Confronting Childhood Obesity in America

Several former Surgeon Generals will participate in an upcoming forum that will address childhood obesity in the United States. The National Summit of Clinicians for Healthcare Justice will host the event sponsored by many of the major safety-net clinician organizations across the U.S. The 2½ day event will be held in Washington, DC, October 23-25, 2008. Clinicians and advocates from all over the country are expected to come together to celebrate, acknowledge and highlight the work frontline clinicians do to serve disenfranchised populations in need of basic health care.

David Satcher, former Surgeon General and current Director, Center of Excellence on Health Disparities and the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine will be leading the opening forum. The conference provides an opportunity for clinicians and others to explore solutions to make quality health care for the underserved a reality. The summit will culminate in a vigil on Capitol Hill to show support for health care justice and to demonstrate the need for health care reform. 

Featured speakers include: C. Everett Koop, MD the 13th Surgeon General; John Rich, MD: Professor, Chair: Department of Health Management and Policy, Drexel University; Richard H. Carmona, 17th Surgeon General; Kitty Ernst, CNM, MPH and Director of the NACC Consulting Group and holds the Mary Breckinridge Chair of Midwifery at the Frontier School of Midwifery & Family Nursing; Dr. H. Jack Geiger a leader in the field of social medicine and the global movement for health and human rights; Donald Warne, MD, MPH President and CEO of American Indian Health Management & Policy; Gloria Wilder Brathwaite, Medical Director, Mobile Health Programs at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  Among the topics to be discussed:

• History of Healthcare: Justice and Injustice
• Transdisclipinary Healthcare Solutions
• Breakthroughs and Breakdowns Healthcare Practice
• Grand Rounds: Case Histories of Justice and Injustice from the Field
• Radical New Ideas for Health System Reform
• Compassion Fatigue and Self Care
• Breaking Through Stigma in Healthcare
• Human Rights in Healthcare

In 1998, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation helped launch Community Voices as a pilot program to create greater health care access at the local level and give the underserved a louder “voice” in the national debate on health care access. In 2003, the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta became the group’s program office.