Oprah’s Latest Project Explores Healthcare Inequalities
Media personality Oprah Winfrey is partnering with Smithsonian Channel to run a campaign that will address racial inequalities in the healthcare sector. The successful talk show specialist is renowned for her famed show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the television network, Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Dubbed the ‘Queen of All Media’, Winfrey now wants to help the community address inequalities in healthcare.
What is Winfrey’s new project?
Winfrey has partnered with Smithsonian Channel to launch a campaign that will address racial inequalities within the healthcare system, according to AP News. The campaign, which commences concurrently with the release of Winfrey’s documentary, The Color of Care, talks about the injustices Black people go through due to systemic ails of the healthcare system in the United States.
Winfrey’s documentary will highlight some of the challenges faced by Black people in the United States through substandard health care systems. Smithsonian Channel head, James Blue III, noted, “The COVID crisis has exposed gross inequalities in our healthcare system which, if left unaddressed, will again disproportionately impact people of color during the next health emergency,” he added, “This campaign will work to address these inequalities.”
The campaign, which is intended to run for one year, features numerous activations in the coming months and a digital series. Through the campaign, Winfrey intends to bring together affected communities, health-related learning institutions, and stakeholders in the healthcare field to come up with a solution to the challenges brought about by inequalities.
Winfrey’s career kicked off early
After her move to Baltimore in 1976, Winfrey became a talk show host, where she hosted the show People Are Talking. Winfrey hosted the show for eight years and made the show a hit. Afterward, Winfrey was given airspace by a TV station in Chicago, where she hosted A.M. Chicago. On hosting a talk show, Winfrey told Achievement, “I was working in Nashville, and so I moved to Baltimore, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll do this for a while, and then I don’t know what I’ll do.'” She adds, “I only came to co-host a talk show because I had failed at news, and I would be fired.”
During her time at A.M. Chicago, Winfrey faced tough competition from Phil Donahue, but her persona and charming nature led to her show beating Donahue with more than 100,000 viewers, taking her show to the top in the ratings.
‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’
In 1986, Winfrey started her show, running for 25 years until 2011. The show, which she christened The Oprah Winfrey Show, was airing on 120 channels and had a reach of 10 million viewers. By the end of its novel year, the show raked in about $125 million, of which $30 million was Winfrey’s share.
Winfrey noted how her success was propelled by preparedness. She states, “If I’d never read a book or spoken in public before, I would have been traumatized by it. So the fact that we went on air with The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, nationally, and people said, ‘Oh, but you are so comfortable in front of the camera; you can be yourself.'”
