Office of External Affairs
Priorities
URGENT LEGISLATIVE ACTIONALERT
JULY 13, 2011
On July 26th the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to mark-up its FY12 spending bill. This is the annual bill that funds all agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Resources and Services Administration, etc). With the current budget allocation provided for this measure, the subcommittee is expected to produce a bill that spends significantly less on programs under its jurisdiction than last year. Therefore, it is important for you to contact your representative this week and encourage him/her to support Meharry Medical College’s (MMC) priorities in the bill.
If you do not know who your representative is, please go to www.house.gov and enter your zip code. Phone numbers for all congressional offices are also listed on www.house.gov. Calling works best, but if you prefer to communicate via e-mail, you can do so through www.house gov.
Some tips for communicating with congressional offices:
- Identify yourself as a constituent and ask to speak with the legislator’s Health Care Legislative Assistant.
- Tell the aide that you are an affiliated with the Meharry Medical College.
- Ask that the legislator to support the appropriations priorities of Meharry Medical College in the FY 12 Labor-HHS bill (see list below) by communicating their importance to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee.
- Briefly explain why these issues are important to you.
- Give the aide your contact information and ask to be informed about the actions the legislator takes in response to your request.
- $24.602 million for the Minority Centers of Excellence (COE) program
- $22.133 million for the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP)
- $1.266 million for the Minority Faculty Loan Repayment program
- $60 million for the Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students (SDS) program
- $65 million for Office of Minority Health (OMH) at the Department of Health and Human Services
- $225 million for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at NIH
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URGENT LEGISLATIVE ACTION ALERT
March 31, 2011
ENCOURAGE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND TWO SENATORS TO
SUPPORT HEALTH PROFESSIONS TRAINING PROGRAMS
Congress is trying to finalize fiscal year 2011 appropriations next week
Leaders in Congress are working this week and next week to finalize the fiscal year 2011 appropriations bills. Federal programs are operating on a continuing resolution (CR) until April 8th.
NOW is the time to contact your representative and your two senators to urge:
- Funding the HRSA Title VII health professions training programs, including--
1. Centers of Excellence (COE) at $24.602 million;
2. Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP) at $22.133 million;
3. Faculty Loan Repayment at $1.266 million;
4. Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students at $49.342 million; and
5. Fully fund the Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry program.
- Provide $61.4 million for the Department of Education’s Historically Black Graduate Institutions (HBGI) program.
- Examine the entire federal budget when considering cuts—not just discretionary programs.
- Please keep me informed about your actions and your votes.
You can contact your senators and representative through www.congress.org. Please make this contact either by phone or email by Tuesday, April 5th.
You can also find this action alert on MyMMC. If you need to locate your legislator visit the Tennessee General Assembly Website at http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/.
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Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall
Hulda Margaret Lyttle Hall, the historic Meharry Nursing School, was one of only five schools nationwide awarded a preservation grant of $1 million or more from the U.S. Department of Interior Historic Preservation. The preservation project will begin in April of 2010.
About Lyttle Hall
Built in 1930, Lyttle Hall is one of the oldest of 21 buildings on the campus with three stories and 32,100 square feet. It was originally used as the Nurses’ Home and has been a dormitory, classroom and office space. The three (3) level building initially housed nursing students, as well as classrooms and laboratory space. There was also a full-service cafeteria for the female nursing students. Built of brick and masonry, Lyttle Hall was designed to complement the buildings on the neighboring Fisk University campus. The basement of Lyttle Hall was divided into a large recreational room, with a kitchenette, laundry and storage spaces. The first floor had a lobby, an office and two (2) reception rooms. It also held a large living room with a porch and a kitchenette and a separate reception room for graduate nurses.
There were also suites of rooms for the director of nurses, the hospital superintendent, a matron and the chief dietician. South of the entrance on the first floor was the teaching section, with a library, large demonstration room, practice utility room, classroom, diet kitchen, staff office and baths. The upper floors contained rooms for eight graduate nurses and 61 student nurses.
Lyttle Hall underwent minor renovations and served as office space for the Central Administration. In 1972, the Stanley S. Kresge Learning Resource Center Building was completed and most of the Central Administration was moved into its office space. The remaining offices in Lyttle Hall included: the Division of Finance, the Provost Office for External Affairs and the Multiphastic Screening Laboratory. The basement was utilized for storage.
In 1992, the building was left vacant, as the administrative offices were moved into the Kresge building and the laboratory was relocated in the hospital. Maintenance and renovations for Lyttle Hall have been deferred for decades, which have rendered the building uninhabitable. Lyttle Hall has 28,886 square feet of habitable space. There are four (4) exterior entrances, 44 separate offices and seven (7) bathrooms on the first and second floors. There is also a multi-purpose room, one self-service elevator and a full basement that is 7,683 square feet.
About Hulda Margaret Lyttle-Frazier (1889-1983)
Hulda Margaret Lyttle-Frazier, a native Nashvillian, was born in 1889 to David and Rebecca Lyttle. After receiving her primary education, in September of 1910 Hulda entered the first class of George W. Hubbard Hospital's Training School for Nurses. She gained recognition as an astute scholar and as one willing to render care when needed. Lyttle became proficient in operating room techniques, and attending physicians rewarded her diligence and efficaciousness by requesting Lyttle's help in the operating room. Three years after entering the Training School for Nurses, Lyttle, Lula Woolfolk, and Rhonda A. Pugh became the school's first graduates.
Lyttle then entered Lincoln Hospital's School of Nursing in New York. Upon completion of her studies at Lincoln Hospital's School of Nursing, Lyttle was asked by her former teacher, Chairman C. Hunt, to stand in for her as an instructor at Southern University's School of Nursing, until her contract with George W. Hubbard Hospital's Training School for Nurses terminated. Lyttle returned to Nashville after her three-month tenure at Southern University's School of Nursing ended. Dr. George W. Hubbard, president of Meharry Medical College, and Dr. Josie Wells, superintendent of George W. Hubbard Hospital, and director and dean of Meharry Medical College’s School of Nursing, recommended her for head nurse at Hubbard Hospital. Lyttle was directly responsible for enhancing the nursing education program and indirectly responsible for improvements made in the general administration of the hospital.
After leaving Meharry Medical College, Hulda M. Lyttle worked in various health care positions around the country. For almost a year, she gave services and expertise to the newly formed (1941) United Service Organizations (USO) in North Carolina. She later moved to Houston, Texas, where she was to manage a recently inaugurated school of nursing. However, because the school's organizational and operational standards were inadequate to meet the academic needs of prospective student nurses, Lyttle closed the school with help from the state board. She moved to California and for a while worked as a private-duty nurse. In 1948, Lyttle accepted a position with the University of California as administrator of School Health Programs. She later accepted the position of superintendent of the National Baptist Bath House Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas. There she met Dr. S. M. Frazier, to whom she seas married in May of 1954. They later moved to Miami, Florida.
A proponent of continuing education, Lyttle had completed summer extension courses at the University of Colorado and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. In 1938, she received the B. S. degree from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College and two years later took advanced courses at the University of Toronto's School of Nursing. Additionally, she held teaching certificates in Florida and Tennessee.
Lyttle served as first vice president, then president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. She was a member of the Miami Chapter of Links, Inc., and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
On June 23, 1946, Meharry Medical College's officials named the student nurses' residence hall in honor of Hulda M. Lyttle-Frazier. She became the first woman Meharrian so honored by the school and the hospital. At the age of 94, on Sunday, August 7, 1983, at Cedars of Lebanon Medical Center in Miami, Florida, Hulda Margaret Lyttle-Frazier died. She was funeralized on August 10 at the Church of the Open Door and was interred in Lincoln Memorial Park.
