FOCUS: Visionary Whipper has made good things happen

Editor’s note: Steve Skardon, executive director of The Palmetto Project, recently published this about longtime North Charleston leader Carrie Whipper on the organization’s Facebook page.  We thought you should read it.

By Steve Skardon, republished with permission  |  It is hard to imagine The Palmetto Project without Carrie Fulse Whipper.

Whipper

For eighteen years, she has guided some of our most essential programs, including our signature statewide initiatives in African American health.  After this month, she will be moving on to new work that also includes time for her grandson, Benjamin.

Carrie is the definition of a change agent. When she came to The Palmetto Project, she already had a vision for new ways that religious and community institutions could turn around soaring rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke in marginalized communities.

Her passion, undaunted spirit, and commitment to excellence turned that vision into a reality that continues to affect countless lives every day.

While Carrie led our Heart and Soul initiative in African American health, hundreds of AME and Baptist congregations created health ministries with volunteers often trained, equipped and supervised by Carrie. Within four years, statewide disparities in mortality rates due to preventable cardiovascular disease along lines of race declined by 50 percent.

Her ability to positively affect the health status of uninsured in the community, as opposed to clinical, settings helped inspire Congress to fund a nationwide network of patient navigators like her.

Carrie’s work attracted local funders like the Trident United Way, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, and the Medical Society of South Carolina, and national foundations like Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation. In fact, she received national recognition from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through a national advertising campaign about remarkable people who change lives through innovative thinking and doing.

Visionaries like Carrie are the reason The Palmetto Project exists. South Carolina is full of them. Their lives and careers have taken unique twists and turns and blessed them with unique insights into how our state can better address the challenges it faces.

Our job is to identify remarkable people like Carrie and give them the support they need to make their vision come alive.

Carrie, from all of us whose lives have been touched by yours, thank you and Godspeed.

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