NEWS

Town hall meeting focuses on plight of uninsured

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School will host a town hall meeting on "Covering the Uninsured" Tuesday (March 25) at 6 p.m. in the Maurice J. Koury Auditorium.

The event, free to the public, seeks to raise awareness of the plight that 41 million Americans face: living without health insurance.

The town hall meeting will feature a panel of experts who will discuss the issue of the uninsured and answer questions from the audience. The moderator will be Dr. Hugh Tilson, senior adviser to the dean of the UNC School of Public Health.

Panelists will include:

· N.C. Sen. William Purcell (D-Anson, Richmond, Scotland and Stanly counties).

· Dr. John Callahan, former assistant secretary for management and budget for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

· Dr. Bill Roper, dean of the UNC School of Public Health and former director of the U.S. Centers for Control and Prevention.

· Dr. Jonathan Oberlander, professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s department of social medicine.

· Gina Upchurch, executive director of Senior PHARMAssist.

· Andy Hartsfield, vice president of public policy and advocacy for GlaxoSmithKline.

The meeting was organized by first-year master of business administration student Andres Rodriguez.

"Covering the Uninsured" is a national campaign sponsored by a coalition of nonprofit organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to national health and health care.

"Making Every Week ‘Cover the Uninsured’ Week" is the focus of the UNC School of Public Health’s annual Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture Wednesday (March 26). Foard Day activities begin at 3:30 p.m. with a variety of events running concurrently, concluding with the Foard Lecture by Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

All events will be held at Kenan-Flagler’s McColl Building and the Kenan Center.

For information on the town hall meeting, contact Rodriguez at (919) 945-1485 or andres_rodriguez@unc.edu. For more information on the Foard Day events, click see UNC News Release No. 150.

To read more about the national "Covering the Uninsured" campaign, click on www.coveringtheuninsured.org.

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Kenan-Flagler Business School contact: Kim Weaver Spurr, (919) 962-8951 or spurrk@unc.edu