UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

Patriot Spotlight: UT Tyler Professor Collects Personal Essays About Health Care

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November 11, 2016

Media Contact:  Hannah Buchanan
Editor/Writer–Strategic Communications & Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.539.7196 (cell)

UT Tyler associate professor Dr. Brent D. Beal, with the help of UT Tyler MBA students from Academic Partnerships, collaborated to develop "As I See It," a collection of personal essays about American health care and health care reform.

After reading a number of personal health care essays, students were asked to write essays of their own about experiences that were meaningful to them and that had changed the way they thought about health care and/or a particular health care issue. The project grew out of Beal's longstanding interest in health care, economic markets and social responsibility.

"The authors of the essays in this volume are primarily health care professionals who have stepped back from their daily work to reflect on how their personal experiences relate to systemic and/or public policy issues in health care," said Beal, who serves as co-editor. "Readers are invited to reexamine taken-for-granted assumptions as they explore the complex interrelationships between health care practice, economic markets, ethics and social responsibility."

The power of these essays comes from the way they magnify personal experience, Beal added.

"These kinds of stories have the capacity to influence public dialogue and shape public policy. These essays give form and life to the contradictions and challenges of our health care system in ways that antiseptic discussions of public policy cannot," he said.

Co-editors are Nancy L. Nieberding and Heather K. Olson Beal.

For more information, contact Beal, 903.566.7312 or bbeal@uttyler.edu.

Serving UT Tyler since 2010, Beal teaches strategic management in the College of Business and Technology.

He conducts research on value creation, income inequality and social responsibility, and he has published articles on a number of different topics including school choice and the increasing marketization of K-12 education, fair trade and brand communities. Beal also writes teaching cases that illustrate the socially constructed nature of economic markets and the prevalence of different kinds of market failure.