Focus Magazine
Nov/December 2006 (Vol. 34/No. 6)
Q & A: Better Health Through Stronger Communities: An Interview with Dr. Gail C. Christopher
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Focus: What compelled you to ask Ronald Dellums to chair the Commission?
Dr. Christopher: I knew that we needed an African American male leader with national stature and demonstrated commitment to improving the health outcomes of all people. Former Congressman Dellums’ exemplary record in Congress included bold leadership on health issues and it encompassed responsibilities in the area of our nation’s security. As chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Dellums (who is now Mayor-elect of Oakland) demonstrated the type of bi-partisan, strategic leadership this Commission would require. We were extremely honored and gratifi ed when he accepted our invitation.
Focus: What in your current or past work drew you toward the issues on which the Commission is focused?
Dr. Christopher: Th ree primary areas of my career came together in this work. First, I recognized the centrality of institutionalized, structural, and individual racism in the life experience of people of color in the U.S. back in the 1970s when I had a large private health care practice in Chicago. I also directed the Family Resource Coalition of America and worked in the fi eld of child welfare and family support. I gained fi rst-hand insights into the problems of minority youth and families who became part of the child welfare system. Community-based family resource and support initiatives are sorely needed. That work led me to develop a multi-cultural education program and curriculum and training materials for our nation’s educators of kindergarten through collegiate levels. The program is called Americans All. Of course, my work in Government Innovation and Reinvention helped me to know, at a heart level, that change in policy and practice can come from a deeper understanding of the issues. Finally, I have a young adult son. His entire life, I’ve worked to mitigate, and to teach him how to mitigate, the effect of a society that would limit his life options because he is African American.
Focus: What do you think the Commission will accomplish?
Dr. Christopher: Th e Commission will help the Joint Center Health Policy Institute (HPI) achieve its mission of “igniting a fair health movement that gives people of color the inalienable right to equal opportunity for healthy lives” because it is focused on the inequality, the unfair dynamics of policies that have had a cumulative eff ect of limiting life options for young men of color. Racial disparities that have a disproportionate impact on persons of color are greatest among men of color. From the lowest life expectancy to the poorest oral health, men suff er disproportionately poor health outcomes and are therefore less available as assets, as partners—indeed as anchors—for families and communities. Th e Commission will provide a comprehensive, yet laser-like focus on opportunities for leveraging change in specific policies and practices. For example, the now well-documented cradle-to-prison pipeline is soldered at critical decision points in the criminal justice system. Police officers, sheriff s, and prosecutors can make a tremendous difference in individual
and group outcomes if their decisions and their discretion were better informed and,
indeed, more humane. Juveniles should be responded to as developing human beings— age appropriately—not as adults. This is one of many opportunities for more appropriate decision making.
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