Kathie Melocco - Health Activism

Blog dedicated to Social Justice and Health and Wellbeing Activism

March 18, 2013

Regina Holliday and Health Activism - The Walking Gallery

Regina Holliday is a Washington, D.C., art teacher, artist, muralist, patient rights arts advocate, founder of the Walking Gallery and the Medical Advocacy Mural Project. On March 27, 2009, her husband, Fred Holliday II, was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer, after months of escalating pain medication prescribed for symptom relief, without a diagnosis of the cause of the pain. Fred died on June 17, 2009. Holliday's response to the shock and anguish of losing her 39-year-old husband (and to her husband's urging on his deathbed) was to become an arts advocate for all patients' rights to their own medical data.

During his final hospitalization, Holliday asked to see her husband's medical records, so that she could do online research of his condition and care, and so that they could make informed decisions together. At the first of five hospitals he was admitted to during this medical ordeal, on April 18, 2009, she was told that copies of his records would cost $.73 per page and would be available after a 21-day wait. That would have been May 9, 2009.

Fred Holliday II died at home on June 17, 2009. In Holliday's words, her husband's final message inspired her advocacy: "He's got a paper in his hand. It says: 'Go After Them Regina, Love Fred.'

 On her blog on Sunday August 9, 2009, she wrote: "I am painting because it is the best way I know that can make a difference. I will paint our sorrow on a wall for all to see. It is hard to look away. It makes you think. It makes you question. The scariest thing to the status-quo is an electorate that is thinking and asking questions. I am as grassroots as it comes. There is just me on a 20 foot ladder donated by my church. I am using paint brushes I have had for 17 years. I am applying acrylic paint (paid for by donations of friends and strangers) on a wall donated by a gas station."
The Walking Gallery from Eidolon Films on Vimeo.

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