Author: Zac Hill

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Q&A: Cyril Chang

Recently, the Harvard Initiative for Global Health released a study that investigated the mortality rate across the United States.Tennessee ranked 45th in the nation, with an average lifespan of 75.1 years. Residents in Shelby County typically live even shorter lives: on average, 73.2 years. But perhaps most strikingly, the lifespan between the longest-living and shortest-living Americans — Asian women in New Jersey and Native Americans in South Dakota, respectively — is a difference of almost 30 years.

The Flyer sat down with Cyril Chang, director of the Methodist-Le Bonheur Center for Healthcare Economics, to discuss the ramifications of the study. — by Zac Hill

Flyer: Why is this study important?

Chang: Well, what it says is that the average lifespan in Tennessee is below the national average. But the question to ask is: How much are we below the average? If everybody is similar, then it does not hurt that much. But in this case, top to bottom, there is a huge difference. That is scary.

Why are there such wide gaps in lifespan across different populations?

It’s important to understand one of the things the study points out, which is that it is too simplistic to view this as a health-care problem. Mostly, it’s a behavioral thing. There are few major behaviors causing a lot of the trouble: Smoking is number one, then poor nutrition. This is not the same as starving people in Africa who don’t have options. You have obesity and smoking, then drug abuse, gun violence, and accidents.

What can be done?

The answer is education. Whether smoking is the problem or nutrition is the problem, you approach them in the same way. We know from research that if you don’t pick up smoking by age 20, for instance, chances are you’re not going to smoke. With the overweight population getting younger and younger, in order to fight it, we’re going to have to start sooner and sooner.

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Courting Scholarship Money

Prospective students eligible for the Distinguished African American, African-American Scholar, and African-American Enrichment scholarships at the University of Memphis may be out of luck next school year.

The scholarships, enacted as part of a settlement agreement dating back to the 1968 Rita Sanders Geier lawsuit, will cease to exist next fall.

Geier, then a professor at predominantly-black Tennessee State University, filed a claim in an attempt to end the effective segregation of Tennessee’s public colleges and universities. The state of Tennessee then established a series of programs, including several scholarships, designed for more effective long-term racial integration. The “other race” scholarships, for instance, would provide an incentive for minority students to voluntarily integrate schools without resorting to racial-quota legislation.

But more recently, two 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases out of Michigan — Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger — held that “other race” scholarships such as the ones stipulated by Geier are illegal.

“Based on the legal precedents set by the Michigan cases, we would be under scrutiny if we continued to offer ‘other race’ scholarships,” says Michelle Banks, Equal Employment and Affirmative Action officer for the U of M.

Exactly what effect the cancellation of these scholarships will have, however, is unclear.

“There is one group of people telling us that we’re going to get the money, and there’s another group of people telling us that we’re not,” Banks says. “Before, the recipients of African-American scholarships received the funds from their scholarships, thereby not competing for university funds. But now, everyone will be competing for the same money.”

Other school administrators, however, say that the changes will have “little to no impact” on how they award scholarships.

Rhodes College political science professor Marcus Pohlmann says that simply rerouting the existing money into need-based aid could maintain the spirit of the Geier scholarships. “It still may serve many of the same students and just proxy for race as such moves have done elsewhere,” he explains.

Still, eliminating the scholarships will probably carry some consequences.

“This might deter some African-American students from coming,” says University of Memphis junior William Terrell, who cited his Distinguished African-American Scholarship as the main reason he attended the U of M.

Pohlmann agrees. “Will it cost the U of M some of its better black students who are better off and have choices of schools? It may.”

“But,” he adds, “other schools are going this same route. It’s not that unusual.”

All 193 students currently receiving funding from the scholarships, however, will continue to do so as long as they abide by the guidelines of their individual programs.

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Guardian Angel

Emily Land first suspected something was wrong with her left leg in January 2003 when she had trouble flexing her quadricep. For many people, this would be a minor annoyance. For Land, a Division I soccer player at the University of Tennessee-Martin, this was a problem.

And with every passing week, her symptoms grew worse.

“I’d randomly just, you know, fall down,” she explains. “I had trouble climbing stairs, the pain kept getting worse and worse, and my doctors couldn’t figure out why. After three months, I had to tell them that nothing seemed to help.”

Land was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of malignant bone cancer that affects about 900 people each year. Of these cases, about a third are fatal.

She was offered several treatment options, including amputating her leg, but she would have to act immediately.

“I was extremely scared of losing my leg,” she says. “I was determined to be physically active, but they told me the alternative to amputation was one of the harshest treatments at St. Jude.” Nevertheless, she persevered, enduring four rounds of chemotherapy that lasted almost a whole year.

But her treatment included more than chemo. She was also fitted with an internal prosthesis designed by Arlington-based Wright Medical Technology — a device called the “Guardian” — that would save her leg. It stretches from six inches below her hip to six inches above her ankle. The still-healthy exterior of her existing bone would be enclosed in a rigid casing, and her kneecap would crown the exterior of the artificial joint. The aim was to restore her range of motion.

“Fourteen weeks of physical therapy — every single day,” she sighs as she recalls the treatment. “After four weeks, I could put the crutches down. There were times I came out of therapy sweating and crying, but I felt good about myself because I knew from soccer that sometimes it took pain to get results.”

After a second surgery to correct minor errors with the first prosthesis, Emily’s range of motion has now reached a full 120 degrees. Though she can’t play soccer anymore due to the stress it would put on the prosthesis, she has embraced mountain biking and can be found riding with her husband at Shelby Farms almost every weekend.

Most important, though, are the benefits that can’t be measured in degrees.

“The greatest thing about having this prosthesis is that it is internal,” she says. “Every time I go out in public I don’t have to open myself up to telling my story. After going through chemo — being bald, sick, and gray — I don’t stand out anymore. [I can] stand out in other ways. I can be a good friend, good public speaker, and a good worker first and a cancer patient second.