Expertise and experience:
1. Advising and mentoring Amherst College students and young alumni who seek to explore and pursue careers in health.
2. Teaching (until December 2010 at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and as adjunct lecturer at UMassAmherst School of Public Health), mentoring, advising, dialogue, organizing, advocating, and experience to learn, practice, and pursue health in all its dimesnions. Has included courses on health disparities, and cultural and linguistic competence, internships, independent study, research, seminars to build leadership capacity of young people and future public health work force.
3. Synthesizing research on social determinants of health, resilience, traumatic childhood experiences, racism, chronic stress, and conditions for productive dialogue that will have a significant impact on future public health practice.
3. Translating this research into humane MCH and public health practice to improve the health of women and children, with systems that honor families, communities, and cultures.
4. Integrating cultural understanding and respect as a key strategy to end health disparities.
5. Changing the language of public health and medicine to better reflect our ideals and purpose.
6. Bringing multiple stakeholders together to untangle complex public health challenges and take collaborative action to solve them.

Service
1. Inspiring a new generation of leaders in public health and service through a wide range of local, national, and global opportunities.
2. Until January 2011, consultation to individuals, communities, organizations to build capacity in the above, by
a) Inspiring keynotes, presentations, workshops.
b) Organizing forums to build essential but previously unlikely partnerships.
c) Serving as catalyst for intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogue.
 c) Writing papers and grants.
3. Organization and facilitation of interactive meetings with broad stakeholder participation to unite diverse parties and spark action to create public health equity.

For more information, contact:
raaronson69@amherst.edu

"A smile is the light in the window of your face, which tells people that your heart is at home."
- Kolawole Bankole, M.D, M.S

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Successful Record

Successful Record

The Center builds on the 20 year record of positive results from Future Search planning meetings held around the world, facilitated by Future Search Network members (there are 350), and documented in many books and articles. Here are a few examples:

1) Collaboration between tribal chiefs and military leadership led to the demobilization of 2,500 Southern Sudanese child soldiers.

2) The combined energy of residents from seven Hawaiian towns, once alienated from one another, became committed to building and sustaining a healthy community in body, mind, and spirit.

3) A new dedicated revenue stream of $50 million per year for the City of Seattle, Washington, emerged from a 2020 Vision Campaign to Meet Basic Human Needs by 2020 and Eliminate Institutional Racism; and the woman who led the Campaign received the 2008 Leadership Legacy Award from the Center for Ethical Leadership.

4) Statewide awareness of the human and financial benefits of investing early in pregnant women and young children became a cultural norm in Maine, supported by the Governor and Attorney General.

5) Over a period of nine years, new partnerships linking community leaders, families, state and local public health, and health care systems set the stage for a commitment of public and political will to reduce black infant mortality in Wisconsin, where African American babies are four times more likely than white babies to die in the first year of life.

6) In Bolton, United Kingdom, children became increasingly involved as an integral component of the City’s School Community efforts to make “Every Child Matters” a reality.

7) New funds were leveraged for parenting education and child care in New Mexico.

8) A plan for health coverage for all people in Vermont was signed into law in 2006.

9) The Nevada Public Health Foundation was established.

10) The Colorado River Headwater Forum, a non-profit organization of diverse stakeholders formed from a Future Search in 1991 (documented in Discovering Common Ground). This group cooperatively developed a Water Quality Plan approved by the state of Colorado and continues to meet and work together on issues that matter to them, despite their history of law suits and contentiousness.

11) The Ute Mountain Ute Reservation’s Future Search included a shared vision of a youth center with tutoring and other services and activities for the youth on this Indian reservation. A summer visitor subsequently procured a 5-year grant of $10 million from the U.S. Department of Labor, and the vision became a reality.

12) Long festering racial tensions in Berrien County, Michigan, transformed into economic development to attract new businesses and open affordable housing.

13) Improvements in water quality occurred in Pakistan.

14) Credit cards were introduced into Eastern Europe.

15) Coalitions formed to address the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana.

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