Big Microsofties join for WGBH global health series
WGBH and Vulcan Productions, which teamed up to produce Evolution and The Blues, are working together on another big-ticket PBS series, this one notable for the far-reaching impact campaign being planned around it.
The project appears to bring together the two founders of Microsoft. The website for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major project funder, lists a $6 million, 3-year grant awarded to WGBH in 2002 for Global Health. And Vulcan Productions is run by Bill Gates' former partner, investor-philanthropist Paul G. Allen. WGBH declined to discuss the cost of the project.
The six-hour series Global Health (working title), airing in fall 2005, will contrast the public health triumphs of the first half of the past century (the widespread vaccination campaigns that virtually eliminated many childhood diseases in the developing world) with the current morass of the past few decades (rampant HIV and resistant strains of tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world; alarming obesity rates in developed countries). Larry Klein (Building Big, Nova's "Why the Towers Fell") is series executive producer.
An NPR series will accompany the TV programming, and an editorial partnership with Time magazine will produce a special edition on global health as well as a scholarly symposium on the topic, said Anne Zeiser, WGBH's director of national strategic marketing. A companion book and content-rich website are also parts of the picture.
"This is an outreach campaign on steroids, designed specifically to get Americans engaged and involved in issues of global health," said Zeiser of the impact campaign, which she is overseeing. It doesn't have a catchy title yet, but the campaign will focus on at least five areas of action designed to reduce childhood deaths in the developing world. Zeiser said producers will partner with one or two major global health organizations (to be announced later) to address the five components, which are:
"Over 10 million children die every year, and more than 6 million of these deaths are needless and preventable," said Zeiser.
The impact campaign will comprise a local component, with stations as the centerpiece joined by local partners, and what Zeiser called an "influencer component," in which business leaders, entertainment celebs and other prominent folks will tour developing countries and raise awareness of the issues.
"If you see a bloated African baby sitting in the mud with flies in his eyes, you're apt to say, 'What can I do?'" said executive producer Klein. "This series won't say what to do, but the outreach will. It's important for people to understand that it's not only possible to save people's lives, but some of this stuff is unbelievably simple. We're not talking heart transplants here. From a social and moral and humanitarian perspective, this is a crime, but we want people to understand that this is in their self-interest as well. If a disease exists in the world, it's in effect in your backyard. Countries and the economies of the world are interwoven."
Each of the six one-hour episodes will examine a different principle of disease prevention, such as surveillance, vaccinations, vectors and health basics such as clean water and proper nutrition. The series will blend documentary footage with historical re-enactments (one will be the 1854 work of John Snow, a London doctor who used epidemiologic evidence to trace a cholera outbreak to a single water pump. He ended the epidemic by removing the pump handle.)
Footage will be shot all over the world, said Klein — including parts of Africa, Asia, South America and the United States. A film crew has already been to Botswana to film distribution of no-cost AIDS drugs there, he said.
Web page posted June 10, 2004
Current
The newspaper about public TV and radio
in the United States
Current Publishing Committee, Takoma Park, Md.
Copyright 2004
EARLIER ARTICLES
An earlier WGBH-Vulcan co-production, Evolution, premiered in fall 2001.
PBS presents The Blues in fall 2003.
OUTSIDE LINKS
Vulcan Productions (formerly Clear Blue Sky Productions).
