Out in the Rural: A Mississippi Health Center and Its War on Poverty - Hardcover

Ward Jr., Thomas J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190624620 ISBN 13: 9780190624620

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Out in the Rural is the unlikely story of the Tufts-Delta Health Center, which in 1966 opened in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, to become the first rural community health center in the United States. It is also the unlikely story of the health center's founder, Dr. H. Jack Geiger, a former teenage runaway who through a serendipitous turn of events was befriended and taken in by actor and Harlem Renaissance icon Canada Lee. Geiger's personal history brings a profound human element to what was accomplished deep in the Mississippi Delta: in addition to providing medical care, the staff of the Tufts-Delta Health Center worked upstream to address the fundamental determinants of health -- factors such as education, poverty, nutrition, and the environment -- and ask the question "What does it take to stay healthy?" Equal parts social history and personal history, Out in the Rural is a story of both community health and of a stranger's kindness paid forward.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas J. Ward is the chair of the History Department at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. A native of Annapolis, Maryland, he earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the author of numerous works on both African-American history and the history of health care, including his first book, Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South. He lives in Spanish Fort, Alabama with his wife and three sons.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0190624620
• ISBN 13: 9780190624620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224