TED Talk Analysis: "Childhood Poverty"

Bert Lubin
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Dr. Bert Lubin delivered his TED talk titled “Childhood Poverty” on October 3, 2013 at a TEDx conference in Golden Gate Park.  Lubin is the CEO of Oakland Children’s Hospital, where children are not required to pay for treatment, so the audience most likely assumed that the speech would involve many health statistics and explanations.  Most members of the audience probably had a basic understanding of what poverty is, but they lacked the ability to see all the details of how poverty could have a direct correlation with health.  Before watching the speech, I expected a well-researched description of how poverty relates to health in children because Lubin is a healthcare professional.  The purpose that Lubin gives for delivering this TEDx talk was to persuade the audience into believing that poverty is all citizens’ responsibility in order to improve the healthcare in America.

Screenshot Taken during speech

Lubin’s delivery of the speech had its ups and downs.  What he did effectively was show how passionate he was about the topic.  When he repeated that “poverty should be considered a disease,” it was easy to see that he believed what he was saying and wanted everyone else to think the same.  Another good thing about the delivery was the PowerPoint visual aid.  The slides displayed facts, and drew the audience’s attention to keep them engaged.  That being said, Lubin read straight from the slides and struggled with changing them at the correct times.  Overall, his delivery was well executed but not the most effective it could have been.  I think it could have been improved by more practice with the PowerPoint, and perhaps by extra rehearsals of the speech to eliminate the extra pauses.

Screenshot of Lubin's slides

As for the content of the talk, all of the information provided was researched and relevant.  There were many times throughout the speech that Lubin offered a new statistic to shock the audience.  The main topic of the health effects developed through poverty was explained through sub details such as America’s poor use of healthcare money.  Lubin remains persuasive throughout the speech that poverty needs to be better funded and examined in terms of being a disease.  He mentions that children cannot help what income they are born into, but he counters that if America were to better relocate funds in healthcare, then these children would not have to live such unhealthy lives.  One way that Lubin could have improved the speech is by keeping the speech more on topic.  His use of stories is an effective way to keep the audience engaged, but not all of the stories easily related back to poverty and children.

This TEDx talk relates to my service learning organization because it deals with children living in poverty.  Most of the cakes made by Sweet Blessings go to underprivileged children, and learning about these children’s lives helps me to better appreciate the service that Sweet Blessings is doing.  By showing these children compassion through a personal cake, Sweet Blessings is essentially following what Lubin mentioned about helping those living in poverty directly.  I found this TED talk online at:

Childhood Poverty