On June 5, 2009, I participated in a panel discussion at Duke University in their Health Policy forum entitled, "State of Medicine: Universal Change." I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction and engagement about the current issues of Health Care Reform with my fellow distinguished panelists along with the superb audience.


Some of the topics that we addressed during our panel discussion were as follows:

• What Should Patients Be Concerned About the Most with the New Health Care Reform?



• How Do We Educate Patients?



• What is Our Vision for Health Care Reform

Included in the photo with me were Dr. Christopher Edwards, Dr. Donna Gilleskie and Kunal Mitra (Moderator).

After our panel (Patient-Centered Panel) discussion and a brief break, the next panel (Physician-Centered Panel) addressed many of the similar issues. This session was very lively and informative. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the physicians' and lawyer's expert comments about Health Care Reform.

I also was pleased to hear the opening remarks from the Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke --Victor J. Dzau, MD. He was very impressive.

In general, the major theme that I received from this professional event organized by medical students at Duke was the following:

• All of us need to get involved in the new Health Care Reform debate!!

Make your voice heard because this Health Care Reform should include all of us.

Medical Anthropology Lecture at Pitt County Memorial Hospital (PCMH)

On May 4th, I presented a lecture at Pathology Grand Rounds forum at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville, North Carolina. I was invited by Dr. Peter Kragel -- Professor & Chair -- of the Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at PCMH to give my lecture to the Pathology Grand Rounds audienc. The audience consisted of primarily health care professionals who primarily worked at or were affiliated with PCMH.

The title of my lecture, "What is Medical Anthropology?" accomplished four major objectives. They were:

1. To describe the field of medical anthropology;



2. To examine the applied clinical strategies of medical anthropology;



3. To analyze the relationship of culture with health care; and



4. To discover how medical anthropology works within the field of medicine.
   

If you want to check out and download my lecture, here it is:

• What is Medical Anthropology? - Presented at PCMH Pathology Grand Rounds

I had an enjoyable time presenting and answering a few questions about my primary field of study -- Medical Anthropology. Interestingly, I highlighted much of my early fieldwork and volunteering experience at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI.. I actually volunteered for 4 straight years at Henry Ford Hospital (1984-1988) and thoroughly enjoyed every day that I had the chance to talk to health professionals and particularly all the patients!

Greetings Everyone,

It's spring time and it is an excellent time for community and county organizations to hold special health events for their communities. Well, I was asked to be the Keynote Speaker at a great community event in Wayne County, North Carolina. The event was held at Mount Olive College and it was called the "2009 Wayne Minority Community Empowerment Forum." The theme was "Health, Wealth and Wisdom."

Organized by Wayne County Minority Health Coordinator, Ms Rovonda Freeman with assistance from Brenda Bass (former graduate student in the MPH program at ECU and one of my students) and many other staff & community folks in collaboration with the Health Director -- Mr. James Roosen -- of Wayne County, this one-day event addressed a wide array of serious health and medical issues affecting communities of color in this area. They also had a comedy show at the end of the event! Local celebrities and radio station -- "Q97.7" were there to entertain and interview participants. After my talk, I was interviewed by one of the radio personalities!

The turnout was a complete success. People and families of all ages and background attended this very special inaugural event. Local and state dignitaries were present including North Carolina State Senator Don Davis.

As Keynote Speaker, I was asked to talk about health disparities and how we as individuals and experts can do something about it. My talk was entitled, "How to Solve and Eliminate Health Disparities." I had alot of fun presenting my information to the audience and the audience was outstanding!! I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and interaction with all the community members. I believe that they responded well to the major themes of my talk which was:

• "Culture"


• "Cultural Competency"

Again, this was a great community event designed to raise awareness of health, social, medical, and cultural issues in the county. These are the type of culturally competent events that makes a difference in the community!! It only takes one community event to move a community into a healthier conscious and healthier pattern!!

POSTER PRESENTATION AT NIH SUMMIT: THE SCIENCE OF ELIMINATING HEALTH DISPARITIES











Greetings Everyone,






During this past week, I participated in the NIH Summit: The Science of Eliminating Health Disparities with a poster presentation highlighting my new online graduate course at East Carolina University -- "Ethnic Health & Health Disparities." The title of my presentation was:

• Using Technology for Teaching Health Disparities

You can download my poster presentation from the link above!

This new online graduate course uses the latest technology to assist health professionals and public health administrators in solving health issues in eastern North Carolina and the United States. Students used the university's Blackboard software to not only hear and view my audio podcast and webcam lectures but they also responded to the discussion board and chatroom sessions online. In addition, culturally competent reports from the National Institutes of Health were also placed online for specific diseased-focused ethnic health and health disparity issues.

The success of this new online course has not only enabled health professionals and public health administrators to acquire new public health skill sets that will assist them in working with and developing culturally competent health programs but it also helped to create a new online 12-credit graduate certificate program in Ethnic Health and Health Disparities at East Carolina University.

Finally, this NIH conference was sponsored and organized by the National Center on Minority Health & Health Disparities (NCMHD). Interestingly, I worked at NCMHD as a Health Scientist Administrator from 2001-2004 and completely enjoyed the opportunity to work with this NIH federal health agency when it first started. In fact, I met several of my former colleagues at the Summit including the Director Dr. John Ruffin. It was a great reunion and they made me feel as though as I was still apart of NCMHD.

Presentation at Harvard University!

Greetings Everyone,

This past weekend, I had the pleasure to be a panelist in one of the sessions of an excellent conference entitled, "The Fourth Annual Kennedy School of Government Black Policy Conference" at Harvard University. I joined two other esteemed panelists in the session called "Campaign to Improve our Health: African Americans and Obesity."

Each panelist spent approximately 10 -15 minutes presenting their research and later we took questions from the audience. During my presentation, I highlighted the major issues related to my 2006 book -- "Food Choice and Obesity in Black America: Creating a New Cultural Diet." I primarily emphasized how culture greatly influences our food choices and that we need to continue developing culturally competent programs such as my New Black Cultural Diet (http://www.newblackculturaldiet/.)

The other panelists included Dr. Shiriki Kumanyika and Dr. Ian Smith. The audience asked a number of excellent questions and it looked like we had a lively interaction during question and answer time.

I have included a photo of the panelists along with our moderator, Dr. C. Frank Igwe and Mr. Sam Sanders - organizer of this panel session and a photo of one of the buildings in the JFK School of Government complex where we presented our session.

All in all, this was the best conference that I was ever apart of. The scholarly environment of Harvard University along with the scholarly professionals who organized this conference made this a ONE OF A KIND CONFERENCE THAT APPRECIATED AND CELEBRATED DIVERSITY!!

Greetings Everyone,

Yesterday, I presented my talk on "Food Choice & Obesity in Black America: Creating a New Cultural Diet" at a community health event in eastern North Carolina. The event was titled, "Working For Healthy Communities," and I was one of the 5 speakers to talk about health and medical issues related to diabetes in the African American community. This event occurred at the Zion Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Pollocksville, North Carolina.

I had alot of fun meeting community members at this event and listenting to the other guest speakers. The church and community made everyone feel very welcome and at home.

In my particular talk, I emphasized how our African American cultural eating traditions and cultural health patterns must be understood and respected while also finding culturally competent strategies to modify these long standing traditions. I believe the community members enjoyed the talk and of course I loved presenting it in a much more "lively" way for the community!

In addition to the presentation, two of my former ECU graduate students and now public health professionals who took my classes were the organizers of this event for Jones County Health Department. Here is our picture along with others of the event.

New Course at ECU - "Ethnic Health & Health Disparities"

I am looking forward to teaching my brand new Distance Education course - Ethnic Health and Health Disparities - MPH 6008-- because it will provide students with graduate training the abilities and knowledge to address national and local ethnic health and health disparities issues.

During the course, students will focus on accomplishing the following objectives:

• Identify and assess the major health issues associated with specific ethnic and health disparity populations in the state and country.
• Describe ethnic health and health disparity issues, including unique and important features.
• Apply principles and strategies derived from public health and medical anthropology toward planning, implementing, and evaluating specific ethnic health and health disparities intervention programs.