Willarda V. Edwards

Willarda V. Edwards

From the beginning of her career, Dr. Willarda V. Edwards committed herself to action. She has worked in service to her patients in Baltimore since 1984; in service to her fellow physicians through her more than a dozen years as an elected official in the country’s largest medical associations; and on behalf of her community-at-large through her work as National Health Advocacy Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and, most recently, as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland, on December 22, 1951, to a U.S. Army computer specialist and a public school counselor, Willarda Virginia Edwards grew up with two older brothers. Edwards traces her interest in becoming a doctor to a particularly vivid struggle she had at age five with her brothers over a toy bag. 

Her mother had offered her two sons the doctor’s bag and her daughter a nurse’s bag. Edwards coveted her brothers’ gift. “The three of us fought over it until I finally got the doctor’s bag,” Edwards told Nikitta A. Foston of Ebony. Edwards developed a more serious focus on a medical career in high school. There she joined a Health Career Club and learned that a career in medicine could combine her interest in the sciences and her enjoyment of people. 

Several other factors led her to choose being a doctor over a nurse, according to her interview with Tracey Gatewood in the Afro-American Red Star. “I kind of thought maybe being a nurse would be fine,” Edwards remembered about her opinion before doing some research at a health career fair in the ninth grade. “Then I started looking through the book at some of the salaries and said well maybe I’ll be a doctor.” 

Moreover, her work as a nurse’s aide during her senior year in high school cemented her goal to become a doctor when she realized that nurses had to follow doctors’ orders even if they did not agree with them. Edwards determined that she would prefer to be the one making the decisions.

Edwards completed her high school education in El Paso, Texas, where her family had moved when she was 11. She then studied premed at the University of Texas at El Paso and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972. Edwards won a Navy scholarship to attend medical school and entered the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she graduated in 1977. Her studies led her to become an internist, a medical doctor who concentrates on preventing, diagnosing, and treating diseases that affect adults. Edwards then completed her residency in Baltimore.

Her medical career officially began in the U.S. Navy, when she served four years on active duty in the Annapolis Naval Clinic. She later spent six months at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where she became chief of the Internal Medicine Department. She completed her active duty in 1984 with the rank of commander; she remained in the Naval Reserves until 1998.

Fresh off active duty, Edwards opened a private practice in Baltimore in 1984. By 1991 she had partnered with Dr. Theodore A. Stephens and their practice flourished and grew to include more than ten employees. Edwards even earned an M.B.A. from the Loyola College of Baltimore in 1999, which helped her manage the growing practice.

Before long, Edwards realized that her successful medical practice was not enough; she determined that she could do more for her community than simply treat her patients. She thus set out on a course that had her devote part of her time working through medical associations to improve the lives of her patients as well as those of her fellow physicians. Edwards had long known the power of medical associations. 

As a medical student in 1973, she had joined the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), a branch of the National Medical Association dedicated to increasing the voice and the numbers of black medical students. Through the association Edwards networked with black doctors who encouraged her. When Edwards herself became a physician, she remembered her own mentors’ encouragement and became a mentor to incoming medical students. Moreover, she committed herself to nurturing ties throughout the medical and political communities. Edwards told Health Quest contributor Anita Womack she learned that “in unity, there is strength.”

Edwards took that notion of unity further than anyone before he, as she became the first person to straddle the divide between the NMA and the American Medical Association (AMA). After attending her first AMA meeting in 1994, Edwards ran for and was elected president of her local chapters of both the AMA and the NMA later that year. She was the first person to hold both offices at once, and was the first African-American female to hold the presidency of the AMA chapter, the Baltimore City Medical Society and MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society. 

Edwards set clear goals for her work in the associations. “I think that my biggest emphasis as president of both societies is the need for physicians to be better organized,” she told Gatewood, explaining that “the societies are the way to get the people together and harness our forces.” Moreover, Edwards considered her leadership positions a way of “fighting against the idea of the ‘old boy network’,” which she considered a detriment to the society by making physicians feel that the organization was “not inclusive” and “not doing anything for them.” Edwards determined to make the organizations she worked for inclusive, active, and successful.

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