Media Advisory: UB to host documentary and panel discussion on health care

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo, along with universities throughout the country engaged in the national conversation on health care, will screen the documentary, “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare,” from 3-4:30 p.m. on Sept. 17 in 100 Allen Hall, South Campus.

The event will begin at 2:30 p.m. with light refreshments. A panel discussion by members of Western New York’s health leadership will take place after the film, from 4:30-5 p.m.

The audience will be students, faculty and staff from UB primarily from the health sciences. The screening is not open to the public.

The panel will be moderated by Philip Glick, MD, MBA, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The panel participants are:

• Erin Campbell, MD, MPH student and chief resident in preventive medicine
• Michael W. Cropp, MD, MBA, president and CEO of Independent Health
• Karl D. Fiebelkorn MBA, RPH, associate dean of student affairs and professional relations in pharmacy practice in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Jeffery Grace, MD, clinical director of the Buffalo Psychiatric Center
• Camille P. Wicher, PhD, Esq, RN, vice president for clinical operations, corporate ethics and research subject protections, Roswell Park Cancer Institute
• Gregory Young, MD, associate commissioner of health for Western New York from the New York State Department of Health

Michael Cain, MD, UB vice president for health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, says, “This event brings together leaders from Western New York health care with UB faculty, students and community partners to engage in dialog and explore, in an interprofessional, collaborative and experiential manner, potential solutions to the challenges we face in achieving quality and equitable health care for all.”

The documentary addresses current U.S. health care issues such as:

• An entrenched system – pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals and insurance companies that profit on declining health
• Overmedication – U.S. health consumers spend roughly $300 billion annually on pharmaceutical drugs, nearly as much as the rest of world combined.
• Overtreatment – one of the hardest things for U.S. health consumers to understand is that more doesn’t necessarily mean better.
• Paying more, getting less – while the U.S. pays more, we often have worse health outcomes
• Preventing disease – 75 percent of health care costs go to treating diseases that are largely preventable
• Reimbursement – the health care system often uses a fee-for-service model of payment
• Treating the whole person – your body isn’t a car, but that’s how it’s treated when you take it to the doctor’s office – fixing broken parts one by one

Questions may be submitted in advance for the panel discussion through the School of Public Health and Health Professions’ Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/sphhp or its Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/UBCommunity using hashtags: #escapefire or #escapefireub.

The afternoon’s events are sponsored by the UB Office of Interprofessional Education, the School of Public Health and Health Professions Office of Public Health Practice, the School of Management, the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the AMA Medical Student Section and Physicians for Human Rights.

Media arrangements: Contact Sara R. Saldi in UB’s Office of University Communications at 716-645-4593 or saldi@buffalo.edu.