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The Tennessean
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ASMSU Exponent
Independent-Marshall, Minn.
Independent-Marshall, Minn.
The Stoutonia
Nashville Scene
 

Documentary profiles TennCare cut fallout

Nashville writer/filmmaker Molly Secours' short film, Faces of TennCare: Putting a Human Face on Tennessee's Health Care Failure, makes its national debut today on the Documentary Channel.

The 13-minute documentary explores how the loss of medical coverage has emotionally, physically and financially affected the lives of thousands of Tennesseans.

"A lot of what comes out in the press is about cost cutting and economics," said Secours. "This film is about the reality of what those numbers mean. Those cost savings are disintegrating peoples' lives, and many, many people have not only lost their jobs, because they can't work, but now they're homeless and have lost anything they ever had."

According to health-care advocates, in August 2005 more than 200,000 of the state's sickest and most vulnerable people were cut from TennCare, the state-funded medical insurance program.

Secours conceived the film after two events in her life. She was on her way to a doctor's appointment after reading about the TennCare cuts and realized how frightened she would be if she were ill and didn't have coverage. Then she was contacted by photojournalist Joon Powell, who had been photographing and interviewing individuals dropped from TennCare.

About 30 of Powell's photographs are seen in the film, while 12 of her subjects are highlighted.

"These 12 represent thousand and thousands of people," said Secours. "The narration explains what happened to these people. All the people I chose had multiple diagnoses. These are critical-needs people who are not insurable, people who have to choose between groceries and medicine for their hypertension."

Faces of TennCare: Putting a Human Face on Tennessee's Health Care Failure is narrated by Minton Sparks and features vocals and music by Maura O'Connell, John Prine and Steve Conn.

"Basically, it's a call for action," said the filmmaker. "The only way the government is going to resound is if they hear from people who are OK, who are already covered."

Ken Beck
The Tennessean (January 1, 2007)

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Note to doctors: You better sound like you really mean it

If you're going to apologize to a patient, Lucian Leape has some advice.

Leape, adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and a patient-safety pioneer, says apologies work only if you show remorse. His remarks came at the National Patient Safety Foundation's annual congress in San Francisco on May 11, where he advocated having physicians apologize to patients after a medical error.

He gave examples of what doesn't work.

Paraphrasing Arnold Schwarzenegger, the vague apology: "I apologize for whatever I did." From Donald Rumsfeld, the passive apology: "Mistakes were made." And, from Trent Lott, the conditional apology: "If I offended anyone, I'm sorry."

Leape then earned some laughs by re-creating an archetypal scene from everyone's childhood: "Remember when you were 3 and your mother said 'Apologize to your sister?' " "I'm sorrrry," Leape said, looking at the ground. "It doesn't sound like you're sorry," he added, taking the tone of a scolding mother.

... and support for survivors of medical errors

In November 1999, Linda Kenney went into full cardiac arrest during ankle surgery after her nerve block medication was inadvertently delivered to her circulatory system. The incident led to her founding the group Medically Induced Trauma Support Services in 2002, as well as to her winning the National Patient Safety Foundation's first Socius Award for work that exhibits positive and effective partnership between patients and providers in the pursuit of improved patient safety.

The group offers support for patients, families and practitioners after a medical error, including a 24-hour hotline, and support sessions conducted by a clinical psychologist.

Socius is derived from the Latin word for partner, and in the spirit of patient/physician partnership, Kenney accepted the award with Rick van Pelt, the anesthesiologist on duty during her medical error and the individual who came up with the organization's mission statement: "To support healing and restore hope."

Putting a face on TennCare cuts

Thousands and thousands of words have been spoken and written about TennCare, the state of Tennessee's controversial Medicaid program that began under a federal waiver in 1995. Joon Powell and Molly Secours decided that the always hot debate needed something worth a thousand words -- a picture, or rather, scores of them.

Powell, a freelance photojournalist, and Secours, a filmmaker, teamed up to make The Faces of TennCare, a 13-minute documentary featuring photos and interviews of Tennesseans who lost TennCare coverage in 2005, when the state dropped 200,000 residents from the program in a budget-cutting move. The original TennCare was far more expansive than traditional Medicaid, with 23% of the state's residents enrolled in it, a greater percentage than any state's Medicaid enrollment, according to Gov. Phil Bredesen's office. Bredesen led the charge to scale back the program.

A bipartisan group of state lawmakers is trying to restore coverage to the 67,000 Tennesseans with multiple illnesses who were dropped from TennCare, Secours says. Last week, Secours presented two copies of the film to the speaker of the state House of Representatives and also mailed a copy to each state legislator. The film has been shown at the Nashville Film Festival and will be aired on the Documentary Channel offered on some cable and satellite television systems starting in June, Secours says.

"This is a very touchy subject," Secours says. "It's an election year, so who knows what the politics are. I was told numerous times that I was crazy to put this together because it was too hot." In the usual debate on TennCare, "It's all about the budget. It's all about the bottom line," she says, adding, "This piece is about the humanity of it."

Cocaine vs. stun guns

Cleveland Clinic and Toronto General Hospital researchers presented some stunning results at the Heart Rhythm Society's annual meeting on May 20. A study involving dangerous arrhythmias that may result from electrical stun guns showed that cocaine decreases, rather than increases, a healthy heart's vulnerability of developing ventricular fibrillation.

However, Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, the study's lead author and a fellow in electrophysiology at the Cleveland Clinic, tells Outliers: "We cannot make any more inferences from that."

According to a meeting abstract, electrical stun guns, or tasers, have been used by law-enforcement authorities in field operations "with reported deaths in violent subjects who were found to be intoxicated with cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs of abuse."

The study aimed to test the hypothesis that electrical stun guns could increase vulnerability for life-threatening arrhythmias; researchers tested five pigs with healthy hearts and injected them with 8 milligrams of cocaine per kilogram of their body weight, Lakkireddy says.

They then delivered a neuromuscular-incapacitating discharge that matched the waveform of commercial stun guns. The results showed that cocaine reduced a healthy heart's vulnerability of developing ventricular fibrillation by 1.5 to two times above the study's baseline safety margin.

Quotable

"I never understood the whole mess. I got so much mail about this. I just threw it all in the trash. So many stamps they wasted. I didn't understand any of it. I'm so mad. All these different plans." -- Marie Grant, a retired nurse who had put off signing up for Medicare Part D until the May 15 deadline, but eventually decided to pick a plan in the hope she would save money, from the New York Times.

ModernHealthcare.com (May 22, 2006)

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Filmmakers present TennCare documentary to lawmakers

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- TennCare advocates presented a documentary titled "The Faces of TennCare" to legislative leaders on Monday, and called on them to restore health coverage to lower-income Tennesseans with serious health problems.

The 13-minute film features images and stories of chronically ill Tennesseans cut from TennCare last year.

Film producer Molly Secours urged lawmakers to approve proposals to return most of the 67,000 chronically ill residents to TennCare, the state's expanded Medicaid program.

Gov. Phil Bredesen, who last year cut 170,000 from TennCare, has labeled as fiscally reckless the proposals to reopen the program to the chronically ill.

One legislative measure failed to advance out of a committee this session when five senators declined to vote on the proposal. Secours said lawmakers declining to cast votes on such measures should be considered to be voting against them.

The Rev. Edwin Sanders II said Bredesen's plan to help up to 5,000 former TennCare enrollees pay for a proposed high-risk insurance pool is good for the people who would get the assistance but does nothing for the much larger number of sick Tennesseans unable to pay for their treatment.

The high-risk pool is part of a sweeping health care package called Cover Tennessee that also includes subsidized insurance plans for uninsured adults and children, a pharmaceutical program and a health education program for children.

The documentary was shown at the Nashville Film Festival last month, and Secours said The Documentary Channel will begin airing the film in June.

- Associated Press
WSMV Channel 4 News (May 15, 2006)

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Advocating the discussion on race

When she said that whites are inherently racist due to their combination of prejudice and, most importantly, the power they have in America, writer and filmmaker Molly Secours shocked some audience members of the "Whispering Black: Code Talk for Whites" lecture on Thursday, March 23, in SUB Ballroom A.

"Sometimes this is daunting," Secours said of discussions on race. "This is not an easy thing to talk about."

She told the story of Lyle Baxter, the only person of color -- a term she used to distinguish anyone who was not of Anglo-Saxon descent -- in her upstate New York hometown. Baxter was a star basketball player on the high school team and popular with most of the town's residents. Secours recalled telling her visiting cousin about him.

"I was acting as though he was my best friend, saying that he was captain of the basketball team, in the French club, and he's . . . black," Secours said. "I whispered the word 'black' when I said it and I'm pretty sure, living in the country where I did, there was no risk of Lyle hearing me whisper that he was black . . . yet at 12 or 13 years old, I knew enough to whisper. There was something I had picked up on that led me to believe I needed to whisper when acknowledging the race of this other person."

Secours then emphasized that to have conversations about race, no one can be afraid of being called a racist.

"You have to do this, you have to keep having forums like this because we've never had a process in this country to recover from the effects of institutional racism, "Secours said.

Secours, who is also white, explained the idea of institutional racism as something whites put in place to gain and keep power. She said that this mixture of power based on prejudice that is so deeply ingrained into many Americans causes racism.

Though the U.S. has made progress in racial equality over the past few decades, Secours said there are many problems that have not been addressed, such as the low number of minority faculty members on university campuses. She said that many universities recruit students of color to fill quotas, but do not often hire professors of color, leaving the students without anyone to talk to about racial issues they encounter.

Secours shared anecdotes about racism throughout the evening. In one, she recounted convincing a Tennessee real estate agent that she was black after the woman had advised her against moving into a neighborhood with a high African-American population. Though the agent dropped her as a client almost immediately, Secours wrote about the incident in an effort to make the experience positive and to push forward the discussion on racism.

"If we just go with the flow, then we're contributing," Secours said. "That's how we're contributing (to racism) and perpetuating stereotypes."

Secours gave advice to the student audience on ways to reduce racism. She asked them to ask themselves why they did not want to be viewed as racist. She said that they should want to fight racism for the betterment of society instead of personally looking good.

"The white students have to care about it. The white students are the ones who do, in a sense, have the power to do something. It's about joining forces. It's not about doing them (students of color) a favor or taking care of them, but it is about becoming an ally."

Brie Mullans, Programming Coordinator for the Diversity Awareness Office said some students contacted the Diversity Awareness Office after the lecture, wanting to get involved.

"We've gotten some contacts, but I think there are a lot of other really great opportunities on campus to combat racism," Mullans said.

Though an advocate for racial discussions, Secours warned that oftentimes such attempts at improving the situation for people of all races can get heated. Mullans echoed that sentiment.

"I thought her point that no one can have a rational conversation on race is true," she said. "I've been attempting to do prejudice reduction work and each time it comes up, it's emotional. I think people get defensive, but that is a natural part of the process and something we have to face before we can work anything out."

The event was sponsored by the Diversity Awareness Office and the Student Activities Office.

- Erica Aytes
Exponent (March 30, 2006)

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Fighting prejudice, one person at a time:
Racial equality starts with self-recognition, conference speaker says

Fighting racism might be so much easier, Molly Secours said, if there were only a twelve-step program for it.

"You'd say, 'Hi, my name is Molly and I'm a racist, and this is how I came to be a racist,'" Secours told an audience at the 2006 Disability and Racial Attitudes Workshop on Wednesday.

It might sound strange, but such a program would at least get people to talk about race. The best way to address the problem of racial prejudice is to discuss it honestly, Secours said.

Secours' comments were in keeping with the spirit of the workshop, hosted by the Southwest Minnesota State University Office of Cultural Diversity and the Southwest Center for Independent Living on the SMSU campus. The workshop brought several nationally recognized speakers and performers to engage the community on the issues of physical disability, racism, and discrimination.

Secours is a writer and activist from Nashville, Tenn., whose writings have appeared in more than 50 newspapers and magazines. She has also attended United Nations conferences on racism in Chile, Switzerland and South Africa.

Open dialogue about all kinds of prejudice is important, Secours said, because racism, like disability, is not always easy to see.

"Over the years we sort of absorb all these things, but we can't see it," Secours said. "I can choose to ignore it. If I'm a white person, I don't ever have to talk about race if I don't want to."

Many white people don't want to discuss race, Secours said. Growing up in a nearly all-white town in upstate New York, Secours said she remembered lowering her voice the first time she mentioned the race of a black man she knew.

"I thought, how interesting that at 13, in a place claiming no racism, I knew to whisper the word 'black,'" she said.

The fear of being labeled a racist can often keep people from acknowledging their prejudices, Secours said. Getting over the label is uncomfortable, but a huge step toward opening a dialogue on discrimination.

"We're so worried about being identified as a racist that we can't endure a few minutes of honest conversation," Secours said. "You can't grow up in this culture and not be racist."

In the end, there are no easy solutions to combat racism, Secours said. But by recognizing prejudice in ourselves and our society, we can make progress.

Audience reactions to Secours' talk varied, and sparked some debate in a question-and-answer session that followed. Jackie Zerr of Marshall compared her own experiences as an elementary school teacher in the South to Secours' descriptions of racism in America.

"There was such hope with those kids. Where is the hope in your story?" Zerr asked.

Johnny Fils-Aime, an SMSU student from Boston, said he thought there was hope in the truth of Secours' message.

"You can't have hope without truth," Fils-Aime said. "We can't get to the positive without looking at the problems and knowing what to work on."

Secours said she knew people would have different responses to her talk, but added she got a positive feeling from the crowd at the workshop.

"I felt a sort of hunger in the room, which is a good sign," she said.

- Deb Gau
Independent-Marshall, Minn. (March 23, 2006)

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Seeing through the many shades of discrimination:
Disability and racial attitudes conference next week at SMSU to examine reality of prejudice

Sometimes, "Minnesota Nice" can be anything but.

The atmosphere may not be tense, and confrontations are fewer. But prejudiced attitudes still exist in rural Minnesota, says John Morman, director of cultural diversity at Southwest Minnesota State University.

"In Marshall, people are in their own little circles," Morman said. "It isolates you. It isolates your thinking . . . and that develops into prejudice and discrimination."

Fortunately, attitudes can change. And that's the reasoning behind the 2006 Disability and Racial Attitudes Workshop, which will be held Wednesday, Mar. 22, on the SMSU campus. The workshop is co-sponsored by the university's Office of Cultural Diversity and the Southwest Center for Independent Living, and will feature nationally recognized speakers on the issues of disability and racism.

The idea for the conference originally grew from SWCIL staff workshops, said center director Steve Thovson. The workshops were hosted annually for seven or eight years. Then, at the suggestion of an SMSU student, the programs were made open to the public beginning last year.

"This is not just a school issue, it's a community issue," Thovson said.

At first glance, racism and living with a disability might seem like two very different topics. But, Morman and Thovson said, they are similar in the kinds of barriers they create between people.

"From my perspective, it's very linked," Morman said. "It's seen as a fault in you to be different, and people judge you on those pretenses."

"We're not criticizing any particular institutions or individuals," Thovson said. "We just want people to wake up and take a look at what's going on. It's a learning experience."

In organizing the conference, Morman said the emphasis was on finding speakers the audience could relate to. Included on the program are appearances by Dr. Rose M. Brewer of the University of Minnesota, independent living advocate Karen Avery and poet Steph Harmon.

"It's not going to be just a bunch of rhetoric," Morman said.

Personal experience will play a big part in the talk hosted by guest speaker Molly Secours. A writer and filmmaker from Nashville, Tenn., Secours has worked for years educating the public about racism. Her theme at the conference will be "Whispering Black: Code Talk For Whites."

"It's about the way white people either whisper around the subject of race literally, or avoid talking about it," Secours said. "And how I, as Molly Secours, participate in it unwittingly or consciously."

Although overt racism is illegal now, Secours said, it is important to recognize that everyone has biases, based on the biases of society. "[Racism] didn't end with Civil Rights," she said. "Many of us are living with privileges, and we can't even see them."

The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the SMSU conference center ballroom, and is free and open to the public. Continuing education units will be available for the event, as well as free refreshments and a light lunch.

Based on last year's crowd of nearly 300 people, Thovson said he hopes the conference will be well attended. More importantly, he hopes it will fulfill its intended mission.

"If we can reach out to one or two people, we've done our job," Thovson said.

- Deb Gau
Independent-Marshall, Minn. (March 14, 2006)

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Activists speak on white privilege

When bad things happen to us, we have a tendency to think life is rough and unfair. Seldom do we ever stop to think about how we got to be where we are in the first place and where we could be if things didn't happen a certain way for our parents, our grandparents and their parents.

This week, two writers came to the University of Wisconsin-Stout to speak on issues of white privilege and racism in our society. Both are civil rights activists who have spent considerable time working to curb institutional racial injustice.

Tim Wise and Molly Secours spoke at a series of events from Sunday, Feb. 26, through Tuesday, Feb. 28.

Molly Secours has been active against racism for the past 8 to 10 years and has worked to spread her message as a journalist, documentary filmmaker and lecturer. At UW-Stout, she spoke of a need for more education in schools and communities on the realities of white privilege in this country.

"There has never been a national dialogue on race," said Secours. "We went from slavery to emancipation to Jim Crow laws to civil rights."

Secours spoke of how white Americans are brought up to be silent about black history in America, partly because it is such an overwhelming issue and partly because whites are afraid of being considered racists if they bring up the topic. Because of this silence, she says, the nation has never gone through a healing process.

Secours calls for colleges to make African American studies a requirement.

"In most places, you have to choose to take African American history," said Secours. "Everyone should have to take it."

Secours currently works with minority juveniles, who have come through the legal system, to help them document institutional injustice on film.

Tim Wise, author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White, is a prominent leader of the contemporary civil rights movement.

"The only reason I'm here today [...] is because I'm white," said Wise.

On Monday night, Wise began by explaining how he had access to a college education, even though he did not come from a rich family.

"I was born into an opportunity structure," said Wise.

Wise said that white families have always been privileged, such as having greater job opportunities than their minority counterparts.

"Latino and black college grads have a higher unemployment rate than white high school dropouts," said Wise.

Because of this privilege, Wise explained, white families have been able to accumulate and pass down their wealth.

According to Secours and Wise, the common belief among Americans is that everyone can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

They said it is this belief perpetuates the stereotype that minorities don't work as hard because they tend to fail more than whites; yet, they tend to fail because whites are privileged.

"When we impose these ideas on [minorities], we impose more inequalities," said Secours.

Many whites would say that problems of inequality that have been passed down are not their fault because they were not the ones who caused it.

Wise addressed this argument with a classic story about a college roommate who left a pot of gumbo soup in the kitchen for days. No one else would take responsibility for it, because they didn't make the mess.

"When we get tired of living in the residue of what someone else [has done], we get acclimated to the smell and no one will clean it up," said Wise, likening the old, rank food in his roommate's pot on the stove to the institutional racism set in place long ago.

Secours described racism as a tool to defend white supremacy, and she said white privilege also acts as a reward system to hold that supremacy in place.

"Just wanting racism to end isn't enough to stop it," said Secours. "If I see [racism] and don't point it out or say anything about it, I am contributing to it."

"We don't just have to [help minorities] fit in," said Wise. "We have to learn ... how we fit into [the minorities'] world."

- Renee Currington
The Stoutonia (March 2, 2006)

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Cutting Room:
Filmmaking project gives local at-risk teens a voice

If God gave you 15 minutes to speak your mind, then took you away, what would you say? That was the question Molly Secours put to students in My Brother's Keeper, a group mentoring program for at-risk Nashville teens. Secours, a local filmmaker known for her socially conscious work, wanted them to create their own film but didn't want them just to copy what they saw on TV. As soon as she asked, she says, "immediately the stakes were higher."

The responses she got became "The Way Out," a short film written, directed, edited by and starring participants in My Brother's Keeper that makes its public premiere Thursday. A straight-shooting slice-of-life drama, it concerns a talented basketball player (William Booker) pulled between the influence of a drug dealer (Quinton Pope) and a studious friend (Thomas Groves) who offers to help him boost his grades for college.

The movie came about through Youth Voice Through Video, the filmmaking project Secours operates with The Oasis Center. Funded by the Soros Foundation, it provides at-risk kids with the tools and knowledge to tell their own stories.

The project made a good fit with My Brother's Keeper, where participants ages 13 to 18 meet for peer support and to vent about everyday problems. "They have major issues at home and at school," says Mark Williams, a social worker now affiliated with the program. "Gangs in school, basic things like sex and parents."

With support from Secours, local writer-director Steve Taylor and Watkins veteran Carlton Adkins, who also served as director of photography, the first-time filmmakers set about drafting a script. As for casting, only Booker had acted before. The revelation, Secours said, was seeing how newcomers like Groves and scene-stealer Lorenzo Short took to the screen.

Perhaps most dramatic was the enthusiasm of Pope, 16, who came to My Brother's Keeper through the juvenile justice system. The first time she saw him, Secours said, "I thought he'd be the first to go. But he was the first one there every day and the last to leave." Not only did Pope pitch in on the script, he also stuck around through the editing process. This summer, as a result of the film, he spent a week studying drama at an MTSU acting camp. His mother tells Secours she sees his life changing.

Not everyone involved is going Hollywood, though. "Too much pressure," says Michael Lauderdale, 18, who directed and co-wrote the film. "Everybody was always coming up and asking what to do next." Now that he knows how to make movies, he says, "I'll just try to enjoy 'em. It'd probably ruin the whole thing if I looked too close."

"The Way Home" screens 7 p.m. Thursday at Born Again Church, 828 W. Trinity Lane.

- Jim Ridley
Nashville Scene (August 11, 2005)

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