{"id":3019,"date":"2014-07-23T09:52:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T13:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=3019"},"modified":"2014-07-23T09:52:27","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T13:52:27","slug":"a-champion-for-health-care-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2014\/a-champion-for-health-care-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Champion for Health-Care Equity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ann Klein<\/em><\/p>\n

World affairs, human rights, the rural poor\u2014all were common themes at the dinner table during Lila May Walkden Flounders\u2019s childhood in Olmsted Falls, Ohio. Times were hard for almost everyone then, in the depths of the Great Depression, but her parents always had a meal and time for the visitors who stopped to speak at their Congregational church.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t discussing the weather or the neighbors next door,\u201d Flounders explained recently from her home in Lantana, Fla. \u201cWe were talking about what could be done.\u201d After childhood, she went on to study international relations in Washington, D.C., and hosted a radio show on foreign policy.<\/p>\n

\"Lila
Lila May Walkden Flounders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently she cemented her legacy of social responsibility by establishing several charitable gift annuities to support the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth in honor of her husband and son. It\u2019s a beautiful tribute to two men whose alma mater, Dartmouth College, also produced one of America\u2019s strongest public health advocates. Flounders greatly admired Koop for his willingness to take on big challenges and confront powerful interests as Surgeon General in the 1980s. Flounders fondly recalls that the last time she and her husband went out socially together, it was to a Phi Beta Kappa luncheon honoring Koop.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Koop took a great deal of pride in the fact that people called him \u2018America\u2019s family doctor\u2019 and the most trusted doctor in America,\u201d says Joseph O\u2019Donnell, MD, senior scholar at the Koop Institute and senior advising dean at the Geisel School of Medicine. \u201cMrs. Flounders\u2019 generosity will help us build on Dr. Koop\u2019s work, instilling in our youth the values that Dr. Koop stood for: mentorship, advocacy, and service to patients and all of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, Flounders\u2019 philanthropic support of the Koop Institute will help fund rural medicine projects with a focus on women\u2019s health. \u201cUntil women can earn money and not be fettered by medical problems caused by a lack of care, they will not move ahead,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Through her father and others in her family, Flounders learned early on the role health care, or the lack thereof, can play in a family\u2019s fate. As an investor in the Tennessee Valley Authority development of the 1930s, her father\u2014one of 13 children himself\u2014bore witness to the struggles of people striving to provide for huge families far from medical care. Her aunt and namesake, a PhD nurse, brought similar stories from a tour of duty in World War II Europe. And her elders recounted the devastation and personal setbacks ancestors suffered when disease took a parent or spouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was brought up with the idea that you have got to make a contribution,\u201d says Flounders. \u201cI think now that this is the way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lila May Walkden Flounders’ support of the Koop Institute was inspired by Dr. C. Everett Koop’s willingness to take on big challenges and confront powerful interests as Surgeon General in the 1980s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":3024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[276,336,335,129,312],"class_list":["post-3019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-donor-impact","category-news","tag-c-everett-koop","tag-koop-institute","tag-lila-may-walkden-flounders","tag-philanthropy-2","tag-public-health","post_format-post-format-aside","author-15"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/07\/Koop-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-MH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3019"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}