HYDE PARK — University of Chicago Medicine got so many applications for its new community advisory committee, it’s expanded the size of the council and brought in some of the medical center’s more vocal critics from the past six years.
On Friday, the medical center announced it would expand the council to 20 members from the planned 15 because 118 people applied to serve on the body that will help advise officials on the needs of the community and what role the medical center should play in working on them.
“We know our communities’ interests and concerns span many issues and needs, and we wanted our advisory council to have the expertise and varied perspectives to help us respond to those needs,” said Brenda Battle, chief diversity officer and vice president of care delivery innovation at the medical center, in Friday’s announcement.
Rev. Julian DeShazier of University Church in Hyde Park has been appointed the chairman of the committee and faces the task of leading the group of that includes people that have clashed with the medical center in the past.
The committee includes Alex Goldenberg, one of the organizers who led six years of protests calling for the medical center to open a trauma center to treat the most serious injuries on the South Side like gun shot wounds and injuries from car accidents.
Goldenberg was banned from campus last year after he and other protesters barricaded themselves in a building on campus while protesting for a trauma center.
One of the committee’s jobs will be to figure out how the medical center’s trauma center fits into South Side communities that haven’t had that kind of care in 27 years when it opens in 2018.
Among the voices that now have the medical center’s ear are influential South Side pastors like Rev. Torrey Barrett of the K.L.E.O. Center and Rev. Richard Tolliver of St. Edumunds Episcopal Church, both in Washington Park, and Rev. Chris Harris of Bright Star Community Church in Grand Boulevard.
Community groups like the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, senior group the Chicago Hyde Park Village and South Chicago coalition Alliance of the Southeast will all also have representative on the committee.
The full committee will start meeting later this fall and includes,
- Salim Al Nurridin, chief executive officer of the Healthcare Consortium of Illinois
- Susan Alitto, board member and founding president of the Chicago Hyde Park Village
- Damon Arnold, medical director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois
- Rev. Torrey Barrett, pastor of the Life Center Church of God in Christ and executive director of the K.L.E.O. Center
- Rev. Julian DeShazier, senior pastor of University Church
- Alex Goldenberg, executive director of Southside Together Organizing for Power
- Judith Haasis executive director of CommunityHealth
- Rev. Christopher Harris, pastor of Bright Star Church of God in Christ and CEO of Bright Star Community Outreach
- Candace Henley, founder and director of The Blue Hat Foundation
- Jennifer Herd, senior health policy analyst of the Chicago Department of Public Health
- J. Brian Malone, executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization
- Sherida Morrison, founder and CEO of Demoiselle 2 Femme
- Ayoka Mota Samuels, director of the Gary Comer Youth Center
- Amalia NietoGomez, executive director of the Alliance of the SouthEast
- Burrell Poe, director of Compassion It Chicago
- Shari Runner, president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League
- L. Anton Seals, neighborhood and community specialist at DePaul University and founder of Seals360Group
- LeVon Stone, program director of CeaseFire Chicago
- Rev. Richard Tolliver, rector of St. Edmund's Episcopal Church and president and CEO of the St. Edmund's Redevelopment Corporation
- Susana Vasquez, vice president of strategic initiatives and resource development at IFF
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