How Personal Stories Inspire State Service: A Conversation with Morissa Henn and Justin Turner 

Both Morissa Henn, DrPH, Deputy Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, and Justin Turner, MD, Chief Medical Office of the Mississippi State Department of Health, grew up with a sense of public service cultivated by their families. And both were inspired in the State of Mississippi. Henn (Milbank Fellow Program, 2022-2023) observed mentor and community health center champion Jack Geiger engage in listening and power sharing in rural Mississippi. And at Meharry Medical College, Turner (Emerging Leaders Program, 2023-2024) was moved to devote his career to creating more equitable experiences and health outcomes for his fellow Mississippians. In conversation with Milbank, they described how they work with people with different origin stories than their own to advance policies that improve population health and health equity.  

How has your origin story informed your state service? 

Henn: I grew up in New Hampshire surrounded by a strong love of politics and health. My father is a family physician oriented around a social justice philosophy and my mother is a now retired family therapist. They shaped my outlook on health as comprehensive and rooted in community and social justice, more than just delivery of services.  

In college I was inspired by the work of Jack Geiger, a civil rights activist who helped start the first community health centers in the United States in Mount Bayou, Mississippi. I was struck by the contemporary relevance of the humanity with which he was engaging with partners and building something from a civil rights basis to deliver health care. My first job out of college was working for Dr. Geiger as a research assistant. I keep Dr. Geiger’s photo on my desk to remind me that help has to be driven by a willingness to not just listen, but by the ability to use one’s privilege to share power, distribute resources, and raise up voices of people who for a variety of reasons, structural or otherwise, haven’t had their needs centered in the conversation around what systems need to deliver.  

Turner: I grew up in Jefferson County, Mississippi, one of the poorest counties in the nation not too long ago. After my parents divorced, we moved in with my grandparents, who were vital in raising me. My grandfather quit school when he was in sixth grade so he could work and provide for his 16 siblings. Later, he became the first Black alderman of a Southern US city post-reconstruction and did a lot of work in the civil rights movement to advance equality and health justice. Service is not what I do, it’s who I am. It’s embedded in me.  

I went to Meharry for medical school. In classes we would talk about different statistics, and no matter the disease category, Mississippi was typically the worst as it relates to bad outcomes. Sitting in that classroom, I had a sense of conviction, pride, and embarrassment. I didn’t feel like I had an option to come back to Mississippi. I felt like I had an obligation to come back to Mississippi.  After I finished my residency, I worked for a national corporation, and I was dumbfounded to find the expectation was to spend less than eight minutes with each patient. These patients were everyday people who deserved quality care. I figured out how to start my own practice, and this past November, I celebrated 10 years of my internal medicine practice. At my clinic, my patients know that they are going to have someone that they can trust, connect with, and not feel rushed. 

I am also now honored to be the Chief Medical Officer for the Mississippi State Department of Health. Mississippi still leads the nation in just about every health category as far as bad outcomes. But I’m thankful to be in a place now where my personal story can help me advance population health and health equity. I’m in rooms and in meetings where not a lot of people look like me, and I’m able to advocate for all patients.  

When I took this role in August last year, I found out that my wife and I were pregnant. My wife had a very traumatic pregnancy and had to be hospitalized or treated in the emergency room 23 times. When my wife went to the hospital by herself, she felt as if she was treated one way, but if she went there with me, she felt as if she was treated differently. Until we have a health care system that makes sure that every person gets treated the right way, we will never fix our disparities.  

How do you approach working with people from different origin stories than your own?  

Henn: Learning people’s stories immediately builds a sense of connection. When I welcome new employees to the Department of Health and Human Services, I always say be curious because when we’re curious, we must be open and acknowledge we don’t know everything. It sets us up to have this humble linkage to people different than ourselves.  

I learned that firsthand being at Jack Geiger’s side, driving through rural Mississippi. My first true southern meal was in Greenfield, Mississippi, probably a mile from where Emmett Till was murdered and where B.B. King grew up, in this beautiful brick home of a family friend of one of the civil rights pioneers, John Hatch. I was the first White woman and the first Jewish person in their home, and they asked thoughtful questions over this incredible meal of fried catfish and okra — foods that I had never had. I remember the strength of the hug at the end of that meal as we realized we’d both experienced a little sense of awe and wonder, having brought curiosity to that meal and conversation. So I try to bring that to my work.  

When I was in Utah, I was focused on gun violence and gun safety. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in in the US, and in Utah, 85% of gun deaths are suicides. I knew the only way to change behavior was by engaging the right messengers and learning from people. I didn’t meet a single gun owner in Utah who had not lost someone to firearm suicide. [So I focused on] engaging them as agents of change and finding common ground to ensure that no person in suicidal crisis ever has access to a gun because that’s not controversial. Gun owners and non-gun owners, gun control and pro-gun rights folks agree that no person in crisis should have access to a firearm. Using that as the common denominator built a variety of policy and non-policy solutions.  

Why do you think it’s important to acknowledge injustice?  

Turner: We saw the fragility of our health care system during Covid. We saw how over 60% of Covid cases were in the minority community initially and how members of these communities had higher rates of death. The issue with health injustice is not something that only happened in the 1930s or 1940s, it’s something that everyday Mississippians are still dealing with right now.  

As a medical community, as an agency, it’s okay for us to acknowledge that. In the past, we’ve tried to propose policy and implement strategies with the assumption that issues with equity are a thing that happened in the past, and people just need to get over it.  

The key is understanding that yes, we all have biases, but our biases don’t have to have us. So how do we put things in place to help us all realize that? Because before we can move forward and implement these policies and initiatives or research, we’ve got to make sure that that people from underrepresented communities understand that we acknowledge any preexisting distrust that they may feel; if they don’t feel heard, it’s not going to matter.  

Any final thoughts about using your origin story or your leadership story to advance policy? 

Henn: In the context of last year’s Millbank Fellows meeting, the origin story framework that opened the first session enabled this instant creation of community. We came together as relative strangers from all different parts of the country, with different experiences and backgrounds, and listening to one another it felt like the spirit of that community was really born. A big part of the privilege of being in public leadership isn’t about having the right skills and education. You have to know the importance of being part of community and building community.  

Milbank’s investment in us helped me prioritize the work of building and supporting teams to find meaning and purpose. It’s also been about understanding that this work does not have to be lonely and isolating. There are long weeks, challenging media, divisive politics, and a really disturbing backdrop of war, climate change, and mass shootings. But if you have commitment to community, you can find a level of groundedness even on the longest weeks. The origin story activity is about finding a deeper connection in this work and giving us the tools to share that spark with others.  

Turner:  I’m still on a high from our first Milbank conference. There was so much diversity in that room, but we shared one language and love for humanity. When you think about our challenges across the nation, there’s common ground in knowing that most of us want the same thing. We just have different views and different ways of getting it done. I left the meeting feeling more motivated to come back to Mississippi and meet those challenges. How do we find the things that we agree on and spend more time there and spend less time talking about the stuff that we don’t agree on? Origin stories help us with connection, and once we’re more connected, we realize that we’re not Democrats or Republicans first, we are Mississippians first.