Building healthy lives and getting results Ohio Health Director at The City Club of Cleveland

CLEVELAND: Alvin D. Jackson, M.D., who begins his tenure as director of the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) on June 1, 2007, will speak about his holistic approach to health care at noon on Wednesday, June 13, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland.

Jackson believes that patients should be partners with their physicians in maintaining good health and charting courses of treatment when needed. Patient education and disease prevention are among his top priorities as he builds relationships with Ohio’s local health departments and other health care providers.

Jackson was formerly with Community Health Services in Fremont, OH, where he provided primary medical care to rural residents and migrant workers since 1993 and served as medical director since 1995. He was also chief of staff of Fremont Memorial Hospital (2003-05) and a staff physician at the Sandusky County Health Department.

In 1995, Jackson and his wife, Gayle, founded the African-American College Club to tutor and encourage students of color to attend college, and he helped launch the mentoring group Brother to Brother to steer young African American males away from guns, alcohol and drugs. In September 2005, Jackson and his medical team took their mobile clinic to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to assist with the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief.

Jackson won Pfizer’s Ohio Quality Care award (2000), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Clinician award (2001) for his dedication to the nation's migrant farm workers, and Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership award (2001).

This program, in partnership with the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland, is sponsored by Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine Health System.

Tickets for this City Club Special Program are $15 for members and $25 for non-members. Lunch is included.

The Cradle to Prison Crisis

Marian Wright Edelman at The City Club of Cleveland

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), will speak about the work of the CDF to dismantle the prison pipeline crisis that is devastating the United States’s low-income Black and Latino communities, at noon on Friday, June 15, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland.

Every year, tens of thousands of poor children are funneled into the prison pipeline, and down life paths that often lead to arrest, conviction, incarceration and even death. The architecture of this pipeline often comprises a complex set of factors that includes poverty, race, lack of quality early childhood education, low-performing schools, lack of access to health and mental health care, broken child welfare and juvenile justice systems, struggling families and depressed communities, and a toxic youth culture.

Edelman, an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life, began her career in the mid-60s when she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to D.C., as counsel for the Poor People’s Campaign. She founded the Washington Research Project and served as the director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University for two years before founding CDF in 1973.

Edelman has received more than 100 honorary degrees and many awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings, which include eight books.

This Friday Forum is in partnership with the Cleveland Bar Association and The Cuyahoga County Bar Association in celebration of Bar Association Law Day.

Tickets for this City Club Friday Forum are $18 for members and $30 for non-members. Lunch is included. Reservations are required within 24 hours of the event.

All tickets can be purchased by calling The City Club at 216.621.0082 or visiting the website at www.cityclub.org.