Vivian Pinn, MD, Recipient of the AMA Distinguished Service Award
As a Black woman entering pathology in the late 1960s, Vivian Pinn, MD, faced a number of challenges, from the lack of diversity in the profession, to being disapproved of by colleagues who thought a woman had no place in medicine. Despite this, Dr. Pinn built an illustrious career in healthcare, becoming a tenured professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, then moving to Howard University College of Medicine and becoming the first Black woman to chair an academic pathology department, before leaving to work at the National Institutes of Health as the first director of the then new Office of Research on Women's Health. Dr. Pinn was recently awarded the AMA’s Distinguished Service Award for her contributions. She shared her thoughts with us on breaking through barriers for ASCP’s Celebrating Black Voices in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
When you first started in medicine, there weren’t a lot of women, and certainly not a lot of Black women in the field. Tell us about that experience.
Vivian Pinn (VP): I'd often go to national pathology meetings, and there would only be one or two other women in the audience. Many times, they were not American women. I had experienced, having been the only woman and the only person of color in my medical school class of course at UVA, a number of challenges, but the pathology department at MGH where I received my pathology training was very welcoming. There was one fellow resident who used to always tell me I was taking the place a man should have, but I realized by that time I didn't need to defend myself because my co-residents would always speak up. After four years of medical school, I was immune to it. I really found the MGH was a very welcoming place, and I was very fortunate because that was not the experience that many women were having in other specialties, or at other institutions.
As the first female Black chair of a pathology department, did you encounter any resistance?
VP: I did have some instances where faculty were not used to taking orders from women. And, of course, I was making changes. So, there was some resentment, which I think many new Department Chairs in general may find when they go to a new department and want to make changes.
I remember one of my faculty members saying that he'd been practicing pathology longer than I'd been alive, and how dare I tell him what to do differently. There were days when it would really get me down, but I was able to get through that because I had excellent training and had the support of my former Pathology chair and mentor, and support in knowing what other departments were doing to strive to keep my department current. Other Chairs of Pathology were very generous in sharing information and guidance with me.
Throughout your career, you chose to really foster your own voice and raise awareness on health disparities and women's issues, and give back. How has service shaped your career, and your objectives throughout the years?
VP: When I was in medical school, there was only one woman who was a full professor at the school. So few women were in medicine, and very few held leadership positions. As the lone woman in my medical school class, I was looking for someone I could go to who would appreciate the things I was dealing with. But that one woman professor was downright nasty to me and the nurses. I did not have that support for a resource as a woman in a predominantly male profession.
When I got to Boston and even in my first junior faculty position, many students started coming to me. I was not much older than they were. But students started to talk to me, first women students, and then some minority students, then other students. I just always felt I needed to be available for them; I knew how much I had missed having someone I could talk to. That was how I got into mentoring and advising.
There has been a push for more diversity in pathology. How would you like to see that change happen?
You often hear people say we need minorities, and we need Blacks and other underrepresented in medicine minorities to go back to their communities to serve where they came from. I agree; primary medical practice is important. We need more community doctors. But I've always said what gets lost is that our communities are everywhere. It's not just going back to practice in the barrio or the ghetto, or underserved areas. It is also in terms of hospital administration, taking care of labs, doing the research, being involved in conducting and interpreting research, and in educational roles including teaching.
So many of our young pre-med and medical students have the passion for wanting to serve. [Yet] you can serve the underserved in fields like pathology, where we have an important role in managing and monitoring how health care is practiced. [We need to] impress on young, potential pathologists that these are valuable roles. They are not deserting their communities by going into a field like pathology where they're more hospital-based, and not out seeing patients in a private office.
Read more of the Dr. Pinn’s interview in the April 2021 issue of
Critical Values.
