Tag: public health

Kate Joyce Kate Joyce (5 Posts)

Contributing Writer and Outreach Coordinator Emeritus

Northeast Ohio Medical University-Cleveland State University

Kate is an M1 at NEOMED in Rootstown, Ohio and part of the CSU/NEOMED partnership. She is excited to have the opportunity to marry two of her passions--writing and health --with the team at in-Training. Prior to entering medical school, Kate had the opportunity to earn an MPH and work for several years with Children’s HealthWatch, a fantastic group that researches impacts of public policies on low-income families in pediatric primary care centers and emergency departments.

Between classes, she works as an EMT or on freelance film projects, practices amateur photography and gets lost in nature. She is particularly interested in physician advocacy, the role of narrative media in public health, urban community violence, nutrition, international health, early childhood education and ending cycles of poverty.




Ten Lessons from Flint: Speaking Up & Getting Results — Part 2 of 3

Published by Kate Joyce

Researchers like Professor Marc Edwards and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha were not the first people to speak up about the water crisis in Flint. In June of 2015, regional EPA employee Miguel A Del Toral, Regulations Manager of the Ground Water and Drinking Water Branch, issued an internal memorandum entitle “High Lead Levels in Flint, Michigan – Interim Report.” This document described the lack of corrosion control protocol and high lead levels. It was released to officials within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Professor Edwards and Flint resident Lee Ann Walters, whose home water contained extremely high lead levels, as confirmed by city officials.

Ten Lessons from Flint: Training for Advocacy — Part 3 of 3

Published by Kate Joyce

Exposing contaminated and corrosive water in Flint was necessary and life-saving, and the story garnered significant national attention. Yet not every situation calls for advocacy in such a public way. Advocacy for individual patients and patient safety is also crucial. Whether you’re advocating for an individual patient in a hospital or the public on the national stage, becoming an effective advocate requires practice and training. With the right training and understanding of the advocate’s tool kit, we can advocate for positive changes on behalf of individual patients and the public.

Vaccines: Our Role in a Civil Conversation

Published by Eric Donahue

Vaccines have become a cornerstone of modern public health and have greatly reduced the burden of infectious disease across the globe. They are also the center of major debate in America. Conjuring furious arguments with divided opinion, where vaccine safety gets more attention than vaccine effectiveness. In the era of Facebook, Twitter and every imaginable social media outlet, opinions and facts flood computer screens, distorting truth and instilling doubt. To support an argument, it is not difficult to find an article or group that agrees with you. Medical professionals constantly find themselves concerned and restrained by an apathetic response to reason and science.

Murky Waters in Flint, Michigan

Published by Joniqua Ceasar

The images of water from Flint, Michigan water came into my mind and I lingered at the sink a few minutes too long. I became heartbroken for the children whose bodies may have been irreversibly and negatively impacted. I became enraged at a system that would prioritize saving pennies over properly protecting its citizens from preventable harm. Governor Rick Snyder, his appointed “emergency financial managers” and other leaders allowed this crisis to develop over years as they mistreated Black citizens through racist policies, violated the public trust, and endangered lives. A significantly poor and majority black city was told it was okay to use polluted water to prepare their children’s dinners. Families washed their dishes in what could be mistaken for urine. They scrubbed their pearly whites with toxins to avoid cavities.

Exercise for Better Sleep

Published by Krutika Parasar Raulkar

Good sleep goes hand in hand with good health; after all, one-third of the day is spent in the state of non-wakefulness know as sleep. Whether this sleep is a peaceful slumber or ridden with multiple awakenings has great consequences for productivity, learning, attention and demeanor throughout the day. Thus, it is essential to maintain adequate sleep hygiene, and exercise can play a role in increasing restorative sleep — if done at the right time.

Let Food Be Thy Medicine: Student-Run Nutrition Education Programs for Medical Students

Published by Kelly Aminian

Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ said, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” The role of nutrition in health has been recognized since the beginning of medicine, yet somehow nutrition education has fallen by the wayside in most medical curricula. Given that 34.9 percent of Americans are obese and obesity has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer, nutrition should be a focal point of medical education.

Between the Lines

Published by Corey Meador

This story revolves around a single piece of paper. Among those who use this piece of paper, and among those who benefit from it, there exists much confusion about the paper’s intention. Some of the providers suspect intentional misguidance by those who designed the form.

WALL\THERAPY: An Intersection of Street Art and Public Health

Published by Ria Pal, MD

Today, a person’s zip code is a better indication of their health than their genetic code is. We know that physical communities experience shared sickness, whether linked to trauma, viruses or unavailable nutrition, and there are established biomedical consequences to poverty and segregation. Acknowledging these links, however, only gets us so far; successful intervention demands thinking deeply about the relationship between patients and their communities. Rochester, NY is home to an innovative attempt to combating these issues. It is one that challenges traditional ideas of what factors define health and consequently, what metrics define therapy.

The Great Needle Exchange Debate

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

In the past few weeks, there has been considerable press surrounding needle exchanges and the recently declared HIV epidemic in Indiana.

The first time I talked with my friends about needle exchanges, I had a visceral reaction. “Why would you give people new needles?” I asked, completely outraged. “Isn’t that enabling and therefore doing a disservice to the very people you’re trying to help?”

Daniel Ricketti Daniel Ricketti (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer

Cooper Medical School of Rowan University

Daniel Ricketti is a Class of 2018 medical student at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. He is passionate about evidence based medicine and helping the impoverished gain access to better medical care. When he is not doing anything medical school related he can be found playing with his dog and watching sports.