Health Reform in the South: Re‐Tracing Robert Kennedy's Steps in Mississippi and Kentucky

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Author: David K. Jones
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.224
• Date: 01 June 2017

Health Reform in the South: Re-Tracing Robert

Kennedy’s Steps in Mississippi and Kentucky

David K. Jones

It has been nearly 50 years sinc e Robert Kennedy’s iconic tri ps to the Mississippi Delta ( 1967)

and Appalachian Kentucky (1 968). What he found shocked hi m. “It’s unacceptable in t his

country that we should have th is kind of poverty. And I think we need to do something about

it.” This paper explores whe ther the conditions that pr oduce health have improved i n these two

areas 50 years later. Are people he althier? A comparative case st udy examining health in these

two regions is a unique way to unde rstand the progress and short comings of the Affordable Car e

Act (ACA). I use the social ecological framewo rk as a guide to focus on the social determinants

of health in two of the least healthy plac es in the United States. Access to insu rance and medical

care is important, but will not produce health if housing is unsafe, foo d systems are inadequate,

and poverty remains pervasiv e.

KEY WORDS: health reform, Affordable Care Act, social determinants of health

Introduction

Robert Kennedy went to the Mississippi Delta in April 1967 as a member of

the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty. Activist

Marian Wright had recently challenged the committee to leave Washington, D.C.

and see conditions in Mississippi for themselves. After a day of hearings and a

cocktail party in Jackson, only Chairman Joe Clark and Senator Kennedy accepted

the invitation to spend an extra day visiting areas away from the city. The next

morning, the senators and their entourage of staff and reporters followed them

north, making stops in Greenville, Cleveland, Clarksdale, and handful of small

towns in between before f‌lying home from Memphis, Tennessee.

What they found shocked them. Large families lived in run-down shacks that

were barely standing and lacked running water. Parents struggled to feed their

children with almost no food in their pantries. Babies with open wounds sat

lifeless on dirt f‌loors.

One of the reporters who followed Kennedy to the Delta described a

particularly poignant moment:

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2017

225

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.224

#2017 Policy Studies Organization