Susan Manabo, left, nurse practitioner, and Celia Moran, medical assistant, have worked with Dr. Condessa M. Curley for 14 years.

Community and world views prevail in medical practice of Condessa M. Curley

 

By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place

LOS ANGELES — Dr. Condessa M. Curley has a community view of medicine that shows itself in practice at the Eisner Pediatric & Family Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles and a worldview of practicing medicine that shows itself in being one of the founding doctors of Project Africa Global.

Eisner Pediatric & Family Medical Center, shortened to Eisner, cares for underserved populations regardless of proof of income or proof of residency.

The facility is immaculate; the exterior and interior walls awash in pastels. Some days are a throwback, like when it was common for patients to bring food stuffs, crops just brought in from the field or fresh fruit just pulled from tree or vine.

Curley has had her share of grapes — one offering of grapes came in the size of plums — and brown eggs. The eggs, which varied in size, were offered by a woman who still raises chickens in the city.

Called from a door just opened, in the waiting room with 60 chairs, called in a commanding voice that says you’re the next patient, Curley greets warmly then leads the way to the doctor’s office. What is now Eisner began in 1920 as a pediatric hospital, along the way switched to an adult hospital, regained its moorings as a holistic children’s hospital and in the 1990s became Pediatric & Family Medical Center.

The name Eisner was added in 2002 after a generous $2.2 million donation boosted a capital campaign. The facility is at the urban core of America; six blocks from Skid Row. Close by is industrial Central City East and the Wholesale District.

With federal status, government programs that purchase services account for 90 percent of $17.9 million in annual revenue.

Operating expenditures, which include dental, adult and pediatric medicine, early intervention for infants and toddlers, mental health and the women’s health center totaled $16.7 in the most recent 12-month reporting period.

“We are dedicated to serving the underserved,” Curley said. “It’s a diverse population.”

Ninety-two percent of patients are Latino, with a smattering of African Americans, a sliver of Asian Americans and a pinch of whites. Nearly 60 percent of patients are 12 and under.

A year ago Curley left and went to work for Los Angeles County as a full-time physician specialist at the Curtis Tucker Health Center in Inglewood. She remains part time at Eisner.

“I am here on Saturdays and Wednesday evenings,” she said. “I like the one-on-one with patients that you get with family medicine. I continue practicing here because this place is about who I am and there is the need.”
Urban confluence, that everything is available, sometimes is a misnomer.

“Some parts of Los Angeles are like rural areas where there is no access to health care,” Curley said. “It’s not true because you live in a city that you have more access to health care.”

She introduces Dr. Lawrence Yee, director of Eisner’s Adult Clinic. They join hands for a photo opportunity. Ties that bind are her other reason for continuing Wednesday evenings and all day Saturdays. Then there is Susan Manabo, nurse practitioner, and Celia Moran, a medical assistant whom she has known since first coming to Eisner.

“We have been together since 1999.” Curley said of Manabo. “Dr. Yee is a mentor. I trained here under him. We have been colleagues 14 years. Susan precepted with me many years ago while she was in nurse practitioner school.

“Many of the young mothers you see here, I delivered a lot of their babies and have been here long enough to see them grow up,” she said.

Curley has a giving spirit. The atmosphere here is warm, friendly, a spirit that exists not just because of the holiday season. In her office, fruit in a dish on top of the filing cabinet and bottles of water are offered to a visitor. She inquires about lunch and is willing to share half her burrito from the staff holiday meal.

Moran made flan, brings Curley an offering in an oversized cup and serves a guest; it’s the best flan you will ever taste.

Curley took a non-traditional route, at age 38, to medical school at the University of California Davis. After becoming an emancipated teen out of the Philadelphia County foster care system, she graduated from Olney High School in 1972.

In 1976, she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. Then she left Pennsylvania for the West Coast, where she proved herself early on to be a lambent wit of academia.

“I moved out here because education was more affordable,” Curley said. “Junior college was dirt cheap. It cost $15 a unit to get nursing degree.”

She earned an Associate of Nursing at Santa Monica College in 1983.

“I was picked up by Cedars-Sinai Hospital,” Curley said. “They sent me back to school to get a bachelor’s degree. They put high priority on nurse’s education.”

Curley complied and earned a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Mount Saint Mary’s College in 1987, but had her mind set on becoming a doctor. She was an oncology nurse for ten years before going to medical school.

“Nursing is wonderful, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do,” she said.

Between 1988 and 1992, pre-med school requirements were completed at California State University, Los Angeles, advancing the medical school plan.

“I applied to UC Davis, the University of Pittsburgh and was on the waiting list at the University of Michigan,” Curley said. “I chose UC Davis because of the cost and the feel. They really recruited non-traditional students, those who took alternative routes to medical school and those who took the regular path of undergraduates to medical school.

“UC Davis has a strong support system for diversity,” she said. “I have always been community conscious and their work in the community was outstanding.”

The student-run Imani Clinic opened in Sacramento, expanding the medical school’s presence in underserved communities, while Curley was at UC Davis.

“Our class got Imani Clinic going in 1995 and ‘96,” she said. “Quite naturally we were standing on other people’s shoulders who laid the groundwork, but we finally got it started.”

To start a medical service that increases opportunities for the underserved would stay with Curley to the founding of Project Africa Global, which goes out into the world to reach the underserved.

Graduation from UC Davis Medical School came in 1996, followed by a residency at the USC University

Hospital. Years beyond her residency, Curley continues ties with the University of Southern California. She is a preceptor and is listed as an assistant professor of clinical family medicine.

Curley has a noticeable modus. Answering disparate questions, like why community medicine, she references her past directly and indirectly.

“The need is huge,” she said. “I have lived in five different foster homes throughout the city, that had different socio-economic backgrounds, including the hood,” Curley said. “Other foster children, we call each other cousins. You greet someone at high school who is a foster child and you call them cousins. Only two or three are still alive today. They have died from being involved in gangs, drugs, you name it. Being in an environment like that you see it.

“What kids go through has shaped what I do,” she said.

Grace, that which is limitless and cannot be quantified in human measures, is boundless in the life of Curley, who grew up, as mentioned, a foster child in Philadelphia. This grace, she heard and saw it first in the words and action of Mary E. Talbert, 65.

Prescient moments were obvious growing up.

“We called her Mom,” Curley said. “She was 65 when she got us. There were four of us, three girls and a boy. I was 2 years old in 1956. Giving back means a lot to me. In my first foster home, we had a grandmother, Mary E. Talbert, who was quite religious. She wasn’t educated, but she understood what it meant to give in service to others and your community.

“She worked with the Salvation Army and Easter Seals,” Curley said. “If it was a cause she supported, we were out there going door to door. With her, it wasn’t an effort; it was a responsibility.”

Then Curley saw grace in the care of Dr. Williams in West Philadelphia.

“In the county foster system, kids were considered dirty,” she recalled. “Dr. Williams was the first doctor who I remember didn’t put on gloves when he treated us. That stuck in my mind.

“I grew up in foster care,” Curley said. “The first point I knew I was going to be a doctor was at age 8. Dr. Williams was the first African American doctor I ever saw. I had a lisp and was real shy. He guided me through therapy. I thought here is a person with the power to change lives. I wanted to emulate him and become a doctor.”

Project Africa Global brings needed relief to Swaziland

Community took on world involvement with the start of Project Africa Global in 1997. PAG is a program of Los Angeles-based Economic Development Fund and has provided direct medical and educational humanitarian aid in Ghana, West Africa, Nigeria, Liberia and Swaziland, especially Swaziland in Southern Africa.

“When I was a resident, you had to jump through hoops to put the whole package together to be able to participate in medical humanitarian organizations,” Curley said. “One group was more evangelical. When you go to Africa, they are more orthodox. They can teach us some things.”

Another reason for launching PAG is to help through the void.

“There is a brain drain in these African countries that we go to,” she said. “Their doctors come here or go to other countries to get educated and then go back home. These countries can’t keep their doctors because they don’t have the resources that more developed countries have.”

“In the United States, we have a lot of resources,” she said. “To go into a country that can’t get the basic medicine is appalling. You know that you are a vessel. We funnel resources into poorer countries that don’t have the resources.”

PAG doesn’t require extended time commitments.

“You don’t have to join Doctors without Borders, which has a huge time commitment,” Curley said. “We want to give another opportunity without the huge time commitment.”

Curley has made ten trips to Africa since 2000. During one trip, she met King Mswati III of Swaziland, which has 1.1 million people, at a medical conference.

“He invited us to come to Swaziland and do an assessment and then do services,” she said. “We have been going to Swaziland for nine years.

“They were bringing people in one step from dying from AIDS,” Curley said. “The need was huge. The death rate from AIDS in Swaziland went from 18 percent to 42.6 percent, dropped to 38 percent and now it is going back up.”

Clarity is at the center of visionary leadership.

“By visionary, for me, it’s about seeing a problem and finding a solution and making sure the solution is sustainable,” Curley said. “You collaborate with others who have the same vision. With PAG, you can’t do it by yourself.

“It’s interesting. When people think it’s a good idea, they come on board. We have lots of partners,” she said. “No one gets paid.”

Curley, the lambent wit takes life-long learning to the highest heights. Post-medical school, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in public health from UCLA and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“In medical school, it was frowned upon if you talked about business and medicine in the same breath,” she said. “Having a business sense is critical, especially if you want to give back. It’s a necessary tool to better support your mission.

“The MBA came together and really supported this 100 percent nonprofit,” she said.

Another strong element of PAG is the community service and internship programs for high school, college, graduate and post-graduate programs, as well as medical students and physicians in training.

“We are proud of the work we do in Africa,” Curley said. “We bring with us people from all over the country.”
Curley has involved herself in the International Visitors Council of Los Angeles’ summit on the Role of Youth in Citizen Diplomacy. Students at Alexander Hamilton High School raised funds to purchase cows, goats, sheep and pigs for an orphanage in Swaziland.

High school students have traveled to Africa with PAG to participate in HIV peer education.

“The future is really in developing our young people,” Curley said. “You would be surprised how many young people want to be developed. Some young people are often labeled bad kids, but that’s not right.

“We need to take them under our wings and support them,” she said. “A lot of young people come to us and want guidance. We need to work with them because they are our foundation.”

Curley and her husband, Reginald, a pharmacist at Walmart, one of the first to be built in an urban area, have three grandchildren who live in St. Louis.

“Kameron, 13, is the oldest,” she said. “He is very bright, investigative and he comes to you without pretense. I hope he stays that way. Haley, 8, is the middle child. She is very prissy. She likes teas. Symone, 2, is a tom boy.”

Again, Curley returns to her modus, referencing her past directly and indirectly connecting disparate questions.

“I tell my grandchildren often that they have a mother and father, a house and shoes on their feet,” she said. “It’s their responsibility to share and give back. Reggie and I have modeled that in them. Hopefully they will carry on that legacy when we are gone.”

PAG welcomes volunteers, who will be vetted for certain skill sets. Contact Curley at (213) 840-1368 (cell phone) or (323) 295-7200. Email her at Reg260z@aol.com.
 

Dr. Lawrence Yee, director of Adult Clinic at Eisner Pediatric & Family Medical Center, is a mentor to Dr. Condessa M. Curley.