Tabatha McGee: Redefining Sickle Cell Care Through Advocacy and Wellness

In honor of Sickle Cell Awareness Month, AABB News is pleased to spotlight Tabatha L. McGee, CEO of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia. McGee is committed to addressing health disparities, dismantling disease stigma and improving access to comprehensive care for sickle cell warriors. She spoke with AABB News about the challenges facing the sickle cell community, the vision behind The Wellness Sanctuary and her mission to create lasting change through advocacy, collaboration and wellness.

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For Tabatha L. McGee, dismantling disease stigma in marginalized communities is personal. The mother of four recalled the challenges her late son Melvin faced when seeking medical treatment for epilepsy. Melvin, who died at age 20 in XXXX , often encountered neglect and bias while navigating the health care system. McGee, CEO of the Atlanta-based Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia, said her experience caring for a child with an often-overlooked disease taught her valuable lessons about community work, giving back and addressing health disparities.

“A lot of what our sickle cell warriors and their caregivers go through — being stereotyped, facing stigma from the health care system — was the same fight my son and I went through,” she told AABB News. “He was called a drug addict and wasn't even diagnosed with epilepsy until he was 13. I couldn't save my son, but I felt I could lend my expertise and voice to the sickle cell community, and I've never regretted a moment of being here.”

McGee began her career at the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia as an IT volunteer in 2015. She went on to serve in several leadership positions before being promoted to CEO in 2021. She spoke to AABB News about the most pressing challenges facing the sickle cell community, including a lack of affordable and accessible treatments, high costs of gene therapy and ongoing funding challenges.

“We get some state funding and a federal grant, but with the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] budget cuts, we're now feeling that ourselves,” she said. “In addition, sickle cell disease [SCD] is a chronic, inherited, painful disease, and it simply doesn't get the attention it needs. Two other rare diseases — hemophilia and cystic fibrosis — affect fewer people, but receive far more funding than SCD, even though SCD affects almost triple the number of people.”

As an advocate and leader in the sickle cell space, McGee also emphasized a lack of provider education, a significant shortage of hematologists and inconsistent emergency room triage protocols. To address these critical gaps, she noted that the Foundation has partnered with Morehouse School of Medicine, also in Atlanta, to develop provider training that offers CME credits to health care professionals.

“There’s a National Institutes of Health [NIH] guideline that stipulates that a sickle cell warrior should be triaged within the first 15 minutes of arriving at the ER, but that's still not consistently followed because hospital staff turnover so often. The people who were trained move on, and the information doesn't transfer to the new staff,” McGee said. “These providers need to understand SCD, nutrition and the complexities of pain management. Prescribing pain medication without managing it appropriately has consequences. Warriors who've been on opioids most of their lives start showing serious side effects by their late teens and early twenties— including liver damage, kidney damage, strokes and heart attacks.”

Although there have been notable breakthroughs in sickle cell treatment within the past decade, McGee pointed out that the transition from pediatric to adult care still needs improvement.

“Children are well taken care of through organizations like Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Hughes Spalding Hospital, but as soon as a warrior moves to adult care at age 18, there is  often a huge gap — a lack of hematologists and resources — and people get lost in the system.”

A Dream Fulfilled

After dealing with serious health challenges in 2018, including a heart attack and a stroke, McGee embarked on a holistic wellness journey to restore her health. Within six months, she was about to discontinue all 12 medications that she had been prescribed, her hair had grown back and she felt rejuvenated.

Inspired by her own health transformation, McGee set out to build a wellness center for sickle cell warriors.

“It was a vision from God,” she said. “I started having dreams where He showed me a wellness center with our warriors in it, and one day it became crystal clear: we needed to do this for the sickle cell community. I live with a real sense of fulfillment from God every day, knowing He gave me this vision, and I was obedient to it.”

McGee researched NIH resources on integrative medicine, interviewed hematologists, visited spas to understand their service models and worked with doctors to determine which services would best serve warriors. She then developed a business plan with mentors and her staff's input and kept the project confidential until launch day. On June 18, 2024, her team held a ribbon-cutting ceremony with more than 300 people and opened the doors of The Wellness Sanctuary.

“It's the first and only holistic wellness center in the country built specifically for patients with SCD,” McGee said. “I tell other executive directors around the country who want to do something similar that you don't have to build it all at once.”

The Wellness Sanctuary currently offers hematology care, IV infusions, massage, reflexology, nutrition counseling, mental health therapy, clinical acupuncture and chiropractic care, with plans to include additional services like blood transfusion exchanges and pain management in the near future. The Sanctuary accepts health insurance and Medicaid and partners with hematologists, community-based organizations and hospital systems for patient referrals.  

“We have memorandums of understanding with Grady Hospital, Emory Midtown, Emory Hillandale and Southern Regional in Clayton County,” she said. “Through these partnerships, we place our community health workers inside the hospital systems so they can identify warriors and refer them back to the Foundation and the Sanctuary for care. We also fund nine other sickle cell organizations across Georgia — there's no competition among us here; we all support each other and send warriors back and forth.”

The closing of Atlanta Medical Center in 2022 left a major care gap for warriors without other transportation options. McGee noted that The Wellness Sanctuary offers an alternative for individuals living with SCD, providing traditional medical care alongside holistic services that support physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Under McGee’s leadership, the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia has experienced significant financial growth, supporting the opening of The Wellness Sanctuary. She said her approach to fundraising is simple: keep asking, and don't accept “no.”

“When I first came to the Foundation, we were bringing in $500,000 to $600,000 annually in revenue. Today we're a $5 million organization,” she said. “I've made the case to state officials that funding The Wellness Sanctuary actually saves them money — warriors were costing the state $1.2 million a year in emergency room visits — and that argument helped secure a five-year state funding commitment.”

Leading By Example

When it comes to health and wellness, McGee is committed to leading by example. She started a wellness challenge at the Foundation that rewards staff with a free day off and encourages employees to use The Wellness Sanctuary’s services. The well-being of leaders and staff is vital for mission-driven organizations, she pointed out.

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“If you're not fit to lead, you'll burn out. You won't think strategically, you'll make rash decisions, and you'll be short with your staff and your partners,” McGee said. “I wasn't always a fit person myself — I had to go through my own health journey to understand that being unfit puts you at risk for stroke, heart attack, diabetes and more. That's even more important for sickle cell warriors, because SCD is already a chronic, painful disease. I want to be an example for our warriors because I can't tell them to live well with SCD if I'm not living well myself. At the same time, I have compassion for how hard that journey is.”

McGee said she is continually inspired by the warriors on her staff. For example, one warrior employee started as a volunteer while on Social Security disability. “He came off the system, started working with us full-time, bought his first car, got his own apartment, and is now in nursing school,” she said. “Another started as a camper at our summer camp, became a counselor, then assistant camp director and now runs the camp himself. Our nurse practitioner is a warrior herself, and so is one of our program staff members.” 

She added that it takes a village to carry out the mission. “I couldn't do this without my team — they're talented, educated, and genuinely have a heart for service,” she said. “Watching them push through and thrive, even when they're in pain, motivates me. And mostly, I love God, and I’ve always liked helping people.”

Looking ahead, McGee hopes to see more financial resources, research and partnerships with smaller community-based organizations for greater collective impact within the field of blood and biotherapies. She also expressed excitement about the growing collaboration among sickle cell organizations across Georgia.

“It’s been a significant change in the past 12 years,” she said. “We’ve also launched new platforms to tell warriors’ stories: a talk show called Unveiling Sickle Cell: Beyond the Pain, a podcast and a new national program called Adopt a Warrior. I love our community and love giving back to it. It's our people of color, my brothers and sisters, my aunties and uncles. I've always wanted to leave a legacy for those coming behind me. I didn't want to be someone who just talked about it. I wanted them to see real results.”