Sharon Roberson shares how her experience with the Center for Health Services informed her professional pursuits, particularly as it relates to combatting the mentality she’d witnessed among many people in West Tennessee–that being the impetus not to “rock the boat” but, rather, accept the status quo. Full footage of Sharon Roberson’s 2018 oral history …
West TN summers and their impact on Sharon Roberson’s career arc Read More »
Sharon Roberson provides insight into the dynamic of student stays with local families and developing community relationships, including the mutually shared desire not to disrupt existing social norms that would persist after they left. Full footage of Sharon Roberson’s 2018 oral history interview.
Sharon Roberson describes the student-led approach to community organizing in West Tennessee, such as appealing to established community leaders (namely, ministers from local churches). She also details the health fair model and rights and benefits counseling, both of which were central to their activist work in the region. Full footage of Sharon Roberson’s 2018 …
Randall Rice discusses state-sanctioned roadblocks to the expansion of affordable healthcare among rural populations in West Tennessee. He also shares about his and others’ success in overcoming these challenges with the support of the nonprofit public policy advocacy organization, Tennessee Justice Center, as well as individual activists and other local programs. These include Jeannie B. …
Randall Rice shares about his and Meryl’s involvement in assisting with open enrollment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in rural West Tennessee communities. Their work began in 2013, developed from a need left by the absence of major enrollment organizations in the area and lack of support from the state government. Recorded on June …
Sharon Roberson describes community organizing work over time and the growing tension that transpired among Vanderbilt students from one summer to the next, particularly in light of apartheid in South Africa and the ongoing domestic fight for civil rights. Many students sought to transition from healthcare to more expansive, basic racial justice issues. Roberson notes …
Biff Hollingsworth, Collecting and Public Programming Archivist with the Southern Historical Collection, provides important context to the development of a partnership with the Coalition. He explains that at the same time Coalitioners first started to explore restoring and preserving their story, the SHC (Southern Historical Collection) was amidst their own pursuit of community-based participatory collecting …
Art Van Zee was among the first physicians in the U.S. to warn people about the dangers of OxyContin and take a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company head on for its marketing blunders. He describes his witness of the problem rapidly develop into a nationwide opioid epidemic by the late 1990s from his work at a …
Art Van Zee on the opioid epidemic in southwestern Virginia Read More »
The third health fair of the summer of 1974 was held in Robbins, Tenn., a small rural community of 2000-2500 people located in the southwest corner of Scott County. The previous summer, the SHC had held a health fair in Norma, a 30-minute drive from Robbins, located in the same county. There was little reason …
Williamson County is located south of Nashville in Middle Tennessee. In 1969, the first iteration of the Student Health Coalition, comprised of five medical students and two nursing students, conducted screenings of children in a Head Start program in Williamson County. Students went on to build on this early experience to craft health fairs and …
