Note to editors and news producers: T.R. Reid is available the week of Nov. 3 for phone interviews. There will also be time slots during his two-day visit for interviews. Contact Kim Eaton (UA Media Relations, 808/640-5912) to receive a copy of the agenda and arrange for an interview.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — T.R. Reid, a Washington Post journalist and author of the best-selling book “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care,” will give a community talk at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Tuscaloosa River Market.
Reid’s talk, “Better Health, Lower Costs: One Man’s Global Quest to Fix a Bum Shoulder,” is hosted by The University of Alabama’s College of Community Health Sciences, College of Communication and Information Sciences and Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration.
The talk is free and open to the public. Continuing Medical Education will be provided, and a book signing will follow.
Reid’s 2009 New York Times best-seller, “The Healing of America,” which details how other industrialized countries provide health care for all of their citizens at a reasonable cost, launched him into a national role in describing ways to provide health coverage for all Americans.
“His work really gets at the underlying systems issues in our health care – the high costs and poor outcomes,” said Dr. Richard Streiffer, dean of UA’s College of Community Health Sciences.
The College educates medical students and resident physicians and is a major provider of health care in West Alabama through the University Medical Center, which it operates. Streiffer said Reid can help continue the dialogue locally about how to improve the health care system.
“As a College, our focus is on primary care, on partnering with communities to improve health and on helping to address the inequities and workforce shortages in rural and other underserved populations,” Streiffer said. “We want to help move Alabama along the journey toward improved health care delivery and, ultimately, improved health equity, access, status and improved overall population health.”
As a Washington Post reporter, Reid covered Congress and four presidential campaigns. He served as the newspaper’s bureau chief in Tokyo and London. He has reported from four dozen countries on five continents.
Reid is a commentator on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and has made documentary films for National Geographic Television, PBS and the A&E Network.
His latest film, “U.S. Health Care: The Good News,” premiered on the national PBS network in 2012 and is still being broadcast by local PBS affiliates. In the film, Reid travels the United States studying communities that provide high-quality health care at far below average costs.
PBS’s “Frontline” made two documentaries following Reid as he did reporting for “The Healing of America.”
In “Sick Around the World,” Reid visited five industrialized democracies seeking to learn how they provide high-quality health care for their populations while spending half as much on medical costs as the United States does. In “India – A Second Opinion,” he studied ancient Indian medicine.
Reid has written nine books in English and three in Japanese.
During his two-day visit to Tuscaloosa, Reid will also speak to journalism and medical students and faculty, as well as participate in a panel discussion with researchers from the College of Community Health Sciences and the College of Communication and Information Sciences.
Contact
Kim Eaton, UA media relations, 808/640-5912 or kkeaton@ur.ua.edu