Becoming a nurse was practically a given for Eugenia Millender, who began her years of health service by helping her grandmother, who didn’t like needles, with her insulin injections. Born in Panama, Millender grew up in a racially diverse family and community. “My mom is Afro-Latina Panamanian, and my father was indigenous Guna Panamanian,” she says. When she was 12, she arrived in Brooklyn with her mother, who was hoping to give her a better life. Living in project housing, they experienced poverty, and Millender saw firsthand the inequities in both the access and quality of health care people received. “My mother did not speak English, and when she tried to get care, people ignored her and were not giving her proper care. So for that reason, I became even more interested in research in health disparities and how to provide the best care to all individuals, regardless of where they are from, or whether they have insurance.”
Millender, 53, moved to Florida as a teen and joined the Army after high school, which allowed her to earn her undergraduate and master’s degrees in nursing. Working in emergency departments in the state, which often care for the uninsured, she witnessed families struggling with the same challenges her mother had. “You know they don’t have the resources to take care of their loved ones once they are discharged from the hospital, or they don’t understand what the doctors and nurses are telling them because they speak a different language or an indigenous language—with my indigenous background, I was sensitive to those things, because I also learned English as a second language.”
Now a tenured professor at Florida State University College of Nursing, Millender co-founded and serves as co-director of the Center of Population Sciences for Health Equity at the institution, which focuses on addressing the causes of health inequities—from language and cultural barriers to mental-health challenges. Building off her own life experiences, Millender takes time to learn from communities about their needs and the obstacles they face in receiving high-quality health care. That includes incorporating, rather than dismissing, cultural beliefs in community-based programs that connect people with health care, often for the first time. “If an individual believes in green tea as part of their regimen, then you need to include green tea as part of their medication list when you do an intake,” she says. “Do not ignore it, do not ask questions about it, but include these holistic approaches as part of the treatment plan.”
Recently, Millender has seen her efforts come full circle with programs she has launched in her native Panama to improve health care for indigenous people. “I feel very privileged, so I have to give back,” she says.
