Jean was a community leader in the 1960s and 1970s in and around Brownsville, Rossville, and Stanton in West Tennessee. With help from the health fairs conducted by Student Health Coalition (SHC), including students from Meharry and Vanderbilt, Jean helped ensure the establishment of the first primary care clinic in Stanton, Tenn. To this day (as of January 2022), she remains active in local politics and advocacy for health care for all.
Related Content:

Behind the scenes at Douglas Community Health Center
Jean Carney reminisces the early days of Douglas Community Health Center in Stanton, Tenn. Following a brief overview of the clinic’s architectural layout and functional operations, she delves into the impact of race relations on healthcare at the time. … Continued

Grant proposal process for the Douglas Community Health Center
Jean Carney details the convoluted grant proposal and approval process for establishing the Douglas Community Health Center, and the lengths to which she and others had to go to make it happen. Despite the several setbacks, she persisted and the… Continued

Origins of the Douglas Community Health Center’s Board of Directors
Jean Carney recounts the story of how the Board of Directors for the Douglas Community Health Center in Stanton, Tenn. first came to be, as well as the role Irwin Venick‘s feasibility study played in determining the community’s need for… Continued

Challenges facing nurse practitioners
Outside the old clinic building of what used to be Douglas Community Health Center, Margaret Ecker and Jean Carney discuss the multitude of challenges facing nurse practitioners and what legislative movement’s been made to overcome adversity of such restrictive practice.… Continued

Criteria for and selection process of outreach workers with MIHOW project
Barbara Clinton explains how partnerships between local community health clinics and the Center for Health Services (CHS) facilitated the development of the Maternal-Infant Health Outreach Worker Project (MIHOW). It was up to the community-run clinics to outline criteria for and… Continued

Jean Carney on the motivation to build the Stanton, Tenn. health clinic
Jean Carney discusses how segregation created healthcare disparities in her community and provides a historical account of the health clinic in Stanton, Tenn. Recorded October of 2017. Continued

Pushback against Douglas Community Health Center
Jean Carney shares how rhetoric against the Black-run Douglas Community Health Center manifested as several false accusations and presented various legal challenges to both the clinic and associated nurse practitioners. Full footage of Jean Carney at the old Douglas… Continued