The Long View

This, unfortunately, is the season for despair for far too many people in our country. We have the recent health policy and population health news that, for the third year in a row, life expectancy in the United States is going down. Our overall life expectancy began to stagnate in the 1980s, then decline for certain groups, and more recently to decline more broadly. (see: “‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates” by Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, November 26, 2019)

And, as researchers point out, this decline cannot be blamed solely on the opioid epidemic. Neither can it be blamed on Democrats or Republicans. Diseases and deaths of despair in our country are something we are all responsible for, what we all can do something about.

History teaches us to take a long view. History training, in the words of one of my favorite contemporary British historians, David Hitchcock, is also “empathy training among other things.”

Recently, I have had the pleasure of immersing myself in the oral history interviews I have conducted with a variety of people working and living at the intersection of homelessness and health in Seattle-King County. You can view the names and photographs of the people I have interviewed so far for my Skid Road project, as well as a few videos, here.

As an antidote to despair, I offer you an excerpt from my interview with one of my mentors, the social worker and civic engagement teacher Nancy Amidei. This interview was conducted on June 16, 2015 at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle. This was her response to my question of what gives her hope for the future:

“I’m old enough to be able to say that when I graduated from college, there was no Medicare, there was no Medicaid, there was no Head Start, there was no WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] program. Food stamps was a pilot demonstration project in seven counties. What else? Oh, school lunch was only in the schools that could afford it, only the rich schools. There was no senior nutrition program. There was no American with Disabilities Act. There was no Civil Rights Act. There was no Voting Rights Act. Oh, there were no women in professional sports because there was no Title IX.

So, if I had to guess, I think all of those things passed within maybe twenty years from when I graduated. Well, if you had lived through that kind of change and you’ve seen that happen–and most of that is stuff that helps people who are not rich, who are not powerful. Food stamp recipients are not rich and powerful. Welfare moms are not rich and powerful. We can do things in this country, and you don’t have to be rich and powerful to make it happen. But you do have to vote, and you do have to pay attention to who’s in office. You do have to pay attention to the candidates. And you do have to speak up.”