BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - One of the foremost authors and researchers on the psychological impact of community upheaval and minority displacement, Mindy Fullilove, M.D., will present a free lecture at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at noon Wednesday, Oct. 14 in the Hill University Center Alumni Auditorium, 1400 University Blvd.
Hosted by UAB's School of Public Health, the talk will be the seventh Carole W. Samuelson Endowed Lectureship in Public Health Practice. For more information call 934-4993.
Fullilove's lecture, titled "Earnest Thompson's Organizing: Lessons in Building People's Power," examines the central role of coalition-building in empowering minorities and the benefits to families, communities and cities that result from assessing the needs of the working class using programmatic thinking.
Fullilove's 1976 book Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People's Power pays tribute to her late father Ernest Thompson, a noted community organizer who helped found the National Negro Labor Council in 1951. Homeboy tells the story of citizens living in the New Jersey township of Orange who struggled against apathy and crime to improve the educational, economical and psychosocial realities of their community. Thompson died in 1971; his alliance-building and minority-empowerment ideas and practices are legendary.
Fullilove also is the best-selling author of Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It. She is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University in New York. She has conducted research with AIDS patients and the chronically ill and offered leading-edge insight into the relationship between poverty, disenfranchisement and mental health.
The Samuelson Lectureship was established by the School of Public Health in 2002 in honor of Carole Samuelson, M.D., a former Jefferson County health officer. It is a tribute to Samuelson's courage, tenacity and leadership in promoting high-quality health and educational services to the public and honors Samuelson for her outstanding service through years of devoted commitment to the county Department of Health and many other community and statewide health organizations.
About the UAB School of Public Health
The UAB School of Public Health is a community of scholars and professionals working and teaching in varied arenas of public health with the goal of fostering research and best practices crucial to the health of our nation and its peoples. The school offers more than 20 areas of study and manages dozens of research and community-service centers.