All posts by Dr. Michael Forster

State Senator John Polk of Hattiesburg would like to raise expectations for anyone receiving public assistance of any kind.  Specifically, he’s proposing stiff requirements for random drug testing and mandatory community service for people on the dole.

The senator deserves the benefit of doubt regarding his intentions to help, not hurt, public assistance recipients, so let’s give it to him.  At the same time, I would urge Mr. Polk to pay close attention to the possible, indeed likely, unintended negative consequences of his proposed policies.  There are at least three:

• Cost to taxpayers – Drug testing in particular is an expensive proposition.  Is self-funding of a testing program through public assistance savings realistic?
• Regulatory expansion – The new requirements wouldn’t execute themselves.  In addition to oversight of a testing program, who will manage referrals of recipients to community service agencies?   And what happens when problems develop, disputes and appeals need to be resolved, and so on?  Making it all work means government growth, something Republicans generally abhor.
• Misplaced blame – Programs like drug-testing and mandatory work typically lump together “worthy” and “unworthy” poor, and skate dangerously close to the thin ice of “blaming the victim.”  Are people on assistance because they want to be, or because high unemployment rates, poor health, mental illness, or some other damaging life circumstance makes subsistence living their only option?

A far better investment of scarce state resources, it seems, would be enhanced case management services by professional social workers that could weed out malingerers and the “professionally poor” who defraud the system, while providing skilled support to those who genuinely need (and deserve, I would argue) a “hand up,” as well as a “handout.”

So far, so good.  Governor Bryant clearly means to be a champion for improving Mississippi’s health. 

A Thursday article in the Clarion-Ledger pointed to a number of new initiatives and focus areas, including:

• “Eat Healthy Mississippi,” a USDA-funded effort to improve eating habits and promote locally grown food.
• A governor-sponsored annual 5K race to promote regular exercise habits.
• Planning for improved medical facilities in synergistic “zones” or “corridors.”
• Inducements for physicians to practice in underserved areas of the state.

We can expect the conservative Bryant (and presumably the majority Republican legislature) to feature personal responsibility as a factor in improving the state’s health profile.  And no doubt individual decision-making is a central component of any comprehensive approach. 

It’s not the only one, however, and arguably not even the most important one, in affecting behavior at a population level.  Smart policy – policy that makes the right choice the easy choice, to paraphrase state public health officer Mary Currier – is at least as prominent a factor.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen an editorial or heard a politician or business leader touting quality education as the indispensible prerequisite of our poor state’s advance.  It wouldn’t do much for my retirement portfolio, perhaps, but it just might cover my Starbucks expenses for a year or so.

Yesterday morning it was the Clarion-Ledger’s editorial turn (as reprinted in the Hattiesburg American) to fly the education flag, in this case featuring the policy recommendations of “Blueprint Mississippi,” a report of the Mississippi Economic Council.

Among other things, Mississippi needs, says Blueprint, an early childhood education system, better pay for teachers, and more rigorous preparation of educators.  IHL commissioner Hank Bounds, who chaired the Blueprint effort, contributes the pivotal punch line – “If you want to improve the economy in this state, then the first thing you have to do is improve education.”  No points for novelty, perhaps, but right on the money.

Now let’s see if the new crop of policy makers in Jackson heeds the education message any better than their predecessors have.

Tomorrow will be a truly extraordinary day for the School of Nursing, the College of Health, and Southern Miss.  At 11 a.m., President Saunders will announce the official start of an $8 million private fundraising campaign to help construct a new nursing building, and a single, strikingly generous gift that will take us halfway to that goal. Not a bad way to kick off the spring semester!

Once completed, the 86,000-sq.-ft., three-story, $31 million facility will allow Southern Miss to make a great leap forward in nursing education and community engagement.  The current facility is crimping enrollments and instructional capacity.  The new one will permit up to a 45% expansion in student numbers, and will feature state-of-the-art clinical simulation and computer labs, side-by-side with electronically-enhanced classroom, conference, office, and informal interactive space.

The new building will solidify and significantly advance Southern Miss’ growing reputation as both a practical and visionary leader in nursing and the health-related professions generally.  It could hardly come at a more opportune time, when Mississippi’s and the region’s needs for health care and wellness promotion seem to grow more acute by the day.

Judging by press accounts, the most popular adjective for Martin Luther King’s well-known 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech is “iconic.”  It sounds great – “iconic.”  But the problem with icons is that they tend to become frozen and context-free, and thereby mask more than illuminate the complex realities they reflect. 

There’s no doubt that King cherished the vision of black and white children living and playing together, judged by “the content of their character” rather than the “color of their skin.”  And there’s no more doubt that King was unwaveringly committed to non-violent means of realizing the dream. 

But King harbored no illusions that the vision of a just American society would be achieved without protracted struggle and challenge to prevailing structures of injustice and violence.  Non-violence was linked to love – “agape” love, reflecting God’s active and unconditional love for mankind, and not sentimental love.  Love in turn was inseparable from justice, with direct action and civil disobedience serving as essential elements of the process of healing a radically unjust society. 

Forty-four years after King’s murder, pursuit of the elusive dream continues.  Remembrances are fond of noting that great progress has been made, albeit perhaps not enough.  Certainly the latter observation is true.  While every American in every region of the country now has a right to sit at the lunch counter, fewer and fewer, it seems, can afford the lunch (or housing, or health care, or a secure retirement, or a high-quality education…). 

King himself recognized that political equality without economic justice was insufficient.  Unfortunately, this part of his “iconic” teaching is too frequently forgotten.