Health Care Town Hall Meeting
March 7th, 2006 6:50 amGot this in email from a friend at IU. Sound slike a very interesting event for those interested in the health care issue. I’ll reproduce it in full until I can find a link for it.
Citizen Input Sought At Town Hall Meeting on Health Care
INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana residents are invited to participate in a national conversation on health care during a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday, March 22.
“What is Your Health Worth? A National Conversation on Health Care” is the theme of the discussion of the simultaneous public meetings at the Big Ten Conference schools and 11 other schools of public health around the country.
The meeting is coordinated by the University of Michigan in conjunction with the national Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, a 15-member panel formed by Congress to find out what the public thinks about the accessibility, cost and quality of health care. That input will be used for policy recommendations to the federal government.
Locally, residents can participate in the conversation at the University Place Hotel and Conference Center, 850 W. Michigan St., on the Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis campus. IUPUI is hosting the event from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The actual Webcast will be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. This program will be moderated by Stephen J. Jay, M.D., chairman of the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Public Health.
At Purdue University, the virtual meeting will be telecast in Stewart Center, room 218, in West Lafayette.
Hoosiers also can participate in the discussion as part of the “virtual” audience by logging on to www.umich.edu/healthmeeting. There are links at the site for additional information and a place for submitting personal suggestions and concerns about the state of health care in America.
Five panelists located at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will join each of the town hall meeting sites by satellite link. Questions will be posed to those in the audience who will discuss them, make recommendations and share their input electronically with the panelists. The panelists, in turn, will share the recommendations from all the various meeting sites with the remote audience.
Panelists include:
· Patricia Maryland, Dr.P.H., a member of the Working Group and president of St. Vincent Hospitals and Health Service Inc. in Indianapolis. She previously held positions at Cleveland Clinic and Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit.
· Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michgan. She co-chaired the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance, which issued recommendations in 2004 about how to extend coverage to more citizens.
· Catherine McLaughlin, professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and director of the university’s Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured. She also is a member of the Working Group.
· Deborah Stehr, a member of the Working Group and a health care advocate who serves as full-time care-giver for her adult son, Jonathon, who has cerebral palsy. A resident of Iowa, she has served on the boards of the Iowa Citizen Action Network and USAction.
· Kenneth Warner, dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Warner has spent decades research the effects of tobacco control policies. In his role as dean, he advocates disease prevention and health promotion through a robust public health system.
For more information about the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, see www.citizenshealthcare.gov/.
