By Ingrid Berg, D.O.,
TGLP Board Chair
A poem by Yvette Perry, TGLP Listener Poet was featured as part of an ethics education event for a large healthcare organization on April 29, 2025. “Living With Sickle Cell Disease” was the theme of the Spring 2025 “Ethics on the Big Screen” presentation held at the Benson Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska, sponsored by CommonSpirit.
The evening included a showing of the documentary Spilled Milk, centered on the experience of Omar Beach, who has sickle cell disease, and his friendship with Jaqai Mickelsen. (The two made the film together.)
The documentary provided a springboard to explore how stigma and social structures interface with the experience of living with sickle cell disease. Utilizing a narrative ethics framework, storytelling helped promote a compassionate exploration of what it might be like for a patient with sickle cell disease to navigate the healthcare landscape.
After the documentary, a panel discussion followed that included TGLP board member, Ingrid Berg, a palliative care physician, as well as a pharmacist, a family medicine physician, an ethicist, and a molecular geneticist.
“It was really important to all of us that we end the evening listening to the voice of a patient sharing their experience of living with sickle cell disease,” Berg said.
The evening then concluded with a recording of Perry reading the poem “What You Will Call Me.” Perry, who is also TGLP’s Health Equity Programs Lead, had written this poem for an earlier TGLP project to bring awareness to the experience of living with sickle cell disease, along with the late Chidube Nkiruka, TGLP Certified Listener Poet alum, whose poem is titled “Sick and Tired.”