Oprah Winfrey and the Smithsonian Channel are debuting their campaign, The Color of Care, with a documentary of the same name. The trailer for the film is below.
The Color of Care campaign is described as “a multi-platform effort to catalyze a movement to eliminate racial disparities in the delivery of U.S. healthcare.” The campaign will take place over a year and will “reach current and future medical professionals as well as impacted communities and policymakers at all government levels to advance solutions toward health equity.”
“The Color of Care education campaign will work to prepare current and future doctors, nurses and medical professionals to play an active role in combating systemic racism in the delivery of healthcare, as well as provide others with the necessary tools to address this issue and advocate for and empower patients who experience these inequities,” states the description. “This effort follows the premiere of The Color of Care film, produced in partnership between Smithsonian Channel, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions and OSCAR-nominated and Emmy award-winning director Yance Ford, who also serves as director.”
The documentary, also called The Color of Care, will also focus on health disparities facing people of color, and what needs to be done to address them, especially in a COVID-19 world. According to the description:
The original documentary, which chronicles how people of color suffer from systemically substandard healthcare in the United States and how COVID-19 exposed the tragic consequences of these inequities, serves as an impetus for a vital reckoning around health equity and is part of a broader effort driven by Smithsonian Channel™ to move conversation and action around this topic forward.
Smithsonian Channel head James Blue said that the COVID epidemic has shown America just how broken the healthcare system actually is.
“The COVID crisis has exposed gross inequalities in our healthcare system which, if left unaddressed, will again disproportionately impact people of color during the next health emergency. This campaign will work to address these inequalities.”
The Color of Care will debut May 1 at 8/7c on the Smithsonian Channel and for free on Smithsonian Channel Selects on Pluto TV. The documentary will premiere in May after the U.S. premiere in other markets including Latin America, the UK, Ireland and Canada.
The campaign will feature a digital series showcasing healthcare advocates and changemakers. Classrooms will also be able to download curricular materials, and a film screening tour will engage medical and nursing schools, health care and medical jouranlists, professional healthcare networks and associations, nonprofit organizations, and HBCUs.
TikTok will also feature a livestream panel event for MTV News promoting the documentary and campaign April 27 at 7/6 CT featuring Winfrey, Executive Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine Daniel E. Dawes, JD; Associate Professor of Social Epidemiology at Ohio State and the founder, director and principal investigator of the Social Epidemiology to Eliminate Disparities (SEED) Lab Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson, PhD, MPH; and family medicine physician and co-founder of The Coalition to Advance Antiracism in Medicine (CAAM) Brittani James, MD.
Partners with Color of Change and Winfrey includes Paramount’s Content for Change, Picture Motion Campaigns, The Association of American Medical Colleges, PBS Newshour Classroom and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative.
