Anne Brooks

From 2000-02, Brooks served as Chief of Staff at Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, a 195-bed hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

After seeing much rural poverty, she returned to Michigan and wrote letters to towns in Mississippi that might need a doctor. Tutwiler was the only town that answered Brooks. Brooks moved to Tutwiler and, in the summer of 1983, she opened the Tutwiler Medical Clinic.

While volunteering at a free clinic in 1972, she met Dr. John Upledger, who treated her for her arthritis. Inspired by Dr. Upledger, and with his encouragement, at the age of 40 Brooks started medical school at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, graduating with her medical degree in 1982.

Brooks joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in 1955 at the age of 17. That same year, Brooks was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She was told that she would be on crutches or in a wheelchair the rest of her life. She attended Barry University in Miami, Florida and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in elementary education. She started her career teaching at Catholic elementary parochial schools in Florida. She also volunteered at drug rehabilitation clinics and abused women centers, among other places.

Anne Brooks, SNJM (born 1938) is an American Roman Catholic religious sister and retired family physician who is CEO of Tutwiler Clinic, a non-profit entity located in Tutwiler, Tallahatchie County in the Mississippi Delta. Tutwiler Clinic provides health services to the poor, medically under-served, largely African-American community.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1938, she was an only child. Her mother became alcoholic and her father was a Navy captain. When she was 10, her parents divorced. Because of his tours at sea, her father sent her to a Roman Catholic boarding school in Key West, Florida. She reportedly decided at age 11, to become a nun.