Professor’s Film Shows Racism’s Intergenerational Toll on Health
What does the intersection of public health and cinema look like? On a recent morning, members of the Columbia Mailman community had the rare opportunity to see for themselves, with the screening of a powerful new film called Brim produced by Paris “AJ” Adkins-Jackson, assistant professor of epidemiology and sociomedical sciences. (Watch the trailer for Brim below.)
The film explores the impact of structural racism on the health and health care experiences of two families over three generations. Brim is informed by Adkins-Jackson’s scholarly work and supported by a Health Communication Pilot Award from the School’s Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. Brim was filmed in Illinois by Visage Entertainment, LLC, between 2023 and 2024.
Over the course of 80 minutes and three parts, the viewer sees how the historical practice of lynching innocent people evolved into modern forms of racial violence, perpetuating trauma and systemic inequality. The film begins with a haunting scene of the young protagonist, Leroy, cradled in his mother's arms as he witnesses the brutal lynching of his father. As the story unfolds, his family participates in the Civil Rights struggle and later experiences punitive policies enacted as part of the 1994 Crime Bill. Ultimately, Leroy's son, Desmond, is wrongfully accused and imprisoned.
Throughout, Brim shows the public health impact of these systemic injustices. In the film, Leroy and his family are forced to travel for hours to find an Alzheimer’s disease specialist. Meanwhile, Leroy’s white counterpart, George, has access to a specialist and is almost immediately enrolled in a clinical trial.
In a study published last year in the journal Health Equity, Adkins-Jackson found that older adults born in places with high levels of structural racism experienced a more rapid cognitive decline in later life compared to those with relatively low levels of exposure. In an influential commentary in the American Journal of Epidemiology, she distinguished between public health studies of race and racism and the methods researchers can use to measure the effect of racism on perpetuating health inequities.
Cinematic Precedents
Brim isn’t the first time a Columbia Mailman professor has harnessed the power of film to inform and entertain the public. W. Ian Lipkin, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia Mailman, served as the scientific advisor for the 2011 film Contagion, ensuring its realistic depiction of a zoonotic virus outbreak—from rapid global spread to the race for a vaccine. Years later, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lipkin and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns teamed up to create two series of PSAs to educate the public about ways to protect themselves. In the first, titled Control the Contagion, actors from the 2011 film—including Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, and Kate Winslet—promoted safety measures like social distancing and hand washing. In the second, Columbia clinicians and local community leaders encouraged eligible people to get vaccinated as part of New York State’s Roll Up Your Sleeves initiative.
Professors React to Brim
Following the screening, Adkins-Jackson led a panel discussion. Amber Baylor, a law professor at Columbia, spoke to the way the film captures the changes in civil rights and criminal law that older adults today have experienced. Jennifer Manly, a neuropsychology professor at CUIMC, described the arc of Alzheimer’s disease research throughout her career from being focused exclusively on White populations to examining racial disparities. Tess Pottinger, a genetic epidemiologist, discussed how important the environment is as it can turn genetic risk on and off. Samuel K. Roberts, a professor in the Departments of History and Sociomedical Sciences, spoke to the historical experiences of injustices that different generations lived through.
In her own reflections on film, Adkins-Jackson said she made Brim to shed light on the pervasive impact of structural racism on health and health care access and the need for interdisciplinary research to address these issues. “I want viewers to see a glimpse into the experiences of our elders, and then, perhaps, we can extend more grace and care for a group of people surviving a world that changed around them,” she said.
