We met in a public health advocacy class, bonding over long car rides filled with conversations about the need to politicize public health in our classrooms. Our need to draw connections between health and power deepened during a period of heightened university activism and mobilization. Simultaneously, so did our frustration from watching traditional public health institutions retreat from their responsibilities, showing indifference to violence, and paralyzed by fear of being “too political.”
Twenty-eight years ago today, then-President Bill Clinton delivered a speech at the White House apologizing for the United States Public Health Service (PHS) syphilis experiments on Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama (1932-1972). My first memory of learning about these experiments was well into my undergraduate training as a scientist at
Disaster response typically refers to the immediate reaction to a crisis that prioritizes saving lives, minimizing infrastructure damage, and setting the stage for recovery. While the term “disaster” often evokes natural catastrophes like hurricanes and earthquakes, it more broadly refers to any large-scale disruption that exceeds a community’s ability to
My friend showed me her arms, covered in bruises from the security guards. That day, I could not believe what she was telling me about what had happened to her on the inside. “I recorded some of it on my Apple Watch, I think? But then it died, so I
You have to feel like you’re committed to something. I do interviews with fourth and fifth graders and they always ask me what made you decide to give your whole life to other people? And what I say is that you have to be committed, and you have to commit yourself. And you have to be committed to not only the struggle but the people you struggle with.
In recent years, dehumanizing narratives about people who use drugs have lessened such that substance use is now considered by some as a public health issue instead of a moral
My public health work took root in the pro-choice movement for reproductive rights. My earliest activism championed reproductive autonomy, centering on legal access to abortion as a feminist fight for
It started with a prickling heat beneath my skin. Over the next few days, my cheeks tightened and islands of irritation formed in protest of my own body—itching and weary.
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