Columnist Barbara Womack chats with a local Black history maker
As we close out Black History Month, we need to recognize the unsung Black History makers who are making history everyday and infecting their goodness on others. One of those unsung heroes is Dr. Katherine Y. Brown, EdD, of Nashville.
Dr. Brown, who founded Learn CPR America, has received many accolades, far too many to mention, but here’s a short list of just a few of them: In 2001, she became the first Black person to earn a doctoral faculty position in the history of Belmont University. In 2021, she received the Athena International Leadership award. This accomplishment made her the first woman in Nashville and possibly in the country to be the first dual recipient of the Athena Traditional Award (2021) and the Athena Young Professional Award (2015) — and the first Black woman to do so. In 2023, she became the first Black woman to receive the American Heart Association’s Martin E. Simmons Award for Advancing Heart Health. She is also the new AHA ReSS Champion Award recipient.
Dr. Brown is married and the mother of four children. Anthony, 30, is a nurse; Sydney, 23, is in medical school studying to be a physician; Irving, 22, graduated from Fisk University at the age of 19; and Robert, 15, is a student at Father Ryan High School with ambitions of becoming a medical pilot. All of her children teach CPR.
Dr. Brown said she instilled in her children a sense of community that made them driven with a strong desire to be of service to others.
“I tell my kids that community service is not an option, it is a responsibility,” Brown says.
Dr. Brown has led an extraordinary life of service to her community and to the world. Internationally, she has taught CPR to more than 300,000 people. Dr. Brown explained why she is so dedicated to teaching the world CPR and why she will go anywhere to do so.
“I provide free CPR because lives matter,” Brown says. “I initiated the concept of bringing CPR training to street corners and unexpected places because cardiac arrest can happen at any time, to any person, anywhere. The nature and location of one’s work should not dictate its value. The world is my classroom.”
In 2016, Dr. Brown established the KYB Leadership Academy. This initiative empowers college, high school and middle school students by exposing them to global leadership and education on pulmonary hypertension.
“Everyone has a unique purpose,” she said. “We must empower them to recognize their worth and let their inner light shine regardless of past experiences.”
She has taken youths to Dubai, Costa Rica, South Africa, Turks and Caicos Islands and other countries to support the organization’s mission.
Dr. Brown is not only the “Queen of CPR,” she is the author of five inspirational books. Her works extend to addressing chronic diseases and health disparities, she is a lecturer, she has presented conferences including the American Association of Medical Colleges and the National Institutes of Health and she is the first Black person to lead a grassroots initiative that led to her training over 300,000 people for free in CPR.
She says, “If you can teach a child to ride a bike, I can teach them CPR and that’s what I plan to do.”
She insists that there’s a need to go everywhere from the grandest mansions to the homeless camps in the woods in order to spread her ministry of teaching CPR to the world because it’s something that anyone can learn to do, she says. Community health efforts, like free CPR, show that one person can educate and enhance the lives of so many others. And while there are many Black unsung heroes who don’t get the recognition they deserve, they, like Dr. Brown, but go along doing God’s work and God’s will. Although Dr. Brown has received numerous awards, she is Black History personified and worthy of our respect every day and not just in February. She has left an indelible mark around the world in terms of CPR training for underserved people. We wanted to share her story and her purpose in life as we approached the culmination of a wonderful Black History Month.