The Student Health Coalition (SHC), also known as the Appalachian Student Health Coalition, was an organization begun in 1969 primarily by then-medical student Bill Dow. Volunteer medical students of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine provided health care to low income individuals in the Appalachian area, particularly East Tennessee. Later as students realized the scope of the problems of the people they served, the effort expanded into providing legal assistance, community organizing, and changing public policies at the county, state, and federal level. The SHC organized community health councils, which then raised funds to build and staff their own local health clinics.
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The program began in 1969 with a grant from the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Dr. Amos Christie of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Dr. Leslie A. Falk of Meharry Medical College were the principal investigators of the grant and supporters of the Coalition.
Organizations
A number of other organizations were formed to work on issues the students encountered:
The SHC led directly to the 1972 creation of the student-run Center for Health Services (CHS) at Vanderbilt University. In the 1990s, the SHC was absorbed by the CHS. The CHS changed its name to the Vanderbilt Center for Community Health Solutions sometime in 2011 or 2012. The Vanderbilt Center for Community Health Solutions appears to have ceased operations in 2013. At least one of its programs, the Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker (MIHOW) Program, was moved to the Vanderbilt School of Nursing in 2013.
Two Vanderbilt law students started the East Tennessee Research Corporation (ETRC), which lasted from 1973 – 1978. The ETRC aided health councils in navigating laws and rules governing health care, partnered with Save Our Cumberland Mountains to reduce local environmental damage from coal mining, and monitored the Tennessee Valley Authority, a major coal consumer and force in the region. The ETRC challenged the TVA, successfully preventing the appointment of unqualified candidates to the TVA board. It also got the TVA to introduce a “lifeline” rate for low income customers. It also pursued legal action on overweight coal trucks that damaged roads. ETRC lawyer and TVA critic Neil McBride ended up serving on the TVA Board of Directors from 2010 to 2013.
The ETRC spawned the Coal Employment Program (CEP), which existed from 1978 to 1997. This organization fought gender discrimination in the coal mining industry. The CEP filed legal complaints against numerous coal companies and mines. The companies were charged with violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discriminating on the basis of gender when hiring for companies with federal contracts (most major coal companies had federal contracts).