Myra Aquino, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2022, Athena Film Festival, Screenwriting Fellowship

Project Type: Pilot

Genre: Comedy

Length: 33 pages 

Field of Science: Medicine, Public Health

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

PUBLIC HEALTH is a half-hour comedy television series about a Filipino American arrogant, competitive surgeon named Stella who– after a humiliating public incident– is fired from her hospital and forced to take on a job in the much-maligned Public Health Department of West Palm Beach, Florida. At her first conference meeting, she meets her colleagues— a motley crew of misguided, incompetent workers. She is roped in to join a presentation about vape prevention at a high school, but the students there recognize Stella from a viral TikTok video and tease her. As a result, she nearly gets into a physical altercation with one of the students.
That same night, Stella has a conversation with her Filipino immigrant parents, who guilt-trip Judy into getting her prestigious old job back. She then talks to her therapist, and shares her insecurities about being underestimated. Later, Stella drives back down to Miami to talk to her former chief of medicine, who informs her that the damage from the video of her incident was too severe, and that she can’t get her job back at the hospital. On her way out, he and another colleague laugh at her for getting a job in public health.
Back in West Palm Beach, the public health department surprises Stella with a much-delayed welcome party, and she is touched. Stella then gets a sudden call from the chief saying she can go back to the hospital but as a more “lowly-regarded” family medicine doctor and she refuses, saying she’ll elevate the reputation of the public health department (and hers, in tandem) instead.