Belfast.  - Medical Outreach Maine is excited to screen the award-winning documentary ESCAPE FIRE and facilitate a post-screening discussion. Medical Outreach Maine is a student outreach group from the University of Maine and is supported by the Maine AHEC Network, the University of New England, Penobscot Community Health Care, athenahealth, Seaport Family Medicine, and the University of Maine Hutchinson Center.

The documentary will be screened on Wednesday, May 29 at 4:00pm in Belfast, ME at the Hutchinson Center, 80 Belmont Avenue (Route #3).  This event is free and the public is encouraged to attend.

ESCAPE FIRE tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: what can be done to save our broken medical system? The film examines the powerful forces trying to maintain the status quo in a medical industry designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care. After decades of resistance, a movement to bring innovative high-touch, low-cost methods of prevention and healing into our high-tech, costly system is finally gaining ground. Filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke interweave dramatic personal arcs of patients and physicians with the stories of leaders battling to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the U.S. military. ESCAPE FIRE is about finding a way out of our current crisis. It’s about saving the health of a nation.

“Medical Outreach Maine” was created in 2006 to provide University of Maine students with exposure to rural health needs and to create a pipeline program. Encouraging pre- health professions students to work in rural and underserved areas and providing mentors in these regions is paramount to encouraging students to eventually practice where they are needed most. This year the group will spend their time in Waldo County learning about rural health and provide outreach services.

For more information about this event please call Sean Sibley at 207/290-5665 or email Sean at sena.sibley@maine.edu