Screening Raises Health Awareness

Aspiring journalists and filmmakers may not usually think of documenting health problems in the world’s less-developed nations as a path to financial success, but an impressive portion of the Harvard community did take notice of global health challenges on Feb 15.

Over 100 students and faculty members attended a film screening and panel discussion entitled “Global Health and Journalism.” The event, sponsored by the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH), aimed to give participants a better understanding of ignored global health crises.

HIGH is a university-wide organization with the goal of teaching a new generation of leaders—scientists, economists, and politicians—to focus on public health issues.

“Our aim is to engage students in issues of global health, and hope that tonight will serve as a career talk to show how students can get involved in unconventional ways through film and media,” said HIGH’s education officer, Catherine Rosseel, in an interview with The Crimson.

There was good reason for the organization to consider that aim met, given the high turnout and rapt silence during the film, “Rx For Survival: A Global Health Challenge.”

Narrated by Brad Pitt, the documentary chronicles health challenges from around the world. From clips of a girl named Raquel in Peru, who lives with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis and will not kiss her son for fear of infecting him, to Mechai in Thailand, who single-handedly distributes condoms in brothels across the country to slow the progression of AIDS, making condom balloons along the way. The film solicited both tears and laughter from the audience.

It also contributed to a central point made throughout the night—that the public is unable to connect to a global health crisis, such as AIDS, when death counts are merely printed in a newspaper or are reported on the evening news.

“It is important to show human faces, the structures behind global health,” said panelist David Kohn, global health fellow at the Nieman Foundation and journalist.

Linda Harrar, senior content director for “Rx for Survival,” agreed. “We need to get the attention of the people by making our case interesting,” she said. “It’s like being a screenwriter. One needs to be able to tell a story, to take characters the audience can become invested in and put them in a difficult situation.”

“Issues of public health are not sexy for newspapers, they are not appealing to readers, they are just incomprehensible statistics,” said Harro Albrecht, a journalist and global health fellow at the Nieman Foundation. “But through the media, an audience can be introduced to the real urgency of the challenges faced by global health.”

In the end, audience reaction to the film and panel was extremely positive.

Cynthia Cortez ’07 said she was impressed with the panel and screening. “It was interesting to see the humanity behind global health, not just through the people in the film, but also the panelists,” she said. “I was amazed to see that their concern for global health issues was not based on politics, but rather born from their own personal concerns for the cause.” Harrar discussed the great benefits of media as a way of exposing people to new experiences they otherwise might not notice and “getting them to care about what is going on outside their own relative existence.”

“Once people learn about the subject and become passionate about it, they are ready to get actively involved in the cause,” she said. “Supporting organizations locally and making one’s voice known are the first steps.”