Diversity Spotlight: Diamond Day-Parker

August 20, 2024 - Emily Jodway

Day-Parker is currently a Public Health Consultant for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a part-time marketing assistant for Birth Detroit and chair of the Detroit chapter of Sisters in Public Health. She is passionate about health education, community outreach and health support for women, particularly Black women and new and expectant mothers. She is our diversity Spotlight selection for the month of August. At the start of her college career, Day-Parker experienced what many aspiring students go through- the difficult decision of what to major in and what she wanted to do. Starting out on a pre-nursing track, Day-Parker pivoted to the College of Social Science just as disaster struck back in her hometown.

“The height of media coverage around the Flint water crisis happened during my first year of school,” she said. “I had never heard of public health as a discipline before that, but my experience as a resident in Flint really exposed me to it and helped me better understand what it was.”

This newfound interest in public health led her to the Interdisciplinary Studies program, where she could concentrate her studies around health and society. During her time as an undergrad, Day-Parker exposed herself to many different facets of public health through participation in study abroad programs, which helped her to narrow her area of focus. She spent time in the Dominican Republic with a mix of students, many of whom were on a pre-med track, learning about the local hospitals and healthcare systems. She also spent three months in Malawi doing epidemiology research, and seeing the rollout of their bed net distribution campaign in particular got her interested in public health campaigns and working in the community. 

“Something that I like about public health is that it’s so broad, so although those two trips weren’t necessarily direct to my interests, it really did expose me to a lot of different avenues and parts of public health that I likely wouldn’t have had access to otherwise,” she commented.

The Interdisciplinary Studies program can seem broad at times, but Day-Parker was also helped along in her path by one of her favorite professors, Dr. Brandy Ellison, and her advisor, Nicolas Gisholt in the Global and International Studies department. 

“Listening to him explain how to market yourself as an IDS student really helped me with finding work after graduation, and being able to describe IDS as multidisciplinary and using it to cater to what position I am applying for was really, really helpful,” she said. 

Day-Parker then went on to Grand Valley State University to earn her master’s degree, focusing on health promotion. It was during this time that she found her passion for helping Black women in the community. While taking classes, Day-Parker worked as a community outreach educator for Planned Parenthood, leading sex education programs. “My work at Planned Parenthood and teaching sex and birth control education really motivated me to do more, specifically for the Black community,” she explained. “It was during this time too that I had my two sons, back-to-back within less than a year and a half of each other, and it really opened my eyes to the struggles in general for Black women.”

She both saw and experienced firsthand disparities within her community, such as a higher rate of HIV among Black women and a large lack of support for women’s maternal health and lactation needs. She ended up doing her cumulative project on lactation support and disparities in the Black community, and ways to remedy some of these issues for women during their breastfeeding journey. 

All these experiences have greatly impacted much of the work that she is doing to this day. “Sometimes it feels like I’m in the front row of a show that’s about me,” she said. “Some parts of the show are extremely accurate; some parts are good, and in some parts there are people throwing tomatoes at the stage and ruining the show. It’s all a very emotional experience.”

Shortly after graduation, Day-Parker moved into a role with the State of Michigan in the Bureau of HIV and STI programs. It was during this time that she learned about Birth Detroit, a community birthing center that assists in prenatal, birth and postpartum care. She reached out to the group and joined part-time as a marketing assistant. While searching to find a community of like-minded others, she learned about Sisters in Public Health, a support system that connects women working in public health across the country. When she found out that the nearest chapter was in Chicago, she put in an application for a new chapter located in Detroit and is its chair and founding member. 

Day-Parker really began to see everything come together when she started her current position within MDHHS, working as a Public Health Consultant in the Division of Environmental Health and providing education and support for communities dealing with excessive levels of lead in their water supplies. “It’s very interesting … The thing that got me interested in public health was the flint water crisis and lead, and now I currently work as a lead health educator, she said. “It really was a full-circle moment.”

Knowing how it feels to be powerless in a situation larger than oneself, like many of the citizens of Flint during the water crisis, has kept the mission alive for Diamond-Day Parker of educating one’s community and giving them the resources necessary to not only survive, but thrive. 

“You can end up feeling really disempowered, so I’ve really taken that and harnessed it into the work that I do now, using the feedback that comes from our community outreach, trying to take that and put a better foot forward for the communities that need that education,” she explained. “I am grateful to have had that experience and to be able to bring that perspective to the table.”

Day-Parker hopes that one day we as a society will acknowledge the difference between equality and equity, and that in some cases, certain groups such as Black women may be at a disadvantage and in need of more assistance than others. 

“To some extent, resources are being offered to certain people, but I really do in my heart wish that we could get to a point of equity where we are realizing that because of different circumstances, because of this country’s history, there are other disadvantages for certain populations, and that equity should be focused on more so than equality,” she said. “I also think that sometimes intersectionalities are forgotten about, and that people can be more than just one thing. We need to push forward that point of intersectionality and how important the need for equity really is.”