KIMBERLY J. SOENEN
Soenen is the Founder and Executive Director of "SOME PEOPLE," a multiverse channel that examines the people, processes and systems that constitute the maintenance of, and barriers to, Public and Global Health.
Her areas of expertise are: White Collar Healthcare Crime, Best Practice, Quality of Care, Non-privatized Single Payer Healthcare policy, and Do No Harm business ethics.
Soenen has been personally harmed by the Commercial Health Insurance industry in the United States. She is a lifelong advocate of enacting a Single Payer National Health Program and she endorses Universal Healthcare / The Medicare for All Act of 2024. She shares the belief with ethical medical professionals that putting patients over politics is paramount to building a civil society and Harm-for-Profit should be made illegal.
Since 1996, Soenen has worked for Oscar, Peabody, World Press, MacArthur and Pulitzer Award–winning organizations in media and policy.
As a young woman, Soenen worked directly for Dr. Quentin Young, Dr. Gordy Schiff, Dr. Linda Peeno, Dr. Deb Richter, David Himmelstein and others at Physicians for a Natiional Health Program as the Media Relations Manager. Among her other responsibilities, she coordinated then-Senator Barack Obama’s Single Payer press conferences in Chicago pitched and placed key policy articles and OpEds with national press. She also traveled to Washington, D.C., to present H.R. 676, The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, to Congress with several Single Payer luminaries including Drs. Marcia Angell, David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, David Satcher, Quentin Young and Economist Dean Baker among others.
Since that time Soenen has financed and produced reportage about Maternal Mortality, Chronic, Kidney Disease, PTSD, TBI, Polio Eradication, Hunger Eradication, Neglected Diseases worldwide, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Child Brides, Mass Incarceration, Chronic Illness, the dangers of Off-Label Marketing, Burn Pits and more.
Soenen has led global multimedia teams and collaborated with bureaus and verticals around the world, including data, investigative, documentary and photojournalism, to produce in-depth narratives, top-tier accountability journalism, visually-impactful essays and high-caliber storytelling across multiverse platforms.
Soenen works with an international network of high performing journalists, producers, policy leaders and artists to improve Public Health policy through visual story telling, reporting and live events. They work together globally to expose fraud and criminality across the healthcare ecosystem.
Her writing and editing have been featured in The Index on Censorship, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune Magazine, The 2nd Hand, MILK, NPR, CNN, MinnPost and the History in Africa Journal (Cambridge University Press), among others.
During her early career she worked for Harper’s Magazine, NPR in Washington, DC, Chicago Tribune books division, and Kartemquin Films. More recently, she was the Director of Global Business Development and Special Projects for VII Photo Agency in New York.
She is the coproducer of Fatal Neglect, the six-part Médecins Sans Frontières documentary series filmed internationally about Global Health. She is the supervising producer of Long Shadow, a film and national engagement project about mass incarceration policy in the United States and how it impacts Public Health. For the DOC NYC film festival she curated VII Uncommissioned which addresses pressing political issues globally, and she is the Executive Producer of Vicarious, a study of trauma reduction and harm prevention.
In addition, she financed Defy about rape as a weapon of war for the International Rescue Committee and Under Cane which exposes the causes of Chronic Kidney Disease among sugar cane workers.
One of the most impactful long-running multiverse projects she worked on is Bring it to The Table. The project includes a short documentary, webisode series, online platform, and community engagement campaign aimed at bridging political divides and breaking down partisanship.
Soenen is a member of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and a graduate of Loyola University Chicago.
DR. LINDA PEENO
Following employment as a medical reviewer for Humana and medical director at Blue Cross/Blue Shield Health Plans, Dr. Linda became a critic of how United States Commercial Health Insurance companies drive profits through the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model.
On May 30, 1996, Peeno testified before Congress about the scope and scale of Moral Inury the United States Commercial Health Insurance industry and lobby was imposing on physicians, and the physicial harm and death the industry was imposing on patients.
In the 2002 Showtime docudrama Damaged Care, Laura Dern portrayed Dr. Peeno as she transitioned from health care industry employee to whistleblower. In 2007, Dr. Peeno was prominently featured in the documentary movie Sicko, which included portions of her May 1996 appearance before Congress.
On June 28, 2007, in a statement about Sicko, Humana declared that Peeno was never a Humana "associate" (permanent, full-time employee), but rather a "part-time contractor". Humana also disputed the portions of Congressional testimony that were shown by saying that because the patient's specific healthcare plan didn't cover heart transplants, the Denial of Coverage was valid.
Since 1996 Dr. Peeno has written about Moral Injury in healthcare and across all industries in the United States specifically. She has also written widely about Denial of Care and how the siphoning of resources away from patients impacts Public Health and Safety, as well as morale and professional integrity.
In the “Rage and Reconciliation” issue of Creative Nonfiction, she penned a now-famous article titled “Burden of Oath” about how physicians are incentivized to impose harm through Denial of Care mechanisms.
Peeno has been featured in the New York Times and countless other papers of record on the topic of Corporate Healthcare and Do No Harm policies and practices. She also consults on legal cases related to Denial of Care and other healthcare issues where preventable harm and death are at issue.
She recently wrote an essay called “Voice Lessons” for The First Person with Michael Judge, the former Wall Street Journal editor’s Substack. In the essay Peeno writes: "We must learn to use our voices, however small, and sometimes weak and ineffective, to understand and change the sources of suffering."