I’ve been struck by the outpouring of love for Dolly Parton from so many corners, including the scientific community, since her passing on Aug. 25. 

It’s not every Grammy winner who gets a touching obituary in Nature. 

Born in a Knoxville hospital that has since been renamed Dolly Parton Children’s, I grew up to become a medical anthropologist and global health implementation scientist. Yet my family roots are always on my mind when I encounter efforts in global public health to help some inscrutable “poor other.” 

Like Dolly’s, most families around the world have tasted poverty, including mine. My dad grew up in rural Tennessee in the 1950s and 60s without the benefits of electricity or running water. A bit like Dolly, through hard work and, let’s face it, white privilege, my dad left his holler to attend university, paving the way for a very different life for my brother and me. I grew up with stories of the bad crop year when a cow got repossessed to cover the bill at the general store. I was admonished to never accept food or drink at someone’s home unless it’s specific, because the person offering may not really have any food to spare. 

We learned that people’s worth and intelligence are not tied to their bank balances.  I think this Appalachian lesson was at the heart of Dolly’s character. Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be.

In the New York Times, columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote a beautiful tribute to Dolly describing her skill as a writer. Dolly’s genius and appeal was in telling her stories, and in doing so, she told pieces of all of ours. I would further argue that Dolly was a woman who deeply understood the social determinants of health, and she used her kindness, wit, and self-made fortune to address them. She funded efforts to reduce childhood illiteracy and structural inequities facing Black student musicians and provided relief after natural disasters. She also invested in science to help us all live healthier lives, including supporting funding for Covid-19 vaccines. 

Perhaps most important of all the lessons Dolly left us was that a sense of fun can (and should) be tied to acts of compassion. There is joy in living and doing for others!  

Much has been said about Dolly’s ability to reach people across a wide spectrum of backgrounds. Many say she was apolitical — but I disagree. Dolly offers a compelling playbook for navigating the politicized scientific challenges we face. She threaded the needle on politics, speaking with her actions (and pocketbook) more than with her glossed lips. 

Dolly saw the humanity in everyone, choosing to focus on people and issues she cared about, not on party alliances and entrenched interests. “I’m not brilliant, but I’ve got guts,” Dolly remarked to Playboy in 1978, when her star was rising. At a time when the scientific community faces existential challenges both in the United States and globally, we’re going to need guts like Dolly’s to take action despite the rhetoric. No one in between, how can we be wrong?

Dolly crafted a brave and highly curated identity to navigate spaces that weren’t meant for her.  She broke into country music when women were expected to fit into only a few, limiting tropes. Famously, Dolly was in on her own joke, all in the service of being taken seriously as an artist. 

When I began my career in science, I, too, wrapped myself in armor — less bugle bead, more blazer — to be taken seriously. In science, we continue to devalue women’s work and the work of others who are not from powerful nations and institutions. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it! 

Perhaps most important of all the lessons Dolly left us was that a sense of fun can (and should) be tied to acts of compassion. There is joy in living and doing for others!  

Dolly reminds us never to underestimate folks from the holler — from Appalachia to Guatemala to Lesotho. Tiny women in rhinestones (or blazers) will surprise you.

Compassion expert David Addiss spoke to me about Dolly, observing, “She was deeply grounded in, and nurtured by, her Appalachian roots. At the same time, her compassion — her commitment to alleviating and preventing suffering — was universal…This dialectic between local and global is, of course, a central theme in global health, and one that we have not yet gotten right.” 

That’s the magic of Dolly. She took the aspirational and transmogrified it into reality. She was genuine in her care for others. It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.

Dolly’s spirit of compassion will live on far beyond the tributes spanning from Buckingham Palace to Los Angeles, from Nashville to the Empire State. She has left a legacy of compassion in her charitable work and through those of us who try to learn from her example. 

Dolly reminds us never to underestimate folks from the holler — from Appalachia to Guatemala to Lesotho. Tiny women in rhinestones (or blazers) will surprise you.

Let Dolly be our soundtrack as we build a more equitable, responsive, and compassionate world together. I’ll think of you each step of the way.

Rachel Hall-Clifford is an associate professor in International Health in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She is a medical anthropologist who applies co-design approaches to global health research and implementation. For 20 years she has worked in the central highlands of Guatemala on the delivery of health services, including accessible health care for marginalized populations, health systems strengthening in post-genocide contexts, and global health fieldwork ethics. She authored “Underbelly: Childhood Diarrhea and the Hidden Local Realities of Global Health.”