Exhibitions: For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform/Para todo el pueblo: Un siglo de acción ciudadana en la reforma de la atención de la salud”

The Good Doctors by John Dittmer

Bloomsbury Press | 2009 | ISBN: 9781496810359 | 344 pages | Adult | Nonfiction

Genre: history/health care reform/Civil Rights Movement/African American/medicine/race

In the summer of 1964 medical professionals, mostly white and northern, organized the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) to provide care and support for civil rights activists organizing black voters in Mississippi. They left their lives and lucrative private practices to march beside and tend the wounds of demonstrators from Freedom Summer, the March on Selma, and the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Galvanized and sometimes radicalized by their firsthand view of disenfranchised communities, the MCHR soon expanded its mission to encompass a range of causes from poverty to the war in Vietnam. They later took on the whole of the United States healthcare system. MCHR doctors soon realized fighting segregation would mean not just caring for white volunteers, but also exposing and correcting shocking inequalities in segregated health care. They pioneered community health plans and brought medical care to underserved or unserved areas. Award-winning historian John Dittmer has written an insightful and moving account of a group of idealists who put their careers in the service of the motto “Health Care Is a Human Right."

The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation by Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames

Temple University Press | 2001 (first edition) | ISBN: 978-1439907443 | 278 pages | Adult | Nonfiction

Genre: disability/health care/politics/history/social movements/social justice

"Based on interviews with almost a hundred activists, this book provides a detailed history of the struggle for disability rights in the United States. It is a complex story of shifts in consciousness and shifts in policy, of changing focuses on particular disabilities such as blindness, deafness, polio, quadriplegia, psychiatric and developmental disabilities, chronic conditions (for example, cancer and heart disease), and AIDS, and of activism and policymaking across disabilities. Referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act as ""every American''s insurance policy,"" the authors recount the genesis of this civil rights approach to disability, from the almost forgotten disability activism of the 1930s to the independent living movement of the 1970s to the call for disability pride of the 1990s. Like other civil rights struggles, the disability rights movement took place in the streets and in the courts as activists fought for change in the schools, the workplace, and in the legal system. They continue to fight for effective access to the necessities of everyday life -- to telephones, buses, planes, public buildings, restaurants, and toilets. The history of disability rights mirrors the history of the country. Both World Wars sparked changes in disability policy and changes in medical technology as veterans without without limbs and with other disabilities return home. The empowerment of people with disabilities has become another chapter in the struggles over identity politics that began in the 1960s. Today, with the expanding ability of people with disabilities to enter the workforce, and a growing elderly population increasingly significant at a time when HMOs are trying to contain healthcare expenditures."

Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson

University of Minnesota Press | 2011 | ISBN: 978-0816676491 | 312 pages | Adult/college | Nonfiction

Genre: Health care/race/Civil Rights/African American/history/politics

Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism--its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination--was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Nelson argues that the Party's focus on health care was both practical and ideological.

The Women Who Caught the Babies by Eloise Greenfield

Alazar Press | 2019 | ISBN: 978-0997772074 | 32 pages | ages 9-12 | Nonfiction

Genre: Children/health care/African American/women/medicine/history

"The Women Who Caught the Babies" highlights important aspects of the training and work of African-American midwives and the ways in which they have helped, and continue to help, so many families by “catching” their babies at birth. The blend of Eloise Greenfield's poetry and Daniel Minter's art evokes heartfelt appreciation of the abilities of African-American midwifes over the course of time. The poem “Africa to America" begins the poetic journey. The poem “The Women" both heralds the poetry/art pairing and concludes it with a note of gratitude. Also included is a piece titled “Miss Rovenia Mayo,” which pays tribute to the midwife who caught newborn Eloise.

The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila, MD

Scribner | 2023 | ISBN: 978-1501198045 | 384 pages | Adult | Nonfiction

Genre: Health care/medicine/politics/social science/povertyeconomics

Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In "The People’s Hospital," physician Ricardo Nuila’s stunning debut, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care. Each patient eventually lands at Ben Taub, the county hospital where Dr. Nuila has worked for over a decade. Nuila delves with empathy into the experiences of his patients, braiding their dramas into a singular narrative that contradicts the established idea that the only way to receive good healthcare is with good insurance.

Close Close All Open All