Title:Reflections on Health with Shantel Hébert-Magee (M’05), M.D., MPH, Louisiana Department of Health

I grew up in New Orleans. My family has been here for nine generations. There’s a strong sense of community, ancestral veneration, and Catholicism. This cultural mélange makes Louisiana unique.

When I was a baby the Creole traiteur (community healer) told my mom that there was a calling on my life and to invest in me. Despite our humble beginnings, my mother, a single parent, made my education her top priority.

As a youth, influenced by hip-hop, I begged for a Georgetown jersey. When the store clerk asked why, I said, “I’m going there.” It was my innate response.

For medical school, I wanted a place that appreciated my Louisiana healing culture that looks at the entire person: environmental stability, spirituality, or imbalance contributing to a physiologic outcome. Cura personalis resonated.

When I was a teen, my Aunt Emma (“Tante Lanky”) passed away from a recurrence of breast cancer after her medical concerns were dismissed by clinicians, confirming that we bring societal biases into health facilities, knowingly or unknowingly.

I chose pathology because I wanted to understand the why.

Joining the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I researched cancer health disparities and GI pathology, working with global industry to develop early detection devices for pancreatic and bile duct cancer. In another country someone said, “Your folks must be so proud. You must do this at home.” The realization came upon me: What about my home community?

I shifted to public health, earning my MPH at Harvard in 2019. In February 2020 I was building a start-up in West Africa when the pandemic shut everything down and I instead returned home as medical director for the Department of Health, responsible for the greater New Orleans area. We were a viral hotbed because of Mardi Gras. Things were very uncertain, and there was so much mistrust.

I was on the news, going to community events and speaking Creole to the elders. Having a face that’s reflective of the community helped.

There were times in my childhood when we were destabilized and had to live with different family members. My experiences with kinship care and having a lot of people in one house resonated with people struggling during lockdown.

I became Louisiana’s chief medical officer for Medicaid, and health care financing was the biggest issue. It’s challenging to provide quality care and access when you have small coffers and a lot of need.

Since returning from my own breast cancer journey in 2025, I serve as regional director for Baton Rouge and six largely rural parishes.

Free time? My brother is a lawyer and we started a community-based nonprofit called GOT GOT Studios, named for when people find themselves dealing with a legal issue and say “I got got.” We use art as a funding source to provide pro bono civil legal aid for people being wrongfully evicted, who face wage loss or health-harming legal issues. We were inspired by the struggles my mom had trying to raise us with limited funds.

When someone is able to say, “My neighbors helped me out,” it reverberates.

Within Louisiana’s healing culture, there’s never a stranger.