheon.
The conference was the first official activity of the 2-year-old Office of Minority Health, said Deputy Health Commissioner Phyllis L. Wallace, conference coordinator. Wallace, who is in charge of the OMH, said this was the first of a series of meetings sponsored by OMH and the V.I. Department of Health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also sponsored the event.
Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Mavis L. Matthew said, "The future of public health in the territory is in this room."
She might have added that the past was well-represented as well. Among the participants were the familiar faces of longtime health-care veterans Dr. Sylvester McDonald, educator May Amritt Villa and social workers Jay Mahoney and Miriam James.
The conference, titled "Building on a Legacy of Public Health in the Virgin Islands — Healthy People in Healthy Communities," focused on bringing public health back to the forefront in the territory.
Wallace, program director of the OMH, gave an overview of the agency. It is an entity within the V.I. Department of Health exclusively targeting minority populations in need. It can develop programs for government agencies and private community-based organizations through its grant-writing, planning and program analysis capabilities.
In outlining the agency's initiatives, Wallace emphasized the need to return to the past for guidance. She likened the agency's progress to the mythical Ghanaian Sankota bird, who looks over his shoulder while forging ahead, returning always to the path.
One of the paths Wallace took pride in presenting is the office's HIV/AIDS Web site and newsletter for the V.I. and the Caribbean. Created by Barbara Carrion, OMH St. Croix district coordinator, the site was established for collecting, analyzing and tracking epidemiological data on HIV/AIDS in the territory.
Wallace noted the territory is primarily composed of minority groups. The V.I. population is 77 percent black, non-Hispanic, 11 percent Hispanic, and the balance, white. Immigrants from other Caribbean islands make up more than one-third percent of the V.I. population.
Dr. Gilberto Cardona, U.S. Public Health Service regional health administrator, gave a thorough rundown of how the service was started, and how fragmented it has become. He stressed the need for public health funds to be accessed more easily, for a path to "help navigate" out of the maze of conflicting and confusing funding, to which the audience responded with a hearty "amen."
Dr. Cora Christian, one of the most prominent figures in the legacy of V.I. health care and the territory's first native female physician, gave a moving, chronological and at times impassioned history of health care in the territory. Christian read from her "book in progress," "U.S. Virgin Islands Health, Now and Then."
Now director of the V.I. Medical Institute Inc., Christian took her audience back to early 1900s, describing the change is medical treatment after the Danes sold the territory to the U.S. and the story of how all the Danish doctors fled after the sale.
"Except for one," Christian said, "Knud Knud-Hansen."
"I'm not stuttering," she said, "that's his name." Christian described Hansen's selfless efforts in establishing a medical community in the V.I. She then took her audience through a chronology of the territory's health commissioners, frequently spicing up the stories with a little political "melee."
Maxine Nunez, University of the Virgin Islands professor of nursing, related 50 years of public nursing in the territory, going back to 1948 when Moorhead's sister, Laura Moorhead, organized public health nurses in the territory. Nunez stressed the need today for re-education on the meaning of public health.
Goals the officials stressed in their mission statement are: epidemic and disease prevention, services to diagnose and investigate health problems and hazards in the community, to enforce laws and regulations that protect health and ensure safety, and to inform, educate and empower people about health issues.
Speakers throughout the day threaded stories of "Dr. John" within their remarks, so far-reaching has his effect been on patients and colleagues alike.
Heath said, "Because of him, I'm here. It's a long, long story — he's been my patient, I've been his patient, he's been my assistant, and I've assisted him. I've learned so much from him, how he tended to people, his body language."
Turnbull said, "He was my mother's doctor, my father's doctor. I remember as a baby, him visiting our home with his black bag. He was a 'gentleman doctor.'"
The knees that precluded him making the Tuesday ceremony have seen a lot of walking. Moorhead joined the St. Thomas Municipal Hospital staff in 1933. He left in 1936 for graduate residency work, and returned in 1948, when he was appointed the first Health commissioner. He served in the USAID program in Liberia, Iran, Vietnam and Arizona, and went back to Vietnam for another tour in 1968.
He retired from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1969 and returned to the V.I. as assistant Health commissioner. He also maintained a private practice, and was consultant to the Medical Assistant Program from 1988 until last year when he retired.
He is married to the former Valarie V. Leslie, and has twin daughters, Jean and Janet, and sons John and Justin, along with Shelly.
