Happy Retirement Pat O’Kray, You Earned It!!!

Andy

“Happy Retirement to You, Happy Retirement to You, Happy Retirement Dear Pat, Happy Retirement to You!”

Today faculty, students, and staff met in the GLC Leadership Room to celebrate the illustrious career of Pat O’Kray.  Having served 15 years at the School of Public Health, she has amassed the greatest amount of knowledge and most importantly, respect, from the entire department.

These past few months, Pat has served as a confidant, resource, and friend to me and my many classmates. Without her guidance, I know with absolute certainty, my transition to graduate school life would have much more difficult. From internships, to class scheduling, to responding to a barrage of random emails, she is one word, wonderful.

Pat O’Kray did not work for the University of Michigan Health Management and Policy department, she embodied it. On behalf of the entire HMP 2014 class, we will miss you.

Andy Mychkovsky is a first year HMP student at the School of Public Health.

Quick Note: Internship & Job Hunting!

Michelle

To all 2nd years who are still looking for internships in the great state of Michigan, check out: http://interninmichigan.com/

Or you can follow them on Twitter — I have found Twitter to be a great resource for job hunting! I follow the National Institutes for Health, the United Nations, and other great employers and job searching engines.

Here are some other recent ideas from U.S. News: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/01/04/4-little-known-tools-for-a-2012-job-hunt

Good luck with your search !

For Prospective Students: Being a UMich SPH Student

Katie Sloter

It is mid-February!

How does this happen? Around this time last year, I was actually trying to figure out housing situations, funding, etc. for the next year– my first in SPH. I cannot believe this year is going so fast. As a first year, I am beginning to think about what comes next. However, I want to take some time to ask you prospective students out there what it is you want to know– about the school, Ann Arbor, the people, anything. I am going to comment briefly on a few topics I was concerned with, but please feel free to jump in and either

a) comment on your experience if you are a current or past student (advice, what you wish you would have known, etc.)

OR

b) ask a question if you are a prospective student.

Ann Arbor, Michigan: Very cute, kind of hippie. I love the Farmer’s Market (which runs through the winter), the music venues, and the little shops and coffee houses. SPH is further from the downtown area. There is also a section called Kerrytown, which is where the Farmer’s Market is located– this is kind of an artsy location. Cobblestones, etc, this is the historical area.

SPH: There is SPH 1 and SPH 2, which is actually connected by an overpass, which is nice in winter if you don’t want to walk the 20 feet into the cold to get across buildings. SPH1 is definitely newer, and pretty impressive looking. It has a cafe, which can be good or bad depending on how bad your caffeine addiction is….! It is pretty, and is full of glass windows (Glasshouse Cafe is it’s name, aptly). SPH1 is my favorite of the two buildings, and it has a couple different quiet study areas, and some rooms you can reserve for groups to study. SPH has a library in this building, but it has been closed since I got here. SPH2 is a little less shiny and new, but this is where the computer lab is located as well as lockers SPH students can reserve, which is handy for storing food-stuffs and winter gear.

Faculty: I personally have had a great experience with most of the faculty at SPH. I definitely choose classes based on not only the material, but whether or not I can learn from the professor. I think we are in an enviable position at Michigan where the faculty are both incredible in their field, but also maintain a passion for teaching. This combination is really why I love Michigan. In the smaller courses I took, I feel like I was able to better get to know faculty.

Adviser: I am not sure how your undergraduate experience was, but I basically planned everything, saw a different adviser each time, and had them sign off on my schedule. I have been so pleasantly surprised with the extent that my adviser cares about my personal goals, and is helping me carve out a class schedule that caters to them.

Funding: … is difficult to obtain. Since public health is not an undergraduate major, it is different than going into a grad program where you can GSI for the mirroring undergraduate department. That being said, I do know some people (usually second years or U of M grads) who hold GSI positions. Unfortunately, they are few. However, U of M does offer scholarships for excellence in education, and this has greatly helped me personally and quite a few students I have talked to. Also, since public health is a service field, there may be possibilities of student-loan forgiveness programs.

People/Students: Something I have found is that everyone right away is craving friendships. I was a little intimidated (okay, a lot intimidated) by moving 12 hours from my home-town. I came a couple weeks before school orientation, and there were some pros and cons to this. I had a chance to explore a little and get settled before scrambling into school-mode; but I was concerned about not having enough to do. You will have enough to do. You know how you have that crazy interest that you like to nerd out about, and peoples’ eyes start to glaze over after a few minutes? Imagine a whole class full of people who care/enjoy/talk about the same things– but from completely different angles and backgrounds! Everyone, I mean everyone, in SPH is there for a reason. I have been here since August 2010, and still have found that I wish I had the time to completely invest in knowing all the amazing people that go to this school. That being said, it is difficult to meet people outside of SPH if you don’t make an active effort early on to join U of M organizations, and just explore outside of SPH.

Housing: I lived alone this year because I didn’t want a random roommate. However, many of my friends found random houses and have really enjoyed their experience! It is also personal preference, but the further you move away from campus, the cheaper housing is. You can find covered parking, but parking in general costs more usually.  I would recommend really seeing what is included utility-wise, check with other students, and e-mailing new and current students about living together.

Courses: Courses depend entirely upon your concentration, but whatever your specific interest, you should be able to find a way to make your courses relevant. For example, I am interested in Global Health, and am taking courses to meet the Global Health Certificate requirements. You can take courses in all departments of SPH, and any grad level course in different programs.

I hope this is at least mildly helpful for anyone getting their acceptances, and like I said, please pitch in if anyone has a comment, question, or suggestion!

IASA presents Samasti

Katie Sloter

I am obsessed with beauty. Not the glossed over, edited beauty that can be found in the fashion magazines (that I only read on airplanes or ‘days that don’t exist’ such as can be found when there is a snowstorm or storm of any sorts).

No. I am obsessed with beauty in cascades of words, the raw visceral beauty that exists in the minutia of our days. I love doorways, photography, people that smile crookedly. Micro-expressions. Water and fire and the kindness of strangers who let you turn in front of them on the road when they could have just kept driving.

One of the things I love about living in a university town is that the beauty of different cultures has a chance to be celebrated. My friend Lindsay Ward, a first year MPH student, chose to be a part of Samasti this year. She spent many hours practicing for the evening, along with nearly a hundred other University of Michigan students. Samasti was put on by the Indian American Student Association of the University of Michigan. This was a celebration of the various types of dances from different regions in India, and it was a smashing success. The dancing had everything I enjoy: slashes of color, fabric, culture, energy, humor, and vivaciousness. I thought it was an awesome way to integrate a little beauty, culture, and class into the experience of being a graduate student. Thank you IASA for a great evening!

Lindsay Ward, MPH 2012, in full garb for Samasti

Internship at the Washtenaw County Health Department

Carrie Rheingans

You know you’re a public health dork when… you leave a two-hour meeting at your internship with your head buzzing about the possibilities of health promotion programs in your community. For my social work field placement this academic year, I’m placed at the local health department, Washtenaw County Public Health. On my first day of orientation to SPH, I remember hearing someone say that if you’ve seen one local health department, you’ve seen ONE local health department – meaning that each local health department is so different from the next that there aren’t many generalizations that can be made about them. WCPH is fortunate to be able to do many health promotion programs that are in addition to their mandated public health duties as required by state or federal regulations.

Our division meeting included updates on a number of health promotion programs, from smoking cessation and healthy eating to biking to work and substance use prevention. It was reassuring to hear a lot of terms I’ve been learning in my graduate studies, and to see how health programs operate in my local community – instead of just reading about it from research articles. One staff member gave a report from a presentation at  statewide conference she had recently attended in which a health communication campaign out of Jackson, Michigan was discussed. I had heard about this campaign before in my health communication course last fall – it was a final project option for some of the students in my class! It was nice to see it come to fruition and be lauded across the state. You can learn more about it on their website – Most Teens Don’t!

Most Teens Don't Logo

Another major topic of the meeting was a big grant we’ve been writing for the last couple weeks for the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). It’s been a fun process being part of this grant proposal. The MDCH has funded 16 community organizations and local health departments over the last year to do planning in their communities for addressing health disparities among various ethnic populations. Washtenaw County was funded to work with African-Americans and Latinos, and we just submitted our proposal for the next phase of the grant – implementation. Even if we don’t get funded, it was a great learning experience to be able to work on developing the programs for the Latino-focused part of the proposal, as well as the evaluation plan. I got to apply what I learned in HBHE 651 (Program Development) and what I’m learning right now in HBHE 622 (Program Evaluation), in addition to many of the theories I learned in HBHE 600 (Psychosocial Factors in Health-Related Behavior) and SW 502 (Organizational, Community and Societal Structures and Processes).

Sleeping Bear Dunes

David McCormick

It’s hard to believe that Fall Break happened over  a week ago – with midterms, problem sets, and the poster session, time has been flying by here at SPH. Thankfully, Fall Break this year was actually a break (last year all of the midterms were after the break, and it was more of a “break from class so you won’t be distracted while you study” type of a vacation), so I figured that I’d use the time to go explore Michigan. The area around Ann Arbor is nice – lots of rivers, streams, and lakes – but I’d never seen the northern half of Michigan and so decided to camp at Sleeping Bear Dunes for a few days.

Moon Over the Dunes

The weather was perfect – high 60s and sunny – and since it was the middle of the Fall, the campsites were fairly empty (at least we didn’t have to contend with lots of loud RVs at night). We also managed to hit that point right before the leaves drop off the trees, so the drive north to Traverse City (only about 4 hours) had lots of nice scenery along the way. The camping was different than I’m used to (there was actually running water and permanent toilets!), so “roughing it” isn’t really an apt description of the facilities. The park has lots of nice trails that wander through the dunes, and it’s easy to forget that you’re standing on sand that was dropped here at the end of last ice age when you’re walking through the middle of a forest. Once you make it through the dunes, the views out over Lake Michigan and across to the Manitou Islands are great. There’s even a dune climb where you can hike up the hills for a bit and over to the lakeshore (although running down on the trip back is more fun…).

View from the Dunes

This trip was my first time seeing one of the Great Lakes, and it was weird to see waves in something that didn’t have a salt spray. The more I explore Michigan, the more I come to like the state – it’s much different than I had expected when I moved here, and there’s lots of state parks and forests to explore. All in all, the trip up north was a great way to escape school and homework for a few days, and it’s inspired me to plan a trip to the Upper Peninsula sometime next year – after the snows melt, of course.

PCAP- Prison Creative Arts Project

Valentina Stackl

 

PCAP is an organization at UM that does work with both adult and juvenile prisoners. It’s also a program through which Michigan prisoners can show and sell their artwork at an annual exhibition. The prices are very reasonable and the artwork tends to be impressive. This is their mission statement: “The Prison Creative Arts Project’s mission is to collaborate with incarcerated adults, incarcerated youth, urban youth and the formerly incarcerated to strengthen our community through creative expression.” Students at UM can participate in the Project and work with prisoners and their artwork. 

The annual exhibit is supposed to break down stereotypes and “demystifies prisoners”. This year’s exhibition really moved me. So many of the paintings depicted incarcerations as a direct result of the failing economy in Michigan. Here are some examples:

This image shows people protesting as jobs are shipped abroad like cargo. 

This one’s pretty scary. Lady Liberty and some sort of Vortex of impending doom. On the scale, the banks are winning and the little guy is about to fall off the only solid ground in sight. 

This one is quite specific to the issues Michigan is facing. It is referring to Michigan auto workers having to find work out of state. It’s also referring to Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s governor and the terrible debt Michigan is in, losing your house, and your job. 

I liked this one a lot. It shows a baby born in the United States as a prisoner. It shows that some children are born into communities were options are so limited that prison is the most likely outcome. 

This picture looks like it could be Detroit. A city that’s falling apart, with prostitutes and drug addicts walking the streets. The frame looks like it could be the perspective from inside a cop car. I’m not sure what to make of that- maybe the fact that imprisoning thousands of people isn’t actually getting at the root of the problems our country is facing?

Anyway- I just wanted to share yet another great thing you can do at UM. There are a ton of activists on campus doing things around the clock. Prisoner’s rights and the decrepit state of many US cities are important causes that you can easily participate in on campus.

Malaria in Michigan?

David McCormick

When you think about malaria, chances are high that the United States is not the first country that comes to mind.  However, malaria was endemic in the US until the late 1940′s, and the high prevalence of malaria in the Southeastern US is one of the main reasons why the CDC headquarters is located in Atlanta.

Malaria has a long history in the US.  Until 1880 it was thought that malaria was caused by bad air (“malaria” comes from the Medieval Italian for “bad air”) and it wasn’t until 1898 that Sir Ronald Ross of Britain proved that malaria is transmitted by mosquitos.  Our capital was built on a swamp (truly a wonder of modern urban planning) and in the summer was notorious for diseases including malaria and yellow fever.

It’s easy to forget that until as recently as a century ago, much of the US was still a developing country – industrial manufacturing was low and most people lived in small towns and worked on family farms.  The population density was low in many regions and low-lying fields were good farmland and ideal breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carried malaria when they flooded.  Malaria was such a problem in the US that the US Census of 1870 released a map showing areas in the US where deaths from malaria were high (see below).

A Census Map Showing the Proportionate Mortality of Malaria in the US in 1870

The map is courtesy of the US Library of Congress and can be found in its original context here.

Michigan’s reputation as a hotbed of malaria was well known, as the following quote from the Bulletin of the Medical and Surgical Sanitorium (Battle Creek, Michigan, 1892) shows:

But what about Michigan malaria? Unfortunately for the reputation of Michigan as a healthful State, the idea got abroad many years ago that the principal feature of its climate was malaria. Going to Michigan was considered almost synonymous with going to have a fit of the ague. It was not supposed to be possible for a person to visit Michigan or even to pass through the State without having the chills.

Apart from being a mere historical curiosity, the high prevalence of malaria in Michigan served as a barrier to development – the rural regions of Central Michigan stand in sharp contrast to the well-developed Southeast and are a legacy of peoples’ hesitancy to venture further inland.

So how did we eradicate malaria in the United States?  Public health.  Even before it was known that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, people would clear swamps to reduce the incidence – a classic example of how you can solve a health problem without knowing the exact cause of disease if you understand the risk factors.  Once we figured out that mosquitoes were the culprit, much of the eradication effort focused on their elimination.  Common practices included land improvement, removal of mosquito breeding sites, and heavy insecticide use.  DDT was the most commonly used insecticide, and its use in the 1940′s to eliminate malaria lead to severe environmental consequences (for more, see Silent Spring). A very nice (and brief) history can be found here.

Michigan Community Conversation for a National AIDS Strategy

Carrie Rheingans

Michigan got its chance to give feedback to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy on Wednesday, 18 November 2009. From across the state, providers, people living with HIV, and people affected by HIV came and gave their recommendations, suggestions, and demands on video tape and in writing.

I was the statewide organizer for this event as part of my social work internship at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC). This experience was the perfect combination of public health and social work that I hope to gain from my dual degree program (MPH/MSW). When the nationwide community conversations were announced, many people across Michigan wondered why we didn’t have one scheduled near us, especially considering the fact that some zip codes in Detroit have higher HIV prevalence than some countries that receive emergency money form the United States government. The Campaign to End AIDS contacted me after hearing from a few outspoken Michiganders and we did a lot of grassroots organizing in a few short weeks to pull off this successful event. See the Between the Lines article and the Michigan Messenger article for further coverage.

The conversation was only two hours long, and the majority of the time was occupied by community members speaking about what they wanted in a National AIDS Strategy. The night started with welcomes from Craig Covey, Ferndale mayor (Ferndale is the city where the event was held) and longtime staff member of the Michigan AIDS Coalition, Christine Campbell and Larry Bryant of the Campaign to End AIDS, and Charles Pugh, President-elect of the Detroit City Council. Charles also moderated the event.

Below are some of the things people told the White House:

“When is the last time we got together as a community of loving, living people when funders weren’t making us?”

“We need quality healthcare for LGBT people living with HIV and AIDS – we need to strengthen doctor-patient relationships because people are not comfortable coming out to their doctors”

“Viagra and Cialis have aided in the resurgence of sexually transmitted infections in senior housing complexes. We need more education and prevention in these locations”

“The church, rid of stigma, denial and fear, becomes a change agent”

“my barrier [to being an AIDS advocate] is childcare”

“I wanted post-exposure prophylaxis and the nurse didn’t even know what it was!”

“We need the same laws coast to coast – enough with a patchwork of different laws about HIV”

“I missed class tonight to be here on my birthday to tell you that we need rec centers for our kids to have something safe to do after school”

“Michigan prisons don’t hand out condoms or test for HIV when people are released – but we know that people are still having sex and they need to get tested because they might need to get right into care”

It was great to hear people from as far away as Kalamazoo, Flint and Lansing gathering to speak out about such an important issue.

Larry Bryant from the Campaign to End AIDS introduces the event as moderator and President-elect of the Detroit City Council Charles Pugh looks on