Voices from the Field

As a graduate student in the Health & Medical Journalism Program in Grady College, I have many unique opportunities to hear, meet, and speak with individuals from the field that have wisdom you simply cannot obtain in the classroom.

Side note: As this blog (and my skills as a writer/reporter) evolve, I hope to share with you experiences on my health beat as well as reflections from these valuable lectures I attend.

Forgive me if I ramble.

Last night, Stanley Foster, MD., MPH, spoke in a Voices from the Vanguard Lecture Series about global inequities, social justice, and empowerment. Having worked in multiple capacities with the CDC in a myriad of global communities (from India to Central America), Dr. Foster's lecture was moving on both emotional and intellectual levels. He hit on political, social, and economic determinants of social injustice that impede on basic human needs--such as proper health care. However, what I found most interesting was his emphasis on poverty and education. Together, poverty and the lack of education keep people oppressed, with health care being a secondary fall out to this cause. This is especially interesting, because I just read a paper that discussed how one should define and measure human development; not by economic terms but by a persons ability to pursue a quality of life with health being an indicator of that ability (Sen, A., 1999). Of course, health, poverty, and education are inextricably related and are confounding factors in the greater schemata of what we consider "Quality of Life." It is how Foster spoke about his exemplars of tackling the problems of poverty and education that were more convincing than the "blurb" of information from that paper.

Although I have not traveled to much of the developing world, I have spent time in Ghana and Turkey and have seen the hard-to-miss differences in how people approach health. Therefore I could completely empathize with the difficulties the community people like Chepe Romero and Rosario Diaz (mentioned by Dr. Foster) have in facilitating a change. I also know that education is a powerful tool and in any marginalized groups of people, education has been a key factor in helping people help themselves. A perfect example of this are the flow-charts being used by a select group of local Ethiopian individuals who were trained in reading and assessing/diagnosing illnesses in their communities. I had no idea that such methods were being used.

I could go-on forever but I fear that I am rambling and I do have to switch modes. Leave a message if you want to ask any questions or discuss anything from the lecture. Also, Attend the Voices from the Vanguard lecture series!

WebMD's Senior Writer for Medical News, Daniel J. DeNoon, spoke in class today. I frequent WebMD, mostly for the "Symptom Checker" (I spent a few months being a closet hypochondriac) but I do read the articles and spent some time being in awe of a person who I read hundreds of times online. The discussion was informative, especially in regards to writing for an online publication, interviewing and sources, and, of course, life as a science/medical writer. The conversation flowed effortlessly as we all laughed and took appreciative notes on all that he could offer as we picked his brain.

In the last 24 hours, I have learned a multitude about writing, best practices for a medical reporter, and the world we live in. Many of these things I will try to practically apply (for my future work and in the short-term, graded assignments). Others I will have to mull over as I try to modify and adjust my own messy tendencies into more refined works of art (this post is obviously not one of those works of art). If you made it to the end, all I can tell you is that the best is yet to come.

Links:
DeNoon article on Teen Pregnancy

More information on Stanley Foster Click Here