Photo by Bryn Healy ‘24. Dr. Khama Ennis presents in Hooker Auditorium.
By Ella Kennedy ’27 and Thandiwe-Wanjiru Delgado-Kinyatti ’27
Staff Writers
Nearly 100 people came to Mount Holyoke College’s Hooker Auditorium on Thursday, Feb. 8, to attend a screening of “Faces of Medicine,” a film showcasing the stories of those who have experienced the struggle and joy of being a Black female doctor in the United States. The film was created by Dr. Khama Ennis, and through it, viewers learned about her life and the lives of other doctors featured in it.
Dr. Khama Ennis was an emergency room doctor based in Western Massachusetts when COVID-19 struck. During the pandemic and the years that followed, Dr. Ennis shifted her focus from working as a doctor to creating a documentary about the other rare but pivotal Black doctors in the United States. After years of work, the first episode of her docu-series, “Faces in Medicine,” was finished and ready to be presented.
The film focuses on four Black female physicians from around the country: Dr. Rose Cesar, Dr. Valerie Stone, Dr. Lynnette Watkins and Dr. Thea James, the first Black female physician Dr. Ennis had worked with. Dr. James’ impact on Dr. Ennis was still apparent despite it having been many years since their last meeting. This was primarily because the story of underrepresentation is all too common for Black female doctors, as they make up roughly only 2.8% of physicians in the United States.
In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Dr. Ennis explained that she had three main goals in mind while creating her film. Her first goal is to give members of underrepresented populations an opportunity to see people like themselves in the medical field, therefore showing them that there is a path to making their desired career a reality.
“I want them to see stories that are real people, not some glossed-up version that doesn’t show the challenges, but shows the challenges and shows the triumphs. I want to show the complexity of the journeys, and I want people to see themselves in these stories and know that this is a path that’s available to them as much as it is to anybody else,” Dr. Ennis said.
Her second goal is to take the burden off of doctors who carry the weight of being in the minority. Dr. Ennis said she wanted these doctors to feel seen and to tell their stories, as Black female doctors can oftentimes feel isolated. The final goal, she explained, is to “share the humanity of people who are in these healing spaces and to disrupt that hierarchy and the perceived invulnerability of us, to show that we’re human too and to just make it feel a little closer.”
In a conversation that took place in the film with Dr. James, Dr. Ennis spoke on the idea of “unpaid labor” as a Black physician, as most Black doctors are expected to not only do their job but also act as a sort of racial ambassador. According to Dr. Ennis, there are various ways to remedy this to make things more fair to those physicians.
“You could hire a consultant who is doing this work and gets compensated to do [it]. If you want to offer the work to somebody, sure, offer it with compensation, and if they say no, then find somebody else. It’s not the job description.”
During the film, Dr. Ennis spoke with Dr. James about the concept of “closing the gap” rather than simply filling it in. When asked to expand on this notion, Dr. Ennis explained that people often use “band-aid solutions” for problems that require a lot more time and attention.
“That’s part of why I started this because there’s little things here and there, but we need massive movement to actually address the root causes to help inequity and disparities. It’s a long game; this isn’t one of those things where there’s a one to three-year return on investment. This is a decades-long solution, but we have to start somewhere,” Dr. Ennis said.
Ultimately, this is what Dr. Ennis is accomplishing with this film: Slowly but surely trying to understand, unpack, reduce the struggle and tell the stories of Black female doctors. Mount Holyoke was lucky to witness the first episode of Dr. Ennis’ documentary, and with proper funding, there will be more to come. As Dr. Ennis states in her docu-series, “Diversity saves lives.”