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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
3349.0: Monday, November 11, 2002: 8:30 PM-10:00 PM | |||
Oral | |||
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| Public healthcare facilities are coming under incredible stress, caught between increased demands and sharply decreasing financing. More people are losing either jobs or job-based healthcare with no government relief in sight, increasing poverty and decreasing social services are leading to increasing disease burdon, healthcare costs are rising beyond control, governmental assistance to safety-net and Medicare/Medicaid-based hospitals and clinics is decreasing, and critical shortages of trained medical workers and medical supplies such as drugs and vaccines are developing. Meanwhile, the population is aging. All of these factors are intensifying the already great differences in health satus and health care between the poorest, the disappearing middle class, and the wealthy. These factors force us to examine what we can to to arrest and reverse these trends. This session is based on the premise that two ingredients have produced the most sucessful struggles for better healthcare. The first is that all levels of health workers and their patients have the same ultimate interests in good healthcare: good staffing, good training, good infrastructure, equipment, and supplies, and a positive desire to provide services. The second is the realization that the power to make these things happen must come from health workers and patients acting together, that healthcare is a necessity for the vast majority of us but it is a financial burdon on the small percentage of the country that owns most of the wealth, and that ultimately, they provide it under duress. | |||
| Learning Objectives: a) Learn organizing strategies that have been effective in other communities. b) Better understand the role and importance of health care community organizers. c) Understanding how to explain that role to others. d) Learn methods of advocating for ones own health care institution. | |||
| See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement and author's information. | |||
| Michael Lyon | |||
| Michael Lyon | |||
| Organizing Experiences of Cook County Hospital Patients and Staff Simon Piller, MD | |||
| Uniting workers, providers and patients and patients in Philiadelphia David Bass | |||
| Organized by: | Health Equity and Public Hospitals Caucus | ||
| Endorsed by: | Community Health Planning and Policy Development; Health Administration; Labor Caucus; Medical Care; Occupational Health and Safety; Public Health Education and Health Promotion; Public Health Nursing; Socialist Caucus; Spirit of 1848 Caucus; Women's Caucus | ||
| CE Credits: | CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work | ||