Monica McLemore

Reproductive health and health equity are among the most urgent issues in the U.S. today — and Monica McLemore, editor-in-chief of the Health Equity journal, is at the forefront of the conversation. From developing a set of recommendations to address the pervasive racism faced by nurses to co-creating a University of Washington program that will educate clinicians and advanced practice nursing students about how to provide abortion care, McLemore has demonstrated her commitment to finding ways to mitigate health disparities. “If we continue to have a maternal health crisis, if we continue to have an infant mortality crisis … then we’re going to potentially see a situation or circumstance where Black people can be extinct in the future,” she said at the 2023 STAT Summit. “And as long as I’m around and a whole lot of other people are, we’re not going to allow that.”