As Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health struggles to regain patients’ trust, Pan-African Community Action (PACA) is coordinating a grassroots medical program aimed at circumventing a local health care infrastructure that members deem detrimental to Ward 8 residents.
The program, known as the People’s Pan-African Wellness Front (PPFW), launched during the latter part of February at R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center in Southeast. Throughout much of that Sunday afternoon, two medical professionals provided services free of charge to community members — all with the promise of more to come.
“This is the first of an ongoing program that will be available to our community on the fourth Sunday of every month,” said Johannes Dzidzienyo, one of nearly two dozen PACA members helping facilitate PPWF.
“This is where people can come in and not just get free health supplies,” he continued, “but free preventative health education, blood pressure testing, glucose screenings, and international health alternatives and understandings of community-controlled health.”
PPFW’s inaugural event on Feb. 22 happened nearly half a mile from Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health. In January, just nine months after the hospital’s momentous opening, hospital CEO Anthony Coleman announced his resignation. As Coleman finalizes his transition later this month, patrons of Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health continue to complain about long wait times, a nursing shortage, and the lack of outpatient services.
For Dzidzienyo, the writing was on the wall well before Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health opened in Congress Heights.
“On the east side of the river in Wards 7 and 8, where you see such a majority of African diasporic people, the reality is that we are an internalized colony,” Dzidzienyo told The Informer, “which means that the imposition of decisions, the imposition of where resources go, the imposition of the [police] presence in our neighborhood are symptoms of us not having power.”
A 2020 Georgetown University study revealed that the life expectancy of residents living east of the Anacostia River is 15 years shorter than those living in some of the District’s wealthiest enclaves. Dzidzienyo said residents of Wards 7 and 8 can tip the scales in their favor by creating their own healthcare infrastructure.
“There’s a $400 million-plus site that’s failing the community, and right next door, you have a community that’s trying to organize itself to be able to address its own needs,” Dzidzienyo said. “As this program continues, people are going to see that contradiction and start asking really pertinent questions about what we need to do to make changes so that we don’t have to rely on public-private partnerships or rely on the interests of developers or council members or whoever else that isn’t from our communities.”
Deputy Mayor Wayne Turnage Attempts to Clear the Air
Early on in Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center’s existence, reports surfaced of at least 100 emergency rooms per day, 80% of which involved ailments that could’ve been addressed at urgent care clinics.
Outpatient services also hadn’t been fully implemented, as outlined in operating partner Universal Health Services’ (UHS) contract with the District.
Within two months, the hospital rejected ambulances at least five times. It had also still fallen short of its staff hiring goals, with hospital officials instead opting for travel nurses and spending much more money in doing so.
Staffing woes intensified by the end of 2025 when George Washington University’s Medical Faculty Associates (MFA), the entity entrusted with providing medical personnel, accumulated more than $400 million of debt. By January, the hospital had more than 60 vacancies. It has since hired Tonya Washington as chief nursing officer.
A Jan. 29 oversight hearing conducted by the D.C. Council Committee on Health focused on, among other issues, accountability measures for UHS. D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson (I-At large), with the support of D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), questioned D.C. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage about the tools at his disposal.
“I’ve done letters, I’ve had meetings, I’ve tried to keep my fellow colleagues on the Committee on Health informed, but I’m also wondering too, what is the levers similar to [what] Councilmember Parker [asked]?” Henderson, health committee chair, asked Turnage. “I asked you last year, the mayor has three seats on the board of Cedar Hill. You were the only one named last year. So who are the other two people that the mayor has appointed to this board?”
Universal Health Services and Medical Faculty Associates didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about staffing updates, MFA’s future involvement in the hospital, and plans to fully actualize outpatient services.
In speaking with The Informer about what Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center faced, Turnage pointed out to what he called a prevalent issue: residents’ overreliance on emergency medical care.
“What we have in the city, that is not peculiar to D.C., is a culture of people wanting to use the emergency room because it’s supposed to receive care,” Turnage told The Informer. “I think the city would have to take some blame if they had not invested in alternative places of service over the emergency room. The city spent millions to bring federally qualified health centers online. And they’re in every ward. And primary care doctors exist in every ward.”
Turnage said that UHS is working on a plan to fully implement outpatient services. He said, according to the timeline presented to his office, that process should be wrapped up by spring. As of Feb. 27, Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center has general surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, outpatient imaging and outpatient physical therapy, Turnage told The Informer.
“Now, that’s not all they’re supposed to provide per the agreement. So we expect that, if this model does not already happen, the primary care and cardiac clinics will open,” Turnage said. “They were scheduled to open in the week of Feb. 2. I believe they have outpatient dialysis, mammography will open in April, and then they have…ongoing negotiations with community physicians, both part-time and full-time.”
Turnage, who also serves as director of the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance, said he maintains regular contact with UHS officials, albeit in a manner that respects their autonomy and experience as a hospital operator.
“My interest is [if] they are living up to the agreement that was signed in 2021,” Turnage told The Informer. “I do speak with [Jason Barrett] the CEO for GW Hospital…. If I have questions, he’s always willing to take my call and answer my questions.”
In 2018, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the partnership with UHS and George Washington Hospital to create a new hospital in Ward 8. UHS won the contract with a plan that Turnage eclipsed that of the other candidates, Howard University Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Nearly a decade later, as former UMC staff members and health advocates call for the severance of the UHS contract, Turnage says that exploring an alternative arrangement would do much more damage than what community members realize.
“Given the history of the hospital and the tremendous financial losses that UMC incurred, the notion that there were tons of health care systems willing to do that is a fallacy,” Turnage told The Informer. “We had three bidders, and only two of them took the proposal process seriously. One of them submitted a proposal on one page.”
Turnage, speaking in response to residents and advocates who want to change course so soon, said that patience is key.
“Is this a well-oiled machine? As of today, the answer is no,” Turnage said. “Hospitals are complex operations. It will take time to put everything in place that needs to be in place to effectively deliver on the vision that we have for this hospital. And I think they will get there sooner rather than later.”
A Community Town Hall With Several Calls to Action
On the evening of Feb. 25, more than 50 community members filled the pews at Resurrection Baptist Church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue for a two-hour community town hall about the situation at Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health.
The town hall, themed “The Plight of Cedar Hill Hospital and Black Equity,” was sponsored by Health Alliance Network, The Washington Informer, and the Anacostia Coordinating Council. Guests included mayoral candidate Gary Goodweather and Democratic D.C. Council at-large candidates Kevin B. Chavous and U.S. Shadow Rep. Dr. Oye Owolewa.
After opening remarks from Pastor David J. Venable, church member Sirraya Gant and Owolewa, a panel that included Ambrose Lane, Jr., Dr. Edward Chapman, Dr. Marilyn McPherson Corder, Dr. Kawana Jeffer Williams and health care executive Che-Nita Blakely provided background about what they saw as key issues: long emergency room wait times, disengagement with primary care physicians and urgent care centers; hurdles experienced by physicians setting up a practice through MFA; hiring of unskilled nurses; lack of doctors on site to provide oversight; lack of hospital administrators who are of the community; and lack of clinical representation on the hospital board.
Corder, a former UMC pediatrician, recounted the shock that she and other credentialed staffers felt when they learned they wouldn’t move over to Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center. The disappointment, she said, followed several years of treating expectant mothers and fighting for funding under the most harrowing of conditions.
“Part of that hospital is a professional office building,” Corder said. “That means there were 20-plus doctors having their private practice for decades…They were seeing patients [of different] generations, grandparents, parents, [and] children. At the last minute, they were told, ‘You’re not invited to the party.’”
Coming under UHS and GW Health required steps that most of the practitioners at UMC were not willing to take, Corder said.
“Some doctors are like, ‘I don’t want to jump into that fire. My license would be on the line,’” Corder recounted.
When it came to solutions, Lane went for the jugular. In addition to a website where patients, nurses and doctors could file complaints, Lane said he wants to bring in outside parties.
“We’re also looking into whether or not that means or will constitute a class action,” said Lane, chair of the Health Alliance Network. “We’re also looking into whether or not the District and the council need to step up and call for a new contract.”
Chapman, fresh from a meeting with Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center’s interim CEO Kimberlee Daniels and Barbara Banks-Wigggins, executive director of Prince George’s County, Maryland’s Healthcare Alliance, suggested the creation of a network that ensures a continuum of patient care.
“When somebody goes to the emergency room, we get their demographic information and then connect them to primary care in the community,” Chapman said on the evening of Feb. 25. “That primary care person would reciprocally use the hospital. So it would be initially a closed network with the understanding that these are physicians that are going to use the facility, but they’re also going to get some benefits by reestablishing that.”
As the District gears up for the most consequential election season in recent history, Lane said that candidates for office need to center Black health.
“The ones that are running for office but never held office before, this needs to be in their platform,” he told community members. “It needs to be discussed. There are those that are running for mayor…It needs to be in their platform. The health care of Black people east of the river.”