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This month's Faith Works spotlight is on Evelyn Cooper. Mrs. Cooper is a Kansas City, Missouri native who has served in nursing for more than 20 years. In her role as a nurse she has held various leadership and clinical positions that have allowed her to manage clinical teams that include nurses, nutritionists, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and many others. Most recently she was lead for 1 of 6 teams for the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Kansas City. She says that she attributes her Christian upbringing and wanting to be a missionary as the pathway that led her to become a nurse.

“I always wanted to help the less fortunate and to help those who couldn’t otherwise help themselves. As a girl, I wanted to be a missionary and as I got older, I saw how my mother worked as a nurse at Children’s Mercy. That’s where I began working as an aide and it gave me a purpose.”

Cooper says that nursing fueled her passion and held and still holds her interest. She says the reason she decided to join the FW Community Advisory Board was to have an opportunity to collaborate with other like-minded organizations that look at faith and spirituality as integral factors that can significantly impact health and health outcome. Cooper also says that it is important to look at where people are and not where they should be. She believes that if medical providers and community and faith organizations realize that no one person is the same and that personal needs and barriers may far exceed what people think they should do, then maybe we can begin to understand health disparities.

“What I have gleaned being on this journey is how many people have co-morbidities that they don’t think they can do anything about…they do not want to put one more thing on their plate. Clinicians lose sight of this sometimes. Some patients feel that they are constantly being judged. I hope that we can help individuals to know that they can speak up and stop listening to the judging. To speak up is not and should not be seen as being confrontational.”

Cooper, a registered nurse and graduate from Graceland in Lamoni, Iowa, is resolute in her commitment to reduce cancer and other health disparities among African Americans and other under-served populations. Cooper is a member of Palestine Missionary Baptist Church of Jesus Christ in Kansas City, Missouri and also serves on the KU Cancer Center Community Advisory Board and is involved with PIVOT (Patient and Investigators Voices Organizing Together) at the University of Kansas Medical Center.