As part of our underserved/global health focus we have regular movie and book club nights. This is a chance for residents, attendings and team members to come together and discuss cultural factors and media representations of the social determinants of health which effect our patient population. This week we met to watch the Emmy awarding winning documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. The film examines the history and development of the current mass incarceration crisis in the United States.

This film inspires thoughts and is often a call to action. Our group focused on how to talk to our patients about mass incarceration, racism and discrimination. We identified interventions we could make in our current practice, discussed a possible Ohio ballot initiative which would declassify some drug related charged to misdemeanors, and learned how to help people register to vote.

If this is a topic of interest you may want to consider reading one of the books we read as part of an earlier group discussion, The New Jim Crow. Other recommendations include Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. If you are more of a move person, consider The House I Live In (on PBS) and Time: The Kalief Browder Story (a 6 episode documentary series produced by Jay Z).

If you have interest, our next meeting is a book group. We will be reading Evicted, which follows 8 families trying to maintain housing in the 21st century city. The author, Matthew Desmond, will also be speaking locally on this increasingly common problem for our clinic population.