Third Annual Public Health Career Dialogue and Mentoring at Amherst April 16

The third annual Amherst College Public Health Career Panel, Dialogue, and Mentoring will take place on Friday, April 16, 2010, at 2 pm in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall. The Amherst College Public Health Collaborative - with support from the Career Center, Health Professions Group (Carolyn Bassett), Class of 1969 Project (Justin Grimes), Center for Community Engagement (Molly Mead), Alumni Office (Betsy Cannon Smith) and Five College Culture, Health, and Science Program (Elizabeth Conlisk and Chris Dole) - has put together a uniquely exciting opportunity for Amherst and Five College students to get a clearer picture of the multiple dimensions and opportunities for a life of consequence offered through public health. The panel is outstanding: Joseph Nwadiuko '08, Donald Lombardi '64, Nils Bruzelius '68, Allison Sullivan '88, Lawrence Osborn '63, Gary Forester '69, and Asinath Rusibamayila Mount Holyoke '10, with Richard Aronson '69 as facilitator. After the panel and dialogue conclude, the group will move over to the Career Center where, starting at 4 pm, students will be able to have individual mentoring sessions with the panelists. Many thanks to Lili Ferguson '10 for her tireless work to plan for this event, along with Kinjal Patel '13. We look forward to seeing you!

Humane Worlds Maternal and Child Health Updated Description

Humane Worlds for Maternal and Child Health
Inspiring a New Generation to Public Health and Service
Spring 2010
Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH

Since September 2009, I have focused my energy on teaching public health as an adjunct faculty at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; and continuing to work closely with individual students excited about public health and with the Amherst College Public Health Collaborative; and participating in the Five College Culture, Health, and Science Program. The teaching at Hampshire will continue into the fall of 2010 and, I hope, beyond. The following is a revised and updated version of Humane Worlds for Maternal and Child Health.
Purpose: To inspire a new generation of leaders in public health and service to create conditions under which all people have the full equal opportunity to thrive in body, mind, and spirit.
Background: Public health and public service face local and global challenges that require multifaceted inter-disciplinary approaches to address underlying root causes and respect the language and culture of all involved. Our objective is to create a more humane and equitable world. To make progress, we need broad participation of many stakeholders, which requires new forms of leadership. Humane Worlds for Maternal and Child Health provides students with various classroom, research, and experiential opportunities to learn about public health and practice such leadership. We draw on research that shows 1) How various forms of inequality, injustice, and stress influence health and create unconscionable public health disparities, 2) How resilience and other positive resources, such as the use of clear humane language, provide the potential to create health equity, and 3) How inclusive dialogue, collaborative action, and cultural and linguistic competence form the foundation for the new leadership. We provide workshops, papers, lectures, courses (currently on health disparities, and cultural and linguistic competence at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts), and community engagement on the translation of this research into humane practice and public policy. We provide educational opportunities to students who seek to learn and practice such leadership. We mentor those who have or are exploring a passion for public health and public service, and support them with tools to express their idealism in action. Our method of choice for this work is Future Search, a unique planning process that has been used with success worldwide for 25 years.

By this means we seek to unite stakeholders and serve as a catalyst for essential but previously unlikely partnerships. Our intention is to enable people to discover common ground for action that they did not realize they shared. Such discovery can lay the foundation for leadership needed to bring dignity, hope, and equity to women, children, and families. We seek to move away from systems that thrive on pathology, medical diagnosis, and risk reduction. Instead, we envision systems and policies that derive their power from resilience, trust, respect of culture and language, and community. Our species has a remarkable capacity for healing and cooperating for the common good. The purpose of the Center is to mobilize that capacity. To support this service mission, we support research on effective methods and mentor those who intend to practice new forms of social action. In so doing, we equip a new generation of leaders with lifelong tools to actualize their ideals.

Public Health: Our purpose in public health, defined by the USA Institute of Medicine and World Health Organization, is to foster conditions that assure optimal health in mind, body, and spirit. We commit to ending health inequities and protecting human dignity. In Maternal and Child Health, we seek to change social conditions so that children experience humane worlds. Such worlds help meet basic needs and support their safety and well being.
Vision: Our vision is to bring the highest ideals of public health into the lives of children and families everywhere and to improve their health by:
1) Humanizing the worlds that they experience;
2) Changing how we think about public health to embrace every facet of their lives;
3) Creating forums for dialogue that lead to effective action on global health inequities; and
4) Educating and inspiring a new generation of public service leaders to carry on this work in the long term.

Goals: We seek to 1) Create equity and end MCH disparities by radical strengthening of the capacity of all concerned parties for participatory leadership. 2) Involve young people in all aspects of our operation, so as to educate and inspire new leadership in public health. 3) Set foundations for societal changes to make equity and justice in MCH a reality; and 4) Challenge individual and organizational biases; 5) Respect all voices, including those historically marginalized; and 6) Promote opportunities for shared learning.

Our expertise:
1. Teaching classes, mentoring, advising, dialogue, organizing, advocating, and experience to learn and practice public health with a focus on community empowerment and uplift.
a) Individual and group mentoring.
b) Internships, independent study, research, seminars to build leadership capacity of young people and future public health work force, with a focus on health disparities and inequities.
2. Synthesizing research on social determinants of health, resilience, traumatic childhood experiences, racism, chronic stress, language, 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. Paying attention to and humanizing 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.

Our service:
1. Inspiring a new generation of leaders in public health and service through a wide range of local, national, and global opportunities, which at this time are concentrated through an adjunct faculty appointment in public health at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
2. Consultation to individuals, communities, organizations to build capacity in the above, by
a) Inspiring keynotes, presentations, workshops.
b) Organizing forums for dialogue and common ground to build essential but previously unlikely partnerships.
c) Serving as catalyst for inter-generational and cross-cultural and cross-language dialogue.
c) Coordinating and writing papers and grants. Several of these papers are works in progress for which students can offer unique contributions.
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:
Richard A. Aronson, MD, MPH
Humane Worlds for Maternal and Child Health
Adjunct Assistant Professor in Public Health, Hampshire College
Mailing address: 19 Maple St.; Hallowell, ME, USA 04347
E-mail: raronson@vmyfairpoint.net
Phone: 207 215 7317 Cell
207 623 3366 Home
www.humaneworldscenter.blogspot.com
www.humaneworldscenter.org

Vision for Public Health within a Liberal Arts College Education

A Vision for Public Health within a Liberal Arts College Education
By Richard Allan Aronson, MD, MPH

Public health embraces and inter-connects the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. It is both a science and an art. Its study offers a wide and rich array of opportunities for students to: 1. Think critically. 2. Learn scientific methods of inquiry. 3. Synthesize across disciplines. 4. Understand complex and interconnected factors that underlie health problems. 5. Apply culture and language to health, healing, and disease. 6. Appreciate and learn to translate a body of knowledge into action to improve the health of communities and society.

It is deeply rooted in prevention but, at the same time, seeks to create communities and society that care about people’s health across the life cycle. It embraces language, and it embraces culture. It seeks healing in the deepest sense - healing that is rooted in physical, emotional, spiritual, and environmental balance, well-being, and safety. Whether you are a community health worker, a public health nurse, a teacher, a physician, a social worker, a psychologist, an occupational therapist, a physician’s assistant, a champion for women’s health, an anthropologist, a business person engaged in economic development, a global health expert, an early childhood specialist, a researcher on how and why toxic stress and trauma have lifelong and intergenerational consequences, an expert on resilience, a nutritionist, a leader in public policy, a community leader and activist, or so many other paths, public health provides multiple opportunities:

1. To apply the idealism of a liberal arts education to action on issues that students are passionate and curious about.
2. To view health and healing in the broadest possible context.
3. To create new and expanding partnerships rooted in synergy, synchronicity, serendipity, fluidity, and the art and social science of collaboration across cultures.
4. To celebrate diversity.
5. To discover new and higher levels of common ground and shared humanity that provide a foundation for real, effective, systemic change.
6. To foster humane conditions that bring out the best in people – hope, resilience, spirit, dignity, healing, compassion.

Through the public health mission of bringing together people from different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives to address public health issues; through opportunities to join in efforts to give a voice to those who have been marginalized and oppressed; and through the classroom energy generated by the study of public health in the liberal arts setting, we can envision a world where every child has the full equal opportunity to thrive in mind, body, and spirit.

And in the community-based learning that is integral to the study of public health, students from early on have the opportunity:

1. To learn to listen more inclusively and humbly to those with whom we work.
2. To learn to honor the people that we serve, especially those whose voices have been stifled and excluded.
3. To learn to put into practice the reality that expertise is not defined by the titles or degrees after your name, but by the unique gifts and skills that you bring to bear to make the world better.

Upon receiving an Amherst College honorary degree in New York City in 2005, Nelson Mandela said, “I come from a country that understands the need for hard work to overcome past destructiveness and to escape a threatened future. But, we have also learned that miracles happen with vision and spirit. The world needs that vision and spirit still, and all the more. We are all threatened by entrenched inequality and divisions. We all must prove ourselves equal to a better possibility. “The power of public health lies in rising to this challenge: To be curious about, to understand, and to change that inequality, and in the process, to partner with multiple, diverse people from all walks of life.

It comes down to continuously exploring, discovering, and acting upon the human spirit in all its promise, resilience, and hope, and to bring light into ourselves, our communities, and our world. Human beings can live for roughly 8 to 12 weeks without food, 8 to 12 days without food and water, 6 to 8 minutes without oxygen. But without the spirit, a certain kind of death is inevitable in just a few seconds. And so it is that an inscription found on a cellar wall in Germany written by a Jew in hiding from the Nazis contained these words: “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in love even when there is no one there, I believe through any trail there is always a way. And I believe in God when God is silent.”

Proposal for a Two-Semester Undergraduate Course on Public Health Disparities and the Community

The potential for a liberal arts education to inform and inspire a new generation of public health leaders is extraordinary. Tapping into a surge of interest in public health on college campuses, Richard Aronson, MD, MPH, is exploring innovative strategies to teach, mentor, and facilitate learning that is rooted in knowledge and experience in the social determinants of health, health equity, and the life course perspective. Through his current position as Assistant Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Hampshire College, he hopes to make this liberal arts approach to public health and health inequality come alive. The Five College Culture, Health, and Science Program and the new Amherst College Public Health Collaborative are two great resources for this work, as well as the Amherst Center for Community Engagement and its counterparts in the Five College community. In this way, the Humane Worlds Center for Maternal and Child Health could find its home. Dr. Aronson welcomes comments on the following draft proposal for a two-semester undergraduate course that would form the core for such a program:

Public health faces challenges that require multi-faceted inter-disciplinary approaches that are rooted in community based learning. Such learning addresses root causes of health disparities and the complex process of respecting the language and culture of diverse communities. The purpose of such learning, which lies at the heart of a liberal arts education, is to equip students with knowledge, critical thinking, and experience to create a more humane and just world. To achieve this purpose, students need to understand, in theory and practice, how broad and equal participation of many stakeholders and collaboration is central to the mission of public health.

We propose a two-semester course at Hampshire College, with vibrant Five-College and Culture, Health, and Science Program participation, which integrates the knowledge of public health disparities with community-based learning and practice. The course will draw on research that shows 1) How various forms of inequality, injustice, and stress influence health and create unconscionable health inequalities, 2) How resilience and other positive resources in people, families, communities, and systems provide the potential to create health equity, and 3) How inclusive dialogue, collaborative action, and cultural and linguistic competence form the foundation for inclusive, community-rooted leadership. The course provides opportunities for inter-generational and multi-disciplinary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the community, to learn and experience such leadership.

First Semester: A series of seminars, lectures, papers, group work, and presentations in the first semester sets the foundation for the second semester of community engagement. These conversations, rooted in discovery of inter-disciplinary topics and approaches to health disparities, seek to move students to listen inclusively and respectfully to diverse stakeholders; to learn to honor the people whom we serve, especially those whose voices have been stifled and excluded; and to learn to theories for how to put into practice the reality that expertise is not defined by the titles or degrees after one’s name, but by the unique gifts and skills that people bring to bear to make the world better.

Second Semester: The second semester would have a smaller class size of about ten. It provides the student with an opportunity to engage with community partners in a project that is of mutual benefit to the student and the community. It provides students with 1. Experience in inter-disciplinary and collaborative group work that is central to public health, and that makes public health exciting and fruitful. 2. An opportunity to synthesize classroom knowledge and personal experience to explore in depth a specific public health disparity in a local community/ 3. A chance to explore ways that active involvement to address a public health issue can have an impact on health disparities; and begin to develop personal long-term strategies for creating social change for health.

Prerequisites: Students who take the course should demonstrate potential to be curious about, to understand, and to want to actively improve the health of communities; and to partner with multiple, diverse people from all walks of life.

Principles: Some of the underlying principles of the course are the following:

1. Involvement of community partners in a variety of forms is integral to all aspects of the course, at every stage.
2. The commitment of the course faculty is long-term. It extends beyond one academic year to a series of actions and activities, such as summer internships and annual orientations, to ensure continuity of the commitment to a sustained partnership between the school(s) and the local communities.
3. While one faculty member would run the course as a whole and assume chief responsibility for mentoring and teaching, drawing upon and involving other faculty, such as CHS, from the Five Colleges is an important part of the overall approach to the course.
4. Ongoing evaluation and learning lessons are used to refine, revise, and strengthen the course and the partnerships that develop.

This course seeks to offer a small-scale model for the application of community-based learning within the context of liberal arts education in public health. It seeks to unite students with community stakeholders and serve as a catalyst for essential but previously unlikely partnerships. Its ultimate purpose is to harness the ideals of a liberal arts education to the challenge of enabling people to discover common ground for new action to improve the conditions that influence the health of people and populations and reduce the inequities among them. Such action can lay the foundation for leadership needed to bring dignity, hope, and equity to people. We seek to move away from systems that thrive on pathology, medical diagnosis, and risk reduction. Instead, we envision systems and policies that derive their power from resilience, trust, respect of culture and language, and community. Our species has a remarkable capacity for healing and cooperating for the common good. The purpose of the course is to mobilize that capacity. The course will be a learning greenhouse to support educational methods that engage communities and inspire students to practice effective forms of social action. In so doing, the course can contribute to bringing up a new generation of leaders with lifelong tools to actualize their ideals.

Examples of course content:
1. Teaching, mentoring, advising, dialogue, organizing, advocating, and experience to learn and practice public health in the community.
2. Synthesizing research on social determinants of health, resilience, traumatic childhood experiences, racism, chronic stress, language, and conditions for productive dialogue that will have a significant impact on future public health practice.
3. Translating this research into humane public health practice to improve the health of women and children and families, 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.