In the Parkland neighborhood, a much-needed, long-awaited hospital recently came to fruition.
Two years after breaking ground, Norton Healthcare inaugurated its West End campus with a monument to Louisville’s pioneering Black doctors and health care workers. The new facility is in a part of town where many residents are Black and on lower incomes, and their struggle to access reliable health care is reflected in health outcomes that are worse than other parts of Louisville.
The unveiling in October was met with gasps and applause from an audience that included the descendants of some of the pioneering doctors honored at the hospital. Stories and photos from over a century of Black physicians and nurses are etched onto plexiglass facing the street, and onlookers stopped to read and take in the names and faces of these lesser-known figures from Louisville’s history.
