Karen Johnson-Webb's guest appearances

Karen Johnson-Webb

BG Ideas

Shannon Orr

Charles Kanwischer

Jerry Reed

Tim Davis

Rachel Rickard

Mona Hanna-Attisha

Maurice Cherry

Nicole Jackson

Rick Valicenti

Lauren Salisbury

Sheri Wells-Jensen

Amy Fiedler

Taylor Simone

Linda Butler

Lynn Whitney

OwlTail

Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha , the pediatrician whose press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb, associate professor of geography at BGSU, whose research includes racial disparities in health, discuss environmental racism and the Flint water crisis.     Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today we're joined by Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb. Dr Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician who's press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis. She's the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Johnson-Webb is an associate professor of geography at BGSU. Her research includes racial disparities in health. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Thanks for joining me today. Mona Hanna-Attisha: It's great to be with you. Karen Johnson-Webb: Thanks for having me. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Mona you played an important role in alerting the public about the Flint water crisis and advocating for the city's residents. Can you begin to just tell our audience how you began practicing medicine in Flint and how that led into your involvement in the water crisis? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah, so I first got a flavor of medicine in Flint as a medical student. So I went to Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine and it's actually the first community based medical school. So the medical school is founded to really kind of serve the rest of the state, and Flint was one of its original campuses. So as a medical student over 20 plus years ago I was in Flint for my clinical training and that's where I really fell in love with the city and I fell in love with the discipline of pediatrics. I then went to Detroit for about 10 plus years to do my residency at the Children's Hospital in Michigan. And then in 2011 I had this amazing opportunity to come back to Flint to give back to the city that really gave me so much and to serve as their pediatric residency director, which means I got to oversee the training of future pediatricians. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Okay. How did you first learn about the possibility of elevated lead levels in Flint's water supply? Mona Hanna-Attisha: So I learned about the issue of lead kind of late in the story. So in April of 2014 Flint changed their water source from the great lakes, which we had been getting for over half a century to the Flint River. And this was done while we were under kind of state appointed emergency management and it was all about saving money. So that happened in April of 2014 and there was kind of concerns from the very beginning about things like color and odor and taste and bacteria. And throughout this time all the people in power said everything was okay. So I was telling my patients for about a year and a half when they came in with concerns about the water, that everything was okay because all these really important scientists were saying everything was okay. But that all changed when I heard about the possibility of lead in the water. And that happened in

Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha , the pediatrician whose press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb, associate professor of geography at BGSU, whose research includes racial disparities in health, discuss environmental racism and the Flint water crisis.   Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today we're joined by Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb. Dr Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician who's press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis. She's the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Johnson-Webb is an associate professor of geography at BGSU. Her research includes racial disparities in health. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Thanks for joining me today. Mona Hanna-Attisha: It's great to be with you. Karen Johnson-Webb: Thanks for having me. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Mona you played an important role in alerting the public about the Flint water crisis and advocating for the city's residents. Can you begin to just tell our audience how you began practicing medicine in Flint and how that led into your involvement in the water crisis? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah, so I first got a flavor of medicine in Flint as a medical student. So I went to Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine and it's actually the first community based medical school. So the medical school is founded to really kind of serve the rest of the state, and Flint was one of its original campuses. So as a medical student over 20 plus years ago I was in Flint for my clinical training and that's where I really fell in love with the city and I fell in love with the discipline of pediatrics. I then went to Detroit for about 10 plus years to do my residency at the Children's Hospital in Michigan. And then in 2011 I had this amazing opportunity to come back to Flint to give back to the city that really gave me so much and to serve as their pediatric residency director, which means I got to oversee the training of future pediatricians. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Okay. How did you first learn about the possibility of elevated lead levels in Flint's water supply? Mona Hanna-Attisha: So I learned about the issue of lead kind of late in the story. So in April of 2014 Flint changed their water source from the great lakes, which we had been getting for over half a century to the Flint River. And this was done while we were under kind of state appointed emergency management and it was all about saving money. So that happened in April of 2014 and there was kind of concerns from the very beginning about things like color and odor and taste and bacteria. And throughout this time all the people in power said everything was okay. So I was telling my patients for about a year and a half when they came in with concerns about the water, that everything was okay because all these really important scientists were saying everything was okay. But that all changed when I heard about the possibility of lead in the water. And that happened in

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb: Environmental Racism and Community Advocacy