Tuesday’s LoC meeting topic: Remote Area Medical.

Tuesday night’s Left of Center meeting is about a group named “Remote Area Medical,” and Jennifer McKeever and I are putting it on. You might remember my lengthy 2006 blog entry about indigent dental care in Virginia, in which I wrote about a huge medical fair, and for which I interviewed Terry Dickinson from the Virginia Dental Association. Well, this event is about that medical fair, and one of the speakers is Dickinson. From the Left of Center blog:

Once a year, thousands of uninsured people from all over Appalachia gather at the Wise County, VA fairgrounds for three days to have rotten teeth pulled, cysts carved out, and mysterious lumps x-rayed. It’s a stunning, moving event, revealing the second-world conditions under which many people are living right here in Virginia.

Speakers: Aryana Khalid, deputy Secretary for Health & Human Services for Virginia, & Terry Dickinson, Executive Director of the Virginia Dental Association (and the big thinker behind Mission of Mercy and the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps). (You can read a recent article about RAM in the Washington Post.)

If you’re not convinced that this is something you’d be interested in, just watch a few minutes of 60 Minutes’ recent feature on RAM.

Drinking and socializing starts at 7:00 PM at Rapture. The talk starts 7:30-ish. Then back to drinking and socializing, with time to chat with our guest speakers. I hope you’ll come.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

2 replies on “Tuesday’s LoC meeting topic: Remote Area Medical.”

  1. As a volunteer at the recent Remote Area Medical event in Wise, VA, I was astonished to learn that Terry Dickensen is “the big thinker behind Remote Area Medical Corps.” It saddens me to see someone else being given credit for the heroic efforts of Stan Brock and his dedicated group of volunteers – the real brains, spirit, and muscle behind RAM. Where was Dr. Dickensen in the mid 80’s when Stan founded RAM? How many of RAM’s 564 missions has Dr. Dickensen even attended? I hope anyone interested in RAM will take the time to view the recent “60 Minutes” segment on the RAM web site (www.ramusa.org) to set the record straight.

  2. Donald, any errors present in this description are solely the fault of Left of Center and, specifically, me. Terry Dickinson had nothing to do with the language that we’re using to describe his role in this event or in RAM. I’m at work, and don’t have time to do anything in the way of corrections just now, but after work (and before the meeting) I’ll make sure that I get our language straight, so that we don’t cause him to have to correct us when we introduce him tonight. Thanks so much for calling that up.

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