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Public Housing and Personal Health: The Tulsa Housing Authority

Aired on Monday, December 5th.

On this edition of ST Medical Monday, we speak with two representatives from the Tulsa Housing Authority (or THA): Matt Letzig is the organization's Interim CEO and Terri Cole is its VP for Assisted Housing. THA, as noted at its website, "provides publicly assisted housing comprised of traditional public housing, mixed finance sites, and Section 8. Currently, THA provides assistance to more than 20,000 individuals, or 7,200 families.... THA offers several housing options throughout the City of Tulsa, including low-income housing, assisted housing, and homeownership opportunities." In doing such, as we discuss today, THA not only offers shelter to those in dire need -- it contributes meaningfully and actively to the health of people in this community. This is because housing, of course, is a major "social determinant of health," to employ a phrase used more and more these days by health care professionals and policy-makers alike. Meaning, those social and economic factors that, taken together, have a greater impact on the health of a given community than access to medical care per se (or than the quality of such care). Housing -- much like schooling, say, or one's own job, or even the air that one breathes -- can be a determining factor in how healthy one is overall (above and beyond such things as diet and exercise).

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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