Family Doc Filmmaker Aims Spotlight on His Specialty

Think about physicians in popular culture today, and you’re more likely to conjure images of young, impossibly good-looking surgeons, which isn’t surprising given that Grey’s Anatomy is in its 21st season. Even when surgeons aren’t the star attractions, Hollywood’s focus in medical dramas is likely to be on hospital-based specialists like Gregory House, M.D., or the emergency medicine docs from ER.

Fox is set to debut Doc in January. That hospital-based drama follows a primary care physician recovering from a brain injury who has lost her memory of the past eight years.

Jon Hallberg, M.D., FAAFP, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, is eager to see how that show, which was delayed more than a year by a writers’ strike, turns out.

“I want to challenge Hollywood to get it right when it comes to portraying family medicine,” Hallberg said. “They just always seem to get it wrong. Every time family physicians are portrayed, it’s a surgeon who had a crisis or someone being punished and forced to practice in a small town. Overnight they pivot and become family doctors. They do it kicking and screaming, but eventually they realize how meaningful it is. That’s lovely, but it’s such a weird trope.”

From Northern Exposure, to Doc Hollywood, and even the BBC’s Doc Martin, there’s no shortage of unwilling small-town primary care physicians in television and film. Hallberg isn’t interested in resuscitating Marcus Welby, but he does have plans to show the nation what family physicians can do. The three-time regional Emmy Award winner and longtime contributor to Minnesota Public Radio might be just the man for the job.

This fall he was named a LEADS (Leadership Education for Academic Development and Success) Fellow by the Association of Departments of Family Medicine. His project will be a film focused on a rural, full-scope family physician.

“Why don’t we show people who are going into family medicine because they want to and they’re trained to do so?” he said. “I don’t want to shy away from the warts, pain and the difficulty of our specialty, but I do want to show realistic, moving, beautiful portrayals of family medicine. We want to entice students to come into this specialty. We want to show patients, payers and policymakers what we can do, what we’re capable of. Harnessing pop culture is a way to do that.”

Hallberg isn’t new to media. From 2003 through 2021, he was a regular medical analyst for All Things Considered on Minnesota Public Radio. During that time, he was a Bush Medical Fellow, an experience that included a course on reporting research to the public at Dartmouth College and another on audio documentaries at Duke University.

“The first audio documentary workshop I went to at Duke was the greatest educational experience of my adult life,” said Hallberg, who still makes monthly appearances on public radio. “It was like radio summer camp. I learned so much and had such a great time. To enter with nothing and leave with a well-polished, beautiful piece that I was proud of was a great experience.”

In 2009, Hallberg created Hippocrates Cafe. The result was a live, inspired-by-radio show with professional actors and musicians who addressed health care topics through story and song.

It started in an unfinished space in Hallberg’s clinic with 100 rented folding chairs.

“We brought people in and said, ‘Let's see what this turns into,’” he said. “The first show was a bit of a hot mess, but after that we figured it out.”

With Hallberg as the host, Hippocrates Cafe produced more than 115 shows in 11 years at more than 70 venues in eight states, including the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, Stanford and the Minnesota State Fair.

The pandemic ended the show’s run after a final performance on Friday the 13th in March 2020. But Hallberg, founder and creative director for the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Center for the Art of Medicine, wasn’t done.

“The dean of our med school asked, ‘Is there something you can do to buoy the spirits of frontline workers?’” Hallberg said. “I thought, ‘There are a lot of things we could do, but I’d love to do something that has a lasting impact.’”

Hallberg reached out to his St. Olaf College classmate Sylvia Strobel, the president and CEO of Twin Cities PBS, and pitched the idea of bringing his live show to television.

“She loved it,” Hallberg said. “Within a month we turned this live show that I’d been doing for a decade into a televised show.”

Removed from the constraints of a stage, the new format allowed Hallberg to tap into more visual elements and utilize bigger, more diverse casts. Hallberg helped Twin Cities PBS win three Regional Emmys in four years for the Art + Medicine shows related to the pandemic, race and disability.

He appeared in early shows but has since moved behind the scenes, including as a producer.

“I have this ability to pull the funding together,” he said, “and I’m really enjoying this. I’m feeling comfortable being behind the camera. I’m at that point in my career where I want to be in a position to help others in a creative way. I never would have imagined I’d be producing. It’s been an absolute blast and I’m having so much fun with it.”

In addition to his LEADS project, Hallberg has three other films in pre-production:

• An animated short will explore the work the University of Minnesota Physicians group is doing around reconciliation in the context of medical errors. 
• A documentary will focus on the Minnesota-based Protez Foundation’s efforts to equip Ukrainian soldiers who’ve lost limbs with prosthetics.
• Another animated short will examine medieval society’s treatment of people with leprosy and parallels with modern-day treatment of people experiencing stigmatization.

“I wanted people to be moved by the shows when they were live, as I do with the TV shows and the films we’ve created,” he said. “I want people to have an emotional response to them.”

Minnesota’s Center for the Art of Medicine was created to encourage empathy and creativity in medical students. Hallberg hopes it will prevent burnout and help students maintain joy in practice as they progress in their careers.

All first-year students participate in a reflective writing course, and there also is elective curriculum that allows students to pursue creative projects. The Center plans to offer a certificate program that Hallberg hopes will serve as a differentiator for Minnesota students when it’s time for them to apply for residency. As part of that effort, he plans to teach an elective on Medicine in Film starting in the spring.

“It’s such a thrill to be part of that art-making process,” said Hallberg, who still sees patients four half-days a week and works as a clinic medical director. “I feel like all these weird, disparate opportunities I’ve had in my life are culminating in a really interesting way. I fully intend to be doing production work into retirement. I never set out to do that, but I’m realizing that’s going to be a big part of my life going forward.”