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Filmmakers shot in Nepal and more than 20 other countries to assess the world's health problems. (Photo: Tabitha Jackson, courtesy of WGBH.) |
Rx for Survival begins 18-month procession of PBS health shows
Americans can be generous when they’re profoundly touched, as they demonstrated after a tsunami devastated the Indian Ocean rim last December.
Planners of this fall’s multimilliondollar project on global health hope to make similar human connections with a six-part PBS series, related NPR newsmagazine reports and an ambitious impact campaign focused on childhood survival, said Anne Zeiser, the project’s outreach campaign coordinator.
WGBH and Vulcan Productions last week unveiled specifics for the Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge project that includes — besides the national broadcasts — a cover story in Time magazine, a Time-sponsored global health summit, a companion book, a comprehensive website, and $14,000 grants to 20 stations for local outreach projects.
PBS plans to use the broadcast Nov. 1-3 [2005] as the first piece of an 18-month health-centric campaign showcasing series on topics including obesity, heart disease, cancer and AIDS.
"We said, ‘We’ve got a lot of really strong programs coming, so let’s make this an initiative so it’s not seen as disparate programming,’" said PBS programming co-chief Jacoba Atlas. "It’s for our stations to . . . look at these programs holistically" and make connections at the local level that unite the diverse topics, she said.
Expected in 2006 are:
Other programs are expected to fall under the health umbrella and may be announced this summer, Atlas said. In related programming, Sesame Workshop announced in February a multiyear Sesame Street curriculum that will focus on children’s health.
In addition, PBS President Pat Mitchell will lead a discussion examining the unique role of public broadcasters in the fight against the global HIV/AIDS pandemic at the Input 2005 conference next month in San Francisco, said spokeswoman Stephanie Aaronson. The Kaiser Family Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and ITVS will join PBS in convening a global media leadership summit at the conference, which will also discuss the value of public/private partnerships in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Merck adds to Bill Gates’ megabucks
In the works since 2001, Rx for Survival amounts to an impact program "on steroids," as described by Zeiser, WGBH director of strategic marketing. Some parts were known last year when the working title was Global Health (earlier article).
What’s new are numerous partners that have joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as project funders. The Gates philanthropy has kicked in $6 million, according to its website. WGBH execs refuse to confirm that figure or give others, but report that the Merck Company Foundation has signed on as a major funder. The Global Health Council, an alliance of health care professionals, is a project advisor.
An Rx for Survival Fund will be established in conjunction with the project to accept donations, but the fund will not be promoted on the air, Zeiser said. Proceeds will go to humanitarian organizations CARE, Save the Children and UNICEF.
The series itself will cover the rise — and fall — of global health care over the past century, from the golden age of vaccine discovery and eradication of smallpox and other diseases to today’s current state of disarray, in which public health officials are fighting drug-resistant TB, an ever-mushrooming AIDS epidemic in the developing world, and the always looming threat of epidemics that spread in hours instead of months thanks to international air travel.
Executive Producer Larry Klein said the project’s six producing teams filmed in more than 20 countries. A spate of kidnappings in Haiti forced producers to skip a planned segment there; they replaced it with footage from health workers in a refugee camp in Chad. As production continued, producers spent less time on the threat of SARS and more on the graver danger of an avian flu outbreak, said Klein.
More than 6 million children around the world die each year from preventable causes. Rx for Survival’s impact campaign will focus specifically on raising awareness of — as well as money to pay for — five simple interventions: antibiotics, insecticide-treated mosquito netting, oral rehydration packets (to prevent diarrhea-related deaths), vaccinations, and vitamin A and micronutrient supplements.
"The tsunami was an interesting experience to see how engaged Americans can be. The outpouring was incredible," said WGBH’s Zeiser. "But it’s the difference between an acute and a chronic problem. Global health has been called the ‘silent tsunami.’ We’re trying to raise people’s awareness that people are dying needlessly. There’s a disconnect between the technology and the degree to which it’s available."
But how to keep Americans from tsking "those poor children" and flipping the channel, because malaria and yellow fever are not in their backyards?
"Just like the adage that all politics is local, all health is local," said Atlas. "One thing we need to understand is that disease knows no boundaries. The idea that we are somehow exempt from this health crisis is mistaken. . . I know Paula Apsell’s team has made these connections." Apsell is head of WGBH’s science unit, which is producing Rx for Survival.
The Forgetting: lessons worth remembering
The idea for Rx for Survival came from Paul Allen, the Microsoft-minted billionaire philanthropist who founded Vulcan Productions, said Richard Hutton, Vulcan’s v.p. for media development. Hutton previously worked at WGBH, where he was the executive producer when the station and Vulcan co-produced Evolution in 2001. Hutton said Allen was pleased with the partnership and suggested other projects, including global health, which Hutton in turn pitched to Apsell.
"He has ideas for programs he’d like to do, and he can help with the financing of the programs he cares about," said Hutton. (Vulcan also produced Martin Scorsese’s The Blues for PBS.) Although Allen had not made much philanthropic investment in global health issues at that time, his pal and ex-partner Bill Gates has been active in this area.
"Did Bill and Paul talk? You betcha. They’re friends," said Hutton. Outreach was conceived as an important component of the project from day one, he said. Both this project and the other big-ticket health series coming to PBS have torn a page or two from the outreach playbook of The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s, the Emmy-winning 2004 special produced by Arledge for TPT.
"One thing we learned is that less is more," said Naomi Boak, TPT’s executive producer for national productions. She was e.p. of The Forgetting and is now working on Fighting Fat and Depression. Bill Moyers’ On Our Own Terms had such extensive outreach partnerships and materials available that some stations felt "overwhelmed . . . trying to serve too many masters. Our feeling was to have a limited number of partners who are very targeted and focused and not competing with each other," she said.
The National Center for Outreach pushed the Forgetting producers to develop measures of not just output but outcome, said Boak. In other words, stations that received outreach grants had to show they tried to change attitude and awareness, not just count resource packets they mailed or calls to their phone banks.
This led NCO to develop a planning and assessment toolkit that it will debut at its annual conference in June, said Executive Director Maria Alvarez Stroud.
"Say you’re a station person interested in doing something about obesity. You would know about the show coming up. This toolkit, through prompted questions, would ask you what you want to do," she said. "It would ask you what your indicators for impact were, who are your partners, and, if you didn’t know yet, it would give you case examples."
Templates will help stations’ outreach directors devise survey instruments and other evaluative tools. An important component of the toolkit will be spreadsheets for station execs to enter data after the activities have been assessed, Alvarez Stroud said. "Because this will be done through our website, we will know what people are doing, and it will provide a consistency to [station outreach] reports."
Rx for Survival has just begun its rollout. Announcements of as many as 15 to 20 additional national partnerships are expected in June, as are recipients of the station grants and the full launch of the website, Zeiser said. NCO will likewise give out a half-dozen $12,000 health-focused connector grants this summer in addition to 10 to 12 smaller grants for stations to hold health leadership summits.
Health is a hot topic, and focusing on health concerns with community partners is something public TV stations can do that commercial and cable broadcasters can’t, said Faith Michel, outreach director for Maryland PTV. MPT has submitted a proposal for one of the Rx for Survival outreach grants. Michel said the grant will build on a health-focused outreach effort, dubbed Healthy Connections, that the state net launched last year with the aid of an NCO connector grant.
"The Holy Grail for all of us is longevity," said Boak. "We’re all looking for ways to create resources that outlast the broadcast."
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posted April 12, 2005.
Copyright 2005 by Current Publishing Committee