BIOGRAPHY
Kearra M. Haynes, MHSM
Kearra Haynes is a licensed minister and serves at Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and The Gathering, A Womanist Church. She currently serves in the Healthcare Ministry, Gender Justice Ministry, and is a researcher for the Broughton and Wells Center for Gender Justice (BWCGJ).
She is a recent graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School with concentrations in Chaplaincy and Black Church Studies. Her article, “Will The Black Church Please Stand Up – ” was published in the 2022 Reproductive Economic Justice in a Post-Roe Landscape: Changing The Conversation in Christian Communities Intervention Forum by Vanderbilt Divinity.
As she finished her studies within the Divinity Program, she was recently admitted into Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine Public Health Program- Global Health Track. While in the first semester of her program, she created a mock reporting system learning model in response to the Severe Maternal Morbidity that Black women faced due to medical apartheid. Her advisor encouraged her to develop a thesis for doctoral work for her passion around medical bias within the medical technology that is utilized in the everyday healthcare system.
She is currently doing post graduate research with interests in Black maternal health care, practical theology, Black Transhuman Liberation Theology , algorithmic bias, and womanist bioethics as a corrective tool. She is currently teaching English at Desoto High School.
She received her B.S. in Health Science with a minor in Speech Pathology from Marshall University,
followed by a post-baccalaureate certificate in Radiology Technology. Afterward, she received a Master’s in Health Systems Management (MHSM) from Texas Woman’s University (TWU) and leveraged her
interdisciplinary background by working in Community Prevention and Intervention as a contractor for
the Texas Department of State Health Service Infectious Diseases Branch. Through various clinical
research roles in HIV Surveillance and the Medical Monitoring Project, CDC research studies, she
tracked and collected data on the prevalence of HIV,TB, and STD transmission within incarcerated population in Texas for CDC research studies, which resulted in her being selected to present the 2019 MMP HIV Incarceration Population and Prevention Plan at the HIV Dallas Data Summit.
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
MALCOLM X
