PARTICIPANTS:
Fenell Doremus - Producer, COOKED: Survival by Zip Code
Judith Helfand - Director/Producer, COOKED: Survival by Zip Code
Dr. Linda Rae Murray, M.D. MPH, F.A.C.P. - Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Illinois School of Public Health
Orrin Williams - Food Systems Coordinator, Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion
MODERATOR:
Pamela Sherrod Anderson - Award-winning writer, filmmaker, playwright, journalist and educator
Pamela Sherrod Anderson - Award-winning writer, filmmaker, playwright, journalist and educator
She is the Creative Committee co-chair on the board of Kartemquin Films and a graduate of Community Film Workshop’s and Kartemquin Films’ Diverse Voices in Documentary program, where she developed The G Force documentary on the challenges of grandparents raising grandchildren. The G Force, an audience favorite at the Black Harvest Film Festival, made its debut at the Gene Siskel Film Center last August and kicked off this year’s Chicago Public Library’s Best of Black Harvest summer film series. Her first feature-length documentary, The Curators of Dixon School, was shown at the Siskel in 2012, voted Best Feature by audiences at the Black Harvest Film Festival, received three-out-of-four star praise from film critic Roger Ebert, and was a selection for the New Teachers Conference sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Pamela’s stage plays have been produced at Transient Theater. As a journalist, she has been an editor, reporter, photographer and features staff writer at national and international publications including the Chicago Tribune and United Press International. She has been a contributing writer to Essence Magazine and to the book, “Black Women’s Health: Speaking for Ourselves.” She also has contributed to the White House years research for the Emmy-awarded WTTW-TV documentary, “Paper Trail: The First 100 Years of the Chicago Defender.” As an educator, she teaches in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University, and in the Chicago Housing Authority and DePaul University Teen Girls summer filmmaking program.
Dr. Linda Rae Murray, M.D. MPH, F.A.C.P. - Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Illinois School of Public Health
Dr. Murray has spent her career serving the medically under served. She has worked in a variety of settings including practicing Occupational Medicine at a Workers Clinic in Canada, Residency Director for Occupational Medicine at Meharry Medical College, and Bureau Chief for the Chicago Department of Health under Mayor Harold Washington. Dr. Murray worked as Medical Director of the federally funded health center, Winfield Moody, serving Cabrini Green Public Housing Project in Chicago. Dr. Murray has been an active member of a wide range of local and national organizations including serving as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Board of Directors of Trinity Health ( a large Catholic Health system).
In 1997 Dr. Murray returned to the Cook County Health System where she served as Chief Medical Officer - Primary Care for the twenty three primary care and community health centers comprising the Ambulatory & Community Health Network of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services; and as an attending physician in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Cook County Hospital. The Cook County Health and Hospitals System is one of the nation’s largest public system of medical care and operates two hospitals, the public health department for suburban Cook County, health services a County Jail and the network of health Centers (ACHN) operated by the County. Dr. Murray has worked in leadership roles in many public health organizations including NACCHO’s (National Association of City & County Health Officers) Health Equity and Social Justice Team, the national executive board of APHA. During 2011 she served as President of the American Public Health Association. In December 2014, she retired from her position as the Chief Medical officer for the Cook County Department of Public Health of the Cook County Health & Hospital System , the PHAB accredited and state certified public health department for suburban Cook County. In December 2018 Dr. Murray stopped seeing patients as a voluntary attending in Internal Medicine ending over forty years of clinical practice.
Today she serves as an Honorary Attending of Cook County Health and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health (Occupational & Environmental Health and Health Policy & Administration Departments). She serves on many local and national boards including the Chicago based Health and Medicine Policy Research Group; and chairs the board for the National Collaborative for Health Equity. She remains passionate about increasing the number of Black and Latino health professionals and serves on the Urban Health Program Community Advisory Committee at the University of Illinois. Dr. Murray is devoting the rest of her career to being an enthusiastic full time trouble maker. She has been a voice for social justice and health as a basic human right for over fifty years.
Orrin Williams - Food Systems Coordinator, Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion
Orrin Williams is the Food Systems Coordinator who joined the Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion in July of 2015. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Northeastern Illinois University in December of 1983. As the Food Systems Coordinator Orrin will be seeking partnerships with various segments of the food system such as community gardens and urban farms to promote CPHP program interventions. He has been an advocate for urban agriculture, food security, and food access and food sovereignty for over 25 years.
Currently, under development are curricula and research on container vegetable gardening as a means to increase food access, lower food costs, and mitigating potential food emergencies via self-sufficiency and interdependent gardening.
Orrin has also been active in the environmental justice movement for decades. He has contributed a chapter entitled, “Food and Justice: The Critical Link to Healthy Communities” in Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement Edited by David N. Pellow and Robert J. Brulle MIT Press 2005, linking food policy on many levels to environmental justice among other writings.
Orrin is currently writing a series of essays for a book to be published in 2019 entitled “The Spirits Told Me to Tell You”.