Dr. Barbara Berney, the project creator and producer, is emeritus at the City University of New York School of Public Health and a distinguished scholar in public health, environmental justice, and the U.S. healthcare system. She was inspired to create and produce Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution by the compelling stories of her colleague, Dr. Richard Smith, who was director of field operations for hospital desegregation in 1966. With its promise of federal funds, Medicare created an opportunity to end the shocking inequalities in hospitals, reversing 100 years of segregated medical care. As a public health professional who worked in civil rights for decades, she was convinced that this little-known, important, and dramatic story needed to be shared with a broad audience. 
 
In addition to teaching health policy, the U.S. healthcare system, and environmental justice, Dr. Berney taught documentary production for public health practitioners at the CUNY School of Public Health.  Before teaching at CUNY, she did advocacy and community and worker education on environmental and occupational health and HIV/AIDS. She got her MPH in health administration from UCLA and has a PhD in public policy from Boston University.  She earned a BA in political science from Reed College. 

Power to Heal tells a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the tale of how a new national program, Medicare, was used to mount a dramatic, coordinated effort that desegregated thousands of hospitals across the country in a matter of months.

Before Medicare, disparities in access to hospital care were dramatic. Less than half the nation's hospitals served black and white patients equally, and in the South, 1/3 of hospitals would not admit African Americans even for emergencies.

Through the voices of the men and women who experienced disparities and fought against them, POWER TO HEAL will introduce the audience to a missing link in the Civil Rights Movement -- a struggle over healthcare from a half-century ago that raises questions that resonate today: is healthcare a human right? Must the federal government intervene to ensure equality?

Brittany Shannahan, Organizer, Medicare-for-All Campaign, Public Citizen, will give us a state of play on Medicare needs and legislation today.

Brittany (she/her and Mx.) works as an Organizer for Public Citizen's Medicare for All campaign. Her primary focus is working with activist groups around the country to pass municipal resolutions in support of Medicare for All - and using the resolutions strategy to build stronger activist networks and social movement infrastructure at the regional, state and national level.

Prior to her time at Public Citizen, Brittany worked as a staff organizer for Medicare for All with Healthcare is a Human Right Maryland and organized grassroots efforts on climate change, energy poverty and student debt in the US and UK. She currently lives in Baltimore, MD.

Rebecca Cerese, Policy Advocate, Health Advocacy Project, North Carolina Justice Center, will give us a sense of what Medicare/caid conditions are like on the ground today.

Rebecca is a social justice activist, award-winning documentary filmmaker and a passionate healthcare advocate. She is the Health Policy Advocate at the NC Justice Center, working with coalition partners and community members around the state to promote better healthcare policies for all North Carolinians.

Rebecca is a proud founding member of the NC Medicare For All Coalition – a diverse coalition made up of 45 different organizations and individuals committed to fighting for a universal single-payer healthcare system that puts patients over profits.