Be there for the 2023 SNaHP SUMMIT and Poster Presentation !
Where: Atlanta, Georgia
When: November 10-12, 2023
Join us to spark connection, get the latest update,s and share ideas as we work together to lay the groundwork for our Medicare for All Campaigns.
The SNaHP Summit comprise a three-day in-person event designed for:
- Members of SNaHP and/or PNHP (residents or fellows)
- Medical students, health professional students, or residents who want to learn more about Medicare for All
- Activists who are committed to single payer and eager to engage in health justice work
So mark your calendar for November 10-12 and register to attend the Annual Meeting/SNaHP summit HERE. Students, Medical Residents or Fellow should use the special discount code “INTRAINING”!
Don’t forget to apply for a scholarship by August 31, so fill out your application today—and forward this email to all the single-payer supporters you know.
In addition, SNaHP is hosting its inaugural poster presentation for display at the SNaHP annual summit in Atlanta! Apply HERE!
The SNaHP summit poster presentation will provide a venue to share innovative and effective educational programs, showcase research and community projects by medical students and residents, and will encourage networking among SNaHP and PNHP members.
What Topics Are Being Considered?
Any! You can submit anything that you think is worthy of presentation. We would love to hear about what our students are doing across the nation. We will consider any type of research from a clinical trial to a case report.
Abstract Information
Abstracts should be limited to a maximum of 450 words not including titles, author names, or affiliations. Tables and figures are not permitted. Please use a single-spaced, size 12 font. Abstracts should include the following sections:
Title
Authors and Affiliations
Background: Present the relevant literature and rationale for your project.
Methods: Describe how the project was conducted. Please include the study design, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and relevant statistical methods, if applicable.
Results: Describe the outcome of your study. Do not discuss their implications in this section.
Discussion/Conclusion: Discuss the significance of your results and what they could mean for medical practice, future research studies, etc. You may also describe future directions for your study or area of research.
There are limited spots available for the symposium, so please make sure you apply by the deadline!
Dates to Remember
- Application Deadline: October 6, 2023
- Notification to Applicants: September 10, 2023
- SNaHP Summit: November 10 – 12, 2023
Judging Criteria
Applications will be peer reviewed and judged on the following criteria:
- Originality/innovative nature of the project or question
- Evidence-base nature of the content
- Visual appeal
- Impact on future work
- Applicant must be a SNaHP member or PNHP resident member
Display
If accepted, the poster must be printed by the applicant and should measure no more than 36 inches in height and 48 inches in width. SNaHP will display posters in designated areas at the SNaHP summit.
Single Payer Medicare for All: The Nuts, the Bolts, and Why Medical Students Should Care About It
Dr. Ed Weisbart explains and answers questions about Medicare for All. The future of medical practice could be brighter than ever, that is, if we get rid of the profiteers who demand physicians turn our patients into the raw material for their profits. We know where we want to go, and we know how to get there. Learn what this means for the future of medicine and join SNaHP as a free student member today.
Medicare Advantage: How Overpaid Insurance Companies are Taking Over Medicare
Today, increasing numbers of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, which is run by health insurance companies that exploit and overbill Medicare for billions of dollars. Learn from Kip Sullivan, JD and health policy expert, why MA plans are overpaid and what can be done about it.
Featured Blog Post:
Virtual Event: Student Advocacy During a Pandemic
SNaHP leadership convened this virtual event (featuring PNHP president-elect Dr. Susan Rogers, Dr. Miriam Laugesen, and others) on April 13, 2020. Watch the event below, and click HERE to check out our related advocacy and social media toolkit.
Featured Blog Post:
Webinar: Pandemics and Single Payer
Our UC Berkeley-UCSF joint medical program chapter hosted this COVID-19 themed webinar on April 1, 2020. Check out the video below, featuring Drs. Amy Garlin, Paul Song, and Sanjeev K. Sriram.
Featured Blog Post:
Webinar – SNaHP COVID-19 Virtual Event April 13
Hi SNaHPers!
In the midst of this pandemic many of us are wondering:
How can I help?
What went wrong with the US response to COVID-19?
Would Medicare for All help and how?
What can I do with my free time to advocate?
To answer these questions and provide a space for community discussion on what is going on, Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) will be hosting a virtual event titled Student Advocacy During a Pandemic: Our Country’s Response to COVID-19 and What We Can Do to Help on Monday, April 13th at 8:00pm ET.
This event will feature:
- Rachel Madley, SNaHP Education and Development committee co-chair and PNHP-NY Metro Fellow – COVID-19 responses around the world and within in the US
- Dr. Miriam Laugesen, Associate Professor Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and Thomas Jackson, former SNaHP Political Advocacy committee co-chair – US Public Health Response to COVID-19
- Dr. Susan Rogers, PNHP President-Elect – COVID-19’s exposure of socioeconomic inequality and health injustice in this country
- Ashley Duhon, SNaHP Executive Board member – COVID-19’s effect on reproductive healthcare
- Ashley Lewis, SNaHP Political Advocacy committee co-chair – Next steps and how to advocate virtually
Please RSVP here. Zoom meeting details will be sent out on the day of the event to all attendees who RSVP.
Don’t forget to share this event with your networks, all are welcome!
Featured Blog Post:
Rachel Madely on Medicare for All and COVID-19
SNaHP leader Rachel Madley presented during the Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN) national conference call on March 24, 2020. She discussed our deadly failure to prepare for and fight the coronavirus pandemic, and the resources that would have been available to us under single payer. Check out an excerpt of her presentation, below.
Featured Blog Post:
Updated Information: SNaHP Summit 2020
We are excited to welcome you to the 2020 SNaHP Summit on Saturday, February 15 at the the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School in Aurora, Colo. (near Denver). Our theme, “Making it to the Mountaintop,” means that SNaHP is moving full speed ahead into this next decade.
Online registration has closed, but on-site registration will be available Saturday, February 15 starting at 8:00 a.m.
Keynote
Our keynote this year is PNHP President-Elect Dr. Susan Rogers.
Agenda
You can find the SNaHP Summit agenda HERE with the speaker’s list HERE. Note that in order to save paper, we will not be providing paper copies at the Summit. Instead, you will be able to scan the QR codes with your phone at the registration desk.
Map
A map of the school can be found HERE. We will be in the Ed2 North building, with meals being served in the “bridge.” We will have a light breakfast and boxed lunch available for attendees. And coffee. All the coffee.
Dress code
Come as you are. If you feel comfortable in jeans, do that. If you feel comfortable in dress slacks, do that.
Article for non-POC meet up
We will host separate breakout sessions for POC and non-POC SNaHPers. If you plan on attending the non-POC meet-up, please read this article in advance to be fully prepared for discussion.
Out-of-town students
Students who are flying in may want to share a ride with other students. Please take a look at our ride-share spreadsheet to connect with other students and coordinate ride-sharing.
The scholarship window is now closed. There will be no assigned student housing this year. Instead, scholarship recipients will be given a housing stipend, which they can use at any location of their choice. The stipend will reflect general lodging prices in Aurora. Students can group up and coordinate to split housing costs using THIS spreadsheet. If you are having trouble finding a housing buddy, please reach out to organizer@pnhp.org and we can assist you.
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: The A.M.A. must support Medicare for All!
On June 8, 2019, at 1:30 PM CST, students, physicians, nurses, allied health care workers, and activists from around the country will unite in Chicago to protest the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (A.M.A.).
Representatives of a rapidly growing coalition of Medicare for All supporters, including National Nurses United, Students for a National Health Program, Physicians for a National Health Program, People’s Action, Public Citizen, The Center for Popular Democracy, The Jane Addams Senior Caucus, various labor unions, teachers, activists, and more, will be taking a stand AGAINST corporate greed, misleading advertising, and the profit motive in health care.
And FOR a system that guarantees quality health care and choice of provider for all Americans, regardless of income.
Join the action against the A.M.A. at https://www.wearethewaym4a.org/
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: Justice for the police shooting of Stephanie Washington!
On Tuesday, April 16th 2019, an Officer of the Yale Police Department fired his weapon during a motor vehicle stop, and the unarmed passenger, Stephanie Washington, was shot and injured. Her life is permanently changed by the trauma she experienced this day at the hands of the police.
The members of Students for a National Health Program know that health is more than just access to a doctor. Health is freedom from all forms of oppression and violence. To this end, we condemn acts of police brutality and stand in solidarity with Stephanie Washington, New Haven Black Lives Matter, and all others affected by this issue.
Join us in supporting Yale SNaHP students demanding that the Yale Police Department and the officer involved be held accountable for the shooting of Stephanie Washington.
Please sign this petition demanding reform from the Yale Police Department in light of these events: https://forms.gle/SK846Lj3nGT88f2XA
Featured Blog Post:
Our elected officials must support Medicare for All
In late February, Seattle-area U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, introduced a “Medicare for All” bill in Congress that immediately attracted more than 100 Democratic co-sponsors. The legislation, if passed, would provide comprehensive healthcare coverage — medical, dental, prescriptions, long-term care, mental health, and more — to every resident in the United States, with no copays, premiums, or deductibles.
Medicare for All is a wildly popular policy. Recent polls show that 70 percent of Americans support Medicare for All, including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans.
Why, then, has our Representative Cedric Richmond not co-sponsored his fellow Democrat’s bill, one that saves working families money and guarantees healthcare security to every single person in America?
Perhaps he fears that Medicare for All is too pie-in-the-sky. Comprehensive, universal coverage? How could we afford something so extravagant? One estimate from Senator Bernie Sanders’ office calculated that through a combination of progressive income taxes, capital gains and dividends taxes, and limits on tax deductions for the wealthy, we could raise $1.8 trillion over 10 years without needing to raise taxes on the middle and working class.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Private health insurance is harmful to your health
The following commentary was published in the Syracuse Post-Standard by local members of Students for a National Health Program and Physicians for a National Health Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University.
At the Martin Luther King Day Health Justice Conference at Upstate Medical University, the keynote speaker stated, “Politics is nothing more than medicine but on a societal level.” Her figurative use of the word “medicine” means that elected officials have the responsibility to diagnose and treat issues that affect their communities. As current and future health care providers, we have the duty to do what is best for each patient, and more broadly, to speak up for legislation that can improve the health of all our patients. Because governmental policies have the power to affect the medical outcomes of our patients, it makes sense for us to speak up in support of the New York Health Act (NYHA) and Medicare for All.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Medical students advocate for Medicare for All
This article was published in the Berkeley Blog. You can read the original article here.
At the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP), our instructors implore us to examine the social and structural determinants of health. Many of us at the JMP have recently gathered to support the Medicare for All National Week of Action, as we believe that one of the greatest strides our country could make towards health justice and equity would be to guarantee every person in the United States access to high-quality healthcare via a single-payer funding system.
We have pledged to ‘do no harm’ in our pursuit of medicine; however, our current for-profit insurance system in the United States routinely harms patients. It consistently produces far poorer health outcomes than any other industrialized country. Physicians and other providers often deny patients life-saving care because they lack the proper insurance, causing tens of thousands of preventable deaths every year.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
“Liberty and health care for all”: The 2019 SNaHP Summit in NYC
Save the date! The 8th annual SNaHP Summit will take place on Saturday, March 2, 2019, from 9:00am to 7:00pm at the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center (VEC) at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York City.
The SNaHP Summit is a one-day gathering of medical and health professional students from institutions all over the country who support single-payer national health insurance. Our theme for the 2019 Summit is “Liberty and Health Care for All.”
By attending, you can expect to learn what a national health program would look like in the U.S. and develop vital advocacy skills geared toward health professional students. Participants will also contribute directly to the national strategy of SNaHP through networking and breakout sessions.
Click here to register for the Summit.
Featured Blog Post:
ATSU group makes case for single payer system
This article was originally published in the Kirksville Daily Express. You can read the article here.
By Jessica Karins
In 2007, Wendell Potter was one of about 20 health care executives sitting in a conference room waiting anxiously for a report from a representative they had sent to Cannes Film Festival. A documentary was screening at Cannes which the executives knew might be an all-out attack on their public image.
The documentary was Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” and it would change the way Potter saw his work for the health insurance industry.
“Our worst fears were realized,” Potter said.
Potter came to Truman State University’s campus for an event sponsored by Truman’s economics department and the A.T. Still University organization Students for a National Health Program. SNHP is a student branch of the advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, a group of doctors who argue for ending America’s private insurance system and shifting to a single payer, or “Medicare for All” system.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: Support immigrant justice by saying NO to the public charge!
Immigrants are under attack.
But we can fight back. This regulation will been open for public comment until December 10, 2018 and a wave of comments and public demonstrations of support from the medical community will be impactful in preventing passage of the proposed change.
Show your support by:
- Submitting a public comment here.
- Only unique comments are counted, so add to the template provided by the Protecting Immigrant Families campaign on their website or check out these instructions for writing a comment.
- Comments on their website will automatically upload to the federal register.
- Ask your federal legislators to defend immigrant rights and stand against this regulation by signing on to this letter.
- Tell your friends, family, and everyone you know to submit a comment. This is how we stop this.
- Tell everyone on social media. Join our Facebook event. Add a Facebook filter, change your cover photos, and share the public comment page. Instructions are in our social media folder here.
- Use the national coordinated hashtag #MedicineforMigration in your social media posts.
- Join schools across the nation and commit your program to spreading the word about this cruel proposal and submitting comments about this cruel regulation during the National Advocacy Week, December 3-10.
SNaHP is proud to support the Medicine for Migration: National Week of Advocacy because immigrant rights are human rights!
Featured Blog Post:
A group of students at Weill Cornell and Columbia explain why their CEO is wrong to oppose ‘Medicare for All’
This article was originally published in Business Insider. You can read the article here.
In a recent article, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital CEO Dr. Steven Corwin commented on rising healthcare costs. He stated that “We do a lot of very expensive things…We have to figure out how to reduce our costs.” In the same article, he stated that he opposes “Medicare for All,” but that “We have to have universal coverage,”
As medical students training at the institution Dr. Corwin leads, we agree: we do need it – and we need it urgently. Unlike Dr. Corwin, we, along with a growing number of hospital leaders, believe “Medicare for All” is the only solution for universal coverage and cost reduction.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Future of care must include single-payer system
This article was originally published by The International Falls Journal. You can read the original article here.
The stories are often shared in passing. As if they’re facts of life that one cannot change. The church secretary that makes $40,000 and spends $25,000 of it on health insurance premiums. The bartender who made too much in tips last month, lost his MNSure coverage, and now hasn’t taken his diabetes, hypertension, or psychiatric meds in weeks. The farm family where one family member must work off the farm to get insurance.
I am only a second-year medical student, but stories of people losing or not being able to afford essential medical care are already a commonplace part of my clinical experience.
In 2015, one third of all Americans put off necessary treatment because of costs. That means that almost everyone reading this knows someone, or they themselves, didn’t get the care they needed because of how much it cost. This summer I spent a rural rotation in International Falls. I was impressed with the quality of care and resilience that this community has shown in its commitment to providing healthcare to the community. I also heard at all levels – from administrators to patients, frustration with the healthcare system, costs, and accessibility of care.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: Support the National Prison Strike
Starting August 21, 2018, incarcerated peoples in 17+ states will be striking to demand an end to the death penalty, unfair wages, unsafe conditions, and racist policing and sentencing practices. They are also demanding equitable access to therapeutic rehabilitation programs and the right to vote.
Throughout the history of prison strikes, lack of quality medical care is a constant theme. The Attica Prison Rebellion, which this strike commemorates, was in part a response to the poor health conditions and medical experimentation on incarcerated people. At Attica, there were compassionate physicians who demanded access to prisoners to assess their injuries following the violent retaliation by correctional officers. As caregivers and public health advocates, SNaHP seeks to honor this legacy of medical solidarity by supporting those striking almost fifty years later in the 2018 National Prison Strike.
SNaHP is encouraging caregivers and public health advocates to personally support the 2018 National Prison Strike by signing the Letter of Solidarity sponsored by White Coats 4 Black Lives.
Here are a few other ways you can support to the strike:
- Educate ourselves and others about the strike demands.
- Officially endorse the strike by emailing a statement of endorsement to prisonstrikemedia@gmail.com and millionsforprisonersmarch@gmail.com. (Sample statement here).
- Share the Letter of Solidarity with classmates, colleagues, and social media: http://bit.ly/students-for-the-strike.
- Amplify incarcerated voices via social media using the #August21 and #prisonstrike hashtags.
- Organize a phone tree in preparation for phone zaps and similar requests once the strike is underway.
Featured Blog Post:
Statement in Solidarity with the National Prison Strike
August 15, 2018
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak
Millions for Prisoners Human Rights
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the IWW (IWOC)
& all incarcerated peoples
millionsforprisonersmarch@gmail.com
prisonstrikemedia@gmail.com
On behalf of Students for a National Health Program, please accept this letter of solidarity with all incarcerated peoples participating in the 2018 National Prison Strike and the supporting organizations of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, Millions for Prisoners Human Rights, IWOC, and more. Throughout the history of prison strikes, lack of quality medical care is a constant theme. The Attica Prison Rebellion, which this strike commemorates, was in part a response to the poor health conditions and medical experimentation on incarcerated people. At Attica, there were compassionate physicians who demanded access to prisoners to assess their injuries following the violent retaliation by correctional officers. As caregivers and public health advocates, we want to honor this legacy of medical solidarity by supporting those striking almost fifty years later in the 2018 National Prison Strike.
Students for a National Health Program advocates for equitable access to medical care, and we stand in support of those who are striking for their right to health. America’s criminal punishment system is dependent on the inadequate accessibility of mental healthcare, rehabilitation, and treatment for substance use disorders. These lifesaving measures are even harder to access for people already in prison. Incarcerated people are often denied medical services, including appropriate reproductive care for pregnant persons, and treatment of infectious disease. We believe all people have a right to safe living and working conditions, rehabilitation programs, and access to mental, medical, and reproductive healthcare. In order to create a healthier and more equitable justice system, we proudly endorse the National Prison Strike and pledge our support.
In solidarity,
Students for a National Health Program, National Board
Robertha Barnes, Augie Lindmark, Jonathan Michels, Sydney Russell Leed, Tony Spadaro, and Michael Zingman
Featured Blog Post:
Can a New Generation of Med Students Help Push Medicare for All?
This article was originally published by Pacific Standard. You can read the original article here.
Upon finding out what residency programs they’d been matched with this spring, some 310 fourth-year medical students have taken the #MatchDayPledge, a social media campaign that invites the next crop of first-year residents to snap selfies alongside a signed commitment to fight for “improved Medicare for All.” The initiative was sponsored by Students for a National Health Program, or SNaHP—a single-payer advocacy organization with 1,400 members and chapters in over 60 medical schools—whose annual conference in New Orleans this March culminated in a demonstration on the steps of city hall, where they demanded an equitable health-care system financed by a single, public insurance pool.
Such actions may not command outsized attention relative to the overall Medicare-for-All campaign, which grew considerably after Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 primary run and counts among its supporters groups like National Nurses United, the AFL-CIO, the Democratic Socialists of America, and several national Democratic figures, including Congressman Keith Ellison and Senator Elizabeth Warren. But the heightened participation of medical students within the movement signals an apparent shift in the way that some future physicians interpret their public duties as they step into their new roles. As the Affordable Care Act teeters after a stormy few years of legal onslaught, volatile exchange markets, skyrocketing premiums, shrinking coverage options, and just-missed repeal efforts, young doctors stand to be a key bloc influencing the direction of American health-care reform, which voters cite as a top concern for 2018 mid-terms.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Solidarity with Medical Students Who Demand Single Payer Now!
This statement was originally published July 18, 2018, to coincide with the AOA annual business meeting in Chicago.
We, the undersigned, stand together with medical students as they pressure organized medicine to support a single, comprehensive health care system for everyone in America.
At the American Medical Association’s annual conference in June, medical students demanded the organization end its decades-long opposition to a single-payer national health program, a system that would be publicly financed but privately delivered and is better known as “Medicare for All.”
This week, members of the Student Osteopathic Medical Association will submit a resolution asking the American Osteopathic Association to support Medicare for All.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
What Does Jeff Bezos Have to Offer Health Care?
This article was originally published by The Progressive. You can read the original article here.
In late January, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jamie Dimon announced that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan would be collaborating on a new “health care venture.” More recently we learned that Atul Gawande, the celebrated endocrine surgeon and writer for The New Yorker, will be its CEO, starting on July 9.
We don’t know much about what the project actually seeks to accomplish. Other than Gawande’s comment that “the system is broken, and better is possible,” the venture has not clearly named the health care problems it is attempting to solve or even offered a mission statement.
How might a new team of billionaires, led by a prominent surgeon and storyteller, approach our health care system? To get a better idea, it may be useful to look at Amazon and its chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Is this the year the AMA finally joins the single-payer movement?
This article was originally published by STAT News. You can read the original article here.
Fifty years ago this month, at the 1968 meeting of the American Medical Association, a fourth-year medical student named Peter Schnall seized the microphone and scolded several hundred of the most prestigious, highly educated white men in America.
“Organized medicine has never felt responsible and accountable to the American people for its actions and continues to deny them any significant voice in determining the nature of services offered to them,” Schnall chastised the group.
“Shut up!” yelled the doctors, who were accustomed to being treated with respect and deference, not with outrage and indignation.
Schnall’s outburst, coordinated by members of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign and the Medical Committee for Human Rights, aimed to be a wake-up call to an institution that was highly successful at protecting physicians’ “interests against encroachment” but failed to meet the public health and human needs of patients by opposing both civil rights and the expansion of safety-net health programs.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: #MEDforED: Healthcare solidarity with NC teachers!
Students for a National Health Program, Health Care for All NC and other national and state single-payer organizations will march alongside North Carolina teachers as they rally for respect this Wednesday, May 16 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
One of the primary issues affecting public teachers across the country has been the rising cost of their health coverage. West Virginia educators recently underscored the connection between jobs and health when they initiated a massive walk-out and demanded action over their increasingly expensive, yet meager, healthcare coverage.
“It’s the insurance,” confirmed one of the striking teachers. “That’s the big deal.”
In North Carolina, health insurance premiums are skyrocketing for all of us and our teachers pay an outrageous average of $10,000 a year to cover their families.
As healthcare professionals and advocates fighting for a universal, single-payer health system, we believe the purpose of both healthcare and public education is to serve the common good of the community, not the bottom lines of corporations.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
Everyone should have access to health insurance
This article was originally published by The Advocate. You can read the original article here.
As a medical student, you never forget the first time a patient says, “Thank you for your help, but I can’t afford it.” It’s the one sentence that could stop any treatment plan, regardless of the potential benefits.
Medical textbooks aid in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, but they fail to tell us how to help a patient who cannot afford care. Like millions of Americans, many of our patients leave clinics with a choice between addressing their critical health needs or paying for basic necessities. As medical students and future physicians, we cannot ignore the system that denies our patients access to the care they need and deserve.
Over the course of history — from the Greensboro sit-ins of the 1960s civil rights movement to today’s high school students leading the fight for stricter gun regulations — students have been powerful agents of social and political change.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
ACTION ALERT: National White Coats for Black lives die-in demonstration on 04/17
Dear current and future healthcare providers,Hope this message finds you well. Many of us are still mourning the tragic death of Stephon Clark, 22-year-old unarmed black man shot and killed by the police in his grandmother’s backyard. This event is tragic and unacceptable, and yet the story is all-too familiar. Stephon Clark joins an ever-growing litany of black lives ended by police violence. The White House thinks this is a “local matter”, but we disagree. This is a national public health crisis.
We are calling on all medical and nursing schools across the nation to join us on April 17th, 2018 at 12pm as we hold a National White Coats for Black Lives die-in demonstration.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
It’s time for Medicare for all
This article originally appeared in Winston-Salem Journal. You can read the original post here.
For more than 100 years, Americans have searched for a cure for health care inequality. Instead, we’ve been prescribed placebos: watered-down poverty programs and party politics.
Despite attempts to ease the pain with reforms like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we continue to rely on a market-driven health care system. After stitching together the remnants of various poverty programs we are left with a system so dysfunctional and freakish it would make Dr. Frankenstein recoil.
After signing the Health Reinsurance Act—the result of a contentious battle for a national health program that was ultimately foiled by the American Medical Association—Republican President Dwight Eisenhower handed the pen to Esther Lape, a social scientist and longtime universal health care advocate. Disappointed that the bill fell far short of her expectations, Lape reportedly waved the souvenir in the air and declared, “This represents a puny little bone in the vertebrae of what I had in mind!”
What Lape envisioned would be transformative: quality health care for everyone.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
SNaHP in The Big Easy: LSU Chapter to Host the 7th Annual SNaHP Summit in New Orleans
This article originally appeared in The Pulse. You can read the original post here.
On Saturday March 3, 2018, the Louisiana State University Health Science Center chapter of Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) will host the 7th annual SNaHP Summit from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. in New Orleans, Louisiana. The annual summit is a one-day event that gathers students from multiple disciplines to learn about what a national health program would look like in the United States, and how to think about and advocate for beneficial change in our healthcare system. Attendees network with students from all over the U.S., learn how to talk about health policy, and contribute to national strategy for single-payer advocacy. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, FACP, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), is a graduate of LSUHSC School of Medicine, and will be speaking at the summit.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
The Biggest Moments of 2017 in the Fight for Universal Healthcare
This article originally appeared on Common Dreams. You can read the original post here.
In the face of a fiercely conservative administration, 2017 has seen an upsurge in popular resistance against measures that threatened to chip away at important–if imperfect–social welfare initiatives, chief among them the ability for Americans to receive quality healthcare.
Activists pushed back against a series of attempts by Republican lawmakers to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with bills that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have led to the loss of health coverage for 22 to 23 million Americans.
While it is tempting to remain on the defensive in the face of an agenda that would rob us of our healthcare, citizen activists across the country recognize that merely protecting the ACA would continue to leave the most marginalized populations in this country behind. While many Americans continue to receive health coverage under the ACA, an estimated 28 million remain uninsured and medical bills continue to be the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.
According to a national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of the population believe that the federal government has a responsibility to provide health coverage for all Americans. Despite continued assertions that universal healthcare in the United States is merely a liberal “pipe dream,” a Medicare-for-All health program–a healthcare insurance system that is government-run–remains the best option for ensuring that all Americans have access to quality healthcare.
Click here to continue reading.
Featured Blog Post:
SNaHP Shots: William Grant
SNaHP Shots is a regular column featuring interviews with SNaHP members from around the country who are committed to passing universal healthcare legislation in their lifetimes.
Where are you from? Where do you attend medical school?
I am a second-year student at Duke University School of Medicine in the Primary Care Leadership Track in Durham, NC. I am originally from Gainesville, FL, and graduated from Morehouse College. While I haven’t decided on a specialty, I hope to provide care in an under-resourced community.
Despite your busy schedule as a medical student, why have you decided to devote your time and energy to the movement for universal healthcare?
I see my role as a medical student and advocate for universal healthcare as being undeniably intertwined. I chose to attend medical school not only to help and treat patients, but to use my platform as a future physician to advocate for social-political change and this of course includes the movement for universal, comprehensive care.
Click here to continue reading.