COVID warrior: Dr. Temple Robinson driven to fix health care disparities in Tallahassee

Dr. Temple Robinson can trace her passion for wanting to serve underrepresented populations, now focused on the COVID pandemic, back to whispers from her South Carolina childhood.

The Bond Community Health Center CEO remembers hearing, upon the passing of a neighbor, “Did he have heart trouble?”

The response, sometimes in a joking manner, was “Yes ... it stopped.” 

But usually, that was it.

Or the case where a woman’s death was left at, “She died of female problems,” when in fact she succumbed to gynecologic cancer.

“You didn’t ask about stuff like that,” Robinson said in a recent interview.

Since January 2015, Robinson has been CEO at Bond, a federally qualified community health center. She served as its chief medical officer from 2011 to 2015 and medical director before that from 2003 to 2011.

Robinson oversees a staff of about 100 healthcare professionals who serve patients, including those with insurance, but a majority underinsured or without. 

For the past year, Robinson has been highly visible, helping to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

She led Bond’s involvement in the establishment of a COVID testing site at Bragg Stadium and now is focused on getting vaccines in the arms of the most vulnerable in the community.

During a recent visit, she was dressed as the CEO, but also had scrubs on hand. It’s not unusual for her to administer vaccines or spend time in neighborhoods. She still treats patients who wouldn’t see anyone else.

And COVID has been particularly devastating to the Black population, a fact Robinson finds troubling.

“Right now, one in every 650 Black people are dying of COVID. Not one of every 650 who died, died of COVID. One out of every 650 Black people walking the streets will die of COVID,” she said, referring to research. "This is ridiculous that African-Americans will die two and three times the rate of white Americans."

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A rural childhood

Robinson grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her late father, Charles Johnson, served as dean of students at Claflin University and her mother, Vermelle Johnson, worked at South Carolina State University and Claflin, where she retired as provost.

She remembers visits to her maternal grandparents’ 80-acre farm in the “Low Country” of Islandton, South Carolina. Her grandmother served as a poll worker, and Robinson says her presence made white people “appalled” they had to take instructions from a Black woman.

“On my grandparents farm is where I gained a lot of my passion for healthcare and health equity and nature and being outdoors,” Robinson said. “We planted tobacco and I remember going to medical school one day and we were learning to tie surgical knots.

"I realized that some of the surgical knots were very similar to the knots we tied tobacco on a stick before it went into the barn to cure. It’s amazing how your childhood prepares you for your adulthood.”

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Robinson entered Claflin as a chemistry major. After two years, she transferred to the College of Charleston with the idea of attending medical school there. She became ill in her senior year and withdrew.

But she didn't give up.

Absent an undergraduate degree, she scored well on the Medical College Admission Test and was accepted at Meharry Medical College, the historically Black school in Nashville. It was a whirlwind, Robinson recalls.

She entered the College of Charleston, became ill again in fall 1982, got married to Duane Robinson that December and started at Meharry in May 1983.

She completed her residency at the University of South Carolina and opened a private practice in Lake City, South Carolina. She also established an intensive care unit and served as emergency room physician at the local hospital.

Moving to Florida

Based on her success. she was recruited to Gadsden County, where she was promised help in establishing a practice and support in duplicating her ER and ICU efforts at Gadsden Memorial Hospital.

“I was excited about the challenge," she said. The family, now including a son, Parker, moved to Florida. She opened a practice, but she said the hospital’s management company pulled out of the offer.

It was a difficult time. The family had purchased a home near Interstate 10 in Tallahassee so she could be accessible for emergencies.

“God landed us in Tallahassee, for a reason, obviously,” Robinson said. “It was a very uncomfortable period for my family."

But she made an impression on many.

“Dr. Robinson is an exemplary person,” said Dr. Carla Holloman, who opened a practice in Quincy around the same time. “She is a very kind-hearted person and demands excellence with her colleagues, her own work and with patients.”

Holloman described her friend as a having a “great, snarky sense of humor.”

In 2002, Robinson was working part-time at Bond, but didn’t stay long because of the center’s “instability at the time.” But in 2003, she agreed to come on as medical director. 

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“I think one of the main reasons I came in 2003 and stayed is (that) what Bond does is what I was doing in private practice but on a larger scale,” Robinson said. “I got into health care because I knew it was wrong that certain people had access to good care and other people didn’t."

Robinson credits Bond’s stability to the dedication of its staff and their buy-in to its mission. Dr. Damon McMillan, Bond’s chief medical officer, says Robinson is a leader: “She’s an excellent physician and able to garner the confidence and respect of the patients that she sees as well as the physicians she works with."

Robinson said being on the frontlines against COVID has affected her, starting with hobbies. 

Besides travel, which she can't do much of, she fishes: “I love to go to Mashes Sands,” Robinson said. “I can’t tell you my spot. Good fishermen don’t tell their spots.”

But for eight months, she was unable to visit her mother in South Carolina. “That hit hard because none of us are getting any younger,” she said.

The long hours spent at the Bragg testing site made her conscientious about not wanting to infect her husband Duane, a retired educator and coach.

“My staff and I, when we got home, we made sure we put the garage doors down so all the neighbors wouldn’t see as we stripped down our clothes and sprayed before we went inside the house,” she said.

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Ongoing challenges

Remaining challenges for the underserved, Robinson explained, include access to testing, access to vaccines, education and controlling the spread: “We’re going deep into the community with our mobile units or pop-up sites. This has been all consuming because we still have all our other work to do.”

Specifically, she noted the importance of providing behavioral health care and convincing patients to not let the pandemic distract them from addressing pre-existing conditions.

“We’re trying to encourage people to come back to the doctor for those things that you can’t do via telemedicine,” she said. “Medicine is still the laying on of hands despite all the new technology.”

Contact senior writer Byron Dobson at bdobson@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @byrondobson.

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