Achieving Health Equity: MCH Perspectives (MCH Workforce Development)

Dr. Merewood directs the Center for Health Equity, Education, and Research (CHEER) at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts, and CHEERing, CHEER’s international partner in Athens, Greece.  She served as the main author on the Interprofessional Education module, Breastfeeding: Human Medicine. Anne is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences at the BU School of Public Health, and a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Nicosia Medical School in Cyprus. Anne gained her undergraduate and PhD degrees at Cambridge University, England, and her Masters in Public Health at Boston University. She has published over 60 papers in the medical peer reviewed literature.

Kimarie Bugg DNP, FNP-BC, FAAN, MPH, IBCLC, is President and CEO of Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE). Dr. Bugg, a career perinatal and neonatal nurse professional, recognized her calling alongside her grandmother as a lay midwife in rural Arkansas at the age of 12.

Graduating nursing school in 1978, Dr. Bugg spent four decades working in the Atlanta Metropolitan area and nationally, mostly African American communities promoting perinatal health, breastfeeding, and community based impact solutions. Kimarie has worked in a private pediatric practice and for Emory University, School of Medicine, as a nurse practitioner. She has worked at the state level, as a perinatal nurse consultant and in the hospital in the pediatric emergency center, special care nursery, and as a bedside breastfeeding consultant from 1986-1994. She was the first African American IBCLC in the state of Georgia (1987). In 2011 she and her professional sisters founded Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, a national nonprofit that seeks to address health disparities and inequities in breastfeeding with a focus on community based solutions. Dr. Bugg is known internationally for her work in lactation, anti racism and health equity strategies, the nonprofit world and Community leadership. She has received innumerable awards and recognition, including multiple lifetime achievement awards. 

She is a member of the faculty for CHAMPs, a Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, and current chair of the ethics committee of United States Breastfeeding Committee.

Kimarie is on the board of advisors for the National Association of Professional and Peer Lactation Supporters of Color (NAPPLSC) and she provides health equity through breastfeeding training, education and resources for healthcare providers, lactation support providers and ROSE Community Transformers nationwide.

Dr. Bugg completed a Community Health Leadership Program, within the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine that stressed best practices to provide global health equity and eliminating health disparities through action-oriented projects. In 2016, Kimarie received a Legacy Award from the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) for her work in the lactation arena for 38 years.

Kimarie lives in the Atlanta area with her husband, Dr. George W. Bugg Jr, a neonatologist. They are the parents of 5 adult children.