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Mason: What are you doing professionally and how did you get there? Natalie: I'm an associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and I'm the founding director of the Center for Maternal Health Equity. When I went to Morehouse School of Medicine, I began as a postdoc. After I finished my PhD, I was interested in women's health research. Originally, I started doing research on cancer, but everything kept taking me back to women's health and particularly, maternal health. There was a time when someone said to me, "You keep trying to get away from it, but this work keeps following you. Your name is Natalie. Your name means birth! You know the root of birth is natal…maybe you're supposed to go with that?" I decided to conduct a research study that eventually led me to create the center. Next, I approached our state legislators and explained that Georgia has the worst maternal mortality rates in the country, particularly for Black and Brown women, who are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications. I received a small grant of $500,000 to start this center, but as soon as it opened, the pandemic hit and the whole world shut down. Still, I made considerable strides and in 2.5 years raised $26 million in research funding for this work. We have now also received NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding, which is one of the highest possible research awards, to start a center of excellence in maternal health. The Carnegie Classification system is what we call the gold standard of research, and I'm an NIH R1- recognized funded researcher in maternal health. I'm a nationally recognized speaker and researcher on Black maternal health and equity. I just received an award in New York from a community partner called Irth app, which was amazing. When the community where you were born gives you an award, and to be back in New York City…it felt like a full circle. Mason: How did you choose this path? Natalie: Growing up in the South Bronx, I witnessed many inequities, though I didn't recognize them as such. I just knew that things weren't fair. I would take the train and go to Trevor Day School and see how differently people lived. I knew that segregation wasn't right. I think it was in my second or third year, I kept hearing about Ms. Jarcho. Everyone said, "Oh, you're gonna love Irma Jarcho. She's Puerto Rican and she does this stuff called public health." "What's that?" I wondered. So, I took Ms. Jarcho's class, which was called "Introduction to Disease in Society," and I was just blown away. We read a public health book that introduced me to diseases like Ebola and how it spreads. This was also at the height of the HIV epidemic in New York City. I had an opportunity to do an internship at Mount Sinai, because one of my classmate's parents was a physician and worked in the HIV unit. That was it. That's when I knew I loved this work. I wanted to pursue public health. I had always thought about medical school, but I never knew about this other realm, where one could learn how to prevent disease or its spread. That there's more than the disease itself; that we can (and should) look at the role of climate change; that we can look at women's health; that we can look at where you're born, where we work, live, and play and how that affects our health. I intuitively understood that because Alumni Profile Natalie Hernandez-Green '96 Founding Director of the Center for Maternal Health Equity Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Morehouse School of Medicine IRTH award Irma Jarcho TREVOR DAY SCHOOL / 47 INSIDE TREVOR TREVOR TRANSLATES FEATURE AR TICLES ALUMNI

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