The 
University 
of 
Michigan School of Public 
Health and Healthy Policy 
Student Association hosted a 
panel discussion focusing on 
the importance of health care 
policy in the context of the 
election year on Thursday 
afternoon. About 50 students 
and 
community 
members 
attended the event.
The 
panelists 
included 
Jonathan 
Cohn, 
senior 
national 
correspondent 
at 
HuffPost; 
Charles 
Gaba, 
health 
care 
analyst 
and 
founder 
of 
ACAsignups.
net; and Marianne Udow-
Phillips, founding executive 
director 
of 
the 
Center 
for Health and Research 
Transformation 
at 
the 
University. The discussion 
was moderated by Daniel 
Lee, associate chair of health 
management and policy.
Gaba 
discussed 
how 
health 
care 
policy 
has 
changed over the years with 
each election cycle in the 
context of divided opinions 

on 
the 
Affordable 
Care 
Act, commonly known as 
“Obamacare,” a health care 
reform law enacted under 
former 
President 
Barack 
Obama’s 
administration. 
According 
to 
Gaba, 
the 
repeal of Obamacare would 
be inefficient.
“We 
are 
spending 
as 
much money to put in the 
administrative 
oversight 
of work requirements as it 
would cost to just cover the 
people who would get kicked 
off of the program because of 
it,” Gaba said.
In 
the 
case 
of 
pharmaceutical 
drugs, 
Udow-Phillips said intense 
pressure from the public 
to target individual drugs 
in an effort to lower prices 
might be more effective than 
legislation. She stressed the 
power 
of 
pharmaceutical 
lobbyists and their ties to 
both the Democratic Party 
and Republican Party. 
“This is not a party issue, 
this is an issue of how 
powerful that lobby is,” she 
said.

The 
School 
for 
Environment 
and 
Sustainability 
hosted 
its 
annual 
Michigan 
Environmental 
Justice 
Summit 
on 
Thursday. 
About 700 students, faculty 
and Ann Arbor residents 
gathered in the Rackham 
Auditorium 
to 
honor 
the 
30th 
Anniversary 
of 
the 
“Incidence 
of 
Environmental 
Hazards 
Conference,” 
the 
1990 
conference 
that 
sparked 
high-level 
government 
meetings and contributed 
to the formation of an 
Environmental Protection 

Agency 
special 
task 
force under the Clinton 
administration.
The 
panelists 
on 
the 
National 
Panel 
of 
EJ 
Game 
Changers 
began 
by 
recognizing 
and 
celebrating the progress 
that environmental justice 
has made over time. While 
the movement first gained 
traction in 1982 through 
an 
Black 
community’s 
protest 
against 
a 
local 
waste landfill, it has now 
been expanded nationwide 
as 
more 
marginalized 
communities began to fight 
for 
their 
environmental 
rights.
Panelist 
Charles 
Lee, 
a senior policy adviser at 

the EPA, mentioned that 
the issue of environmental 
justice 
did 
not 
have 
a 
name 
when 
he 
first 
started 
working, 
but 
as 
communities 
have 
empowered 
themselves, 
real changes have been 
made and more scholarly 
work has been produced in 
the area. 
Beverly 
Wright, 
panelist and founder of 
the 
Deep 
South 
Center 
for 
Environmental 
Justice, also commented 
on 
how 
advocates 
and 
scholars 
have 
sparked 
policy changes that aid 
communities nationwide.
“If you think nothing has 
changed, this is light years 

in terms of the difference 
between 
the 
way 
we 
interact with government,” 
Wright said. “We literally 
had to lock EPA people in a 
room to listen to us. It was 
tough.”
Wright recounted how 
she first made a connection 
between 
justice 
and 
activism when she first 
witnessed the effects of 
local pollution on Black 
communities and pointed 
to racial segregation as 
one of the causes of such 
suffering. 
“Why are we the only 
ones living fence line with 

michigandaily.com
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Friday, February 14, 2020

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INDEX
Vol. CXXIX, No. 70
©2020 The Michigan Daily

NEWS .........................1A

OPINION.....................4A

LOV E N OT E S . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 C

STATEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1B

A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A

S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 A
michigandaily.com

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For the fourth year in a 
row, the Detroit Community-
Academic Urban Research 
Center has partnered with 
Poverty 
Solutions 
at 
the 
University of Michigan to 
provide funding for projects 
seeking to develop policy to 
alleviate urban poverty. 
The Detroit URC is a 
community 
and 
academic 
partnership 
working 
to 
improve 
health 
for 
Detroit 
residents 
through 
community-based research. 
Barbara Israel, professor in 
the Department of Health 
Behavior 
and 
Health 
Education and director of the 
Detroit URC, said the URC 
partnership 
with 
Poverty 
Solutions is beneficial. It 
combines Poverty Solutions’ 
resources with the URC’s 
expertise in funding seed 
projects, which are projects 
that are launched with a 
small amount of funding. 
Israel 
said 
Poverty 
Solutions and Detroit URC 
selected 
projects 
based 
on 
how 
equitably 
they 
involved 
community 
and 

Approximately 
30 
students gathered in the 
Yuri Kochiyama Lounge in 
the South Quad Thursday 
evening to attend “From 
Fear 
to 
Reality: 
Yellow 
Peril 
Anxieties 
Over 
Coronavirus,” 
hosted 
by 
the United Asian American 
Organizations.
This event was designed to 
educate students about how 
diseases 
have 
historically 
propagated 
discrimination 
against 
Asian 
Americans 
and address how racially 
charged anxieties due to the 
coronavirus outbreak reflect 
American ideals on health 
and immigration. 
LSA sophomore Victoria 
Minka, an intern for UAAO, 
opened up the presentation 
by discussing the role of 
modern 
pop 
culture 
on 
the 
frenzy 
surrounding 
coronavirus. 
Minka 
emphasized the importance 
of 
understanding 
how 
and 
why 
the 
spread 
of 
misinformation online led to 
the spread and normalization 
of 
xenophobia 
stemming 
from coronavirus. 

Students
examine 
fears over 
epidemic

CAMPUS LIFE

SARAH ZHAO
For The Daily

30th annual Environmental Justice 
Summit highlights intersectionality
Speakers address importance of future activism, policy changes

RESEARCH

Conversations touch on 
racially-charged hysteria 
about coronavirus, roots 
in historic discrimination

$79,500 will go toward 
research on alleviating 
urban poverty through 
programs and policies

JULIA RUBIN 
Daily Staff Reporter

See CORONAVIRUS, Page 2A
See DETROIT, Page 3A 

Grant to 
support 3 
projects 
in Detroit

DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily
The University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability hosted the 2020 Michigan Environmental Justice Summit at Rackham 
Auditorium Thursday. 

LOLA YANG
For The Daily

Discussions of reform will be of 
major significance, panelists say

Health care 
experts talk 
election year

VARSHA VEDAPUDI
Daily Staff Reporter

See HEALTH CARE, Page 3A 

See SUMMIT, Page 3A

Jason White explores advertising, 
disrupting the marketing world 

See YAFFE, Page 3A

Yaffe Speaker Series brings in Curaleaf Executive, details career

ALYSSA MCMURTRY
Daily Staff Reporter

statement

KELSEY PEASE/Daily
Cura Partners’ Jason White discusses his career, culture, and commerce at the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative Speaker Series Thursday evening in the 
Ross School of Business. 

Jason 
White, 
chief 
marketing 
officer 
of 
the 
cannabis company Curaleaf, 
shared his favorite quote by 
playwright George Bernard 
Shaw at the Ross School of 
Business on Thursday to a 
crowd of about 100 people. 
White said it related to an 
overall theme of disruption in 
the marketing world. 

“A reasonable man adapts 
himself 
to 
the 
world; 
an 
unreasonable one persists in 
trying to adapt the world to 
his,” White quoted. “Therefore 
all progress depends on the 
unreasonable man.”
The Yaffe Speaker Series 
was co-founded by marketing 
lecturer Marcus Collins in 2018 
to invite various individuals 
to speak with students about 
pioneering 
change 
in 
the 
marketing industry. Collins 

spoke with The Daily before 
the Yaffe Speaker Series about 
why he felt White was a good 
choice for the series.
“So 
the 
Yaffe 
Speaker 
Series … is essentially an 
initiative at the Ross School 
of Business where the focus 
is to create programming to 
help prepare our students for 
the changes in the evolving 
media 
landscape,” 
Collins 
told The Daily. “Jason had 
a very glowing career. He 

has not only been navigating 
the digital landscape, he has 
been rewriting the rules and 
reimagining it.” 
White’s 
career 
started 
at 
Wieden+Kennedy, 
an 
advertising agency that works 
with large companies like 
Nike, when he was 28 years 
old. From the moment he 
walked in the doors, his White 
felt he had found his passion. 

