Hear From the Author Who Wrote the New Book Peace & Health

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

Marianne O’Hare: Welcome to Conversations on Health Care. This week , veteran
journalist Thalia Assuras interviews author Charles Barber on his new
book “ Peace & Health , ” about our co - host, Mark Maselli ’s half century
quest to address health inequity.

Charl es Barber: It's the story of a 20 - year - old who bands together with kind of a
motley crew of people in Middletown in the early 70s and the kind of
improbable journey that is now a major national healthcare provider.

Marianne O’Hare: Now, here's your guest h ost Thalia Assuras with Charlie Barber.

[Music]

Thalia Assuras: Hello, everyone. A half century ago, a group of small town activists
and students in Middletown, Connecticut, set out to change health
care. This was daring, it was radical , and it was profoun dly just . That is
the description that you'll find in this new book, Peace & Health , the
history of the Community Health Center , Incorporated. It's written by
Charlie Barber . He is a writer in residence at Wesleyan University. He's
a renowned author of non fiction books, and you will have read his
writing in places such as the Washington Post and The New York
Times . Charlie , welcome to Conversations on Health Care .

Charles Barber: Thank you , Thalia .
th
Thalia Assuras: You know, hitting a 50 anniversary is a b ig milestone, and I had the
opportunity to speak with Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter about
that accomplishment on a previous program. But now a book, why a
book and who's going to pick it up?

Charles Barber: One of the reviewers of the book said, “ It r eads like a novel, but it's all
true. ” It's the story of a 20 - year - old, who's a college dropout, who
bands together with a group of kind of a motley crew of people in
Middletown in the early 70s. They include a pharmacist , business
person, a leader of the African - American spiritual community, another
college student at Wesleyan , who becomes a U . S . S enator, a former
jazz musician who has kind of fallen on hard times, and then later a
nurse practitioner. They all rally around this cry of health care as a
righ t and not a privilege, which is sort of a radical idea now and
certainly back then. So , I wanted to tell the story of how they pulled it
off and the kind of improbable journey that is now a major national
healthcare provider.

Thalia Assuras: You talk about a lot of different people in there and wondering how it
is that they actually got together, that's really hard to do, especially
when you think about the tumultuous times we're in now. I'm
wondering at the same time, if you think it could happen now.

Char les Barber: I teach at Wesleyan and Mark cam e to my class, and Mark explained
the origin story of him as a 20 - year - old and starting a clinic that

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

looked like it was out of Haight - Ashbury with beads hanging down ,
and it was a substance - use counseling center and a place for draft
counseling against the Vietnam War. Then he found a new site and
built it by hand with a kind of edgy carpenter and this was sort of the
first two years and then they were shut down by the power base in
Middletown. The students, my s tudents said, you could never do this
now. There'd be so many things that would get in your way and Mark
said, “ Absolutely not, you can do it now. ” I'm here to tell you that this
story can be done now , but Mark would say it's the rallying around an
idea an d having a big tent to get members of the community that
represent different interests to come together and that's how you do
it and you can do that now or in 1972.

Thalia Assuras: But Mark is the one who is the magnet, really? What was it and what
is it i n his personality that brought all these people together?

Charles Barber: Part of it's just a work ethic, I mean, just a flat out work ethic. He was
profoundly inspired by this idea that health care is a right, and not a
privilege , and even as a 20 - year - ol d, I think inspired by the Civil Rights
Movement and then later he had personal connections with Desmond
Tutu and with the Dalai Lama. He was just profoundly inspired to kind
of to inspire change at a local level and it's remarkable because he
doesn't come from a healthcare background and he had dropped out
of college and I think it was a profound sense of social justice and he
talks about his mother taking Mark and his brother to Mississippi in
the early 60s and him being shocked as a young kid by the pove rty. It
was a seismic thing for him. I think it was maybe seven years old. 10
years later, he shocked to find the same level of poverty in the
African - American community in Middletown. One of the principal
drivers of this sort of team of people that create d the Community
Health Center is in fact representative of that community who is sort
of the spiritual advisor to t he organization until her death.

Thalia Assuras: Right, so you're moving us into talking about Reba Moses, one of the
original board members, daughter of a sharecropper in the Carolinas.
Tell us more about her and her influence.

Charles Barber: I think you asked sort of how did Mark do it , I think there's this sort of
fearlessness and as a 20 - year - old just sort of walked into her
neighborhood, which was the kind of the other side of the track s
quite literally in Middletown, was a place where there was flooding in
the spring, and she would literally have to move out until the water
subsided. It was shocking to him. Then he became almost like a
me mber of her family. She was a matriarch of her community and I
think he saw her as a kind of a mother figure and a matriarch. Then
she became one of the first board members and became sort of the
conscience of the organization over many years, from her exp erience
of hardship.

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

Thalia Assuras: And actually, too, we were talking about students who were part of
the team and I believe that young John Hickenlooper helped Mark
found CHC . He's a current U . S . Senator . Tell us about that relationship.

Charles Barber: Well, they first met because Hick needed a roommate and Mark
answered an ad and they show up together and they have the same
bicycle. They become roommates, and Hickenlooper is around
Wesleyan for about 10 years. While he's going to school over the
protra cted period at Wesleyan , Mark and Hick live d together over in
many different places. Hicken looper as the sort of the budding
legislator becomes a strategic partner with Mark, and the particular
fight that they fight is with the City of Middletown around th e
allocation of HUD money, which is held back for political reasons from
the city to the early Community Health Center . This is sort of mid 70s
to early 80s , and Hickenlooper and Mark study up on the HUD regs,
Mark goes to Washington and wins the fight. Th is was essential
funding at that time and so it's Hickenlooper, who is the great friend
also supports the purchase of the first building, but he's also the
strategic advisor.

Thalia Assuras: Right, and they were part of that whole student unrest as well on
campus and around campus , and that kind of propelled them at the
same time and those around them to make up this team. Would you
say that?

Charles Barber: Absolutely. You know, it started in 1971, the prototype of the clinic of
what became the Community H ealth Center, in the tumult around the
Vietnam War, Wesleyan students went on strike against the Vietnam
War, they also decided not to go to class for a month , and so campus
essentially closed down , and Wesleyan students started hanging out
downtown and so it was Hickenlooper and a couple other Wesleyan
students that also banded together with Mark and all inspired again,
by the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti - War Movement to do
something in our backyard that sort of reflects the National Civil
Rights Mov ement.

Thalia Assuras: I'm not sure a lot of people really realize that about a U . S . Senator
from Colorado and about Mark Maselli himself who really had this
hippie look at this long ponytail, and a half the time he was had to live
with different people be cause he didn't really have a whole lot of his
own , did he?

Charles Barber: He wasn't ruthless, but he was homeless. He was crashing all over
town. He didn't have a car, he would hitchhike to Hartford to the
state capitol for meetings, beads and incense , a nd this is very much a
part of its time .

Thalia Assuras: Mark, and the others attracted a team, for example, to include Jerry
Weitzman, a local pharmacist who was also like Reba Moses, a

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

mentor to Mark . Tell us about that relationship, Jerry Weitzman.

Char les Barber: I mean, I think if you look at the two people that just made it happen,
but the two most prominent in that group are Reba and then the
other was Jerry Weitzman, who was a pharmacist. Jerry was a very
successful business person on Main Street. M ark walked into his
pharmacy one day and said, Look, I'm setting up this clinic, I have no
money. Can you do something for me? Jerry kind of said, oh, yeah,
sure. Then later that afternoon, Jerry pulled up with his station wagon
and dropped off medical equ ipment for free. Jerry became the
Chairman of the Board of Directors for , I don't know, the next 25
years, and both Reba and Jerry are 30 - 40 years older than Mark and
Jerry, among other things becomes the business advisor and also sort
of vouches for Mark because he's the liaison to the business
community and the establishment and kind of saying, Yeah, his hairs
down halfway down his back, but he's all right, and that in terms of
credibility with local community was huge.

Thalia Assuras: I want to get to Je rry's tragic death because it had an influence in
terms of the of the future as well , but let me ask about one more
character first , and that's James Moody , who was a big band musician
in the 1930s , lost all his teeth. But with CHC, he became a patient
boa rd member after help free dental care, free health care , and he
healed physically and emotionally. He paid it forward, didn’t he?

Charles Barber: He did and he's sort of one of the other members of this band , and
one of Mark's insights early on was to prov ide dental services first,
partially because the first thing they got donated was a dental chair.
Mark was thinking sort of holistically around behavioral health care
and dental care and medical care, which was pretty ahead of its time.
James was one of th e first patients . He had lost his teeth . He couldn't
play his instruments anymore. Early CHC provided him with new
teeth, which was transformational for him both physically and sort of
inserted his self image. James became again, another early board
member and the first board member who was specifically a patient ,
which lead very quickly to most of the board members, which is now
the case as we speak, being patient ’s another idea sort of 20 years
ahead of its time to have the leadership of the organization having
patient representation and James was a pioneer in that regard.

Thalia Assuras: Why was it so important for CHC to have that element?

Charles Barber: I think this is an example of Mark not having the credentials and the
formal education, not knowing the rules , and he just thinking, well,
patients know the quality of the services and what's being given to
them and their issues, but obviously better than anybody else, why
not . Mark didn’t know that this was essentially taboo. Meanwhile, 30
years later, it's now best practice in progressive organizations around
the country in healthcare that you have huge patient representation. I

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

think it's an artifact of being an outsider and just having some
common sense ideas and not knowing what you couldn't do .

Thal ia Assuras: Common sense , how about that? You brought up Jerry Weitzman died
tragically in a car accident and you quoted Mark as saying, in a very
pointed chapter, the best way to honor J erry's memor ies to go out
and do things with great love , and that's a ctually happened through
the Weitzman Institute named after Jerry, obviously . Tell us more
about that the institute and how it has taken CHC forward nationally
and internationally.

Charles Barber: Jerry died just a random insane tragedy of someone running into his
car with a wife and two friends and they were all killed , going to a
baseball game on a Friday night. This is late 90s. And Margaret Flinter,
who became the fifth member of the team, highly qualified, advanced
practice nurse, and she kind of shore d up CHC's clinical game starting
in the 80s when she joined . Margaret said about Jerry, he never
rejected a good idea , and so he was a healthcare professional who
followed the research , and so when Jerry died, Mark and Margaret
over time created a researc h institute under his name, the Weitzman
Institute, which is a now a major part of the Community Health
Center , and has really been the intellectual factory that has sprung
the organization forward nationally and is leading educational efforts
and teleheal th that's impacting more than a million lives now . Again ,
one of Mark's fundamental insights, kind of not knowing the rules, so
to speak, is an highly early embrace of technology, going back to the
70s, and collecting data, and hiring data specialists, lik e in 1975, to
look at patient needs. When Jerry dies, you know, now 30 years later
with CHC now having significant resources, Mark and Margaret found
a research institute that looks at the research and by the way, the first
F ederally qualified health cente r, the first in the country to start a
research institute and it's now led research pursuits that have
transformed the care not only in Connecticut, but all over the country.

Thalia Assuras: And in fact, F ederal funding had been a problem and many people
h ad expected the Clinton Administration to boost funding for CHC . It
didn't . That happened under the two President Bush's . How did it
happen that way?

Charles Barber: So the first President Bush signed legislation in 1990. It led to an
incredible transforma tion in health care, and what it did is it tripled
the reimbursement rate for services that the Community Health
Center and other organizations were providing . It also made drugs for
patients much more attainable. It was absolutely transformational to
this Community Health Center starting in 1990. It was a sea change . It
made them go from as worthy as what they were doing was kind of
just getting by to a viable business model , and so between 1990 and
2000, they opened 10 major new bricks and mortar clinics in cities all

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

over Connecticut, thereby setting them up to create a National
Research Institute in the 2000s.

Thalia Assuras: So let's bring us to the COVID crisis in which CHC has been prominent ,
and there are these terrific stories in the book and photog raphs about
the great efforts of CHC in vaccines and in testing . You say in the book
that CHC was made for this mo ment. What do you mean by that?

Charles Barber: Well, the moment was January 21 , so the vaccines had just come out
literally a month before te sting hundreds of thousands of people with
bodysuits and people driving up, you know, those really nightmarish
days and that had gotten the state's attention. I think the key to it was
the entrepreneurial spirit that goes back to the early days of Jerry
We itzman of having, you know, people that run businesses at the
helm of the Community Health Center. So out of that , Mark received a
call like January 8 , 2021, from the State . Mark, can you set up a mass
vaccine site on an abandoned airstrip in East Hartford , where we're
going to do maybe 2,000 to 3 , 000 vaccines a day, we're going to have
people drive in? Nobody had done this in the country at this point .
Mark says, Yes, I'll do it. When do you want it? We want it in a week,
then and this is a senior official from the Department of Public Health.
Do you want to contract? Mark said no, we'll do it without a contract ,
and Mark ’ s reasoning and he dealt with the State for 40 years . One ,
he ultimately trusted the S tate that they would make it good. Second,
he knew that if you know a contractor and lawyers got involved, it
would take six months , and the more established players like Yale
New Haven and Hartford Hospital would do it, they wouldn't do it as
quick as CHC , but they would do it.

Literally , I think 10 days later, they have this setup, a military
operation, literally with the National Guard there with 500 cones and
almost like an old toll station off of the highway people driving up and
this became the second ma ss vaccine site in the country. I think CHC
has vaccinated almost a million people against COVID at this point .
People came from half the eastern United States to this site , and it
brought the Community Health Center to a national level of
prominence . This was on the CNN and the Financial Times and the
th
Wall Street Journal , and this was almost in their 50 year anniversary .
It sort of brought home, all of the ambitions of this 20 - year - old kid,
camping out to try and find a site for his clinic that had just been shut
down , down the street, totally differ ent, but totally the same. It's an
impossible thing to do. I'm going to do it.

Thalia Assuras: Such faith and confidence that this could be done that he and his
team could absolutely do this , and I think the final tally was you said
about a million, nearly 800,000 Connecticut residents got the vaccine
through CHC and they actually got some recognition from the White
House with some Easter Eggs. Tell us that story.

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

Charles Barber: They're kind of funny story. So , Mark gets a call from the folks at the
main o ffice saying there's a big package, it's to you and it's f rom the
White House. What is it? Mark comes over and it's hundreds and
hundreds of wooden Easter Eggs that were given to 20 organizations
nationally in recognition of their COVID efforts. It was Eas ter and so
the Easter Bunny in costume at various mass vaccine sites literally
gave them out to patients. As a matter of fact, I got my vaccine that
day, and I got one of the Easter Eggs .

Thalia Assuras: What do you think is really going to inspire the rea der in picking up
this book?

Charles Barber: That idea has changed the world like Margaret Mead, and small
groups of people change the world. The Martin Luther King quote that
the arc of justice tilts towards justice. It's a slow tilt . I think in these
har d times, and I'm thinking of my college students at Wesleyan ,
they're in the middle of COVID that's destroying their college years ,
and so I think a book like Peace & Health tells the story students and a
younger generation because I think I kind of had a younger generation
in mind writing the book, the tumult in which the Community Health
Center was created Vietnam, civil rights, poverty, incredible violence
in the United States. There hasn't been that much divisiveness until
now and out of the crucible of that hatred and fear came the
Community Health Center. I think the ultimate message is you can do
it now , and as Mark said to my students, he had his backup . Mark got
the Wesleyan buildings and grounds people to install the dental, the
first dental chair to lift it up and do the platform. I know the students
are thinking that would be over social media in 10 seconds, and
everybody would get fired and Mark said to them, no, you just do
something different. You just figure it out. So the message of out of
gr eat trouble can come something like this. It was the work . They
were hippies but not really . They were organized.

John Hickenlooper, his hair was started down, started scraggly
looking, but the strategic mind of a future senator, the business mind
of a ve ry -- he was among the most successful business people in
Middletown, the spiritual mind of a sort of renowned leader in the
community of R eba Moses . They have the romantic idea of Peace &
Health , but they're workers. I think the other way that this book c an
be helpful as a roadmap of how one organizes politically and
strategically, and how one goes across the aisle, whether it's
Democrats to Republicans or 20 year olds to 50 year olds, or blacks or
Jewish folks, that you cross the aisle, and there's power in that true
diversity of differing expertise.

Thalia Assuras: Where does CHC go from here? You know it so well.

Charles Barber: If you look at the history of the C H C, it's constantly morphing, which
made writing it a challenge. Mark is famous or infamous for saying,

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

we change every two years and I literally saw that because I saw the
COVID stuff that I was talking about. Now, I'm seeing the cusp of post
COVID. I think it is and is not a healthcare organization at the end of
the day . I think it's a social t ransformation organization. I think we're
all dealing with pandemics of not just COVID but racism and
environmental crises. I think the idea of further in reach into what are
called the Social Determinants of Health , not just people's presenting
problems t o where they live, saying your zip code is more important
than your genetic code. So many of those things are what impact
people's lives and the length of their lives , and so I think, a further in
reach to the fundamental issues of what is at stake a nd wha t drives
health outcomes.

The current medical director, Veena Chanamsetty, who is another of
many stars that Community Health Center has , she sees her work as
much around the social determinants of health as health care. They
see every encounter with a pa tient not only as an opportunity to look
at their presenting problem, but to look at the environment in which
they're living , their friends, their family as a way to transform health
and health care.

Thalia Assuras: Charlie Barber , thanks for joining us , a nd the book Peace & Health is
available on www.amazon.com . It's in hardcover e - book and an audio
book version. Thank you to the audience for joining us today. You can
learn more about Conversations on Health Care and s ign up for the
email updates at www.chcradio.com . Thank you.

Charles Barber: Thank you , Thalia.

[Music]

Mark Masselli: At Conversations on Health Care, we want our audience to be truly in
the know when it comes to th e facts about health care reform and
policy. Lori Robertson is an award winning journalist and Managing
Editor of FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate
for voters that aim to reduce the level of deception in U . S . politics.
Lori, what ha ve you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: Since the 2010 - 2011 flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has recommended that everyone six months and older get
an annual flu shot with rare exceptions, including those with allergies
to th e vaccine ingredients. The CDC’s recommendation is based on
evidence that vaccination can prevent people from getting sick with
flu and reduce the severity of disease if someone does fall ill . Prior to
the COVID - 19 pandemic , the CDC estimates that on avera ge
vaccination has prevented more than five million illnesses, over
70,000 hospitalizations and 6 , 000 deaths each season. The
effectiveness of the flu vaccine varies each year, depending on how
well the strains selected for inclusion in the vaccine match t hose that

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”

ultimately circulate. Flu vaccines also tend to not work as well in older
people who are more vulnerable to severe influenza still the shot
prevent millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths each season.

In some parts of the country, particul arly in the south , flu activity is
already high. So far, it appears that this year's vaccine is a good match
for the circulating influenza strains. This year for the first time, the
CDC is recommending that people 65 years of age and older get a high
dose flu vaccine, since there is evidence that those shots may work
better than standard flu shots in that group. That's my Fact C heck for
this week. I'm Lori Robertson, Managing Editor of Fact C heck .org .

Margaret Flinter: FactCheck.org is committed to factual ac curacy from the country’s
major political players and is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy
Center at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you’d
like check, email us at www.chc.radio.com . We ’ll have FactCheck.org’s
Lori Robertson check it out for you here on Conversations on Health Care.

[Music]

Margaret Flinter: Each week Conversations highlights a bright idea about how to make
wellness a part of our communities and everyday lives. Vaccinati ons
are considered one of the great public health achievements of the
20
th
century, reducing fatalities from most common and fatal diseases
by up to 99% , but some of those numbers just aren't stacking up. As
recently as 2009, only 45% of the nation's presc hool - aged children
had received all of their recommended vaccinations and boosters.
Researchers at the Children's Outcome Research Program at
Children's Hospital in Colorado decided to take an in - depth look at the
problem.

Dr. Allison Kempe: Primary care p ractitioners are so overstretched . There are so many
competing demands that it's rather impractical , and they also require
a level of technical expertise that sometimes they don't have.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Allison Kemp e heads up the children's Outcome Re search
Program, and she conducted a study on what would help to generate
better compliance with required vaccinations. She found that when
parents received timely reminders from their state and local health
departments, parents were much more likely to get the vaccinations
and boosters for their children that they needed.

Dr. Allison Kempe: It didn't take away from the primary care providers, but it helped
them to do the reminder recall for their practices centrally so this was
much more efficient and much more cost efficient . In a fairly short six -
month period where it this was done centrally , about 19% of children
who were not up - to - date became up - to - date versus about 13% in the
practice based recall state, which on a population level is re ally very

Charles Barber on his new book “PEACE & HEALTH”
powerf ul.
Margaret Flinter: And the study also suggests that there's a cost savings and reduce
medical costs as fewer children fall ill .
Dr. Allison Kempe: The costs of not preventin g these illnesses are very high.
Margaret Flinter: A S tate H ealth D epartment dri ven vaccination program that assists
private practices in vaccine compliance for their patient population,
improving vaccination rates of young and vulnerable children while
improving the public he alth. Now that's a bright idea.
[Music]
Mark Masselli: I'm Mark Masselli.
Margaret Flinter: And I'm Margaret Flinter.
Mark Masselli: Peace and h ealth .
[Music]
Marianne O’Hare: Conversations on Health Care is recorded in the Knowledge and
Technology Center Studios in Middletown, Connecticut, and is
brought to you b y the Community Health Center , now celebrating 50
years of providing quality care to the underser ved, where healthcare
is a right, not a privilege , www.chc1.com and www.chcradio.com .
[Music]