KNOXVILLE – “Poverty and Health Care,” is the theme of a mini-summit to be held on March 31 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It is the second of three mini-summits looking at various aspects of poverty to be held this spring on campus.
Ready for the World, UT’s international and intercultural initiatives, has devoted this academic year to “Our World in Need” with a particular emphasis on the issue of poverty.
The semester’s first mini-summit — “Baldwin Lee, James Agee and Walker Evans: Photography, Poverty, Politics in the South and Abroad” — was held in February; a mini-summit on “Poverty, Energy and the Environment” is being planned for April.
The “Poverty and Health Care” mini-summit is being sponsored by Ready for the World.
The summit will include a juried art exhibit that’s open to the UT community. Students and staff are invited to submit their paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, films/videos, mixed media and installations for the exhibit that will be on display at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy March 31-April 2. The exhibit will kick off with a reception on March 31.
The theme of this exhibition is health care and/or poverty, and it is meant to provide a visual representation of these issues through art and creative dialogues.
To enter, submit any number of works to the Baker Center, Room 208, no later than 5 p.m. on March 26. All work must be framed or otherwise ready for display.
Artists will be notified of acceptance on the evening of March 29, and those artists must be available to set up their display at 2 p.m. on March 30.
Ten $100 awards will be given to the most outstanding works, as determined by the faculty jurors.
Here’s the schedule for the March 31 summit, which will be held in the Toyota Auditorium at the Baker Center, 1640 Cumberland Ave. All events are free and open to the public.
9 a.m. — Graduate Student Research Showcase. Moderated by Don Bruce, associate professor of economics and faculty of the UT Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER), the panel will feature Woods Nash, a doctoral student in philosophy, presenting “Expanding John Rawls’ Theory of Justice to Encompass Severely Impaired Persons”; Landon Bevier, doctoral student in sociology, presenting “Predicting Opinions on Child-Care Funding: Environmental, Experiential and Ideological Indicators”; and Bruno Wichmann and Melanie Cozad, doctoral students in economics, presenting, “Efficiency of Health Care Delivery Systems: Effects of Health Insurance Coverage.”
10:45 a.m. — Faculty Research Showcase. Moderated by David Patterson, professor in the UT College of Social Work, the showcase will feature Yingkui Li, assistant professor of geography, presenting “Spatial Disparity of Healthcare Access in Missouri”; Denise Bates, assistant professor in nutrition, presenting “Meeting the Needs of Burundian Refugees in the United States”; De Ann Pendry, lecturer in anthropology, presenting “Poverty, Race and Type II Diabetes: Untangling the Assumptions Embedded in Medical Statistics”; and Stan Bowie, associate professor of social work, presenting “The Public Health System in Haiti: A Mixed Method and Exploratory Study of Hospitals and Health Care Clinics.”
12:15 p.m. — Lunch break. Participants are on their own for lunch.
1:30 p.m. — Local Nonprofits Forum. Moderated by Paul Erwin, professor and director of the UT Center for Public Health, this forum will feature representatives of local nonprofit health care organizations and focus on health care service delivery, and service gaps, to those in or near poverty in the Knoxville area. Participants will include Dr. Dennis Freeman, CEO of Cherokee Health Systems; Linda Cole, certified nurse midwife with Lisa Ross Birth and Women’s Center; Melissa Knight, executive director of Interfaith Health Clinic; and Dr. Martha Buchanan, health officer of Knox County Health Department.
3:30 p.m. — Lessons from 15 Years of TennCare. Moderated by Bill Fox, professor of economics and CBER director, the symposium panelists will include Darin Gordon, deputy commissioner of finance and administration for the Bureau of TennCare; Carole Myers, assistant professor in UT College of Nursing; and Keith Goodwin, president and CEO of East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.
5:30 p.m. — Art exhibition prizes awarded.
5:30 p.m. — Keynote Address by U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper. In addition to being a congressman, Cooper is an adjunct professor, teaching health care policy to MBA and Executive MBA students at Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University. He was invited to President Barack Obama’s health care summit in February. Cooper, who calls himself a “Blue Dog Democrat,” has long fought to improve the U.S. health care system, but advocates “pay-as-you-go” budgeting for Congress.
6:30 p.m. — Closing reception.
All day — Juried art exhibit in the Baker Center rotunda. Entries from staff and students, using any media, will be displayed and prizes will be announced at the end of the day.
C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu@utk.edu)