Category Archives: Healthcare

2014 nov Susannah newIn a post on Medium,  Susannah Fox explains how an airplane emergency reinforced her belief in the power of peer leadership.  Tap into the ‘just-in-time/someone-like-me network, she says. And2014 nov tuck-ponder be ready to help the next person.
I’ve watched this happen on Michele Tuck-Ponder’s Facebook posts. She crowd sources everything from summer camps to bulk food purchases. And it works — people love to help.

Michelle is a former mayor of Princeton Township, mother of two, now manager of the Princeton University Center for African American Studies and a member of my church. Susannah, mother of two, is the former director of the health and technology portfolio at the Pew Research Internet Project,  now entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — and yes, she is my daughter.

 

 

Songs for the Congo: Sunday, Nov. 9

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, Faith and Social Justice, Healthcare, , , , , , , , ,

2014 a Karrin_Allyson_2LEnjoy a terrific jazz afternoon and support United Front Against Riverblindness. Together with another worthy charity for Congo, Woman Cradle of Abundance, UFAR presents its second annual benefit concert with 4-Time Grammy Nominee Karrin Allyson.

When: Sunday, November 9 at 3:00 PM
Reception with the artist will follow. Doors open at 2:30 PM.

Where: Solley Theatre, Arts Council of Princeton
Corner of Paul Robeson Place and Witherspoon St. in Princeton

Tickets are $70, $30 for students. Click here or call 609-924-2613.

UFAR, founded by Daniel Shungu of Lawrenceville, works to stamp out riverblindness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where one-third of the 60 million people are at risk for getting it. It starts with a rash and leads to sight loss, forcing children to leave school to care for parents.

Woman, Cradle of Abundance, also known as FEBA, aims to change the dismal future for many women in the DRC, known as one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a woman. Founded in 1999 by an ecumenical group of Congolese women, it supports a sewing school where girls learn a marketable trade. It also provides medical care and support for women and children living with HIV / AIDS, counseling for survivors of rape and forced prostitution, and school fees for orphans. The US partner is raising funds to help the Congo project build a Women’s Center.

Karrin and BillHelp both causes by enjoing a jazz afternoon with Karrin (shown here with her partner Bill McLaughlin). She is described as “always globetrotting and delighting audiences all over the world with her unique and personal style — straight from the heart.”

Borowitz Report: Christie now an MD?

Around Town, Healthcare, , ,
TRENTON (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that he was “sick and tired of having his medical credentials questioned,” Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) had himself sworn in as a medical doctor on Sunday night. Read more in the New Yorker.

Doing Their Part in Coach Class

Faith and Social Justice, Healthcare, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

A renowned but humble malaria fighter is today’s lead story in the science section of the New York Times.  Unlike many of his NGO peers, Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer flies coach  instead of business and takes meetings with village chiefs as well as with the high-muckety-muck do-gooders.

2014 elsie and danielHis story echoes that of a friend from my church, Daniel Shungu,  founder of the United Front Against Riverblindness.    He dedicated his later years to fight riverblindness and works in a self-effacing but efficient fashion. He left yesterday (in coach, sloughing off concerns for his safety re the Ebola epidemic) for a meeting in Geneva and then for village visits in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He’ll be back in time for Karrin Allyson’s  November 9  “Chansons pour le Congo,” jazz concert fundraiser for UFAR and Women, Cradle of Abundance. (The latter charity is shepherded in this country by Prof. Elsie McKee, shown here with Shungu.)

Also yesterday I heard Don Stryker, facilities director at Princeton Friends School, share news of his daughter, Ella Watson-Stryker. She is in Liberia, on her third trip to West Africa to help with the Ebola epidemic and writes in the Guardian about why she keeps coming back.

 I came back for my colleagues who are tired, heartbroken and angry and need someone to take their place when they are too exhausted to continue. I came back because of the children dying alone in boxes, and for the elders who, having survived war, now watch their communities being consumed by a virus that has no cure. I came back for the patients who survive. And most of all I came back for our Guinean, Sierra Leonean, and Liberian staff who are fighting the long fight with a level of courage and compassion that exceeds anything I have ever seen. If they can keep going for months on end, then I can come back to help them.

Meanwhile a Liberian native, Judy Stryker (no relation), spoke to the United Methodist Women at Princeton United Methodist Church about the charity WOMASSI, and the women are rallying to help her collect health care supplies (rubber gloves, sanitizer, etc) that she personally mails to Liberia.

We each have a part, especially those who fly in coach class.

 

Hospitals assume that patients will follow directions when they leave the hospital. VOX Telehealth assumes most will not.

Here is my story about VOX Telehealth, part of the cover story in the June 25 health and fitness issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper.

It’s good news for those advocating e-Patient rights.

Changing the way they see the world

Faith and Social Justice, Healthcare, , ,

2014 anna students2014 7 looney John at camp

These days, student doctors with hefty loans likely gravitate to high-paying specialties rather than primary care. Here’s an inspiring example of how Robert Wood Johnson Medical School encourages them to change that viewpoint. It is the Community-Oriented Primary Care Summer Program, “Changing the Way You See the World,” directed by Anna Looney.  In this interdisciplinary program, students come from medical schools, pharmacy, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs. Looney says the program aims “to give them experience working with New Jersey’s underserved populations and hopefully light their fire to into primary care.”

As examples, the photo on the right shows a migrant farm in Hammonton where two students did health screenings with the workers. On the left, volunteering at Elijah’s Kitchen.

The closing celebration and poster session is today, Friday, July 18, 4 to 6 p.m. in the Great Hall at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway.  Keynoter Deborah M. Spitalnik of the Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities will speak, and 20 interdisciplinary students from four institutions will present posters summarizing their community service projects (732-235-4200).

Today’s Google Doodle commemmorates the 96th birthday anniversary of Nelson Mandela, whose inspiring statements include  “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

It is an apt coincidence.

The S&M novel “Fifty Shades of Gray” could be named “Fifty Shades of Profit.” From profits on that book, the publishers gave everyone, even the mailroom, a $5,000 bonus. To cash in on the phenomenal interest in that rag (Ok, Ok, I read it too) the Women in Business Association borrowed the title for its meeting on Thursdaya CHyde_Headshot_Web, January 23, 5 to 7:30 p.m. at Capital Health. Cost: $25. One of the speakers is, natch, a sex therapist, Dr. Christine Hyde.

Wait a minute. I relish being in a room with powerful women. I went to WIBA’s anniversary party at Capital Health, was energized and inspired (see my previous post  and for pictures click here). But I am not that interested in sex therapy in a group.

Turns out Hyde has a different topic — what you eat. She has a phenomenal story of going from 300 pounds to running a mini-marathon in a matter of months.  “As you start detoxing your body, your mind gets clearer and your energy level sours. You don’t realize how bad junk food and poor-quality food affect how you think, ” she says.

In this magazine story Hyde tells of her turnaround. Now that, I could use.

Get the Facts on Obamacare

health insurance flyer

GET THE FACTS on the Affordable Health Care Act. The Princeton Human Services and Princeton Health Departments are staging a very useful workshop on how to sign up for healthcare coverage — Tuesday, November 26, at 6 p.m., free. Among the sponsors is Not in Our Town, which I work with.

Get your questions answered: Are you eligible? How do you apply? What documentation will you need? How to sign on to the website.

It’s not rocket science but it helps to get advice.

Anna Quindlen: Humanizing Healthcare

Faith and Social Justice, Healthcare, , , ,

anna quindlen

Anna Quindlen made a speech to healthcare professionals about how doctors should treat patients and their families. Her 83-year-old father had recently died from burns over 40 percent of his body. She praised his caregivers.

As you would imagine, her words are potent. “They put a human face, a series of human faces, on my father’s care.” Her speech is online at HumanizingMedicine.org, and read it now because it will be taken off the web in December.

In her comments on medicine Quindlen talks about journalism. Newspapers used to be faceless dispensers of information, and readers “had their back fences to chew over their tragedies, their disappointments, and their dreams.”  Now newspapers use social media to facilitate those discussions.

She likens the power relationships inherent in medicine with the power that journalists have. When interviewed, you have every good reason to wonder whether I will get your story right — or wrong.  But doctors have power over our very lives.

And so she makes the case for empowered patients, patients and family members who are armed with knowledge, who want to be treated as individuals. “People want the press to see them . . . as a person. They want the doctors and nurses to see them as something more than files. . . We are part of a society that has suddenly discovered that it has no human face and that is terrified and repelled by that fact. ”

I learned of Quindlen’s speech from  another of my favorite writers.