For every woman who comes next
Cone Health is strengthening maternal care for families across our region through a $1.5 million gift from Dr. Vanessa Haygood honoring her mother.
When Dr. Vanessa Haygood committed a $1.5 million gift to Cone Health in support of women’s and children’s care, she knew whose name should carry it forward. For years, driving past the MedCenter for Women on Wendover Avenue in Greensboro, she returned to the same quiet thought: My mother’s name belongs there.
The MedCenter for Women has become a place families rely on and a cornerstone of community health. It will now be known as the Cone Health Pearl Walker Haygood MedCenter for Women.
Haygood’s investment honors Pearl Walker Haygood, whose life was shaped by both loss and resilience. Pearl’s own mother died during the 1918 influenza pandemic, leaving Pearl to be raised by extended family from just three days old. She lived through a time when many Black women faced barriers to consistent, preventive care. She endured the loss of three pregnancies and rarely received the care she needed. Still, she earned a college degree and built a life defined by strength and determination.
Those experiences shaped Dr. Haygood’s career in obstetrics and gynecology and her commitment to advancing maternal care. In the conversation that follows, Dr. Haygood reflects on that journey and the future she hopes to help build for women and families across our community.
When you and your husband came to Greensboro in the mid-1980s, you set out to care for patients who were facing limited access, financial barriers and complex pregnancies. Your work made a decades-long impact on the health of countless women in our region. What are you most proud of from those early years?
Haygood: My husband and I came here to do basically what Dr. [Tanya] Pratt and her associates now do at Cone Health — to be physicians for the population of patients who were not being seen by private practices. We did that for two years, and the number of patients in that category increased, but the hospital administration declined to increase staffing. We decided to leave that employment and start our own practice, Central Carolina OB/GYN.
The practice grew rapidly and innovated. We were the first private practice to offer nurse-midwifery care. Now, more than half of the babies delivered in health systems are delivered by nurse-midwives. We feel very excited about having left that as a legacy.
What makes Cone Health the right place to invest — and what about the MedCenter for Women inspired you?
Haygood: I have been impressed by how Cone Health is evolving to carry out its initial mission of caring for all people, regardless of their ability to pay. The health system’s trajectory, especially under former CEO Dr. Mary Jo Cagle, has been strongly directed toward serving the people of our region with quality health care.
I was so excited when MedCenter for Women opened. I passed it just about every day for years, driving down Wendover Avenue, and each time I said, “My mom’s name needs to be on that MedCenter.” It needs to be there as a symbol for how she cared about opportunity and education and as a source of hope. The work that has been done to make that a welcoming space that feeds the body and the soul — with the artwork and beautiful design inside — is something I think represents the essence of my mom. The warmth inside and the care available there are exactly how I see her.
What do people in our community most misunderstand about maternal health outcomes — and what does the data actually show?
Haygood: The data show us there is a profound difference in the price that a Black mother may pay to build a family versus what a white mother pays. The risk is much higher by multiples. It’s not just financial risk, though the more complications you have, the bigger your bill. It is also a risk to her immediate life, her future well-being and her child’s future well-being because of the higher risk of prematurity and infant mortality associated with it.
Many people would like to believe it is only an educational issue — that Black women don’t know any better, so we don’t do any better. There is a belief that we don’t comply with providers’ instructions, that we lack financial readiness for having a family. That’s not what the research shows when you look at maternal morbidity, and, heaven forbid, mortality.
Philanthropy means something different to all of us. What does it mean to you?
Haygood: Philanthropy is kind of a long word for what I grew up thinking of as people helping people. People often think that philanthropy is something that rich people do. In the community where I grew up, what we did wasn’t called philanthropy, but I can give you example after example of people getting together and gathering resources for a cause that wasn’t for themselves — it was for someone else, it was to meet a need, to fill a gap and to build on that, small act after small act.
When you think about the MedCenter for Women over the next five years, what do you hope has changed because of this gift?
Haygood: I hope that there will be other people who feel that this is something that’s worthy of support and that women’s health is one of the most important investments you can make. I would love to see innovative, evidence-based programs blossom. I want so badly — even if I’m not here to witness it — to reach a point where it is an absolute rarity that mothers are dying during and after pregnancy and that babies are dying before they reach their first birthday.
The measure of a society is how it treats its children, but if the children never get here and never have a first birthday, then we have nothing to invest in. Likewise, if we think of our children as a precious resource, such as water, how can you possibly say that you are caring for the water if you’re not caring for the vessel, the mother?
If you could talk to your mother right now, what would she say?
Haygood: My mother would say, “Oh, you didn’t have to do that. I don’t need a name on a building. You know I am just so proud of you.” She was proud of all of her children. She poured into us from deep within. How does someone who loses their mother when they’re just 3 days old — someone who technically didn’t experience mothering herself — know how to pour into her children like that? She knew how to experience joy in the development of those she had invested in. I hope that trait is genetic because it means I might inherit some of it.
“This gift strengthens our ability to provide the highest quality care for women and children. It’s about excellence and outcomes. We’re committed to delivering care that addresses the full spectrum of women’s health needs.” - Dr. Tanya Pratt, obstetrician-gynecologist
“We are humbled that Dr. Haygood has seen our work and believes in our ability to steward this gift well, that she trusts our creativity and passion to take her gift and transform it into safe and effective strategies that directly increase maternal and infant vitality.” - Jamilla Walker, MSN, CNM, IBCLC
