The U-M School of Public Health was the lead organizer of this year’s annual health disparities lecture in honor of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Symposium on campus. Each year, many of the health science schools (Public Health, Social Work, Medical, Nursing, Pharmacy, Dentistry) work together to bring a speaker to discuss an aspect of health disparities. This year’s speaker was Dr. Sherman James, Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke University, a former SPH faculty member and one of the founders of U-M SPH’s Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health, one of the first centers of its kind in the United States. The annual MLK Symposium is one of my favorite things about being a U-M student: classes are officially canceled so students can attend the multitude of events celebrating the work of MLK. I got to attend two more events in addition to the health disparities lecture: Shirley Sherrod’s keynote and a screening of Bilal’s Stand, a community-made film about a friend of mine from the Detroit area who struggled with deciding whether or not to attend college or take over the family taxi business.
Shirley Sherrod MLK 2011 Keynote Address in Hill Auditorium
Dr. James’ lecture focused on health disparities in the Civil Rights era and today. He started by showing many images of public places in the US South, highlighting how they were related to health disparities then and now. Then he started talking about specific issues, one of which was maternal and infant mortality rates. In the Civil Rights era (1960), Black women died giving birth at a rate of 31.7 women per 100,000, while White women died at a rate of 22.9 per 100,000 (Chay et al., 2003). This relates to today, where here in Washtenaw County, Black babies are three times more likely to die before their first birthday than White babies. I’m doing my social work field placement at the Washtenaw County Public Health Department, where they have a campaign about this very issue, called the 3X More Likely Campaign. Michigan Radio, the University of Michigan-based National Public Radio station, recently did a story about this disparity (and interviewed my supervisor!). The suspicion is that babies are being born with very low birth weights, because they are being born premature. According to the Washtenaw County campaign site, Black women may have their babies early as they age because of the chronic, low-level stress that has been building up over the duration of their lives. This really highlights the need to continue studying the social determinants of health.
Dr. Sherman James' MLK Memorial Health Disparities Lecture
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).
My current social work field placement is really bringing my two degree programs together. I’m a dual degree student – doing a Master of Public Health in SPH (in the department of Health Behavior and Health Education) and a Master of Social Work at the School of Social Work. I’m studying Community Organization and Community & Social Systems in social work. There are many dual degree options for students in public health, and it can be a really great investment if you want to work in multiple fields.
This is my third and final year of the dual degree program, and I’m happy that my courses and field experiences are really coming together in my learning. For my public health department, students usually do a 3-4 month field placement between their two years. I did a year-long placement at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center as an AmeriCorps member for the National AIDS Fund’s national direct AmeriCorps program in Detroit. For a social work degree, students can elect to do either two field placements (one each during each academic year) or one longer-term placement (from January – December of one calendar year). Most students elect to do the single placement, but I elected to do two.
This year’s placement is at the Washtenaw County Public Health department and I’m working with a number of community members to develop a Latin@ community center, Casa Latina, for Washtenaw County. I’m applying coursework in both schools that has covered grant-writing, program development, program evaluation, community participation, multi-level interventions, social marketing, survey design, materials creation, leadership development, and community organization and development. It’s nice to be able to apply what I’ve learned, and even combine some tasks at my field placement with current coursework. For example, for my program evaluation class, my final project is to create an evaluation plan for a health program – which is one of my tasks for a grant I’m writing at my placement. For another class, my final project is to create a community participation plan, which is something we need to do for Casa Latina anyway.
It’s great when I get to do public health practice during the semester and apply the things I’m learning in the classroom to the real world. Sometimes I wish there was a larger field component in public health, but there are definitely options for getting more real-world practice if you look for them.
Today’s my last first day of school and it’s been a great one so far! It’s sad to think that this long journey will be over in eight short months, but I know I’ll be happy to be done and start applying all the wonderful knowledge and skills I’ve learned in my two degree programs, public health and social work.
I always feel so optimistic at the beginning of a new semester – like maybe this time I can actually do all the reading! I’m very excited about my two public health classes this semester (EHS 500 – Principles of Environmental Health and HBHE 622 – Program Evaluation in Health Education). The environmental health class interests me because of the material and my background in the biological sciences, and the program evaluation class because it’s a valuable and transferable skill in the field(s) in which I’ll be working upon graduation.
I’m also excited to start teaching again. Last semester was my first being a graduate student instructor (GSI), and I really learned a lot, both about being a teacher and about being a student. I gained a lot of patience and improved my skills for speaking publicly and making sure people are following what you’re saying. I also learned how to better manage my time as a student, as well as what amount of work goes on behind the scenes in the classes I take. I also learned that while teaching is fun, grading is NOT fun. The worst part is that my midterms are at the same time as the ones I have to grade – which doesn’t make it easy to study for my own classes.
The other exciting development this semester is my field placement for social work. I’m working with the Washtenaw County Public Health Department to help develop a Latino community center for our community (Washtenaw County, the county in which the University of Michigan is located). Currently, there is no such organization that caters to people of Latino/Hispanic ethnicity or Spanish speakers.
I hope to write posts this year about my public health and social work classes, my field placement, teaching, and my passion, HIV and AIDS. Stay tuned!
Last weekend (March 12-14), many units at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor District Library supported a conference titled “Bring it Back, Take it Forward”, about 50 years of activism in southeastern Michigan. I spoke on Friday on the Health Activism panel as an AIDS activist, along with two physicians who have been activists for healthcare reform and a man who is a former UAW union member working for healthcare reform.
Odile Hugonot Haber (moderator), Dr. James Mitchiner, me (taking notes about what everyone's saying!), Dr. Andrew Zweifler, and Al Gladyck
It’s official – I’ve now presented at a conference! I had presented before, but they were mostly campus conferences. The Sex::Tech conference is a national conference about using mobile and internet technologies to reach youth with information about sexual health. I presented on my work in my social work internship with the HIV/AIDS Resource Center about maintaining client confidentiality when using new technologies. Two other U-M SPH students and one recent alum also presented and won a young researcher award (see below)!
As a nonprofit organization, using social media to get the word out about our work is great, since most online platforms are free. There are potential ethical issues, though, when communicating with clients – especially people already living with HIV (“clients” at HARC also includes people who come for HIV testing or with whom we interact during outreach and educational activities). Most of our accounts online say “HIV” or “AIDS” or both in the title or name. This can pose a problem for people who don’t want to come out and say they might have HIV or be at risk for contracting HIV. More obvious issues of confidentiality include a staff member posting a comment on a client’s public space – think about what could happen if I wrote to someone living with HIV on their facebook wall: “Hey, did you get that gonorrhea test yet? You’re at higher risk since you have HIV.” We have had no such issues, but we also don’t necessarily have a social media-specific set of guidelines in place at our organization (yet!). We have confidentiality guidelines in our staff handbook, so obviously that would cover the above situation, but it could become a very gray area when a staff member is publicly friends with a client in a public space. What if someone wonders why they’re friends or how they know each other? What would be the client’s response? These are some of the topics I presented about at the conference.
Social Media and Client Confidentialilty
The presentation was more of a workshop than a presentation, resulting with the (over 65!) participants leaving with a handout that can help them get started making guidelines for their organizations. I have uploaded both the presentation and the handout on SlideShare.net.
The Sexuality and Health Lab (SexLab) in the SPH also had two students and one recent grad present their research – and they even won the conference’s first-ever Young Researchers Award! Their research was based on about 30 in-depth interviews with young men who have sex with men in our community, and they each analyzed the data with a different topic in mind. Emily Pingel was examining coming out in the techno era, Michelle Johns was looking at masculinity of young men who have sex with men who seek partners online, and Anna Eisenberg was learning about negotiation and communication in protective sexual health practices. Their presentation was well-received, with many questions from the audience afterwards.
Emily Pingel (MPH, 2009), Michelle Johns (MPH candidate 2010) and Anna Eisenberg (MPH candidate 2010) with the Young Researchers Award (a mannequin hand holding a cell phone and condom)
Since I’m going abroad for a social work internship this summer, I needed to make a travel health appointment to make sure I have all the vaccinations and immunizations I need to stay as healthy as possible while I’m traveling. I had my appointment last week (my third in five years…) and got my first-ever anti-malarial medication prescription.
As a current student, I have access to the services at the University Health Service (UHS). They have a travel & immunology clinic, and it can get pretty busy during certain times of the year (before spring break and summer break). They ask you to take an online basic travel health training in order to make an appointment. It doesn’t take long and is a good review of water and food safety, sun and bug issues, and what to do in a health emergency.
It’s best to go prepared to the appointment and know exactly where you’re going in your travels. Malarial areas can get pretty trick in some places, so it’s best to know what cities or villages you’re going to if possible. The appointment is pretty quick and includes a review of health issues in the locations where you’re traveling and some immunizations and prescriptions as necessary. My favorite part is getting ciprofloxacin to treat diarrheal illness. It’s helped me out in the past! UHS can also dispense many of the prescriptions right there in their pharmacy.
There’s a price list on the travel health page for planning for what immunizations you might need. If you don’t have insurance coverage for some of the requirements, it’s easy to go to the Washtenaw County health department as well.
The Sexuality + Health Lab is new to the School of Public Health. Dr. José Bauermeister is the principal investigator of a number of studies being conducted by current students and recent graduates. In its short time, the lab has already published and presented at conferences, including the Association of Public Health’s national conference.
As part of my social work internship at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC), I get to participate in their “Building a Technology-Enhanced Social Network Intervention to Promote HIV Testing among Young Men who have Sex with men (MSM)” project. We are using mixed methods (qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey) to learn more about if YMSM internet use for finding sexual partners correlates with HIV testing behavior. My role will be to help recruit people for the interviews and survey and to conduct interviews, including in Spanish. I’m very excited about this opportunity!
Today is World AIDS Day: a day where 5,500 people will die of AIDS and 8,200 more will become infected with HIV – 152 of them in the United States of America. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS just released a report that says that AIDS is the leading cause of death globally in women of reproductive age. We know that HIV is a worldwide crisis, already devastating countries across the globe and poised to ravage others… unless we continue to work to stop AIDS. If you’re a regular blog reader, you know I’m not a person who just spews statistics; you know I like action (see previous posts about work with youth in the USA, youth in Peru, outreach in the USA and Peru, and advocacy). So for this World AIDS Day, I want to share with you some things you can do to help stop AIDS.
Get yourself tested for HIV. Free testing is offered all week in the local community (see complete listing here), or you can text your zip code to “KNOWIT” (566948) to find a local testing site.
KNOW YOUR STATUS!
Support organizations serving people living with HIV by donating directly to them rather than buying some product that only contributes a minuscule portion of its profits. Your donation goes further when it goes directly to the organization.
Write a letter to the editor of your local media source, call into radio stations, and send emails to friends, family and colleagues with things people can do. Describe the epidemic in your local community and challenge people to act. Call on elected officials to fund important services that keep people alive.
Attend World AIDS Day and World AIDS Week educational and action events near you. The Ann Arbor area has many events going on this week – see a complete listing on the World AIDS Week website.
Be creative and use your skills to make a difference in your community!
Carrie in front of the AIDS memorial in Durban, South Africa
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.
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
