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

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Public Health Conversation and Mentoring at Amherst Draws 35 Students

By Jodie Simms, Annah Kuriakose, and Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH

We are delighted to share that the Public Health Event held at the Amherst College Career Center on December 5, 2008, was a huge success. Thirty five students with interest and passion for public health turned out for a 90 minute dynamic conversation with six alums (Dick Aronson '69, Alan Blum '69, Gary Forester '69, Anya Guyer '99, Molly Greene '01, Jesse Bump '94) and one faculty, Prof. Christopher Dole of Anthropology. Individual mentoring sessions of 30 minutes each followed, in which all six alums participated. Jodie and Annah have received lots of positive feedback from students who have said things such as "my eyes were really opened to new possibilities and to things I never thought of before, including ways to contribute to health besides medicine". One woman said it was the best event she had ever been to! Other words used to describe it were: exciting, inspiring, thought-provoking, motivating, helpful, fantastic, and powerful. We are grateful for the sharing of experience, knowledge, and ideals that happened. We hope that the energy that came from this event will spread into the future and awaken a stronger presence of public health at Amherst and beyond.




P.S Please let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions of how we could make the event even better in the future!

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