Premier Inc, a healthcare company headquartered in Charlotte, NC sent us to the south side of Chicago. Our mission was to document the community benefits of Mobile Care, otherwise known as the asthma van. A traveling RV visits elementary schools coordinating with local hospitals to deliver asthma control medication and checkup on at-risk patients.
The American Lung Association has given the neighborhoods of South Chicago an F grade for air quality. 25-30% of children have exacerbated asthma as a result of the particulate matter in the air.
The truly astounding metrics are that kids who once were missing 25+ days of school now only miss one or two in a year due to asthma. The Asthma Van brought emergency room visits from 700 down to only 100 over the course of three years. This saves the hospital money and benefits the community and quality of life of inner city kids.
I opened the piece with a drone shot of the community next to large petroleum and coal refineries. It should hammer home the idea that the air is terrible. Just working there for two days, we found ourselves coughing.
It’s good to see a community outreach project providing such successful healthcare.
The above Mobile Care video was for the winner of the Premier Cares Award, an honor for community agencies and health organizations that support people excluded from, or underserved by, the mainstream health delivery system.
The runners up were also represented by videos we produced. One was a suicide prevention clinic in rural Idaho. Another is a teen empowerment program in Washington DC helping young mothers. It was rewarding to visit and learn about the programs and meet the people serving these communities. The Idaho trip stands out because it was our first time ever visiting let alone filming inside a jail.
Suicide Prevention Clinic in Idaho:
Teen Mother Empowerment Program in Washington DC:
These projects were completed under the confident guidance and direction of Tyler LaCross and Ron Randle of Premier Inc. Tyler second shot and produced. He and Ron consulted the transcript to determine what sound bites of our hours of interviews would make it into the finished pieces. the above videos were used at the Breakthroughs 2017 Conference in Washington DC.
