Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

Oregon PSR is celebrating our 40th year of work for a more healthy, peaceful, and just world in 2021. We began from the powerful vision of our founders who sat on Dr. Karen Steingart’s living room floor and strategized about how a health message could help prevent nuclear war. Over the next forty years, our members, volunteers, and donors contributed their passion and leadership to the organization, bringing a broad public health frame to issues such as environmental justice, gun violence, and climate health, learning and growing along the way.

This anthology, edited by Leah Stenson, conveys the enormity of Fukushima, the first nuclear disaster of the 21st Century on both the environmental and human scale. The second edition features all new prefatory material, including contributions by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Helen Caldicott, Fairewinds Energy Education founder Maggie Gundersen, and professor emerita Dr. Norma Field. The essays examine the status of Fukushima ten years after the disaster through the lens of social, political, and environmental concerns.

What an extraordinary time for Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility to be celebrating our 40th anniversary. With the support of our members, donors, and volunteers, we’ve accomplished so much in these past four decades!

Challenging times can be times of profound growth and learning, and this has certainly been the case for Oregon PSR. The movements to promote peace and justice and to protect our climate continue to grow, and I encourage you to read about our ongoing work to make our world more just, peaceful, and healthy for all.

Oregon PSR is celebrating our 40th year of work for a more healthy, peaceful, and just world in 2021. We began from the powerful vision of our founders who sat on the living room floor in Dr. Karen Steingart’s house and strategized about how a health message could help prevent nuclear war. Over the next forty years, countless members, volunteers, and donors brought their passion and leadership to the organization, bringing a broad public health frame to issues such as environmental justice, gun violence, and climate health, learning and growing along the way.

Though 2020 and the early months of 2021 have posed a unique set of challenges to Oregon PSR’s work, we continue to learn and implement new ways to grow our movement for a more healthy, just, and peaceful world. With the support of our members and volunteers, we have taken advantage of online meeting technologies to broaden the reach of our Peace Program efforts well beyond the borders of our state, involving new partners and reaching new audiences. If you missed any of our recent events, be sure to check them out on our website, Facebook page, or our new YouTube channel.

It is a little staggering to reflect on everything that has happened over the past year: wildfires and ice storms destroying communities in Oregon and beyond and demonstrating that climate chaos is upon us; the deadliest wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of approved vaccines; and a presidential election that signaled the end of the Trump Administration alongside a very disturbing reminder on January 6th that the violent right-wing extremism and white nationalism of Trumpism is still with us.

At the beginning of 2020, Oregon PSR began a campaign to close the waste incinerator that has been in operation for 34 years in Brooks, Oregon, just north of Salem. This incinerator has been burning not only residential waste but also out-of-state medical waste which, when burned, releases toxic chemicals into the air that our communities breathe. Our work has continued despite the year-long struggles over COVID-19, wildfires, and, more recently, severe winter weather.

Mass incarceration is a major public health issue in the United States. With over 2 million people currently incarcerated, the US leads the world by far in incarceration rates. The negative health impacts created by mass incarceration are present not only in prisons, but also in the communities that prisons are located and the communities where adults in custody come from, which are disproportionately lower income communities and communities of color.

As we celebrate our 40th year of work in 2021, we are asking members who believe in this organization to consider investing in the next 40 years. In addition to making one-time donations, here are four other ways that you can support our work.

Oregon PSR Program Assistant Katy Morrow recently conducted an online interview with Catherine Bax, PA (pictured here), a member of our Healthy Climate Action Team.

How long have you been a part of Oregon PSR?

“I feel like I’ve always been peripherally involved in PSR. In the 70s, when living in Los Angeles, my involvement primarily consisted of participating in anti-nuke actions and Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorials every year. We moved to Portland in 1993 but I didn’t really start volunteering with Oregon PSR until about 2014 after I’d retired from Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center.”