Meet Jacqueline Brown
HISTORICAL 5TH WARD NEIGHBORHOOD INSPIRES QUALITY AND CARE IN MEDICAL PRACTICE
“I've been going to Dr. Brown since I was in my teens. She makes me so comfortable.”“I loved my visit with Dr. Brown. She took a genuine interest in my issues and concerns. She wasted no time scheduling all the proper tests for treatments.”“She is awesome, and I absolutely love her.”
These were just three of the many reviews that I saw randomly searching for how the internet portrayed my mother, Dr. Jacqueline Brown, a recently-retired OBGYN who had her own practice, Total Woman Health Care, for 31 years (1990-2020).
These random reviews from verified patients on a website that reviewed physicians made me smile because they only confirmed what I’ve been hearing over and over again throughout my life when people found out that I was Dr. Brown’s son. Patients just want to go on and on about how great of a doctor my mother is, not just because of the quality of practice, but because she genuinely believes in adding that extra element of individual attention and care for each and every patient.
“Because I came from a tightly knit segregated community in 5th Ward, I feel a connection and love for those patients. I sympathize and empathize with them, and I feel like I would not be able to live with myself if I did not provide them the best care that I could.”
It is evident throughout her career that “the best care” as she puts it is steeped in her deep knowledge and expertise as a physician, but also in the deep level of care and individual attention that she gave to every single one of her patients.
That two-prong approach that defined her 40-year long career wasn’t necessarily learned at North Texas State in Denton, TX, or in medical school at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX or during her residency at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. But, it was planted in her as a little girl growing up in the very close community of 5th Ward, Houston, TX, where everyone in the community attended the same church, and where your pre-school teacher could also be your vacation bible school teacher, and the church organist would give you your first piano lessons. “Our teachers were college level instructors. They were master teachers. They loved what they taught. They were experts in their field. And they were expert teachers, not only because they knew the subject matter, but because they loved us. They let us know that they loved us. And they let us know how important it was to get an education, to excel and to be productive citizens. I really value that now. I valued it then, but I value it even more now.”
Dr. Brown’s value of education, excelling at every level, was planted in the Fifth Ward, and so was the attribute of caring for others.
“Growing up in 5th Ward had an impact on me because even though my mother was able to afford a private physician for us as children we had to go to the city clinic on Lyons Avenue to get our shots. We saw a lot of poor patients who had to go there for their primary care. That had an impact on me. And so I’ve always wanted to take care of as many poor patients as I possibly could throughout my practice and never wanted to turn a patient away because they couldn’t afford the care.”
When she reminisces about her beloved EO Smith Junior High School, and Wheatley Senior High School, and her equally beloved Pleasant Hill Baptist Church including the church organist Maddie Overton Roberts -who also penned the school song for Wheatley High School, it is easy to make the connection of how much those early years impacted the level of care that she gave to each and every one of her patients throughout her 40-year career.
In her closing remarks, she pays tribute to her high school alma mater located in the heart of Fifth Ward: “I know a lot of my classmates feel close to Wheatley because it was the beacon light that guided our way, and that phrase were words that were part of the school song. It has inspired us all, and we heed the call that Wheatley made to us. I will always cherish it, and I will always have fond memories of it. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity it provided me.”
