Jefferson Humanities Forum - Ricardo Nuila: The People's Hospital

Where does an uninsured person go when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? Ricardo Nuila's book The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine takes us inside the Harris Health System and Ben Taub Hospital, where he has practiced for more than a decade. In this talk, Dr. Nuila will read portions from the book that detail the broken system's effects on his own patients, and how the public healthcare system, which emphasizes people over payments, might light the path forward.

Ricardo Nuila is a writer and an associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. For the past thirteen years, he has worked as a hospitalist and attending at Houston's largest safety net facility, Ben Taub Hospital. His first book, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon, Kirkus Review, and Washington Post, and was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He is the director of the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) at Baylor, which integrates arts and humanities into medical education and has received an Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) grant supporting its work. His essays and stories have been featured in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, VQR, The New England Journal of Medicine, New England Review, and Best American Short Stories.

Moderator: Keith Leaphart, DO, MBA, Enterprise Executive Vice President and Humana Chief Health Equity and Community Impact Officer, Jefferson Health

During 2024-2025, the Jefferson Humanities Forum hosts multidisciplinary scholars and thinkers to investigate the theme of Access.

Ricardo Nuila’s visit is presented as part of the Jefferson Humanities & Health program Convalescence, an immersive art installation by artist Pepón Osorio highlighting systemic health and health care inequities in the U.S.

Jefferson students may count this event for credit towards the Asano Humanities & Health Certificate.

Learn more: Jefferson.edu/Humanities

Major support for Convalescence has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Wagner Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator, [email protected].

Host or Publisher Jefferson Humanities & Health