By Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH, Jodie Simms, Annah Kuriakose
On Friday, December 5, 2008, at 2 pm, at the Career Center at College Hall, Amherst College, there will be an exciting innovative opportunity for Amherst students interested in public health to get concrete tips, contacts, and advice for applying their idealism to action.
A Public Health Dialogue: Multiple Paths to Work for Social Justice
and Healing
Friday, December 5th, 2008, Group Dialogue and Panel 2-3 PM, Individual Mentoring Sessions 3 – 5:30 pm Amherst College Career Center, College Hall
Description: Join us for a dialogue with alumni and faculty (Prof. Christopher Dole) who will speak about their experience in the public health field. Students are encouraged to bring questions and thoughts about opportunities in public health.
After the panel, from 3 - 5:30 PM, alumni panelists will be available for
individual advising/mentoring conversations with interested students. Sign
up in the Experience section of the Career Center Website:
http://amherst.erecruiting.com/er/security/login.jsp?returnto=/er/stu/calendar/career_center_calendar_view.jsp
To sign up you will need to upload a resume (a draft version is fine). If you need
assistance, please see a Peer Career Advisor, or contact the Amherst Career Center.
Individual sessions: Richard Aronson '69, Gary Forester '69, Alan Blum'69, Anya Guyer '99, Molly Greene '01
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Public Health Leadership Workshop
By Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH
During the past year, Humane Worlds Center has developed and refined a leadership workshop that draws on my 32 years of pediatric, public health, and public service experience. Also, it synthesizes several important bodies of research in a way that practitioners, families, communities, and future public health leaders can apply to their worlds. This workshop, which I presented at the University of Illinois School of Public Health MCH Leadership Retreat in July 2008 and at the American Public Health Association MCH Community Leadership Institute in October 2008, serves as a powerful catalyst for honest inter-generational dialogue about the future of public health. If you're interested, please contact me at raronson@verizon.net
Leadership, Legacy, and Community: Practical Tools to Transform Research into Public Health Practice
Creating equity and bringing an end to health disparities in Maternal and Child Health will require a radical strengthening of our capacity for interactive, visionary, and participatory leadership. Such leadership is needed to fuel, inform, and inspire sustainable and systemic change in order to reverse longstanding inter generational injustice. Such an effort is neither easy nor comfortable. It is a long-term process that challenges individual and organizational biases, promotes opportunities for shared learning, and respects and strengthens the voices of all, especially those of the children, families, and communities directly affected.
This workshop will:
1. Briefly highlight areas of research that are starting to form the foundation for an evidence-based practice for transformative leadership strategies needed to create equity and justice in MCH: A) The life cycle perspective to MCH. B) Biological effects of chronic stress. C) The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study. D) Resiliency at multiple levels. E) Social capital; and F) Conditions for productive dialogue and action.
2. Propose for consideration a set of assumptions that characterize leadership practices that show promise of success in reducing disparities, whether related to services, research, and/or teaching:
a. Honor and respect the dignity of all people involved, and of their cultures.
b. Consider that everyone is an "expert" and honor all voices, especially those who have historically not been included in the design of the policies that affect them.
c. Include families and communities as equal partners from start to finish.
d. Use simple and clear, non-jargon, and non-bureaucratic language and other communication.
e. Draw on the strengths, resiliency, and resources of all people involved.
f. Collect, follow, analyze, and use data in an honest, clear, and accurate way that is faithful to the core functions of public health.
g. Build and sustain public and political will for action.
h. Move from a paradigm of “eliminating” disparities to one of “creating” equity for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, income, gender, religion, and nationality.
i. Act with the knowledge that behind every statistic, every risk factor, and every preventable death is a real human being, with all the complexity, vulnerability, magnificence, and potential for good that is in each of us.
j. Stay relationship-centered, that is, carry out the work within a context that appreciates the vital role of loving and thoughtful human relationships in promoting health, safety, and justice.
3. Give specific examples of leadership development that strive to integrate the research and the assumptions into practice.
Summary
The transformative leadership model of the kind presented at this session represents a process where we bring key stakeholders together and get the whole system in the room, thus forming new partnerships and coalitions needed to make an impact on MCH disparities and inequities. This process fosters the conditions for discovering common ground while at the same time celebrating and tapping into the richness of our diversity. It makes it possible for all of us to confront our fears, biases, and denial and move to help each other reach a deeper understanding of the underlying root systemic factors that underlie the major MCH challenges of our time. It has the potential to unite us by discovering that we have much more in common than we previously believed. The challenge is to put into practice a style of leadership that includes but goes beyond traditional historical models of public health. It seeks to foster environments in which children and families not only survive but also have the opportunity to grow and thrive and live compassionate, productive, and dignified lives.
During the past year, Humane Worlds Center has developed and refined a leadership workshop that draws on my 32 years of pediatric, public health, and public service experience. Also, it synthesizes several important bodies of research in a way that practitioners, families, communities, and future public health leaders can apply to their worlds. This workshop, which I presented at the University of Illinois School of Public Health MCH Leadership Retreat in July 2008 and at the American Public Health Association MCH Community Leadership Institute in October 2008, serves as a powerful catalyst for honest inter-generational dialogue about the future of public health. If you're interested, please contact me at raronson@verizon.net
Leadership, Legacy, and Community: Practical Tools to Transform Research into Public Health Practice
Creating equity and bringing an end to health disparities in Maternal and Child Health will require a radical strengthening of our capacity for interactive, visionary, and participatory leadership. Such leadership is needed to fuel, inform, and inspire sustainable and systemic change in order to reverse longstanding inter generational injustice. Such an effort is neither easy nor comfortable. It is a long-term process that challenges individual and organizational biases, promotes opportunities for shared learning, and respects and strengthens the voices of all, especially those of the children, families, and communities directly affected.
This workshop will:
1. Briefly highlight areas of research that are starting to form the foundation for an evidence-based practice for transformative leadership strategies needed to create equity and justice in MCH: A) The life cycle perspective to MCH. B) Biological effects of chronic stress. C) The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study. D) Resiliency at multiple levels. E) Social capital; and F) Conditions for productive dialogue and action.
2. Propose for consideration a set of assumptions that characterize leadership practices that show promise of success in reducing disparities, whether related to services, research, and/or teaching:
a. Honor and respect the dignity of all people involved, and of their cultures.
b. Consider that everyone is an "expert" and honor all voices, especially those who have historically not been included in the design of the policies that affect them.
c. Include families and communities as equal partners from start to finish.
d. Use simple and clear, non-jargon, and non-bureaucratic language and other communication.
e. Draw on the strengths, resiliency, and resources of all people involved.
f. Collect, follow, analyze, and use data in an honest, clear, and accurate way that is faithful to the core functions of public health.
g. Build and sustain public and political will for action.
h. Move from a paradigm of “eliminating” disparities to one of “creating” equity for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, income, gender, religion, and nationality.
i. Act with the knowledge that behind every statistic, every risk factor, and every preventable death is a real human being, with all the complexity, vulnerability, magnificence, and potential for good that is in each of us.
j. Stay relationship-centered, that is, carry out the work within a context that appreciates the vital role of loving and thoughtful human relationships in promoting health, safety, and justice.
3. Give specific examples of leadership development that strive to integrate the research and the assumptions into practice.
Summary
The transformative leadership model of the kind presented at this session represents a process where we bring key stakeholders together and get the whole system in the room, thus forming new partnerships and coalitions needed to make an impact on MCH disparities and inequities. This process fosters the conditions for discovering common ground while at the same time celebrating and tapping into the richness of our diversity. It makes it possible for all of us to confront our fears, biases, and denial and move to help each other reach a deeper understanding of the underlying root systemic factors that underlie the major MCH challenges of our time. It has the potential to unite us by discovering that we have much more in common than we previously believed. The challenge is to put into practice a style of leadership that includes but goes beyond traditional historical models of public health. It seeks to foster environments in which children and families not only survive but also have the opportunity to grow and thrive and live compassionate, productive, and dignified lives.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Amherst College Public Health Event January 24 2009
By Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH
As a pediatrician specializing in maternal and child health, my work has focused on honoring and respecting cultures, communities, and families in promoting the health and well being of children and youth; and in promoting strong partnerships and collaboration among multiple stakeholders to address public health issues, challenges, and disparities. In recent years, with the Humane Worlds Center I have turned my focus to teaching and mentoring, with a special focus on inspiring a new generation of public health leaders to carry out their work with skills rooted in collaboration, cultural respect, community empowerment, and taking action with a context of shared vision and common ground. This teaching and mentoring has been incredibly exciting, given the surge in interest in public health on college campuses such as Amherst, and the underlying passion to work to promote social justice in the world. I have been working on a unique project with two seniors at Amherst College, Jodie Simms and Annah Kuriakose, who are helping me start the Humane Worlds Center, a new organization whose purpose is to inspire and inform a new generation of leaders in public health to create the conditions for people to have full and equal health in mind, body, and spirit. To that end, with the Amherst College Career Center (Carolyn Bessett) and Center for Community Engagement (Molly Mead), we had a public health career panel and one-on-one mentoring on campus on March 28 and 29, 2008. Over the summer, I had two Center for Community Engagement interns, Jodie and Chenlan Bao '11, at the Humane Worlds Center. This fall of 2008, working with Jodie and Annah, we have organized a second public health conversation and mentoring session that will take place on Friday, December 5, 2008, at 2 pm at the Career Center. Our next big project is an exciting interterm event at Amherst that we are going to have at the Keefe Campus Center at Amherst College on January 24, 2009. It's a full one-day conference on public health and Amherst: Public Health and Amherst College:Mobilizing the Power of Communities to Improve a Society's Health
The goal is to start to establish an ongoing student-led public health presence on campus. To that end, we want to devote January 24 to an exploration of: What is public health? What are the key public health issues at Amherst College? How can Amherst students strengthen their capacity to work in true partnership with communities? What does it mean to work in a spirit of collaboration with families and communities? The January 24, 2009, meeting will focus on strategies, both at Amherst and beyond, needed to equip students with the capacity to:
1) Change how we think about public health to embrace every facet of our lives;
2) Create forums for dialogue that lead to effective action on local and global health inequities; and
3) Humanize and dignify the services and policies that relate to public health.
The sponsors are the Dean of the Faculty, Career Center, Center for Community Engagement, Class of 1969 Project, and Humane Worlds Center. See the description below, which I have also attached. The web link on the Amherst web site is:
https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/interterm/courses#Public%20Health
We really want the January 24 event to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders from Amherst, surrounding communities, and public health in a spirit of collaboration and respect for each other's voice and unique contribution. Future Search (www.futuresearch.net) is a unique planning method, which has been used with notable success in many of the world's cultures, and which I have had the privilege and opportunity to practice for the past 15 years in the world of public health. This approach unites people from diverse walks of life, gives them a voice in shaping humane systems, and lays the foundation for action to create healthy communities. What differentiates Future Search from most strategic planning methods are its four principles, synthesized by Weisbord and Janoff from 75 years of social science research:
* Get the "whole system" in the room-those with authority, resources, expertise, information, and need-all in the same conversation.
* Explore the whole before seeking to fix any part. Each person has a part of the whole. When all stakeholders have the chance to put in what they know, each has a picture that none had coming in, and they can plan together in a shared context.
* Put common ground and future action front and center. Problems and conflicts become information to be shared, not action items.
* Set up meetings so people can do the work for themselves. With self-management and personal responsibility encouraged, groups are capable of doing much more than they are usually asked to do.
We will use principles from Future Search to guide our meeting.
Please contact me if you are interested in taking part: raronson@verizon.net or 207 623 3366.
As a pediatrician specializing in maternal and child health, my work has focused on honoring and respecting cultures, communities, and families in promoting the health and well being of children and youth; and in promoting strong partnerships and collaboration among multiple stakeholders to address public health issues, challenges, and disparities. In recent years, with the Humane Worlds Center I have turned my focus to teaching and mentoring, with a special focus on inspiring a new generation of public health leaders to carry out their work with skills rooted in collaboration, cultural respect, community empowerment, and taking action with a context of shared vision and common ground. This teaching and mentoring has been incredibly exciting, given the surge in interest in public health on college campuses such as Amherst, and the underlying passion to work to promote social justice in the world. I have been working on a unique project with two seniors at Amherst College, Jodie Simms and Annah Kuriakose, who are helping me start the Humane Worlds Center, a new organization whose purpose is to inspire and inform a new generation of leaders in public health to create the conditions for people to have full and equal health in mind, body, and spirit. To that end, with the Amherst College Career Center (Carolyn Bessett) and Center for Community Engagement (Molly Mead), we had a public health career panel and one-on-one mentoring on campus on March 28 and 29, 2008. Over the summer, I had two Center for Community Engagement interns, Jodie and Chenlan Bao '11, at the Humane Worlds Center. This fall of 2008, working with Jodie and Annah, we have organized a second public health conversation and mentoring session that will take place on Friday, December 5, 2008, at 2 pm at the Career Center. Our next big project is an exciting interterm event at Amherst that we are going to have at the Keefe Campus Center at Amherst College on January 24, 2009. It's a full one-day conference on public health and Amherst: Public Health and Amherst College:Mobilizing the Power of Communities to Improve a Society's Health
The goal is to start to establish an ongoing student-led public health presence on campus. To that end, we want to devote January 24 to an exploration of: What is public health? What are the key public health issues at Amherst College? How can Amherst students strengthen their capacity to work in true partnership with communities? What does it mean to work in a spirit of collaboration with families and communities? The January 24, 2009, meeting will focus on strategies, both at Amherst and beyond, needed to equip students with the capacity to:
1) Change how we think about public health to embrace every facet of our lives;
2) Create forums for dialogue that lead to effective action on local and global health inequities; and
3) Humanize and dignify the services and policies that relate to public health.
The sponsors are the Dean of the Faculty, Career Center, Center for Community Engagement, Class of 1969 Project, and Humane Worlds Center. See the description below, which I have also attached. The web link on the Amherst web site is:
https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/interterm/courses#Public%20Health
We really want the January 24 event to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders from Amherst, surrounding communities, and public health in a spirit of collaboration and respect for each other's voice and unique contribution. Future Search (www.futuresearch.net) is a unique planning method, which has been used with notable success in many of the world's cultures, and which I have had the privilege and opportunity to practice for the past 15 years in the world of public health. This approach unites people from diverse walks of life, gives them a voice in shaping humane systems, and lays the foundation for action to create healthy communities. What differentiates Future Search from most strategic planning methods are its four principles, synthesized by Weisbord and Janoff from 75 years of social science research:
* Get the "whole system" in the room-those with authority, resources, expertise, information, and need-all in the same conversation.
* Explore the whole before seeking to fix any part. Each person has a part of the whole. When all stakeholders have the chance to put in what they know, each has a picture that none had coming in, and they can plan together in a shared context.
* Put common ground and future action front and center. Problems and conflicts become information to be shared, not action items.
* Set up meetings so people can do the work for themselves. With self-management and personal responsibility encouraged, groups are capable of doing much more than they are usually asked to do.
We will use principles from Future Search to guide our meeting.
Please contact me if you are interested in taking part: raronson@verizon.net or 207 623 3366.
Working to ending Inequalities in Infant Mortality
Ending Inequalities and Creating Equity in Birth Outcomes
There is a large and unconscionable disparity in the rate at which African American and white babies die in the United States. In Wisconsin, black babies are four times more likely to die during their first year of life. To help address this, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health hired the Center’s founder and director, Richard Aronson, M.D., M.P.H., to review the research and promising practices on birth outcome disparities, and make recommendations for a special initiative by the University. Read his report at http://wphf.med.wisc.edu/specialinitiative/index.php and a presentation that he gave at a Wingspread Conference held in May 2008, at http://wphf.med.wisc.edu/specialinitiative/wingspread.php.
There is a large and unconscionable disparity in the rate at which African American and white babies die in the United States. In Wisconsin, black babies are four times more likely to die during their first year of life. To help address this, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health hired the Center’s founder and director, Richard Aronson, M.D., M.P.H., to review the research and promising practices on birth outcome disparities, and make recommendations for a special initiative by the University. Read his report at http://wphf.med.wisc.edu/specialinitiative/index.php and a presentation that he gave at a Wingspread Conference held in May 2008, at http://wphf.med.wisc.edu/specialinitiative/wingspread.php.
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