Mayo Clinic’s Community Affairs Director,, is a connector whose focus is to preserve and enrich cultural diversity within Mayo Clinic’s patient population and staff.
From years of talking with patients from all walks, he explains that there are myths about getting access to the top-notch care offered at Mayo Clinic and works to fight those myths every day.
“You don’t have to be really rich or really sick to be treated here. Mayo Clinic is for everyone,” Kelly said.
In addition, Kelly emphasizes that despite efforts to close the gap, health care disparities between whites and blacks persist, from higher cancer death rates in blacks due to later-stage diagnosis, lower rates of mammograms, and less access to health care – among other factors.
“Although the incidence of breast cancer is lower in blacks, the survival rate lags behind other ethnic groups, for example” Kelly said.
Research continues to show that minority populations are hit hard in certain conditions, including in cardiology, cancer and neurology. Mayo Clinic is working to understand and remedy those disparities through research, education, and community outreach.
Kelly’s responsibilities also include nurturing cultural diversity within Mayo’s staff, which is a vital objective for Mayo Clinic. He is a founder and board member of Arizona’s premier diversity education organization, the Diversity Leadership Alliance, and uses the forums that Alliance provides to help Mayo and other organizations share best practices for recruiting and retaining a diverse group of employees.
“It’s my goal to demonstrate the significant impact of having diverse employees supported, and to make sure organizations understand how they also benefit from such practices,” he explains, “We know that diversity of thought, beliefs and backgrounds within our staff help Mayo Clinic to provide each unique patient with the best possible care.”
Marion Kelly has been working in this capacity at Mayo Clinic since 1995 and takes his job seriously. Whether it’s entertaining a new black doctor and his family with a dinner at his family’s Phoenix-area home; or meeting with a group of African American breast cancer survivors to lend support; it’s never too much or outside his scope of work. All he does is a reflection of Mayo’s moral responsibility to be of service to humanity.
Marion draws together many community organizations for alignment with Mayo Clinic’s vision for diversity, including The Links, Incorporated, and the Phoenix-area Gamma Mu Boule Chapter and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
“I like to link people and organizations with Mayo who have never considered making that connection. I want to create pipelines,” he said. “I’m always thinking about how to show people of all backgrounds that they are welcome here.”
The guiding principle for Kelly’s work is found in an inscription on one of Mayo Clinic’s buildings. It says: “Within these walls all people regardless of race, creed or ethnicity will be cared for without discrimination.”
