in memoriam

Doris Bunte ‘Taught Us What It Means to Be an Advocate’

Robert Horsburgh and Daniel Brooks collaborated with the pioneering Massachusetts State Representative and public housing advocate for 13 years at the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center. Bunte passed away on February 15.

The School of Public Health lost a great friend last month, says Robert Horsburgh, professor of epidemiology.

Doris Bunte, a lifelong public servant and the first Black woman elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature, was co-chair, and then chair, of the Community Committee of the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (PHH-PRC) at SPH from 2001 to 2014. She passed away on February 15 at age 87 after a bout with cancer.

Bunte was well positioned to energize and direct the PHH-PRC in its mission of improving the health of residents of Boston Housing Authority residences. After living in the Orchard Park public housing residences for decades, she became the first Black commissioner and administrator, and first public housing tenant, of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), where she led the push for the integration of the South Boston public housing developments. The PHH-PRC Community Committee that she led was comprised of BHA residents and stakeholders in local organizations—including Community Health Centers, BHA, and SPH—who worked to address the needs of public housing residents through education, research, and advocacy.

“Doris was a force of nature, and she was devoted to improving the quality of life of BHA residents,” says Horsburgh, who served as co-principal investigator of the PHH-PRC with former SPH Dean Robert Meenan. “Doris always knew who to call, and when she called them, they responded.”

She was not, however, a hard taskmaster.

“Her success was based on the fact that she treated everyone equally,” Horsburgh says. “She recognized that we all face challenges, and that working together we would be able to surmount challenges that we could not surmount alone.” Bunte was also known for her sharp wit and gracious sense of humor, which made it possible for the PRC to get through difficult circumstances, says Horsburgh.

“It was quite an education working with Doris,” says Daniel Brooks, associate professor of epidemiology and who served as research director for the PHH-PRC. “I learned so much from her about what it means to advocate for one’s community. She always pushed for empowerment of public housing residents, whether through the status of the Community Committee within the PHH-PRC, or by bringing attention to the too-often ignored strengths that existed in the public housing community.

“I look back and think about how all the things many of us are learning or re-learning today about equity and justice were embodied in her actions,” he says.

Under Bunte’s leadership, the PHH-PRC implemented a number of successful programs, including health surveys of BHA residents to identify their priorities, development-centered smoking cessation programs and development-centered dental caries prevention. The PHH-PRC also implemented tenant task force training programs to prepare the next generation of resident leaders in seeking and managing outside funding to support resident health improvement programs.

The PHH-PRC was a textbook example of community-based participatory research and its success can be largely attributed to the vision of Bunte, who continuously focused the research of delivering tangible benefits to the participants, not just publishing articles, Horsburgh says.

“Her vision was that the organization existed to listen to the residents and develop programs that met their needs.”