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Listening session takes aim on health, environment by Heather Murphy Public Relations Discussion of disparities and environmental injustice in minority communities dominated the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Joint Listening Session of the Health and Environmental Braintrusts held at MUSC June 7 and 8. A variety of speakers ranging from professors, doctors and political figures to local citizens voiced their opinions during the session and based arguments and solutions on views related to dialogue, responsibility and racism. “All the issues are solvable,” said MUSC President Ray Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., in his remarks opening the two-day session, the first of five to be held around the country. “The solutions begin with dialogue. The black caucus being held today is a big part of changing the challenges we face.” U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, chairman of the CBC Environmental Justice Braintrust, hosted the conference and kicked off this dialogue as he asked the audience why a nation that spent more on health care than any other nation was ranked only 37th worldwide.  “No issue will test our democratic principles, no issue will test our system, and no issue will test our technological capabilities more than health care,” he said.   The challenges that Clyburn and other speakers at the caucus believe that minorities face include environmentally-related illnesses and racism.  “There is no question on the connection between environmental hazards, health and communities of color,” Rep. Donna Christian-Christensen, M.D., of the Virgin Islands, said in her opening remarks, “Building an effort based on real stories and real people is essential.” Throughout the session, Christian-Christensen received nods of appreciation for all of her efforts in helping to organize and present the caucus, which she chairs. “We are and should be mad as hell. We should be enraged. We’re talking about pain, death, misery and suffering,” said Reed Tuckson, M.D., educator and senior vice president with United-Health Group in Minneapolis. “Pity and compassion in a world of pain mean nothing unless it leads to change,” he said.  As the overview speaker for the event, Tuckson recommended solutions to minority health disparities. He called for a shared national vision of health, a basic benefits health care package for every citizen and improved patient education. Also on his list are more minority doctors, an objective measurement of our health care system, increased funding for preventive community programs, more research on environmental problems and their relationship to individual health, and more individual responsibility for health. “Let’s stop viewing our communities from the context of our deficits and do it from our wholeness,” Tuckson said. Jewel Crawford, M.D., echoed Tuckson’s call for mobilization. “We must become environmentalists. We’ve got to be the stewards of this planet.” As she sat on the first panel Friday, Crawford discussed toxic waste dumps that are primarily located in minority neighborhoods, the need for physician education concerning environmental justice, and minority communities taking on personal responsibility and practicing preventive health care.  “Emotionalism is motivating,” she said after the panel discussion. “If you’re angry and upset, you’ll do something about it. There was definitely some venting in there, but so many of those people are already involved. This is the coming together of the grassroots with skilled people like scientists and health practitioners. People are looking to collaborate with the agencies involved in this and make the agencies do what they were mandated to do.” Crawford said the problems that are wreaking havoc on minority communities were not limited to just those communities, rather, that they affected the United States as a whole. “It’s important to continue to mobilize,” she said. The next few steps for this mobilization involve four more joint listening sessions, which are tentatively scheduled for Albuquerque, N.M., Detroit, Seattle, Brownville, Texas, or possibly the Virgin Islands.  David Rivers, of the Environmental Biosciences program said: “We’ve received extremely positive reports about what was discussed during the session as well as how well it was organized and presented. The end result will be the production of a document that can be distributed to policymakers who can then use the benefits of these findings.”  Rivers said that in addition to the report on the five sessions of the black caucus due out in September 2003, a major made for TV dialogue produced in conjunction with SCC-TV will be broadcast.