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State's New Rhodes Scholar Seeks Health Care Solutions

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 20, 2007

  Joseph O'Shea

TALLAHASSEE - On-campus, Joseph O'Shea is a leader among his peers as student body president of Florida State University. Off-campus, he already is a leader in the fight to reform America's health care system.

Now, the 21-year-old from Dunedin is heading to Oxford University in England as Florida's newest recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship.

"I hope to spend the rest of my life resolving the inequalities in society," O'Shea said. "And I'm incredibly excited to go to Oxford University. This will be my first time abroad; I've never been out of the country."

The Rhodes Trust on Sunday announced the winners of the internationally awarded prize. Monday morning, FSU President T.K. Wetherell introduced O'Shea, Florida's sole Rhodes Scholar this year, to reporters at a news conference in Tallahassee. O'Shea was one of 32 U.S. students awarded the scholarship, selected from 764 applicants.

The honor will fund up to three years of study, starting in October, at Oxford, where O'Shea will concentrate on comparative social policy. He is an honors student with majors in philosophy and interdisciplinary social sciences and a 4.0 grade-point average.

O'Shea, who also is a Truman Scholar, founded a free health clinic in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and led a coalition to expand health care for the poor in Leon County. He began his volunteer work, he said, as a volunteer at the Clearwater Free Clinic.

Volunteer Work An Eye-Opener

"That was certainly an eye-opener," he said. "You can spend a lot of time reading about inequities in health care, lack of access to health care in American systems. But it's a lot different to see it yourself and have to face people struggling to pay, and listen to their stories and try to find a place for them in the health care system in this little niche, in this little tiny clinic in Clearwater.

"It revealed to me ... that there were a lot of people who needed help and who couldn't get it in America. And I thought a just society wouldn't allow this to happen because, for the most part, it wasn't any fault of their own."

O'Shea traveled to New Orleans nine months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. With help from volunteers, he transformed a flooded home into a free health care clinic for residents in the Lower 9th Ward. His effort has amassed as much as $400,000 in donations and grants, and the clinic sees about 30 patients a day.

He also led a group in Tallahassee seeking a half-percent sales tax to benefit the health care needs of indigent residents. In the end, though, voters rejected the plan.

O'Shea looks forward, he said, to using the Rhodes Scholarship as "a means to an end," which, in his case, will be to observe and research health care and social programs in other countries for possible solutions to problems in the United States.

O'Shea is the third Rhodes Scholar in FSU's history, Wetherell said at Monday's news conference.

Dad's Illness, Death Inspired Him

O'Shea's father died in the spring after battling polycystic kidney disease for a little more than four years. Today, the scholar is candid about the effect of his father's disease on his own drive to improve health care, particularly for the underprivileged.

"My father passed away, but he was sick for many years before that," he said. "It forced a lot of changes in my family, and it developed a sense of empathy and humility, and the idea that much of what happens in our lives is just simply a matter of luck."

O'Shea's three siblings also attend FSU: Jesse, a freshman studying biology; Mykal, a junior studying nursing; and Robert, a second-year law student.

Joseph said he expects to run for a political office one day. The Democrat said he supports Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president in 2008.

O'Shea describes himself as a "social entrepreneur," which he says combines the "core values of an entrepreneur" with the "humanitarian, the justice side, equality."

He said he did not initially view himself as the right candidate for the Rhodes Scholarship, which seemed like an award for "bookworms." Despite a stellar academic profile, O'Shea views himself more as a man of action.

He attributed that results-driven, creative approach to his late father, a Bay area businessman.

"He was a true fighter; he really had the same sense of drive and inspiration," O'Shea said. "Translating that, or merging those values with a sense of justice or sense of duty to help others - I think that's where I get that."

Reporter Adam Emerson contributed to this report. Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382 or cdolinski@tampatrib.com.

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