With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, I remember when my daughter first heard the queen speak on the radio. “Wow! I never heard English spoken so beautifully. Who is that?” I smiled because I’d grown up trying to imitate the “Queen’s English” as a youngster in the British colony of Bermuda. I was doubly saddened by the queen’s passing because it came just days before my birthday. How does one celebrate life and death at the same time? My first instinct was to ignore my birthday. Who wants to celebrate getting older anyway?So I vacillated between mourning and sulking.
To all of you who, like me, have been long time Ken Burns fans, his documentaries have been mesmerizing: Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, Vietnam and The Roosevelts. And while I eagerly await his upcoming movie, The U.S. and the Holocaust, I have a certain amount of dread about its release. We’re living in a time when even The Diary of Anne Frank is controversial. The banning of Maus demonstrated how divided we are over telling the stories of the Holocaust. Given Ken Burns’ focus, I suspect the outcry is going to be loud and vicious.
HEALTH EQUITY AND HEALTHCARE DISPARITIES SPOTLIGHTED IN AMERICAN DIVERSITY REPORT
New Edition Includes Articles, Podcasts, Poems
CHATTANOOGA, TN – Deborah Levine Enterprises LLC today announced the latest issuance of the American Diversity Report (ADR), an award-winning digital multi-media platform containing the latest news, educational resources and related information highlighting key issues of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the public arena. The theme of the October edition is health, healthcare and equity.
“Our economy is volatile, and an uncertain political environment surrounds the health and wellbeing of Americans,” says Deborah Levine, Editor-in-Chief of ADR and an award-winning author of 15 books. “The diversity of our situation is evident as Covid disproportionally impacted people of color per new infections and higher death rates, as well as glaring disparities in affordable healthcare coverage.”
“This new edition of the American Diversity Report serves as a valuable public resource on critically important topics of DEI during these turbulent times,” adds Levine, who is also a columnist for the Times Free Press newspaper of Chattanooga and was named a “Diversity and Inclusion Trailblazer” in 2019 by ForbesMagazine. “We are all linked by our common humanity and concern for our own the health, in addition to the health, wellbeing and healthcare of our families, colleagues and friends – especially as the United States becomes increasingly more diverse in all aspects of public and private life.”
In addition to the timely articles listed below, the October edition also includes poetry and podcast interviews. The featured articles by ADR advisors and contributors include the following:
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Deborah Levine is a management consultant, speaker and leading diversity change agent with 33-years of experience. The inventor of the Matrix Model Management System of neuro-communication, she has received the Champion of Diversity Award from DiversityBusiness.com, the Excellence Award from the Tennessee Economic Council on Women, and the Chattanooga Award for Management Consulting.
Levine’s published articles span decades in journals and magazines such as, The American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Public Management & Social Policy, The Bermudian Magazine, and The Harvard Divinity School Bulletin. She’s also a syndicated writer for The Good Men Project, a former blogger for The Huffington Post, and has been featured on C-SPAN Book TV. Further information is available online at https://deborahlevine.com/
In July, 2020, the two of us met for the first time as inaugural co-directors of the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine’s new Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism (HESJAR) curricular initiative. Beginning with our initial conversations it became clear that addressing speech — physician speech, patient speech, medical school speech — would be central to our journey.
For an entire year (2020-2021) we planned.This involved reading, particularly about efforts at other medical schools.It also involved listening: to students; to other faculty and staff; and particularly through a series of community conversations in which medical students interviewed local residents about their experiences with the health care system.Those conversations deeply informed our curriculum development.
On July 28, 2022, the General Assembly of the United Nations took a bold step in the ongoing process of caring for the creation we have inherited. By an overwhelming vote of 161 – 0, with eight member nations abstaining, the General Assembly approved a resolution which establishes a sustainable and healthy environment as a basic, universal right of all people. Over one hundred nations co-sponsored this resolution. The large co-sponsorship (unfortunately, the United States was not a co-sponsor) testifies to the strong support for this resolution among the UN delegates and their national governments.
Because a livable human context is absolutely central to the continuing viability of creational life on our planet the United Nations’ vote placed this right at the core of our understanding of the longstanding human rights tradition, which includes social/political values such as freedom. This newly affirmed right is seen as standing at the very heart of that tradition. Its recognition and enhancement are not marginal but integral to the maintenance of the entirety of humanity and the universe with which we are intertwined.
It’s amazing that Medicare recipients just gained a cap on insulin prices. It’s truly incredible considering the pharmaceutical industry lobbying efforts against any price controls or negotiations. Spearheaded by The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, often known as Pharma, those efforts have been ongoing for years. And in September 2021, it was reported byThe Hill, a media company based in Washington, D.C., that Pharma was launching a seven-figure ad campaign against the proposals moving through Congress to allow negotiation of drugprices.
After the killing of George Floyd, Equity Rising, a group of Black professionals, came together to address social justice and equity in the government and in corporations. They believed that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) expertise is essential to the total sustainability strategy of corporationsand, therefore, is an essential boardroom function. The DEI expertise brings both functional and demographic diversification of board members.This article contends that since traditionally the DEI function has been populated primarily by people of color and women, DEI expertise will add to the demographic diversification of the board. With the increase in demographic diversity for other functional board positions, DEI experts will aide in establishing a critical mass of women and people of color in the boardroom.
As my radio theater play, UNTOLD: Stories of a World War II Liberator, is in preparation for broadcast, I am reminded of the 1st time that I agreed to serve on the local Holocaust Remembrance Day Committee was painful, even after almost seventy years since the end of World War II. I agreed to assist in promoting the event beyond our Jewish community and I agreed to participate in the reading of the names of the victims. And I resigned myself to being an usher at the event, not my favorite thing. What I didn’t bargain for was a seat on the stage when I offhandedly shared that I was helping in memory of my father who was a U. S. military intelligence officer during World War II. Aaron Levine was an army translator of German and French. And by the way, he was a liberator of a labor camp.
Why do we now say Kyiv instead of Kiev? It’s because Kyiv is the Ukrainian pronunciation and Russia’s invasion is a culture war.Their disputes are old-as-dirt and Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev tried to enable a Ukrainian revival with the transfer of Crimea from Russia. But, Soviet repression went beyond land and sovereignty.
With the USSR dissolution, Ukraine established a new government with its own national anthem in Ukrainian, not Russian. It’s no accident that Putin’s treaty demands include protection for the Russian language. It may seem trivial, but imagine if England suddenly tried to re-establish British control over America and insisted that we revert to British English. If England were like Putin, you might go to jail if you refused to spell “color” as “colour”, the original, British version. Or what about our patriotic song, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”? That melody was originally an unofficial national anthem of England. We wouldn’t tolerate going back to its original title: “God Save the Queen”. We’d fight a new War of Independence.
Okay, you don’t know me and until a week ago, I didn’t know you.
But since you disrupted my life when you snuffed out the lives of 10 African American people in Buffalo, I decided to write you a letter. I included pictures of your victims in my first draft but removed them because they were too painful to look at. Why the pictures? Well because I wanted you to see them in your worst nightmares during your years behind bars.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 25, 2022