We like prevention......right?

Here's the story:

Project Prevention is an organization that pays an incentive of $300 to drug users to get sterilized or go on long-term birth control. The project was started by Barbara Harris, who adopted four babies from the same drug-addicted woman. After watching the newborns go through withdrawal after they were born, she decided to take action....and this is the action she chose to take.

Part of her rationale is that having unwanted, drug-exposed babies is harmful to a woman's self-esteem. Another part of it is that the children are a burden on the system - according to the the Project's website, 80% of newborns whose mothers are illicit drug users go straight from the hospital to foster care.

I think that because this is an extreme case, it forces us to confront all sorts of issues in public health ethics. Sure, this is cost-effective, but is it social engineering? And no doubt many women use the incentive money to pay for drugs. Is the incentive coercive, given their addiction and need for money? But what if it is true (as the organization claims) that this incentive is the "nudge" that people need to do something that they know is the right thing for themselves? And there are many more questions that a program like this raises.

If you want to learn more, google the organization - there are lots of opinions out there.


Controversial enough for you?

Recipe for success

What do you think are the key skills leaders in public health need in order to be successful, and why? What skills are you most interested in developing over the course of the fellows program?
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Sometimes I am intimidated by the number of skills that public health leaders need to have. Like leaders in every field, it helps to be persuasive, charismatic, and wise. They must be good at negotiating, good at settling disputes, and competent in their content area. These are particularly important because public health leaders tend to work with so many different stakeholders.

But, perhaps most importantly, leaders have to get a lot of work done every day, especially when they are overseeing a large teams that need to ask them questions in order to move projects forward. I am amazed by how many emails people answer, how many meetings they are able to participate in, in the span of one day. I really want to learn how to do this, to work on my time management skills, and my ability to work quickly and efficiently. Another skill that's important to me is organization. I am not naturally an organized person, but have put systems into place for myself in order to manage my calendar, my files, etc. But often these systems do not fit my needs well. I guess I'd like to see how other people organize themselves, and learn from this.

I also want to work on my networking skills. I sometimes go to networking events, but then do not feel like talking to anyone at all. Even though I like talking to people, I feel nervous about approaching people, worried that I'll ask them boring, irrelevant questions. Somewhat related - I'd like to work on my interpersonal skills in general. Though I don't feel like I'm socially awkward, I feel that this is an area that is so critical for success, I'd like to focus on it. In particular, I'd like to get better at sensing how others are feeling, and responding appropriately.

Digital Storytelling

What a great activity to start off the Fellows program!

The time flew - it was thrilling to know that we'd be assembling the entire story in a day. I kept thinking about how different the process of making a digital story would've been even five years ago - the software had so many easy-to-use features, it took just minutes to overlay a soundtrack using Jamendo, and we recorded our voices on Ipods, which are a basically a household item these days.

As we discussed at the workshop, new media is decentralizing the arts. I think it's great that the barriers to creating and "publishing" art are lower now. And I do believe that Digital Storytelling will be a useful public health tool. This is a compelling medium for marginalized populations and advocates to use to share their experience. I especially like the juxtaposition of photography and narrative - people can choose to keep one element literal and the other figurative (or any other combination!)

After the workshop, I thought about how everybody has had experiences that you'd never imagine they've had. This general concept used to be central to my worldview (especially when I listened to "This American Life" all the time!) but I hadn't thought about it in a while.

We learned a lot about each other over those two days - if not for the workshop, we may have never have heard those stories.