Throughout the month of April, National Minority Health Month, we’ve been highlighting the ways health centers dedicate themselves to reducing health disparities – whether it’s through vaccinating hard-to-reach populations or launching innovative programs that target health conditions that disproportionately affect minority and ethnic populations.
That brings us to A PLACE TO BREATHE. This stunning 86-minute documentary film explores the universality of trauma and resilience through the eyes of immigrant and refugee health care practitioners and patients and features a Community Health Center in Lowell, MA. The film intertwines the personal journeys of people who are transcending their own obstacles by healing others, spotlighting the work of Street Level Health Project and Metta Health Center (part of the Lowell Community Health Center.) Combining cinema vérité and animation, the film focuses on the creative strategies by which immigrant communities in the United States survive and thrive. The project is currently on the film festival circuit and is also screening in numerous health care contexts including the World Health Organization Turkey, American Public Health Association, UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Tufts University Community Health Program, Integrative Medicine for the Underserved, among others.
A Place To Breathe Trailer from Michelle Grace Steinberg on Vimeo.
The film’s Director/Producer Michelle Grace Steinberg, also a long-time Nutritionist and Herbalist at Street Level Health Project, explains:
“Our goal is to utilize the power of cinema to raise consciousness on increasing access to culturally responsive, integrative health care. As we all struggle through this painful pandemic moment, our hope is that growing awareness to long-standing health inequities can finally lead to much-needed systemic change. We are very interested in partnering with institutions, organizations, and individuals to sponsor film screenings and panel discussions with its participants to stimulate dialogue on best practices in culturally responsive care and the importance of centering community health workers and providers who come from the communities being served.”
Visit https://underexposedfilms.com/a-place-to-breathe for more information about the film and a trailer that you can share in your community. You can read more about the impetus behind it in this interview and here is a detailed educational review. If you are interested in setting up a screening and discussion of related issues around health equity and culturally responsive, integrative healing at your health center, please contact michelle@underexposedfilms.com or visit https://gooddocs.net/products/a-place-to-breathe.