vector control

Open Letter to Gingrich and Santorum Addresses Their Racism

2012-01-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

Racism is incompatible with true Christianity. Here is a copy of the open letter to Gingrich and Santorum from some American Catholic leaders in response to racist remarks made during the on-going campaign. Both candidates identify themselves as Catholics and deny they are racists. The proof is in their words.

An Open Letter to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum

As Catholic leaders who recognize that the moral scandals of racism and poverty remain a blemish on the American soul, we challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Labeling our nation’s first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of “welfare queens” and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders.

Some presidential candidates now courting “values voters” seem to have forgotten that defending human life and dignity does not stop with protecting the unborn. We remind Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum that Catholic bishops describe racism as an “intrinsic evil” and consistently defend vital government programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits that help struggling Americans. At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting.

As the South Carolina primary approaches, we urge Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and all presidential candidates to reject the politics of racial division, refrain from offensive rhetoric and unite behind an agenda that promotes racial and economic justice.

Francis X. Doyle
Associate General Secretary
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (retired)

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Institute Leadership Team:
Sisters Patricia McDermott, RSM (President) Eileen Campbell, RSM Anne Curtis, RSM Mary Pat Gavin, RSM Deborah Troillett, RSM

Sister Pat Farrell, OSF
President
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

Rev. Bryan N. Massingale
Associate Professor of Theology
Marquette University

Rev. Clete Kiley
Director for Immigration Policy
UNITE HERE

Rev. Anthony J. Pogorelc, M.Div., Ph.D.
The Catholic University of America
Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J.
University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice
Boston College

Sr. Patricia J. Chappell, SNDdeN
Executive Director, Pax Christi USA

Marie Dennis
Co-President, Pax Christi International

Rev. John F. Kavanaugh S.J.
Professor of Philosophy
St. Louis University

Rev. Jim Keenan, S.J.
Founders Professor in Theology
Boston College

Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Senior Fellow
Woodstock Theological Center
Georgetown University

Sister Mary Ellen Howard
Executive Director
Cabrini Clinic, Detroit

Rev. James E. Hug, S.J.
President
Center of Concern

Sister Simone Campbell
Executive Director
NETWORK, A Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Steven Schneck
Director
Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies
The Catholic University of America

Sister Karen M. Donahue, RSM
Justice Team
Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community

Sister Mary Ann Hinsdale
Assoc. Prof. of Theology
Boston College

Tom Allio
Cleveland Diocesan Social Action Director (retired)

M. Shawn Copeland
Associate Professor of Theology
Boston College

Sister Maria Riley, OP
Senior Advisor
Center of Concern

Todd Whitmore
Associate Professor
Department of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Terrence W. Tilley
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology
Chair
Theology Department
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Michael E. Lee
Associate Professor
Theology Department
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Paul Lakeland
Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies
Director, Center for Catholic Studies Fairfield University

Lisa Sowle Cahill
Monan Professor of Theology
Boston College

Eric LeCompte
Board Member
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

Tobias Winright
Associate Professor of Theological Ethics
Saint Louis University

Christopher Pramuk
Assistant Professor of Theology
Xavier University, Cincinnati

John Sniegocki
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
Xavier University, Cincinnati

Kathleen Maas Weigert
Carolyn Farrell, BVM Professor of Women and Leadership
Loyola University, Chicago

Daniel K. Finn
Professor of Theology and Economics
St. John’s University, Minnesota

Gerald J. Beyer
Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia

Jeannine Hill Fletcher
Associate Professor of Theology
Faculty Director
Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Sister Mary Ann Hinsdale
Assoc. Prof. of Theology
Boston College

John Inglis
Professor and Chair
Department of Philosophy
University of Dayton

Anthony B. Smith
Associate Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of Dayton

David O’Brien
University Professor of Faith and Culture
University of Dayton

William L. Portier
Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology
University of Dayton

Alex Mikulich
Research Fellow
Jesuit Social Research Institute
Loyola University, New Orleans

Susan M. Weishar
Migration Specialist
Jesuit Social Research Institute
Loyola University

Kristin Heyer
Associate Professor
Religious Studies
Santa Clara University

James Salt
Executive Director
Catholics United

Vincent Miller
Professor of Religious Studies
University of Dayton

Nancy Dallavalle
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Religious Studies
Fairfield University

James P. Bailey
Associate Professor
Department of Theology
Duquesne University

The Case of Alejandrina Cabrera

2012-01-27T04:59:00.001-08:00

Alejandrina Cabrera is an American citizen of Mexican descent running for San Luis, Arizona city council. Her name was taken off the ballot after complaints were made, and investigated, that Cabrera is not fluent in English. There are more details in the New York Times article.

I find this case linguistically fascinating and morally confusing:

She is a US citizen, yet she is from a part of the US that was once Mexico.

Her constituency is primarily made of Spanish-speakers, yet city council meetings are held in English.

The story seems to highlight the racist anti-Latino fever in present-day Arizona, and yet the people making the complaints against her are also Latino, for whom English is also a second language.

Her ability to speak Spanish makes her qualified to represent her majority Latino and Spanish-speaking district, yet her lack of English make her ineligible to work in city government.

I can´t decide where my feelings lie with this story. It seems people are angry that she had the audacity to run at all. But in that audacity, I find there is something to admire. Especially to run in Arizona, where police have been given license to ask perceived immigrants to prove their legal status at any moment. Could it be that her campaign is, in itself, a political statement about immigration, language and citizenship in Arizona? But if she were elected, how would she perform her job? It seems she would be wonderful at listening to the concerns of her district, but possibly unable to express them to the local government.

How is it that a US citizen does not speak English? Well, for one, being a citizen doesn´t really have a language requirement. If you are born in the US, you are an American - it doesn´t matter what language you speak at home. In the NYT article we learn that, growing up, Cabrera spent a lot of time in Mexico and attended a bilingual education program in Arizona. Bilingual education is meant to help the children of immigrants to transition into English while still receiving instruction in other subjects in their own language. It does happen that some students never really learn English in this type of environment - especially when they grow up in a community that doesn´t speak that much English either.

I think it is significant to remember that Arizona used to be Mexico. Within the border area there are Latinos of various degrees of separation from Mexico. There are those whose families were in the area when it became part of the US, and there are those who have immigrated more recently. Within the community, the use of English varies widely. There are Latinos whose families no longer speak Spanish at all, and there are those who have yet to learn English. The "Latino" community can mean a lot of different things, and in some sense encompasses communities that have little more in common than a Spanish last name.

Cabrera plans to appeal the decision to take her name off the ballot.

Tropical Medicine Ryan Gosling

2011-12-06T13:06:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, promise this is the last Ryan Gosling post.

Let´s make it as esoteric as possible, ok?

Biostatistics Ryan Gosling

2011-12-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

So, I thought Feminist Ryan Gosling was great, but this - this has brought me to tears. I have been laughing for half an hour now. Biostatistics Ryan Gosling has now employed Gosling's brooding images to help us study biostats. How I wish this had been around when I was at Tulane! And, unlike the Fem site, this one takes original submissions.

Any ideas? Something about cluster graphs or SPSS maybe? Check it out.

Related Post:

Feminist Ryan Gosling
Posts on Biostatistics

Vintage HIV Posters

2011-12-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

United States, 1988

Salon.com has this great slide show of HIV posters from different decades and countries. I especially love looking at social marketing from other time periods. The poster above, for example, says the "AIDS virus" whereas now, most scientists would say "the virus that causes AIDS" which is HIV.

Switzerland, 1987

Iceland

Israel, 1991

South Africa

Bahrain, 1991

Pakistan

Australia, 1992

Slovakia, 1994

Indonesia, 2001

Trinidad and Tobago

Estonia

This last poster reminds me of vintage STI posters from the WWII era in that it uses the female body to represent the disease, although at least it is equal opportunity in that it also shows a man in the same form.

Hey Girl...

2011-11-27T03:33:00.000-08:00

Feminist Ryan Gosling

The funnieset part about this blog, in my opinion, is that no one really knows if Ryan Gosling is a feminist or not. The creator of the blog admits such. But the idea of this attractive guy spouting out references to feminist authors while also flirting and being sensitive...it´s too much. I love it. I don´t even get many of the references because, despite being a feminist I didn´t take a single course in women´s studies. But I did catch the reference to Anzaldúa.

It´s better than a kitten vs. computer video.

Sorry about the....

2011-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

You can tell someone to get tested this way....or use inspot.org

Correlation and Causation - Not the Same Thing

2011-11-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

Related Posts:

Statistically Significant Other

Fail: Five Reasons Why Pox Parties are a Bad Idea

2011-11-20T02:31:00.000-08:00

This is a great image, I´m not sure who drew it but I found it at this blog, in a post about a "fun" pox party.

You may have read recently that last month a few parents got together on facebook to organize pox parties for their kids. It was even in the New York Times. Some of the plans included sending infected items - such as lollipops - through the mail to share with other parents who wanted their children exposed to chicken pox. The idea is to go ahead and expose the children so that they will gain natural immunity. Chicken pox can be deadly in adults who never had it as children.

But guys, organic is not always better.

This story is enough to make anyone with an MD or MPH hit their head on a wall. Since 1995 there has been an effective vaccine against varicella/chicken pox. Prior to that there were approximately 4,000,000 cases and 100 deaths each year in the US. Since the vaccine was added to the routine schedule, cases have dropped 90%.

Here are five reasons why pox parties and organic immunity to varicella are a BAD IDEA:

1. Herpes Zoster

The varicella virus will never leave your body. Once you´ve had chicken pox, you are at greater risk for someday experiencing the joys of herpes zoster, otherwise known as shingles. Shingles is a contagious, painful, nerve-stinging rash that can affect people later in life, especially when their immunity is low (that´s why so many older people suffer from it.) If you´ve never had chicken pox, you are at much less risk for experiencing shingles later in life.

2. Death

Prior to the vaccine there were 100 - 150 deaths each year and thousands of hospitalizations. Varicella is a virus, and no matter the lollipops and games of twister popular at pox parties, you cannot control it. You can´t decided ahead of time that your child will get a mild case that doesn´t leave deep scars or require a trip to the emergency room.

3. Mailing Toxic Agents...it´s illegal.

If you want to have a private pox party in your own living room, that´s between you and your children who may later thank you the scars and shingles. But do not mail intentionally infected material through the mail. The Federal Government makes it pretty clear that sending biochemical toxins through our national mail service is a crime.

4. There is a Vaccine.

And it doesn´t cause autism, it isn´t part of a government conspiracy. It has lead to a dramatic reduction of chicken pox cases which means less hospitalization, less days missed from school. No pox scars, less risk of shingles. Should I say it again: Vaccines do not cause autism. There is no reason to give your children "organic immunity."

5. Herd Immunity

This one requires us to suspend our selfish motives and think about other people. There is a certain percentage of any population that cannot be vaccinated. Pregnant women, people with autoimmune conditions, people on chemotherapy, babies, the uninsured. These people can be protected from disease if enough of the eligible population gets vaccinated. When you intentionally turn your children into little varicella incubators, they can unintentionally spread the disease to people who haven´t been vaccinated because of their contraindications.

Pox parties are nothing new. In fact, they are a pretty medieval way of preventing disease. If you are not convinced by the reasons above, let me recommend reading the great book, Octavian Nothing. There is a pretty harrowing account of a small pox party.

Do the right thing, vaccinate your kids, don´t take them to pox parties.

Posts about Immunization

Spirits of Central America

2011-10-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

All of these stories have many variations. If you know of another version of these legends or any other interesting creatures, please leave a comment so I can add them to the list.

Image found at www.mayanmade.com

La Siguanaba - Central America

La Siguanaba is a shape-shifting woman with long hair who haunts men who have been unfaithful or are traveling alone. Once she has lured a man away, her face transforms into a horse´s, or a skull, or a horse’s skull with red eyes. She may lead a man into a place where he will get lost, or the very sight of her face may drive him mad. To defend oneself from her, you should bite your machete. Like La Llorona, she is often found near water sources like rivers or water tanks. Her legend is traced back to Nahuatl mythology. She offended the water god Tlaloc by cheating on his son and being a bad mother. Tlaloc also cursed her son, El Cipitío. Other names include Sihuanaba, Siguanaba, Cigua or Cegua. Her names are derived from several different Nahuatl words with various meanings.

El Cipitío - El Salvador

El Cipitío is the child of La Siguanaba who was cursed by Tlaloc. He is cursed to live forever as a small child with backwards feet. He is usually depicted with a large belly and a hat. He likes to eat ashes and banans, and to throw stones at people. He can also teleport. He sounds more creepy than scary.

La Mano Peluda

La Mano Peluda or “The Hairy Hand” is said to belong to a man who was killed during the inquisition. His hand is said to have come back to life to seek revenge on his enemies while they’re asleep.

La Lechuza - Mexico

La Lechuza or “The Owl Woman” is a witch that can turn into a huge bird with red eyes. She attacks men like an owl attacks a mouse. There are stories of people shooting owls or crows and the next day elderly ladies coming into town with gunshot wounds. If you’d like to meet her, go outside at midnight and whistle three times and La Lechuza will whistle back. This legend is also popular in Texas.

Que viene el coco, Goya 1799

El Cuco

Also known as El Coco, he is a dark, shapeless monster that kidnaps and eats children that don’t obey their parents. This myth began in Spain or Portugal and was brought to the Americans during the colonial period. Sometimes he is depicted as having a pumpkin head or a skull face.

Duérmete niño, duérmete ya...Que viene el Coco y te comerá.

La Carreta Chillona - El Salvador

La Carreta Chillona or “The Screechy Wagon” is a wagon made of human bones. The legend began in Spain and centers on a boy named Terencio, who was adopted by a priest and moved to San Salvador as an adult. There, he pretended to be a miracle doctor, but ended up killing many people. The dead priest came back as a ghost and forced Terencio to build a chariot from the bones of his victims and sentenced him to wander the streets for all eternity. If you hear the sound of the wagon´s bones and chains, you will know that death is near.

El Cadejo

The dog-like animal can be good or bad, depending on the color of its fur: The white cadejo is said to protect travelers from danger or drunks from robbers. The black one has penetrating red eyes, sharp teeth and hoofed feet. The evil cadejo smells of burning sulfur and lurks in alleys and other dark places waiting for his next victim. The name cadejo could come from the word cadena, or chain. Sometimes the dog is depicted with a chain following it.

La Llorona - Mexico

La Llorona or the "Wailing Woman" is the ghost of a woman who drowned her own children in anger over her husband´s betrayal. Now she wanders at night, often near water sources, crying and wailing "Ay, mis hijos!" Children are told she will take them and kill or eat them if they cross her path. I have also heard the La Llorona is the ghost of La Malinche, the Aztec interpreter and lover of Hernán Cortéz, who killed her children when she realized together they had betrayed her people. .

This list was inspired by Latina Magazine´s " Scary Latino Myths."

Don´t think I haven´t noticed that most of these spirits and creatures are female. Witches, evil seductresses and bad mothers have been scaring people for centuries the world over. What does that say about women? In these myths we seem to have incredible sexual power as well as a great capacity for committing evil against men on the road. The myths are both insulting and empowering. La Llorona can be seen as the most evil figure in Mexico, or the most powerful female next to La Virgen. Make of them what you will.

Related Post:

Spirits of the Caribbean

Is America a Christian Nation?

2011-10-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

This can´t be posted enough times.

Related Post:

Christianity and Healthcare Reform

We´re a Culture, Not a Costume

2011-10-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

Students Teaching Against Racism in Society (STARS) is a student organization at Ohio University. Their mission: “To educate and facilitate discussion about racism and to promote racial harmony and to create a safe, non-threatening environment to allow participants to feel comfortable to express their feelings.”

They created these anti-racist Halloween campaign posters to give us all something to think about as we select costumes this year. That when people dress up as "an Indian" or "a Mexican" they are using an entire culture as a prop. And that is wrong.

By now, these posters have been re-posted at numerous sites on the internet. I am amazed by the rancor this campaign has brought out in some people. The comments can be nasty. But they are a window onto the minds of people who 1. do not think they are racists, 2. believe they know what racism is and 3. are somehow offended by the campaign rather than enlightened by it.

Many White Americans believe there exists a special Racism Test, that only they can administer. They imagine the races switched in a given situation and if they wouldn´t feel offended they believe minorities shouldn´t feel offended either.

Costumes are a great example. In many of the comments I´ve seen where these images have been posted elsewhere, people (presumably white) complain that they wouldn´t be offended if they saw a black person dressed as a cowboy, or a Mexican dressed as a Viking. Therefore, minorities shouldn´t be offended when white people use foreign cultures as costumes.

"I hope I don't offend anyone of Scandinavian descent if I dress up as a Viking this Halloween. Will Italians be outraged if I dress up in a toga? I suspect that Italians and Scandinavians are not as touchy and more secure." Comment on the Huffington Post

Except it doesn´t work this way. When people use this disingenuous Racism Test to determine if something is racist or not, they are ignoring the cultural and historical context in which we all live. Italians and Scandinavians in America have now been absorbed into the dominant white culture. They cannot experience racism in the way the the Black, Native American, Middle Eastern, Asian and Hispanic students in the posters can.

Should we live in a society where race is not a factor in how people are treated? Of course. But we don´t live there now, and it isn´t helpful to pretend that we do.

White people cannot be the ones to determine if minorities have the right to be offended by what white people do. We cannot say that wearing blackface is ok, because we wouldn´t be offended if black people painted themselves white. This colorblind way of viewing racism does not help us get beyond racism, it perpetuates it.

I assume that most of the people leaving comments along the lines of "This is too PC" or " They are being too sensitive" would not want to be seen as racists. But in their inability to understand their own privilege or to be empathetic with someone else´s experience, they are exposing how little they know about not being racist.

I really commend the students who created these posters. They are well done and very thought provoking. It hurts when others point out your racism. I believe that is why so many of the comments are angry. But this Halloween, people may think twice about their costume choice. Or maybe it will take until next Halloween for the point to sink in. But at least the dialogue has begun.

Related Posts:

Nivea: Of Course this is Racism
All Posts on Race

New Orleans: Southern Comforts

2011-10-11T02:51:00.000-07:00

Found at Creative Roots, Design by Studio Muti, Cape Town, South Africa.

What Would Happen if the GOP Banned Contraception?

2011-10-08T01:14:00.000-07:00

What, you don´t think it could happen? Look around you. They are dismantling Planned Parenthood, cutting funding for family planning, trying to make it lawful for pharmacies to refuse to distribute emergency contraception. Rick Santorum was filmed saying he would defund contaception and that contraception is "dangerous."

The GOP holds contraception in contempt.

What would happen if it were banned althogether? Let´s take a look back in time to communist Romania under the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. In 1966, he outlawed abortion and all contraception. In 1967 the birth rate doubled. And then women started seeking out illegal abortions. As the birth rate fell from the initial boom, the maternal mortality rate tripled. For over two decades, contraception and abortion were illegal in Romania. The result was not a larger population, as Ceauşescu had intended. The result was more abortion, higher maternal mortality, more unwanted children who filled up orphanages of international infamy.

In 1989, the year Ceauşescu was overthrown, 400,000 women were hospitalized from complications from abortion. Hundreds died. Even after 1989, when the laws were reversed and abortion and contraception were legal again, as there was still limited access to contraception and to information, Romania continued to have a high abortion rate and low awareness about alternative methods of contraception.

Banning contraception and sex education should not be on the Pro-Life platform. If the intention really is to prevent abortion, the best thing Pro-Life activists could do is to make sure every woman knows she has the power to control her own fertility and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But this is not what is happening. Pro-Life activists are the ones supporting politicians today who are proposing legislation that would defund access to contraception.

The irony is that they call Obama a communist. They say they want the Government to stay out of our lives. And yet, what is more invasive than a government that attempts to control your fertility? Communist Romania already lived through that misery. Why would we want the same in America?

There are two very good films that address this time in Romanian history.

Children Underground is a documentary that follows the lives of several children who had left orphanages in Bucharest and were living in the subway in the early 1990´s.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a drama about a young woman seeking an illegal abortion in Bucharest in the 1980´s.

A Handmaid´s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, predicted what a conservative, fertility-obsessed North American dystopia might look like way back in 1985.

References:

NYT: Romania Seeks to Reduce Abortions
Ceauşescu´s Longest Lasting Legacy
The Nation: Ban Birth Control? They Wouldn´t Dare

Related Posts:

Posts on Pregnancy
Posts on Preconception Health

HIV: Corruption Kills

2011-10-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

www.pamoja.at
www.piuma-simba.org

Corruption takes resources away from the those who need it most. Corruption kills.

Ways People Find this Blog

2011-10-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

I use stat counter to count the number of people who visit my blog. I think most bloggers do this to reassure themselves that somebody, anybody reads the posts they write. The stat counter allows me to see the visitor´s city, the length of time they stayed on a particular post and the phrase they typed into the search engine to find the blog. Don´t worry, there is no way I can see the visitor´s name or identifying information. Some of these phrases are interesting, some are hilarious. Here is a list of some of the recent phrases that lead people to my blog. They are linked to the related post.
King Cake
What Ethnicity is Salma Hayek?
This is American and Our Only Language is English (typo theirs, not mine)
Marpessa Dawn (frequent)
Brazilian Asians, Lovefoxx Luisa
Why Does Oscar Wao Use Lord of the Rings References
Soucouyant (frequent)
Planned Parenthood is Problematic
Hot Teenage Boy Mudding with Four Wheelers
Mad Men Hard to Understand
Punk Latina
El Tigre Chino
Weeds is Racist (extemely frequent)

My all time favorite was from a few years ago: Can I Ride an ATV While Pregnant?

Notice that many of these posts address race. I do not think of race as being a theme of this blog. I tend to think of it as a blog about public health, places I have been, interpretation stories. But I realize I have written quite a bit about race here. My post on Orfeu Negro has gotten some angry comments from people desperately defending the film as not racist. My post on Weeds has received many comments and visits from people looking for racial analysis of the show. (Unfortunately I don´t have access to the latest season, so the review is fairly old now.) This says to me that people have a lot of questions about race. It is something we think about a lot more than we want to admit. The posts I have written on race all try to address some sort of misconception I encountered as a teacher or an interpreter.

My posts on Suriname get a little traffic, maybe because few people have been there and have written about it in English. My posts on malaria get very few visitors, probably because most people would rather hear what the CDC has to say about it than what I have written - and it´s ok, I understand.

I love comments, positive AND negative. I really like hearing what other people have to say about the topics that most interest me, even if they disagree. So, always feel free to comment on the posts, just keep it nice.

Net Inspection

2011-10-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Stanmeyer
Arusha, Tanzania 2006

A woman inspects a mosquito net for flaws at a factory.

Related Posts:

All Malaria Posts

HIV Postcards, In French

2011-09-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Positive Bodies

2011-09-13T05:41:00.001-07:00

Read more about this project here.

These are body maps made by HIV positive people in Kenya, India and Thailand. Body mapping is a therapeutic exercise that can be used to help people living with HIV to process the pycho-social elements of the disease. At a time when the body may be a source of shame or of pain, it is a way to reconnect the spiritual and physical that exists in all of us. The beautiful self-portraits are life-size and are made during a complete workshop that addresses the stigma the painters may be facing from their families and community.

North Star Alliance

2011-09-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

The North Star Alliance is a health organization that focuses on the health of African truck drivers. Truck drivers are an at-risk group for HIV as being away from home and family can result in risky sexual behavior, like having sex with sex workers, who are also at risk for HIV.

The North Star Alliance is setting up a network of Roadside Wellness Centers to address the health needs of drivers along some of Africa´s major international highways.

I found these postcards on a recent trip in South Africa.

Related Post:

No-Man´s Land

Good Catholics Use Condoms

2011-09-11T03:38:00.000-07:00

From their website: "Condoms4Life is an unprecedented worldwide public education effort to raise awareness about the devastating effect of the bishops’ ban on condoms. The campaign was launched on World AIDS Day 2001 with the display of billboards and ads in subways and newspapers saying, “Banning Condoms Kills.”

I really like the idea of this campaign. In fact, I agree with every line of these posters - until the bit about thanking Pope Benedict, for anything. To state that the Pope really believes that condoms saves lives is giving him a little too much credit.

In 2009, on his way to Cameroon, the Pope said "HIV/AIDS is tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

Then, in 2010, the Pope made these comments: "She (the Church) of course does not regard it (use of condoms) as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

A Catholic commenter, Austen Ivereigh, clarified the comments: "If the intention is to prevent transmission of the virus, rather than prevent contraception, moral theologians would say that was of a different moral order."

So, if your intention is to avoid spreading disease, not avoiding pregnancy, it is somehow a more humane sexuality. But it is not totally condoned either. None of this really makes me want to thank the Pope for expressing his opinions on condoms and HIV. It´s clear that he still holds the belief that all sex should be for procreation, and that is dangerous too.

In any case, I think the campaign is interesting as it tries to reassure Catholics that there isn´t actually anything wrong with using condoms - even if that isn´t exactly what the Pope said.

InSpot.org: In English

2011-09-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I posted about inspot.org, a site you can use to inform partners about their risk of having an STI. For example, if you have herpes and want to warn an ex, but are too embarrassed to contact him/her directly, inspot.org will send that person an anonymous email telling they may be at risk and where they can get tested.

I think this site is great as it promotes positive behavior - warning someone that they may be at risk, or even putting their future partners at risk - but also allows anonymity, which is very important in the case of STIs.

Related Posts:

InSpot.org: En Français
InSpot.org: En Español

InSpot.org: En Español

2011-09-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I posted about inspot.org, a site you can use to inform partners about their risk of having an STI. For example, if you have herpes and want to warn an ex, but are too embarrassed to contact him/her directly, inspot.org will send that person an anonymous email telling they may be at risk and where they can get tested.

I think this site is great as it promotes positive behavior - warning someone that they may be at risk, or even putting their future partners at risk - but also allows anonymity, which is very important in the case of STIs.

You can even send the email in Spanish or French. Here´s what the Spanish versions look like:

Related Post:

Send an HIV-Positive Post Card

InSpot.org

InSpot.org: En Français

2011-09-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I posted about inspot.org, a site you can use to inform partners about their risk of having an STI. For example, if you have herpes and want to warn an ex, but are too embarrassed to contact him/her directly, inspot.org will send that person an anonymous email telling they may be at risk and where they can get tested.

I think this site is great as it promotes positive behavior - warning someone that they may be at risk, or even putting their future partners at risk - but also allows anonymity, which is very important in the case of STIs.

You can even send the email in Spanish or French. Here´s what the French versions look like:

Related Post:

Send an HIV-Positive Post Card

InSpot.org

Post Secret: Drug Abuse

2011-09-11T02:05:00.001-07:00

This secret may be referring to Montana´s Meth Project which posts graphic billboards like the one in the postcard and the one below. I guess it´s good the sender doesn´t see his life reflected in the billboards - yet. But it may just be a matter of time before meth affects his work, he loses his job and starts a downward spiral that results in...well, what you see in the billboards.

Related Posts:

Posts on Drugs
Posts on Post Secret

Post Secret: Pregnancy and Virginity

2011-09-11T01:59:00.000-07:00

I love reading Post Secret every Sunday morning. I have decided to start collecting those secrets that speak to some of the topics I like addressing on this blog. I often fantasize about teaching again and using some of these images to start conversations with students on difficult topics like sex, pregnancy, rape, STIs. I´ll keep adding to the lists, so feel free to check back sometimes.

Related Posts:

Posts on Pregnancy
Posts on Sexual Health
Posts on Post Secret

Post Secret: STIs and Stigma

2011-09-11T01:58:00.001-07:00

I love reading Post Secret every Sunday morning. I have decided to start collecting those secrets that speak to some of the public health topics I like addressing on this blog. I´ll keep adding to the lists, so feel free to check back sometimes.

If you can´t or don´t want to talk to your (ex) partner about their risk of having an STI, you can always use InSpot.org to notify them for you. This organization will send an anonymous email to the person, letting them know they should get tested and where they can go. But, you should never not tell someone something so important to their health (and the health of their future partners) just because it was a bad break up.

Related Posts:

Posts on HIV/AIDS
Posts on Post Secret

Durban Trash Can

2011-09-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hi all! I haven´t posted for a while because I was in South Africa for a very busy week.

This is a Zulu-style decorated trash can in Durban. I liked it because it includes the outline of the iconic rickshaw men (the figure in green).

Be on the look out this week for new posts - I have lots of new material!

Interpretation Files: Language Cards

2011-08-22T05:28:00.001-07:00

These cards can be an important tool for those who do not speak English in the US. As you can see, one side explains, in English, that the card-carrier does not speak English well and that they require an interpreter. The other side says the same, but in the language of the carrier.

It is especially important that the card states which language the carrier speaks. Portuguese-speaking immigrants are often given Spanish-speaking interpreters because English-speakers sometimes cannot tell the difference between the two languages.

These cards were originally developed by Reach Nola to address the needs of immigrants in New Orleans which has large communities of Spanish-speakers from Latin America, Portuguese-speakers from Brazil and Vietnamese.

For more information about these cards, go to ReachNola.com

Related Posts:

Interpretation Files

Nivea: Of Course this is Racism

2011-08-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

This unfortunate advertisement is making its way around the internet, so I thought I would give my own commentary. In my opinion, more interesting than the ad itself, is the way so many blog commentors want to defend the image and text as not racist.

Here are some of the frequent comments I have read elsewhere, and here is why they are wrong:

IT CAN`T BE RACIST BECAUSE...

1. ... NIVEA DIDN`T MEAN FOR IT TO BE RACIST. Intention does not matter. It is too easy to dismiss racist people and their actions as merely ignorant. The truth is, Nivea probably had no intention of offending anyone, especially not the target of the ad: Black Men. The fact that they failed so completely to achieve their goal of making their product appealing to this demographic shows that they lack diversity in their marketing department. Having Rihanna as the face of Nivea does not make up for not having black people involved in marketing campaigns that target black people. The fact that Nivea didn´t know the ad would be interpreted as racist does not erase the fact that the ad has already been published and the hurt already felt.

2. ...THEY MADE ONE WITH A WHITE GUY TOO!

Sin City is not an excuse to look like Hell.

There are several reasons why this argument doesn´t work in proving the ad isn´t racist. Exchanging black men with white men is a not a valid racism test. Racism must be considered in its historical context, not in a color-blind vacuum. Historically, black people in America have dealt with racial discrimination based on their appearance and, especially, their hair. Telling a black man that his afro is uncivilized is not the same as telling a white man with long hair and a straggly beard that he looks like hell. White men in America have never had to prove they were men, in spite of their whiteness.

But also, look at the above ad with the white model. There is no talk of the civilizing quality of Nivea for Men. Intention or not, Nivea can´t hide behind the white ads as proof that they didn´t mean to be racist; the black model gets civilized while the white model gets to go to Las Vegas. An afro is uncivilized while the long hair and beard just look like Hell.

3. ...SHORTER HAIR IS MORE CIVILIZED. Who gets to decide what is a civilized hair style? Nivea? And why would they decide that the afro is not civilized? I knew this ad was racist when I first saw it because I am aware that black professionals are often told their appearance and hair styles are not professional enough. To some, the afro or natural hair styles are considered a political decision to not conform to white standards of beauty. It actually makes a lot of sense for an international corporation to attack the afro - it is a symbol of resistance to standardized beauty.

Just try telling QuestLove that he doesn´t look civilized, professional, proud and fine wearing his hair natural.

4. ...IT`S A POOR CHOICE OF WORDS, BUT IT ISN`T RACISM. What is the line between merely offensive and offensive in a racist manner? In using the word re-civilized next to a black model and attacking a hair style specific to black people, Nivea made it racial. Again, historical context is really important to understanding why this is racist. In a country where black people have had to fight to be seen as equal in the eyes of the law and society, suggesting in anyway that they are uncivilized or need re-civilizing can make one feel like we´ve stepped backwards about 40 years.

5. ...WE SHOULD ALL BE OFFENDED EQUALLY. Some are saying that the entire campaign is offensive as it implies men must conform to a beauty standard set by Nivea, As white men should be offended because their choices in hair style are also limited by the campaign, it cannot be racist. It is offensive to everyone. But while the white ad may be offensive to white men with beards and long hair, white men still have racial privilege. So, sorry if I don´t shed a tear. Just because white people were offended too, doesn´t mean it isn´t racist towards black people.

6. ...I´M NOT OFFENDED, AND I`M BLACK! It´s great if some black men don´t feel hurt on a personal level about the ad. But they should be able to recognize racism when they see it, and recognize that it does hurt other black people. To move beyond racism, we need to know what it looks like. It doesn´t always look like a member of the KKK. The outcry the ad has caused will teach Nivea a lot about marketing to black consumers. Like, maybe they need to hire some black people on their marketing team to make sure this never happens again.

Here is Nivea´s official apology:

“We are deeply sorry for a recent ‘Re-civilized’ Nivea For Men ad. This ad was inappropriate and offensive. Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values at Beiersdorf and we do not tolerate insensitivity. It was never our intention to offend anyone and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Beiersdorf, as a company, represents diversity, tolerance and equal opportunity. Direct and indirect discrimination must be ruled out in all decisions and in all areas of the company.”

Here is the clip from Living Single that I immediately thought of when I saw the ad. It is from the episode in 1994 when Kyle has to consider cutting his hair in order to take a promotion at work. If only someone at Nivea had watched Living Single when they were a teenager.

Related Posts:

The System Will Be Racist on My Behalf

Global Health e-Learning

2011-08-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

Check out this site: Global Health eLearning Center

The Global Health eLearning Center was created by USAID to help public health professionals continue their education and update themselves on specific global health topics such as:

malaria
HIV/AIDS
tuberculosis
child survival
immunization
maternal health
health systems
gender and health

The online courses are completely free. Each takes between one to three hours to complete. You can specialize in certificate areas like infectious disease or maternal health. You can stop in the middle of a course and easily come back to it later. I have already completed one malaria course and found the difficulty level to be in the middle - it´s more than just the basics, but really just a platform to having a deeper understanding of the issue. I will take the malaria in pregnancy course next, which will offer more details on complications of malaria in this one context. I am delighted that the program is available, easy to use and completely free. I don´t know why I hadn´t heard of this before, which is why I am telling everyone I know in the public health field that they should at least take a look at the course offerings.

The Winged Scourge

2011-08-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

I just found a malaria PSA made by Disney in 1943. It's a fascinating look onto a time when malaria was still endemic in the United States. The first four minutes give a very simple, yet scientific explanation of how the anopheles mosquito spreads the malaria parasite. The anopheles is named a criminal, a monster and public enemy #1.

The PSA, in true Disney fashion, has a dramatic narrator and music that makes you think the mosquito will become a wicked stepmother queen at any moment. At 4:09 the Seven Dwarves are employed in some pretty crazy vector control. Of course we all know DDT was used to combat mosquitoes in the 1940's, but who knew people were encouraged to coat water surfaces with oil? (That doesn't really sound like such a good idea to me!) Other techniques, such as cleaning up trash that can collect water, are still relevant today.

Especially of interest is the implication that malaria can cause poverty. We see the ruin of a lovely farm after the farmer is bitten by an infected mosquito. The farm falls into disrepair and poverty because the farmer is too sick to work. Malaria and poverty have a symbiotic relationship. In areas where malaria is still prevalent, the power of the work force is burdened with constant illness. And it is the poor who are the most likely to live near swamplands or to be unable to afford mosquito nets or treatment when sick.

Empty Handed

2011-08-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

The short film "Empty Handed," produced by Population Action International, addresses problems of access to contraception in Uganda. The film highlights the fact that women know about contraception, and want it, but due to weak distribution systems and poor government support, it is often unavailable at health posts when they make the effort to seek it out.

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the New York Times about maternal mortality in Uganda. The two issues go hand in hand. Contraception prevents not only unwanted pregnancy, but also pregnancy-related deaths.

While both stories focus on Uganda, the problems they describe exist all over the world. Especially poignant is a comment by a warehouse manager that somehow Coca-Cola is able to restock distant villages with its product in a matter of days, while the government health system delays distribution of medications for months. It´s not that it can´t be done, it´s that multiple pieces of the distribution system are broken.

The film and article both address the fact that donor money could be part of the problem. The warehouse manager informs us that 95% of the medications are paid for by donors and only 5% by the government. The NYT article reports that the Ugandan military recently purchased fighter jets. The more donor money received, the less responsibility the government takes for its own health care system. Donors may pay for medications, but are often not allowed to pay government workers´salaries or assume control over distribution systems. Donor agencies cannot and should not take the place of government run ministries of health. But if the government moves funds from the health budget to the military, assuming that outside help will cover the health care of its citizens, then maybe the donation is hurting more than it is helping.

In my experience, I have seen beautiful, new health clinics with no staff, I have seen boxes and boxes of medication with no transportation to the clinics, and I have met skilled health staff who do not have all the tools they need to use their skills to save lives. Women know how to prevent having more children than they want, but when they go to the clinics, they come away empty handed.

Maternity Leave is a Racket?

2011-08-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

I have no love for Fox News, but this scene was an amazing display of feminism, even if it did appear on a typically anti-feminist station.

Host Megyn Kelly invited Michael Gallagher, a radio personality, to explain why he criticized her taking three months of maternity leave by calling it a «racket».

Here is the conversation:

She played a recording of Gallagher saying on air: Megyn's still on maternity leave, isn't she? Boy, what a racket that is.

MK: What a moronic thing to say.
MG: Well, I mean, let's— Are you going to disagree that's there a diff—
MK: Oh, you're standing by? Are you doubling down? No, no, no, no, no, are you not taking those remarks back? Is maternity leave, according to you, a racket?
MG: Well, do men get maternity leaves?
MK: Guess what honey? Yes, they do. It's called Family Medical Leave Act. If men would like to take three months off to take care of their newborn baby, they can.
MG: OK. Let me give you an explanation. I was drinking that day.

Kelly ends the clip by listing some of the risks associated with not taking time to rest and bond with your baby after delivery. She even criticizes the US for being the developed country with the least developed maternity leave policies. I think Gallagher represents a certain sector of Americans who really believe women are being lazy or unprofessional by taking paid leave time after giving birth. They probably also think giving space for women to breastfeed at work is a racket. Or that increasing maternity leave to six months, so women can more easily breastfeed for the recommended amount of time, would be insane.

And I love how she shut down his ridiculous logic that men don´t get to take leave time. Yes, they do, and I support that, but even if they didn´t get to - men also don´t gestate and don´t give birth which includes bleeding, stretching and sometimes even a surgery to recover from. He basically just being a dick, (sorry Mom) and she called him on it. Good for her. And good for Fox for giving her a platform to address the issue.

Some less triumphant moments on Fox:

The Office of Majority Health (Glenn Beck on the Office of Minority Health)
Why Does this Man Still Have a Job? (Bill O´Reilly on Birth Control)

I Wish This Was...

2011-08-04T02:22:00.001-07:00

This is another New Orleans campaign by Candy Chang. She produced these stickers onto which you could write what you wished an abandoned building might be. Many people wrote similar wishes, that the building might be a place to purchase food. This captures a real issue in New Orleans: the lack of grocery stores, especially in low income neighborhoods, and especially in those neighborhoods still recovering from Katrina.

There are three major supermarkets on Magazine St.: Whole Foods, Breaux Mart, Walmart and two on Tchoupitoulis: Winn Dixie and Rouse´s. But if you go to, say, the Marigny, Bywater or Ninth Ward you won´t find any large supermarkets, only small corner stores which have large selections of liquor, beer, candy and chips and may or may not have overpriced bread, short dated milk and wilted produce.

One answer to neighborhood food insecurity is the farmer´s market. New Orleans has Sankofa, Freret St., Crescent City farmers markets in a variety of neighborhoods. The purpose is to increase access to fresh, local produce. Some farmer´s markets even take food stamps. There seem to be efforts to turn the French Market back into a produce market - but the last time I was there, it was still mostly Mardi Gras junk.

Another answer is better zoning. Instead of allowing supermarkets to crowd around Magazine St., the city should force supermarket chains to serve the other neighborhoods as well. Access to quality food is an issue in every American city. It is well documented that poorer neighborhoods do not have the same fresh foods available to them as more affluent areas. The sticker project reflects the desire the neighborhood has for better access to food and a desire to transform blocks of blight into a strong community.

I´ve really enjoyed reading through Chang´s other projects, check them out here.

Related Posts:

Before I Die I Want to....
The Office of Majority Health (In which Glenn Beck has a fit about Doritos)

Before I Die I Want to...

2011-08-03T09:09:00.001-07:00

Installation artist and urban planner Candy Chang implemented this project on the corner of Marigny and Burgundy Sts. in New Orleans. She covered an abandoned building with blackboards with the incomplete sentence «Before I die I want to...» and left out chalk so passersby could fill in the blanks. She writes on the website that the intention was to «transform a neglected space into a constructive one where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us».

The one in the fifth picture down that says «...get my wife back» got to me.

What would you fill in?

... live in New Orleans again.

... have some kids.

...go to all seven continents. Well, maybe not Antarctica.

...publish a novel.

The project in Khazakstan

Related Posts:

Candy Chang Projects
Post Secret
Ask Yourself
Posts on New Orleans
Posts on Architecture (most of it abandoned and in New Orleans)

No Man´s Land

2011-07-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

I first found this story at Jezebel. British artist Mishka Henner has compiled 64 photos of women standing along roads in Spain, Italy and Romania and put them in a book. All of the photos were taken by Google Street View, the tool that lets you see very specific addresses at street level when using Google Maps.

There is the implication, put forward by Henner, that the women are probably sex workers.

The book/project is controversial. Some find the images exploitative. The women could not have given consent to be photographed by Google, or to be published and labeled by Henner. And, we cannot know if they really are sex workers or if they are simply women standing along the road - waiting for a ride, taking a walk or waiting for a child to come home from school. Assuming they are sex workers based on their clothing is dangerous to all women. And why do we assume a woman standing along a road is a sex worker - what would we think of a man doing the same thing?

But I will be honest, some of the pictures do seem to be of women selling sex. I base that in my own experiences of meeting sex workers, not on stereotypes from movies.

I do not like the title. If No Man´s Land is meant to convey the emptiness of the scenes, there are other words to use. Because, while there are no men in the selected photos, men are definitely an important aspect of sex work. If the women are actually sex workers, who do you think they are waiting for?

There is also the issue of Henner´s selling the book for profit. He was not the photographer - is it even art?

Google Street view catches random images of people all the time while recording the street view for geographic purposes only. I imagine Henner spent numerous hours looking for the images online, but he has only compiled them, maybe manipulated the composition. And now he is selling them. The anonymous women, their faces blurred, will receive no recognition, except being labeled as sex workers. I wish that he had made this an exhibit of some sort, but not for profit.

To give him credit, the photos are available for viewing online without any cost. And the composition is beautiful. And the images open up a lot of dialogue about sex work, privacy and about the nature of what makes art.

I think the pictures are fascinating and, despite the ethical concerns, I am glad the project was made. Sex work is marginalized and so we tend to think it exists only in the margins. But these daylight scenes are completely mundane, isolated yet not hidden.

The sites are so rural and vast, some without any buildings at all, you can feel the danger of the work, even in the open, under the sun. Anything could happen to them, and they would be far from help. Or at least, that is the sense I get from the photos. We don´t know anything about what lays beyond the border of the picture. As I said before, the composition may have been edited to increase the sense of isolation.

Many of the pictures of are of black women, while all of the locations are in Europe. The women could citizens of the EU, but many could also be immigrants from Africa or Latin America. The issue of human trafficking hovers over many of the photos.

Another factor to consider is the affect of the Google Street View camera on the captured scene. From what I understand, Google gets these images from a car that carries a camera and GPS unit, taking pictures every 100 meters or so. I do not know how visible the camera would be to pedestrians standing along the road. In some of the photos the women have their back to the road and the camera. If the cameras are visible, or the Google car is suspicious looking, you could imagine the women purposefully turning their backs to the road. Or, if they were walking on the road, they may have stepped aside and waited for the car to pass them - making it look like they had been waiting beside the road for some time.

The Google car probably influenced the scenes in some way.

What do you think about this project?

Misinterpretation in the DSK Case

2011-07-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Nafissatou Diallo, the woman accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape, has come public with her story. This quote attributed to her: «Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing» turns out to have been a poor summary, a paraphrasing, of a recorded phone conversation she held with a friend.

The conversation was is Fulani, a language from Guinea. I wonder about how the conversation was originally interpreted. Who was hired to make the interpretation? How many professional English-Fulani interpreters are there in the US? How could the interpretation be so dangerously misconstrued to imply something she never said? I haven´t found any articles with details on the linguistic issues of the case, only this report from the Wall Street Journal, stating that Diallo insisted the prosecutors, who want to drop her case, should listen more carefully. It sounds like the first interpreter of the recording either didn´t speak Fulani that well or purposefully paraphrased Diallo´s words in a way that discredited her.

The above quote is not actually what she said at all. It is several pieces of a much longer conversation, rearranged in a way that implies she was after DSK´s money. During the actual conversation, she describes in detail what happened to her. She references DSK´s power, not his wealth. She says she knows what to do - as in, find a lawyer, because a crime had been committed against her. Somehow, in a different order, this was interpreted as «Because he has a lot of money, I know what to do [pursue his money].»

Read the story for more.

Ugly things we have heard about DSK´s accuser in the press:

She has HIV

She is an illegal immigrant

The point about rape that I would like to make is that she could be any and all of these things and it still does not preclude her from having been raped by DSK.

The accusation of prostitution is especially troubling. It seems there are many who do not believe it is possible for a prostitute to be raped. Let´s be clear, even if a prostitute is paid for the sex, if she did not consent to it, it is rape. Diallo has denied that she has ever worked as a prostitute.

Another point, in the Wall Street Journal article, is uses the term «almost raped». Yet, her charge is that DSK forced her to have oral sex. Oral sex is sex, therefore oral sex without consent is rape.

Diallo has lied about being raped in the past , this is true. But DSK has also been accused of rape in the past, and for some reason this doesn´t hold the same weight.

It seems one must be perfect to be raped – and to receive justice. We should think hard about the implications of this. Diallo may not even be allowed to take her case to court because of mistakes she made in the past. We have all made mistakes, all lied about things big or small that might impact our credibility. Does that mean there are limits to our right to justice when we are wronged?

Related Posts:

Wall Street Journal: Strauss-Kahn Maids´s Remarks Misportrayed
Interpretation Files

Good Intentions

2011-07-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

UNICEF´s Mother Baby Pack is a interesting example of a public health campaign gone wrong.

The pack is a well intended, yet poorly designed intervention meant to prevent the vertical (mother to child) transmission of HIV. The pack contains an astounding 5 month supply of anti-retroviral medications for both mother and infant. It was launched in 2010 in Cameroon, Kenya and Lesotho. While this may have seemed the answer to HIV in rural Africa, where access to medical care is often complicated by long distances from health facilities, 5 months is an awfully long time to go without seeing a doctor when you are both pregnant and HIV+, and 5 months worth of anti-retrovirals is quite a cache of very powerful medication.

While the information in the box may encourage return visits to clinics, by giving this much medication at once, the pack is implicitly discouraging pre and post natal visits. You can see from the picture the labeled boxes for medication taken during and after pregnancy as well as for infants. It seems to imply an HIV+ pregnant woman can do it herself, without a doctor.

Having worked in an HIV clinic and witnessing the vast support system some HIV+ patients truly need, I cannot imagine how this pack became a reality. Many HIV+ patients visit their doctor every three months, to have blood drawn for CD4 counts, to discuss issues with medication, to monitor general well-being. HIV treatment is a beast and patients often need guidance and encouragement to take it properly.

Of course, conditions are different in Africa. The pack is clearly attempting to address the fact that many women simply cannot see a doctor as often as they might if they lived in a developed country. But to expect someone with no medical back round to administer potentially poisonous medication to a new-born infant - it´s strange.

The Mother Baby Pack has now been quietly recalled. You can read UNICEF´s statement here, but you have to look for it under «Ensuring Quality and Effectiveness».To me, it´s a sad story and a little chilling. I am unaware of any reports of death or injury due to the pack, although the potential was there. But I can imagine if there had been, how awful that something so well-intended could have gone so wrong.

It is so easy to make mistakes while trying to do the right thing.

Related Posts:

UNICEF Mother Baby Pack Update
POZ Magazine: HIV and Pregnancy

Fake Immunization Campaign Used by the CIA

2011-07-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

An Afghan child receives the oral polio vaccine at a refugee camp in Pakistan.
From Getty Images.

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that the CIA in Pakistan used the cover of an immunization campaign to gather DNA samples in their attempt to find Osama Bin Laden. The operation was unsuccessful in finding any of Bin Laden´s relatives and does not appear to have lead to the assassination of Bin Laden in April. The participating Pakistani doctor has been arrested and news of the fake campaign will surely have negative affects on public health efforts in the future.

An except from the article:

The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.

Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.

In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.

It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.

This operation was profoundly unethical in a number of ways.

As the article reports, the full 3 dose course for the hepatitis B vaccine was not given to the patients. No patients benefited from this immunization campaign. Even if the vaccines were real, the campaign was completely fake.

The mistrust this operation will cause in the community could be disastrous for public health efforts in the near future. Pakistan has still been unable to eradicate polio from its borders. While the Taliban have sometimes supported vaccination campaigns, they have also sabotaged them with violence and rumors that the vaccine is a «tool from the West» meant to sterilize Muslim populations. Now it seems true that immunization campaigns really can be a tool of the West.

The CIA has exploited the trust communities hold in medical professionals and may possibly have exacerbated existing suspicions that vaccinations can be used against them.

Polio: Who Knew Eradication was Controversial?

Zombie Apocalypse 101 Brought to You by the CDC

2011-07-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Back in May of this year, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) actually made a web page about how to handle a zombie apocalypse. You don´t even know how excited I was about this. Most people are surprised to find out that I love zombie movies, but I really do. And the reason I like this is because they are really all about public health.

As the zombie genre has moved far beyond it´s mystical origins, it depends more and more on science to appear plausible. Zombieism in its current cinematic form is usually presented as an extremely contagious type of virus. The zombie-virus most closely resembles rabies in that it makes victims extremely aggressive and is transmitted by a bite. Of course, from there it loses any semblance of real science.

At the moment there is no virus that provokes cannibalism in people.

I like zombie movies like Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and Rec because the zombie epidemic could be substituted for any national disaster. How would the government react? How would the CDC react? Usually, it acts like a heartless dictator, brutally pushing people into quarantine. I think the CDC´s webpage on the subject is hilarious, because government institutions often play the villain is these types of movies. The CDC itself is often the bad guy in a hazmat suit, tearing apart relatives.

These movies show people stocking up on food and water, barricading their doors and windows, carrying flashlights. All things you should do to prepare for a hurricane.

I also like movies about the zombie apocalypse because I am convinced I would survive one.

Vector Control

2011-07-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

I am re-launching my first blog. It no longer made sense to keep the title A Minha Vida, when most of the posts aren´t really about my life anymore. I have another blog for that, one that I have had to make private for work reasons. But I will keep this blog public. I have decided to shift the focus of this blog away from my life and focus on public health in general. In the upper right corner you see 12 tags that categorize most of the posts into public health topics as well as a few others I find interesting. I used the six departments of public health at my alma mater, Tulane, to divide up the «public health» category.

I named the blog Vector Control after my interest in malaria. Hence, the picture of the engorged mosquito. I hope you enjoy the new focus and layout. It´s still a work in progress.

Historic Columbia River Highway

2011-07-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

In May, Tyree, my Mom and I went to Portland for my cousin Laura´s wedding. After the wedding, we took a trip along the Historic Columbia River Highway and saw several beautiful waterfalls. I also found these great postcards. I really love the stylized scenes. The back doesn´t say who the artist is, but the were produced by Lantern Press.

Tyree and I at Bridal Veil Falls, along the Historic Columbia River Highway. My mom took the picture. It was a great trip!

Beyoncé and Mozambique: Run the World (Girls)

2011-07-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Here is Beyoncé´s video for her new song, «Run the World (Girls)». Some friends alerted me to the fact that the two men dancing with her in the first routine are Mozambican. The video below shows their group Tofo Tofo dancing a similar choreography. Apparently Beyoncé had them come to L.A. to teach her the steps and to film with her. That´s really exciting! It´s great to see Mozambique being represented on the world stage. The video below is really fun and definitely worth a look.

As for Beyoncé´s video, I wasn´t so impressed. There is subtle African imagery, but it´s very hard to say where she thinks this dance off is taking place. The dancing and the hyenas hint that it is somewhere in Africa, but no specific country. The hyenas remind me of photographs of the Hyena Men in Nigeria by Pieter Hugo, which I had seen online a few years ago. Except, Beyoncé, as she is holding the hyenas in chains, also looks like she is in a fashion shoot. More about that later.

At some point she is standing in front of a street sign with the names Tbilisi and Tschinvali, and some other words in another alphabet. A quick google search shows these are not places in Africa but in Russia and Georgia. Maybe the sign is meaningless, maybe the video is supposed to be in nowhere land.

I like Beyoncé, I really do. I think she´s an amazing singer, a profoundly talented dancer. But she has this habit of making her songs seems deeper than they really are. I noticed this with «Upgrade U». It has a great beat, is fun to dance to, and the message seems like it could be a good one - a great woman can make a man a better man. She sings:

«I could do for you what Martin did for the people,
Ran by the man but the women keep the tempo...»

But she follows that with a list of fashion labels that will actually upgrade the man. Audemars Piguet, Hermès, Cartier. Please. Why call on the image of Martin Luther King Jr. if you are only going dig that kind of shallow grave for your song?

The same with «Girls». She sings:

«Smart enough to bear children then get back to business...»

But then why is there no imagery of motherhood or even of professionalism? There is only the imagery of militant strippers. Not that strippers aren´t powerful, not that sexuality isn´t power. But is that really what she wants to say when she says Girls run the World? We run it with our sexuality? We run it with our minds, our hearts, our fertility, our intelligence too.

There are scenes of women, completely still in their poses. This makes the whole video seem like one big photo shoot for Vogue. But fashion is not female empowerment. It is also not empowerment for most Africans. The fashion industry has been scaling up the amount of appropriation of African prints and styles, without increasing the number black models allowed to walk down the catwalks. If Beyoncé really wants to do something for women (and for Africans), she should demand that the fashion labels that pay her for endorsement start hiring more models of color.

I just don´t buy it that Beyoncé is a feminist. This is not a feminist song, or video. And that´s shame.

Update: And to prove my point, here is a quote from Beyoncé´s interview with Harper´s Bazaar:

Although many women today steer away from the word 'feminist', the Texan insists she's always been one, although she believes the movement needs a new name. She explained: 'I don’t really feel that it’s necessary to define it. It’s just something that’s kind of natural for me, and I feel like...you know...it’s, like, what I live for.

'I need to find a catchy new word for feminism, right? Like Bootylicious.'

How to Respect Men

2011-05-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

I found this image at Feministe. The image above is in response to the image below, originally printed in the Brooklyn Yiddish-language newspaper, Der Tzeitung. They photoshopped Hillary Clinton - our Secretary of State, the person with the most power in that room - out of the photograph of the situation room, receiving news about Bin Laden´s death. They later printed an explanation (which some called an apology, but I would not) in which they wrote:

In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.

Treating women differently than men in this way is disrespect. Treating images of women - all women - as immodest, while the images of men are not considered immodest is disparaging to women, even if the newspaper claims that is not the intention. Feminism is merely the idea that women are human too.

So, I love the response. Photoshop out all the men. It is respectful to men, to treat them with modesty, by erasing them from reality.

HIV Treatment is HIV Prevention

2011-05-15T06:51:00.000-07:00

This week saw big news in the HIV community. A study of discordant couples (in which one partner is HIV + and the other is not) has shown that when the HIV+ partner is on anti-retroviral therapy, the risk of viral transmission is lowered. By 96%. The results were so striking that the study was ended four years ahead of schedule. What would be the point of continuing, when you already know the answer: HIV treatment is prevention.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here.

This is important news as it gives some scientists and doctors hope that maybe we can outsmart this very clever virus. The results seem to imply that more testing and more treatment could possibly slow down transmission rates in a dramatic way - something that abstinence and condoms have been unable to do on their own.

The study results are also a weapon against those who question allocating resources towards treatment, suggesting instead that more resources go towards prevention methods (like abstinence and condom campaigns). Now it seems clear that good treatment is also prevention - it protects the negative partners of HIV+ people. Now there is less reason to have to decide between the two.

Michael Specter, a public health journalist, writes in a short article about the study that some in the health community are already asking the difficult questions. Will this news make HIV+ people on treatment less careful about unprotected sex? There have always been people who have questioned HIV treatment, arguing that resources should instead be given to increasing prevention efforts. There are also those in our society who feel HIV is a result of poor personal decisions and that the enormous financial cost of treatment is a waste.

For some reason, there are people who relish a fatal STI because they can use it to scare people into believing sex is sinful. STIs are terrible diseases, but they are not punishments from above and we should not humor those who want to use STIs to their advantage while on moral campaigns against human nature.

It seems that this news may have some influence on the current CDC and WHO recommendations for the commencement of anti-retroviral treatment. An HIV negative person might have a CD4 count between 500 and 1,500. Many HIV positive people also have CD4 counts around 500. Generally, someone is not diagnosed with AIDS until they have a CD4 count of 200 or lower. One goal of HIV treatment is to prevent the onset of AIDS in HIV positive patients. Currently, the commencement of anti-retroviral treatment is recommended for a CD4 count of 350 or less, but even last year I attended a lecture, sponsored by a drug company, that showed a study of patients who began treatment at a CD4 count of 500. It was already known that beginning treatment earlier is better for patients. With this new study, we find that it is better for their partners as well.

Still, there are caveats. Besides being expensive, treatment is a life-long commitment. Once you start, you should not stop because of the risk of resistance. Drug-resistant HIV is a very real issue. Once the virus forms resistance to one class of drugs, it greatly narrows the treatment choices left. And taking these pills is hard. They come with side-affects like diarrhea, nightmares, vomiting. They are daily reminders that you are living with a fatal, contagious disease - just the act of taking the pills depresses some patients. Doctors often want to delay treatment until it is necessary, to reduce the risk of non-compliance.

Treatment is not simple. Certainly, it will always be better to prevent infection altogether. But HIV is here, and we must deal with it as it is. This study should support increased funding for treatment and a move to earlier treatment - as a prevention method.

Related Posts:

ADAP Mishap: Who Will Have Access to HIV Medications in this Economy?

All HIV/AIDS Posts

Orfeu Negro: Is It Racist? Part II

2011-05-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

It is time to look at Orfeu Negro with a new set of eyes. I want to defend it, of course. It moved me and it has a place in my heart. But part of understanding racism is admitting that you see it, even in places you want to keep innocent of it: in your favorite books, in your family, in your own privileged life.

The film is often called ground-breaking and ahead of its time for employing an all-black cast. The story centers on Orfeu, his fiancée Mira, his neighbor Serafina and her cousin Euridice. They live on a favela high above the city, and are removed from it in every way. An airplane passes over the favela to remind you that no, they are not slaves on a fazenda, they are living in Rio de Janeiro, in the 20^th century. The isolation is important. While racist institutions may influence their lives, white people, as individuals, do not play an important role in the story. Black people have lives, communities and stories independent of white people - and that may have been a fairly revolutionary idea on film in 1959. But the movie can, at times, fetishize this culture that would be foreign not only to non-Brazilians, but to white Brazilians as well.

When looking at Orfeu Negro through a racial lens, you must keep in mind of the layers upon layers of various cultural influences laid over the final story. It is a French-made film, set in Brazil, based on an ancient Greek myth. And I am an American, looking at it through my own cloudy pair of glasses. The universality of the myth seems to be an important message. There is the implication that the lovers have been reincarnated. That they should be reincarnated as afro-brazilians, as opposed to say, modern day Greeks, implies love and tragedy are elements to be experienced and understood in all cultures.

Conversely, racism may be experienced in all cultures, but its manifestations will be different in each. You cannot say that the mãe de santo from the Macumba scene looks like Aunt Jemima. You cannot say that Mira, in her Carnaval costume, is trying to be white. To a Brazilian she might look like Xica da Silva. The scene involving watermelon, which I will say is cringe-inducing, may not have the same meaning to black Brazilians as it does to black Americans. I am unsure if Brazilians have the ugly watermelon and fried chicken stereotype. I am unsure if a French director, in the 1950´s, would have been aware of the loaded nature of this image. Are Serafina and Chico just eating watermelon, or is Camus using this image on purpose? Marpessa Dawn, the actress who plays Euridice, was American and was also Camus´wife at the time. While she wasn´t in that scene, it does seem strange that she wouldn´t have said anything about it possibly being offensive. And who knows, maybe she did and no one listened to her.

Is racism universal? Is racism recognizable across different cultures? We like to think Greek myths hold universal truths about the human condition, but what myth speaks to the universal truths of racism?

There are very few white people in the film. After a long opening scene of a multi-cultural Rio celebrating Carnaval, we see a white clerk at the office where Orfeu and Mira apply for a marriage license. He is the one who starts the tension by assuming Mira´s name must be Euridice, as her fiancé´s name is Orfeu. (Just as a man named Romeo might hear jokes about his Juliet.) Not familiar with the ancient story, Mira thinks Orfeu has cheated on her with another woman. This scene is important for plot development – but you could also understand it to mean that Orfeu and Mira are uneducated. Even a lowly government clerk knows about Greek mythology, and they do not. This scene also draws a line between those who live in the favela and those who live in the city, and work at government institutions.

In the first favela scenes, we see a Portuguese merchant who is relentlessly teased and manipulated by the female clientele. The scene is supposed to be funny, especially considering the strange relationship Brazilians have to the Portuguese (Brazilians sometimes make jokes about the intelligence of the Portuguese.) But it also relies heavily on stereotypes of black, female sexuality. Mira herself could be seen as an unflattering stereotype. She is definitely an intense character, edging on hysterical throughout the film. While a breathtaking performance, it isn´t a positive image of a black woman.

The Macumba scene was one that really moved me when I first saw it. I liked how seamlessly the story merged Greek mythology with afro-brazilian religion. However, even my professors pointed out its problematic aspects. For example, in the scene before Orfeu arrives at the ceremony, we see him descending a spiral staircase, at the bottom of which there is a red light. My professors suggested the spirals were suggestive of Dante´s rings of hell. If in the very next scene he attends a Macumba ceremony, it seems to imply that Macumba is hell or of the Devil. I don´t necessarily agree with this association. Neither ancient Greek religion, nor afro-brazilian religions are greatly concerned with good and evil in the Christian sense of those words. Hell is not the equivalent of Hades. Euridice was not in hell, she was simply dead and in the under-world. Macumba was a way to reach her. I found the use of spirit possession (a very real aspect of afro-brazilian religions) as a fitting way to fulfill the myth and allow Orfeu to find Euridice again, if only for a fleeting moment. But I can see how others might be uncomfortable with the imagery. It was up to the director to be sensitive to how viewers would interpret the scene. While some may understand that Hell and Hades are not the same and therefore Camus is not saying Macumba is Hell, the images of spirit possession would have been shocking to white audiences, especially of that era. It probably did reinforce negative ideas about black spirituality rather than teach anything real about Macumba. It was a fairly sensational scene. But it was also real, filmed at an actual ceremony. Is it racist? It´s hard to say.

At the end of the movie we again see Orfeu wander through the bureaucracy of the modern world. After so many scenes set in the favela, in homes without running water, with farm animals in every corner, it is jarring to see Orfeu, in his Carnaval costume, walk into office buildings with file cabinets, temples of the most mundane aspects of modern life. White people exist in these places: in offices overflowing with paper and in morgues with men in suits and sign in sheets. Orfeus´ presence in them is dream-like and anachronistic.

You could interpret the film´s message in several ways. That black people are not part of the modern world; that they live only in the white imagination, dancing and singing and being passionate. Or, as criticism of the white world and its banality and meaninglessness in the face of Orfeu´s harrowing loss. I think the director was probably feeling a mix of the two ideas. He may have loved black people. He married Marpessa Dawn. His greatest work was this film, which is entirely about black Brazilians. But loving something does not erase your own racism. If he valued black culture over white, was it because he found in black culture something missing in his own? This is exactly what Obama criticized his own mother for.

The frenetic energy of the film is cause of both the highest praise and the harshest criticism. Does the constant singing and dancing distract from the reality that life in the favela is a life of poverty? Is it a minstrel show? (Did they even have minstrel shows in Brazil like they did in America?) Actually, this is also a criticism of Carnaval in general. Carnaval is a distraction. But I don´t think the film ignores this. The opening song, A Felicidade by António Carlos Jobim, is a philosophical reflection on just this fact. Happiness is a drop of dew on the petal of a flower...the happiness of the people is the great illusion of Carnaval. And it all ends on Ash Wednesday. The point of Carnaval is that it ends. All the singing and dancing will end. It is all ephemeral, just as love and life are ephemeral. Orpheus and Eurydice had each other for only a moment, and then it was lost.

Marpessa Dawn and Marcel Camus

Is the film racist? Yes. It was made in 1959 by a white French director, how could it not be? (It doesn´t matter that he was married to a black woman and employed black Brazilians in his film) Does that mean it wasn´t groundbreaking for its time or that there isn´t value to be found in it? Obama found it to be a window on his mother´s soul. While he was uncomfortable with what he found there, it allowed him to see his own life in another context. There are many well-meaning white people, who love to travel and to experience other cultures. Learning to do this in the least racist way possible is a work in progress.

UPDATE: A note about comments: As this post seems to bring out a mean streak in some people, I have two requests:

1. Please be sure to read the post carefully before posting a comment.

2. Please be respectful. I don´t mind if you disagree. If you don´t agree with what I have written, that´s great, please explain your opinions and ideas in your comment. I posted the essay because I want to hear other ideas on the topic. But if you use personal or racist insults about myself, the president or anyone else, I can´t publish your comment.

Orfeu Negro: Is It Racist? Part I

Manhã de Carnaval

Orfeu Negro: Is It Racist? Part I

2011-05-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading Dreams of My Father, by Barack Obama. In it, Obama describes a scene in which his mother took him and his sister Maya, to see Orfeu Negro, in New York.

This caught my attention. In the Portuguese program at my university, Orfeu Negro had a heavy role in the curriculum. I must have watched it three times with my professors indicating, frame by frame, the deep layers of symbolism. I love this film. I was excited to read that it was one of Obama´s mother´s favorite films. And sad to read that Obama was offended by it.

Here´s how he describes watching it with his mother:

«...black and brown Brazilians sang and danced and strummed guitars like carefree birds in colorful plumage. About halfway through the movie, I decided that I´d seen enough, and turned to my mother to see if she might be ready to go. But her face, lit by the blue glow of the screen, was set in a wistful gaze. At that moment, I felt as if I were given a window into her heart, the unreflective heart of her youth. I suddenly realized that the depiction of childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad´s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.»

The point of the scene is not to critique the movie, so he doesn´t say specifically what scenes in the film he found so offensive. The point was to discuss what he learned about his mother in learning that what he found racist, she found beautiful. Of course, I think the film is beautiful too. So, what does that say about me?

It´s a good reminder of how hard racism is to understand and how hard it is to untangle ourselves from it. I am not black, and because of that, I can never watch Orfeu Negro through the eyes of someone who knows what it is like to live with the stereotypes, with the discrimination, with the stress of being the Other every day in America (or Brazil).

In these passages, he does seem very critical of his mother and of her decisions. That she might have been looking for something more sensual, more exotic in her life could mean she was fetishizing Brazilian, (and Kenyan, and Indonesian) culture.

Again, it makes me wonder about myself and my own decisions. I wouldn´t say that I have chosen to work in Africa to find an element of myself that is missing...but maybe I am not being completely honest either.

I am acutely aware of my privilege here. Here I am the Other, but that does not mean the same thing as being black in America. I struggle with how to respond to my position here in the right way, the least racist way. As much as I really love this film, I have to try to understand it from Obama´s perspective.

«The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.»

I want to say that, Obama wrote these words in a memoir and they may be more an account of how he was feeling at that moment than the way he feels about it now. In the new preface he writes that if he had known his mother was going to die before the book was published, he might have written more about her, and less about his father. It seems that his feelings about his mother have changed since her death, or at least since he watched the movie with her.

«My mother was that girl with the movie of beautiful black people in her head, flattered by my father´s attention, confused and alone, trying to break out of the grip of her own parents´ lives.»

Read the next post for a racial analysis of Orfeu Negro.

Orfeu Negro: Is It Racist? Part II

The Guardian: Why Obama is Wrong About Black Orpheus

Hypocrisy: Rick Scott Does it Best

2011-04-05T08:54:00.001-07:00

Here´s a picture of Rick Scott on March 28th, supporting Special Olympics Athletes - in a photo op.

Here´s a story from March 31st that illuminates Florida´s Governor´s true feelings about people with disabilities: Rick Scott Orders Immeadiate Cuts to Programs for the Disabled

How could he stand there, in front of everyone, feigning support for people he was just about to cut at the knees?

Florida - what have we done in electing this man?

Being an Unexpected Speaker

2011-03-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was only a declared linguitstics major at the University of Florida for one semester. I moved on to other ideas, finally graduating with a degree in Spanish. But I´ve never lost my interest, especially in sociolinguistics. I have noticed a phenomenon that doesn´t seem to have a name. Maybe if I had at least minored in linguistics I would know if it has ever been studied or not. It is best described with a story:

A few years ago in New Orleans, I drove out to Kenner to speak with the pastor of a Brazilian church. The front door was locked, so I went to the back where I saw a woman in the kitchen. «Está o pastor?» I asked. Is the pastor here?

She looked at me with a startled expression and said «I no speak English.»
«Tá bom, falo português» It´s ok, I speak Portuguese, I said in Portuguese. «Está o pastor?» I asked again.

She looked at me without any comprehension and repeated «I no speak English, only Portuguese.»

Now I was frustrated. Was my Portuguese not good enough? Was my accent that bad? Why didn´t she understand that 1. I was speaking to her in Portuguese and 2. I wanted to know if the pastor was there.

Finally the pastor walked in and greeted me warmly. As we exchanged greetings, the lady looked on in total shock. But, you speak Portuguese! she said.

It is my theory that the reason she didn´t understand my Portuguese was that she didn´t expect me to speak Portuguese. She knew I was American and not Brazilian. She expected me to speak English to her and she preemptively told me she wasn´t going to understand what I was saying. She was so worried about me speaking English to her she did not hear or understand my Portuguese until someone else entered the room and shook things up.

Another time this happened was in Suriname, and it was ever stranger. Suriname is a Dutch speaking country. There aren´t a lot of Dutch living there anymore, but there are a few and while I was there many people thought I was Dutch until I told them I wasn´t and couldn´t speak Dutch at all.

My coworker was Brazilian and we spoke with each other in Portuguese. One day her eight year old daughter came to visit the clinic. When my coworker introduced us, I spoke to her in Portuguese but she responded in Dutch. She was bilingual, but really she only spoke Portuguese with her mother. She spoke Dutch at school and with her father´s side of the family. I told her, in Portuguese, that I didn´t speak Dutch and that she could speak to me in Portuguese, but she didn´t believe me.

She asked me several times, in Dutch, if I wasn´t Dutch. I told her several times, in Portuguese that I was not Dutch, couldn´t speak Dutch and that she could speak to me in Portuguese or English, if she knew any. She turned to her mother, who confirmed that I did not speak Dutch.

Again, my theory is that the little girl couldn´t understand me for the first five minutes, because she so deeply expected me to speak Dutch, because of my appearance. She seemed reluctant to speak to me in Portuguese because she did not really believe that I would understand her. Once she got over this initial misunderstanding, we got along just fine.

Does anyone know if there is a name for this? When someone cannot understand you, not because you don´t speak their language, but because they don´t expect to you to speak their language. Has this ever happened to anyone in English?

Planned Parenthood: Gabrielle Union Speaks Out!

2011-03-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

So, I just read this interview with Gabrielle Union on her thoughts about Planned Parenthood. It was interesting to me because she addressed many myths about PP just as I had done in my post last month about Five Myths about Planned Parenthood. It´s an interesting interview. She makes good points about all the other services PP provides, which usually get overlooked. In addition to sex education and access to birth control, PP clinics provide HIV tests, HPV vaccines, breast and cervical exams. Planned Parenthood is good for women. For some reason that makes it a scary place to some conservative politicians.

Read full interview HERE.

Five Myths about Planned Parenthood

5 Myths about Planned Parenthood

2011-02-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

A recent postcard from Post Secret

In light of the current attack on Planned Parenthood, I thought it would be interesting to explore some of the myths out there about this organization. This recent postcard at Post Secret speaks to the reality that even women who are raised in conservative families that don't discuss sex in favor of adstinence and ignorance will eventually find themselves in need of information about their own bodies. And they will often turn to Planned Parenthood.

Myths about Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood's purpose is to provide and promote abortions.

Under 5% of the organization's activities involve abortions-related services. Many of those services include referrals to other clinics for actual procedures.

There is no organization that actively promotes abortion. Women choose to have abortions based on their personal circumstances. Planned Parenthood provides information on the choices available to those women who wish to end their pregnancies - but no one promotes abortion.

Defunding Planned Parenthood will decrease the number of abortions in America.

50% of all pregnancies are unplanned. 50% of unplanned pregnancies will end in abortion. Planned Parenthood's main purpose to prevent an unwanted pregnancy prior to conception by providing information and access to contraception. Defunding a major provider of low-cost contraception will probably increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions - the very opposite of what this new bill intends.

Planned Parenthood uses federal funds to provide abortions.

Under the Hyde Ammendment, it is illegal to use federal funds to perform abortions. When the clinics do provide abortions the patient pays a fee and donations make up the rest.

Planned Parenthood is Evil

You can read the organization's mission statement here. Despite what you may hear from conservative politicians, Planned Parenthood cares about women. They care so much that they want women to have control over their fertility. Imagine that.

Planned Parenthood is Racist

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood's founder, Margret Sanger, is problematic. While a great feminist, she was a eugenicist. This is true. What is not true is that the organization that exists today is a racist institution. Planned Parenthood does not target black women for abortions. Planned Parenthood doesn't target anyone for abortions. Planned Parenthood intends to make information and contraception available to all women who need it.

10 Myths about Virginity

Planned Parenthood: Gabrielle Union Speaks Out!

Polio: Who Knew Eradication was Controversial?

2011-02-12T07:57:00.000-08:00

The New York Times recently published an interesting article about the Gate´s Foundation´s efforts to eradicate polio. It interested me because polio is one of the projects we are working on at my new job. Though very far down the chain of donors, the project is related to this global eradication effort.

Polio has been eradicated from the United States for so long that older Americans remember polio as something they worried about when they were children in the 1950´s and 60´s but probably did not have to worry about for their own children. The polio vaccine has been part of routine childhood vaccinations for sometime, though it has long since ceased to be an issue for American children. But this is not the case in the developing world. India, Pakistan and now central African countries like the DRC and Angola, which had previously been thought to be polio free as still struggling to make the virus history.

The world is close to eradication, but as the article describes it, getting rid of the last of the virus is like squeezing jell-o. As eradication is acheived in one country, it reappears somewhere else.

And here is the controversy: as eradication has proved so difficult, is it right to keep spending money on this one disease, when there are other diseases, like malaria, that affect more people and cause more deaths? There are some public health officials who are not supportive of aggresive polio campaigns for just this reason. They say it is not a feasible goal and that there are other, more pressing health concerns to deal with.

It is my opinion that eradication is an important goal. It is not right to declare the fight over only now that the virus is no longer a concern in developed countries. The vaccination works, but the campaigns are needed to deliver the vaccine and education to the hardest to reach communities. And if the virus is not actually defeated, there will still be ongoing costs just to contain it. Now is the time for eradication. If we let go of the fight now, all the work done in the last decades could be reversed in just a few years.

Kahlúa es Delicioso and English is Boring

2011-02-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

I love this Kahúa commercial. I think Ana de la Reguera was a great casting choice (she was the nun in Nacho Libre). She declares that in Spanish, everything sounds more - intriguing. I love her list of completely ordinary objects - stapler, shoes, Robert, piano - that sound more intriguing in Spanish. And of course, by intriguing she really means sexy. Robert, if only he were Roberto, would actually be sexy. And Kahlúa is just so intriguing that the English delicious is simply not good enough to describe it.

Which is an interesting commentary on language. Languages tend to have personality traits attributed to them. French is romantic, German is stern, Italian is passionate and English is...well, what does the rest of the world think of English? It´s one of those things that is difficult to know as a native English-speaker. Even though I speak Spanish and Portuguese, I still have some idea of what those languages sound like when all you can hear are the phonemes. But I can never not understand English, so it´s hard for me to pick out those sounds that might dominate the way the language sounds to non-native speakers. I´ve heard people say it sounds like wah-wah-wah or that it sounds like we have marbles in our mouths. I´ve never heard anyone say that English is sexy.

English is becoming a universal language. Even French, Japanese and German tourists might use English to get around in a place like Mexico. This makes it very useful to native English speakers. But this also makes English less intriguing. If everyone speaks it, what is special about it? As language is often intricately intertwined with culture, do we lose a little of our culture as the rest of the world is capitalizing on our language? I envy people who have always been multilingual. Especially Africans. I really like the idea of speaking one language for business and another with your family. The language you speak to your loved ones must be elevated in your heart. But the language I use with my loved ones is the language of business.

With so many people learning English for purely financial reasons, it is easy to forget that English is the language of Shakespeare, of Lord Byron, the Beatles. For as much as I don´t like listening to Shakira sing in English, I was delighted to hear that she studied Beatles´lyrics to learn it. It shows that she actually cared about the musical culture of the language.

Of course English can be romantic, stern, passionate and sexy. English can be anything we need it to be. But it´s true, it´s more fun to say Kahlúa es delicioso.

Plumpy´Nut

2011-02-06T03:25:00.000-08:00

Kwashiorkor, the name for that awful, classic condition of starvation in children: distended belly, orange-tipped hair, comes from Ga, a language in Ghana. It means « the illness the baby gets, when the second baby comes». Meaning, it is the illness babies get when they are no longer, if ever, exclusively breastfed. Weaning is a critical time for an infant in the developing world. While breastmilk should safely provide all the nourishment a newborn will need, after six months it will no longer be enough on its own. With the introduction of other foods and water, comes the possibility of also introducing bacteria and of not providing enough vitamins and minerals through solid food.

Malnutrition has long been a global health issue. Poor nutrition in infancy has life-long effects. When entire generations of children are affected, it has community-wide effects.

Plumpy´nut is one solution that is gaining ground. It is essentially vitamin-packed peanut butter, high in calories and nutritional value. It was invented by a French doctor. UNICEF currently purchases 90% of the product to use in feeding programs around the world. It is not meant to be a constant nutritional supplement, but rather an emergency food to bring children back from the brink of acute malnourishment. This New York Times piece on the product nicely explains the product´s history and use in The Peanut Solution.

The article also gently points out the controversy of a product like this being for-profit. While UNICEF distributes it to patients for free, UNICEF must purchase it from the company that makes it and holds the patent. That company makes quite a lot of money. Is this wrong? Or is this just the way the world works? The article addresses these difficult questions.

Related Post:

Breastfeeding in the Developing World

Holiday with Sameer

2011-01-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

One positive thing about waiting so long for my visa to Angola is that I have been able to spend a lot of time with my horse, Sameer. I've had Sameer since I was in sixth grade. He's a part of the family.

On Lake Talquin, on a cold and windy day.

Floridians get very excited about frost as it's as close to snow as we usually get.

At the end of December, we had to move Sameer from the farm with the sheep and goats, to another farm in Gadsden County.

Mom and I playing around with the stall shavings.

Santa is in Suriname

2010-12-23T18:13:00.001-08:00

Concerns about Facts and Infant Mortality

2010-12-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

Re: " 'Safety net' can be a trap for poor women" (My View, Dec. 5).
Published: December 08. 2010 in the Tallahassee Democrat

Public health issues, such as infant mortality rates (IMR), cannot be explained away with personal anecdotes. The health of a community cannot be reduced to the hundreds of separate decisions an individual makes in a lifetime. Numerous factors — policies and trends often beyond the control of the individual — contribute to racial health disparities in America.

It's hard to imagine how abuse of Medicaid by poor black mothers could be one of them. Less than a year's worth of free insurance seems an unlikely motivation for pregnancy. The Office of Minority Health reports that even when IMR is stratified by income and education of the mother, race is still a risk factor. This means that black women with the same salary and years of education as white women in their peer group are still at greater risk of having their babies die before they reach the age of 1. Even the Centers for Disease Control cannot explain this, but a history of racism surely plays a role.

For this reason it is unhelpful when respected professionals perpetuate myths about welfare abuse within the African-American community during a dialogue about IMR.

HEATHER JORDAN, MPH

Related Posts:

Florida's F grade hardly a surprise
Safety net a trap for poor women

Ellen Hamilton: 'Safety net' can be a trap for poor women

2010-12-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

Re: "Florida's F grade is hardly a surprise" (My View, Nov. 28).
Published: December 05. 2010 in the Tallahassee Democrat

It was the shards of glass on the ground that kept getting my attention. I was standing on the playground of a housing project, spending time with a young African-American girl whose social/emotional/psychological needs I was there to assess. As I observed this child, described as belligerent by her teacher and hard to manage by her mother, I was distracted by the dangers in the grass.

Why didn't someone pick up that glass, so the children could be safe? Were residents of the project waiting for the management to do it? The playground itself looked shabby, with much of the equipment broken, missing or unusable.

I stood there, wondering what could be done to truly improve the circumstances of people of the projects, people who are our neighbors.

Better brains than mine have attempted to unravel this rough, tightly woven fabric of racial, social, economic, political and psychological threads we call poverty. How do we alter the cycles in which poor people find themselves?

Dr. Edward Holifield made an impassioned plea that more attention be given to the issue of black babies and the appalling number born prematurely and those who die as infants. He notes social and political causes, citing "contempt for poor children in general and black children in particular." He reports that the "dysfunctionality" of Medicaid is "considered by some to be a risk factor for infant mortality." "In 2008, 42 percent of the births in Leon County were covered by Medicaid, which means that Medicaid must share the blame for such terrible birth outcomes, especially in regard to black infant mortality," he wrote.

This last statement is poisoned by a stark contradiction. The large number of Medicaid-paid-for births indicates that many women, without adequate income and insurance, are having babies. Whether Tea Partiers, conservatives, moderates or liberals, many people bristle, and some bleed, at this reality. Surely, the medical services paid for by Medicaid can do only so much to ensure the safe arrival and survival of black babies.

They represent hope for families, and I have heard many young, black mothers, no matter how dire their circumstances, refer to their babies as joys, blessings, the inspiration that keeps them going.

We all need hope. However, as long as young women and men have no cause for hope, other than having a baby, we have no chance of stopping the generational cycles of poverty.

The absence of black fathers has been noted as a factor in the health of black babies. Drug and alcohol addiction, incarcerations and poor education are rampant in the poorer families of our society. Self-esteem is compromised for many young people of all races, and depression lurks as an unrecognized, undiagnosed condition that is both cause and effect in the cycle of poverty.

It is illogical and dangerous to blame Medicaid, cracked and flawed though it is, for the terrible sadness of black infant mortality, without also looking at other issues. The binding and blinding truth is that the availability of Medicaid, intended to be a safety net for girls, women and infants — a critical, compassionate net we should be proud to have — is also a potential trap. Teenagers and young women often trade in their youth, sacrifice their educations and have multiple babies they can ill afford for reasons we must come to understand.

The hard-to-speak truth is that the contempt Dr. Holifield and others witness toward poor, black children is a contempt for the circumstances of individuals perceived to be using a system designed as a safety net, which has become the ground on which their lives and their children's lives are based.

While Aid to Families with Dependent Children is no longer available, young mothers can still receive housing subsidies, food stamps and other services. Extremely alarming is the trend of some parents invested in having their children labeled with a disability in order to receive disability benefits. For some families, this is the new welfare.

As long as young, black men leave, literally, their pants on the ground, and young, black women do not see for themselves a role, a life, a dream that takes them into young adulthood before they become pregnant, babies will continue to carry the burden of a community of people that is hurting and wants hope and a society and political system that are ambivalent, at best, about providing support to people seen as irresponsible.

The playground on which I stood a couple of years ago is no longer littered with glass, and new equipment is in place. At least, this has changed.

When I last contacted the young mother of the child mentioned above, she reported that her daughter's behavior had become less problematic. She no longer needed my services, and she was happy. She was pregnant, again.

As we lobby for better services for babies, we must also examine the effects of those services on the people who brought the babies into being, and be aware that, as we hold the net, we may also be setting the trap, as subtle and dangerous as those shards of glass on the playground.

As a society grappling with painful and knotty issues — fear, ignorance, racism and the legacies of the sin that was slavery — we must recognize, with heart and mind, the legitimate concerns of all segments of our society.

Related Posts:

Florida's F grade hardly a surprise
Concerns about facts and infant mortality

Edward Holifield: Florida's F grade on babies is hardly a surprise

2010-12-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

Re: "Fla. gets an 'F' for premature birth rates" (news article, Nov. 17)
Published: November 28. 2010 in the Tallahassee Democrat

None of us familiar with Florida's abysmal record regarding maternal and children's health were surprised by this article in the Tallahassee Democrat. This record documents a history of contempt for poor children in general and black children in particular.

It places Florida in the company of other states with an F rating that typically have neglected their poor, such as Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Even West Virginia was ranked ahead of Florida in the annual report compiled by the March of Dimes.

Reality is even worse than the Democrat article suggested. For example, the article reported that 13.8 percent of Florida's babies were born too soon in 2008. This was a "provisional" statistic. The actual statistic was worse, at 14.2 percent. Further, 19.4 percent of black babies were born preterm in Florida in 2008, compared with 12.8 percent for white babies.

Thus black babies in Florida have a preterm birth rate more than 2.5 times the national government's objective of 7.6 percent. The black preterm birth rate in Florida is the same as the overall preterm birth rate for Puerto Rico.

The racial disparities regarding maternal and child health issues are extraordinary. A preterm rate of 13.0 percent was reported for Leon County. This obscures the black preterm rate of 16.8 percent, compared with the much lower white preterm rate of 10.4 percent.

The Democrat article reported that the preterm birth rate in Leon County has "decreased over the past three years." However, that rate decreased only modestly, from 14.3 percent in 2006.

Meanwhile, there has been no statistically significant improvement in infant mortality in Leon County during the past 20 years, according to state epidemiologist Bill Sappenfield. Black infant mortality in Leon County at 11.3 per thousand live births remains embarrassingly high when compared with white infant mortality at 4.3 per thousand.

These dismal results were predictable. Medicaid is so dysfunctional that it is considered by some to be a risk factor for infant mortality. Medicaid "reform" has turned into Medicaid repeal.

A pregnant woman in Florida is banished from the Medicaid rolls only 60 days after she delivers her baby. Thus, a sick mother is expected to be able to care for her infant child.

In 2008, 42 percent of the births in Leon County were covered by Medicaid, which means that Medicaid must share the blame for such terrible birth outcomes, especially in regard to black infant mortality.

During years 2006 through 2008, one out of five black women in Leon County received no prenatal care during their first trimester of pregnancy. By comparison, 91 percent of white women in Leon County received prenatal care during their first trimester of pregnancy.

Only 68.5 percent of black women in Leon County initiated breast feeding following delivery, compared with 85.8 percent of white women.

The black maternal mortality in Florida is 33.8 per 100,000, which is more than three times the maternal mortality rate for white women at 10.7.

These problems exist largely because the political power structure does not care. Leon County Commissioner Bryan Desloge in 2007 used the racially pejorative term "million dollar crack babies" when speaking of black infant mortality. Mayor John Marks and the city of Tallahassee spent more money in 2007 on the St. Francis Animal Hospital than on the Bond Community Health Center.

Florida in 2005 left unused $20 million in federal money that could have been spent on KidCare.

The problem is not money. Rather, it is a lack of political will, coupled with babies who cannot vote.

See responses to this article:

Safety net can be a trap for poor women
Concerns about facts and infant mortality

Five Pitfalls of Gift Cards

2010-12-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

You are going to get a few gift cards this holiday season. Chances are you are going to give a few too. This is a difficult post to write, knowing that many of my family and friends have given me such gift cards - so my point isn't to make anyone feel bad. My point is only to illuminate the pitfalls of gift cards, as there are many.

Why do I care? When I got married we received over $200 worth of gift cards to Home Depot and Lowes. They were even special wedding gift cards when a cute bride and groom on the plastic. The problem: we were moving into a second-story apartment in the metro New Orleans area. We had no reason to go to Home Depot - we wouldn't even have a yard. Our parents ended up buying the gift cards from us to be nice. Over the course of two years in New Orleans, we received around $50 worth of movie tickets to Regal Entertainment Cinemas from our family in Tallahassee. The problem: there isn't a Regal Cinema in the entire state of Louisiana. We could only use the tickets in Florida. In other words, we were given hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards that were worthless to us.

Here's a list of the pitfalls of gift cards that may make you think twice about giving plastic as a present. Alternatives: this Christmas give home-made gifts, make a donation to charity in your loved-one's name or just give cash.

Pitfall #1. What can you buy for exactly $20?

Nothing. You almost always have to purchase more than the value of the card to redeem every penny. Otherwise you are stuck with a card with 33 cents on it. Either way, you lose money. What kind of gift requires you to spend your own money?

Pitfall #2. What if that store doesn't exist in your town?

Well, you can always try to order something online. But when it's something like movie tickets....there's not much you can do. You can re-gift it to someone in another town, or the money is lost.

Pitfall #3. What if that store doesn't have anything you want?

Then you're REALLY out of luck. Very few cards are redeemable for cash. If you don't buy anything, the company gets to keep the gift-giver's money without selling any merchandise!

Pitfall #4. What if that store goes out of business before you use the card?

When Circuit City went out of business a few years ago, millions of dollars in gift cards went unredeemed, lost forever to the card holder. What a waste!

Pitfall #5. You should absolutely never buy a gift card with a credit card logo!

Above all, never give a gift card with a credit card logo. These often come with expiration dates or even activation fees. Why should anyone have to spend money only to spend more money?

Again, why not just give cash?

*The only thing positive I can say about gift cards is that I have been given cards to stores and restaurants that I never would have tried otherwise and in the end really enjoyed. Sometimes cards do encourage you to be adventurous and try new things. But in the big picture, gift cards benefit companies far more than they do consumers.

The Office of Majority Health

2010-11-21T17:35:00.000-08:00

I typically find Glen Beck to be unwatchable. I don't think he's usually worth the effort to be offended. But I found this clip to be so overtly racist that I couldn't help but wonder how he gets away with what he does.

Mostly I was interested because he specifically calls out the Office of Minority Health(OMH) for committing all sorts of evil against white people. And he seems to really have a problem with Doritos, as seen around 3:10.

After an initial rant about Obama and reparations, Beck introduces his guest, Linda Chavez, and the conversation turns to talk of Obama settling "old racial scores" and racial "preferences" within the administration's policies.

The two talk about OMH's supposed conspiracy to prove that minorities receive inferior health care than whites. Beck throws up air quotes when saying OMH wants to "nudge the system into a more 'fair' system of health care." Does he not believe that is what OMH is meant to do? Or does he not believe that a fair system would be one in which all Americans receive equal health care?

Chavez really gets me around 3:30 when she says: "A lot of our unequal health outcomes have to do with not just income but behavior... they're going to try to turn this into a race issue." During which Beck is also complaining simultaneously that "There is no Office of Majority Health."

Chavez is not a nurse, doctor, public health professional, epidemiologist. She's not even a dental hygienist. For what reason would she be invited to talk about health disparities, the causes of obesity and medical school admissions on the Glen Beck variety show? Because she knows how to spread racial angst to white people almost better than Beck himself.

Let's look at OMH's explanation for its own existence:

Why we were established

Poor health outcomes for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders are apparent when comparing their health indicators against those of the rest of the U.S. population. These populations experience higher rates of illness and death from health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, specific cancers, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, asthma, hepatitis B, and overweight and obesity. OMH's primary responsibility is to improve health and health care outcomes for racial and ethnic minority communities by developing or advancing policies, programs, and practices that address health, social, economic, environmental and other factors which impact health.

Let's think about the Beck/Chavez explanation of obesity among minorities. Beck says it's that they must eat more Doritos than everyone else and that they should just stop. Chavez says it's really about individual behaviors or "what people do to themselves" and that OMH is making it a race issue.

If only health were as simple as the individual decisions we make for ourselves. As with all public health issues, obesity is extremely complex and related to factors that reach far beyond an individual's decision to eat Doritos instead of an apple. While it may seem intuitive that human adults should have the ultimate control over what we put into our mouths, you cannot ignore that environmental conditions and policy makers often have much more control over which foods find their way to our tables. Processed food is cheaper than fresh food. Major supermarkets do not open stores in low-income neighborhoods. Schools cut back physical education programs as they also down-grade the quality of food they feed our children. Beck and Chavez are happy to ignore these truths and blame poor health on the individual instead of the system that is proven to influence health outcomes.

Beck complains that there is no Office of Majority Health. This, of course, is not true. If the US Department of Health and Human Services had always had the best interest of all Americans in mind, the US would not have the embarrassing health statistics it has now. But, as an arm of a government with a racist past, how could this organization have been anything but an Office of Majority Health? All government institutions were once run by and for the exclusive benefit of white men.

Maybe one day the OMH will no longer be necessary. But currently African American infants die at a rate twice that of white infants. Would Linda Chavez blame this horrifying statistic purely on the behavior of African American mothers? I have a feeling she would.

Reproductive Life Planning

2010-11-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

50% of all pregancies in America are unplanned. In an age with so many contraceptive choices, how is this happening? Here is one example of what a reproductive life plan might look like. Produced by the Office of Minority Health, it is meant to get people of reproductive age to stop and think about what their goals for parenthood really are.

Do You Want Children?
Yes, then When? How many? What conditions need to be right?
No, then how are you avoiding pregnancy?

On the back, it asks you to put in writing what your plans are. Of course the plan can change at any moment. Both women and men should be aware of their partner's plan - though no one can force the other to change their own. For example, a man should not force his female partner to take oral contraceptive, but if he doesn't want to become a father and she doesn't want to be on the pill, he should use a condom or abstain from sex. Men shouldn't just leave decisions about contraception to women. They should play an active role in their own sexual health.

It may seem obvious to prepare yourself for parenthood, but clearly not enough couples are following through. This is a great preconception activity, especially for young people.

* In my presentation on STIs and Pregnancy, I emphasized that plans for avoiding STIs and Pregnancy can overlap sometimes but not always. When refering to the A,B,C method of prevention, A(bstinence) and C(ondoms) can work to avoid both STIs and Pregnancy. But the B is more tricky. (B)eing Faithful to your partner can work to avoid STIs, but not pregnancy. And (B)irth Control including oral contraceptives, IUDs and spermicidal jellies will help against pregnancy, but not against STIs.

Autumn in New York

2010-11-17T05:22:00.000-08:00

I was invited by OMH to give my PPE STIs and Pregnancy presentation at a training at Hunter College. Tyree and I made the most of the trip and went to the Met, the Guggenheim, Central Park and saw some friends. The weather was beautiful. I liked the city more this time than at any other time in my life. (There are more pictures of me than of Tyree, because he won't let me take pictures of him.)

Me, in front of Hunter College, where I gave my presentation.

Our cute hotel room.

Mulemba Xangola

2010-11-16T11:07:00.001-08:00

In just a few weeks, Tyree and I are moving to Angola. We expect to be there around two years. We are very excited.

I'm posting these maps first so that everyone is clear on where we're going. Just to be especially clear, we are going to Angola the country, not Angola the prison in Louisiana. (There was some confusion about this as we were leaving New Orleans!) We will be living primarily in Luanda, the capital.

Some brief details: The national language in Angola is Portuguese and there are about 30 different African languages spoken, corresponding with the 30 or so different ethnics groups. Angola was a Portuguese colony from the 1500's until 1975. Angolans, like Mozambicans, had to fight for their independence. After independence there was a civil war between the MPLA on the left and UNITA on the right. Actually, the civil war was much more complicated than that, but that's all I can explain for now.

The war ended in 2002 and Angola is now going through a period of reconstruction. It is oil and diamond country, which has the strange affect of making Luanda the most expensive cities in the world, in a country with one of the worst infant mortality rates among all nations.

We are very excited about our move. I will be posting all Angola-related posts on my other blog: Sem Conteção, which I started several years ago with the hope that I might return to Africa one day.

Interpretation Files: The Language Line

2010-10-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

Since I began interpreting in New Orleans, I have been very interested in the use of the language line at hospitals and clinics. I had never seen it in action until today. I have always wondered how it compares to the use of on-site interpreters. My experience today is too small a sample size to draw any conclusions about the service, but it is a good example of how badly an interpretation session can go.

When the nurse first walked into the consultation room, I introduced myself as the patient's interpreter. The nurse said I wouldn't be necessary as the clinic uses the language line. I explained this option to the patient, who then said she still wanted me to interpret. When I told the nurse what the patient preferred, I was told that it was the clinic's policy to use only the language line. She specifically said "That is the only we can be sure the patient understands what is being said."

Now, I see how such a policy could be a good thing. It would prevent children, family members and friends who may not actually be fluent in both languages from serving as interpreters. This can potentially ensure accuracy and prevent a conflict of interest. The problem with the nurse's understanding of the policy was that even when a trained interpreter was available in-the-flesh, she chose to use the language line over the patient's request not to use the telephone service.

I explained that I am actually a trained interpreter but the nurse wasn't having it. I asked the patient if she still wanted me to stay in the room and she said yes. So I sat in the corner of the room, deciding to remain quiet and observe just how the language line really works. It didn't go very well. We waited quietly for ten minutes for the nurse to secure an interpreter on the other end of the phone. And I was right there, doing nothing!

The interpreter on the phone did almost every thing right; he spoke in the first person, even speaking in the third person when he had to request repetition. He was accurate most of the time. It was clear that he had received training similar to mine, which was interesting for me to see.

But he did not lay down any ground rules and this actually resulted in some major mistakes. He should have - from the very beginning - told both the nurse and the patient to speak only in short phrases. He let the nurse talk too long, giving him complicated directions, mixing questions with instructions. Clearly, she had no idea how difficult it would be for him to remember and interpret everything she was saying.

At one point she asked the interpreter - directly, as she wasn't even looking at the patient - to ask the patient if she was allergic to any medications, if she had been to the doctor recently and to list all the medications she was currently taking - all without giving the interpreter any time to ask the individual questions or giving the patient time to respond. The nurse wrote down that the patient had no allergies and then announced that the patient must not be taking any medication - as the interpreter hadn't listed any - and began to move on to the next set of questions.

This was the only time I interfered and I only did so because I knew the patient was taking medications and I also knew that the interpreter had never asked her that question - he had forgotten in the midst of all the other questions the nurse was asking. I interrupted to tell the nurse that the patient did take medications.

Here is the absurd part. The nurse looked at me and said "You see? The language line is the only way we know if the patient is understanding or not. If she can't even understand him, and he's a professional..." she shook her head. I took two things from this: One, she did not believe that I was a professional interpreter and two, she thought the patient was so stupid that she could not even understand another Spanish-speaker. The nurse had no idea that not everything she was saying was being interpreted because she herself wasn't giving enough time to the interpreter to do so. She had actually caused more inaccuracies because of the way she was handling the consultation. She was giving too much information at once, she was being confusing and she was treating the patient as if she wasn't in the room at all.

The interpreter is partly to blame as well. If he had simply set up the rules at the beginning, by insisting the nurse speak only in phrases short enough for him to remember, such mistakes could have been avoided.

I was impressed that the clinic has any language policy at all, but clearly it had been implemented without any staff training. The nurse's inflexibility was all a power trip anyway. When the doctor entered the room, I again introduced myself. I asked the doctor what she wanted to do, use the language line or me. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Well, since you're already here. Why not?"

Prison is Nothing Like in the Movies

2010-09-22T19:00:00.001-07:00

I keep seeing the trailer for Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps. In the trailer, there is this moment where Michael Douglas' character gets out of prison - having been there since the '80's for (I suppose) some white collar crimes involving money - and they give him his phone back. His ridiculously large, obsolete mobile phone. It's meant to be funny. It's meant to imply that he's been in prison a really long time.

Except, in my experience with people released from prison, this never happens. In my work I have met numerous people recently released who left with nothing, not even their i.d. The i.d. is actually the worst thing to lose. But why would they come out of prison or jail with no i.d.? Isn't there some safe box where you can leave all the things you enter with, so they can give it to you when you leave? Not exactly.

You may get your clothes back, but for some reason I have seen many clients who report having their i.d. lost/stolen while they were in prison. Just so you know, you can't do anything without an i.d. Replacement? At least thirteen dollars, if not more if it's expired. No money? Too bad. You can't even get into a homeless shelter without one.

I recently had a homeless man in my office. He had been released from prison some time ago, yet still didn't have a new i.d. He had recently been released from the ER and still had an i.d. bracelet around his wrist. I asked him if he wanted me to cut it off. No, he said, that's how they know who I am. The shelter needed an i.d., the only one he had was a plastic bracelet from the hospital.

So, who are they kidding? Who would get a phone back, twenty years later? Maybe that's something that happens, not when you steal a hundred dollars, but when you steal millions, on Wall Street.