Neva White '85
Neva White '85 BSN, MSN, DNP learned at a very young age to take the limits off her life. Her inspiration for that mindset? Helen Keller.
"My hero is Helen Keller," said White, the now executive director of the Frazier Family Coalition for Stroke Education and Prevention, a health equity collaboration between Thomas Jefferson University and Temple University Hospital.
"She has always been since I was a child. I always looked up to her because, though she was blind and deaf, I admired the way that she saw the world, what she gave despite her limitations. I always saw her as an inspiration. I said to myself, 'If she can do it, anybody can do it.' I meet a lot of people with a lot of limitations, who have struggled and who have come through a lot. I always try to do the best that I can with what I've been given. Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I don't."
Admitting that "no" has never been in her vernacular, White set her sights on a career in nursing after an amazing experience at Northeast High School where she was part of an after-school first-aid team that tended to sports injuries.
"I learned how to do electrocardiograms and CPR in high school," she said. "It was a unique program, and I loved it because I have always loved everything about the body and medicine and health. I would get home from school at 7 p.m."
It was also at Northeast High School where White first saw an advertisement for the nursing program at Holy Family University.
"I'll never forget it," she said. "I went to check it out, and I just fell in love. I loved the campus and the feel of the school. I loved the staff. I felt at home and comfortable. It checked all my boxes. I had thought about being a physician, but nursing was more fascinating to me as time went on because my mother got ill when I was going to college, and I took care of her. And I think that was what transitioned me to want to be a nurse. I remember when I told my high school counselor that I wanted to be a nurse. He got up from the chair. He shut the door, and he said, 'Why on earth would you want to be a nurse, Neva? You should be a physician.' I said, 'What's wrong with being a nurse?' I think that nursing is a wonderful profession. It hasn't steered me wrong. I have been able to raise my two sons and do all the things I wanted to do. Nursing has served me well."
That is not to say that White wasn't met with challenges along the way. In particular she recalls her struggles in chemistry and philosophy while an undergraduate.
"The chemistry courses were probably my hardest courses," White said. "I'm the type of person where nothing is going to ever stop me. I never took a 'no'. A 'no' was always a 'yes' for me. In high school, algebra killed me, but I became an algebra tutor. At Holy Family, I had a nun for chemistry who worked with me, and she didn't let me fail. She tutored me. She saw that I wanted to be successful, so she took the time to help me through it. I couldn't understand philosophy at first.
'Why do I have to take philosophy? What is that?' But it helped me to think. We had a philosophy teacher who really opened my eyes to how that course really made you a thinker and how it connected the dots. Between chemistry and philosophy, I learned to understand life in a different kind of way, broadening the way I thought about things. Challenges really started to excite me.
"As long as you were willing to put everything in it, the professors at Holy Family would put everything they had in it," she continued. "It was such a spiritual experience for me. I'll never forget the first day. We read Footprints in the Sand, and I just said, 'This is where I belong. I'm not going to be alone these four years. I'm going to have my Holy Family family, and I'm going to have God with me.' I met friends. They embraced me. They were endearing to me. I had such wonderful professors.
I met wonderful nuns and priests who were so spiritual, so godly. You could feel God's presence in them. It was such a beautiful place, a wonderful place to learn and grow. Every time I think about Holy Family, it just makes me feel warm inside."
White went on to Virginia Commonwealth University and then to Temple University where she earned a post master's certificate as an adult nurse practitioner. She also taught nursing there for 10 years. She completed her DNP at Thomas Jefferson University and has made her mark as a diabetes and cardiovascular specialist.
Her most recent work with the Frazier Family Health Coalition ranks among her most gratifying as it uniquely combines the efforts of two hospitals in a stroke prevention program in the heart of North Philadelphia, where some of the highest rates of stroke, hypertension and diabetes exist.
In addition, White has poured her energies into three additional programs. First, she is involved in a digital equity program that teaches computer literacy, allowing patients to access their medical records electronically.
Second, she works with patients and healthcare professionals to look at food intake from a cultural perspective. Third, she is engaged in a program centered around peripheral artery disease in an effort to prevent limb loss.
"We are here working with this community -- some of the poorest, sickest people in Philadelphia - in a zip code where African American men are losing their legs at a rate five times higher than the rest of the city," she said "We are looking at high-risk issues, just trying to make a small dent to improve the lives of the people we serve."
It is that servant's heart that she developed at Holy Family University that White hopes will highlight her nursing legacy.
"I want people to say, 'Neva gave it her all. She did the best she could'," White said. "I believe that nursing is the art of caring, and I believe that my purpose here on this earth is to serve and to care. That's what I've done, and that's what I am going to continue to do. My art is caring."