The Chain Remains: Part II
Even with all the structural barriers that formerly incarcerated people face, there are stories of hope and resilience. This is not to say that re-entry is an easy or fair process. As it is discussed in part one of this piece, written by Stephen Hicks, people face many barriers when they are out of prison. […]
The Chain Remains: Part I
Prison is human storage, but worse because prisons attempt to strip away the dignity of those incarcerated. Look at the school-to-prison pipeline paradigm, mandatory minimum sentencing, crack/cocaine sentencing discrepancies, or the myriad of intended and unintended consequences from the “War of Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” movements. But what is more alarming after […]
Ten Years
Humor me for a moment… Let your mind wander back in time. Let it meander over your life’s trail to where you were 10 years ago. What was your focus then? How did you spend your time? What did you hope the future would bring? I was 15—a high school freshman in a suburb of […]
A Fabulist Imagines in Ruhiira
Those who most intimately know me have said I have an overactive, irrepressible imagination. I have realized it is both a curse and a blessing. A curse of finding myself trapped in an obsessive mind, a mind that can persuade me that the most dangerous fictional ideas I conjure are true. A blessing of being […]
The long road to ending unsafe abortion
When we were 17, a friend of mine got pregnant. When she told me she planned to terminate the pregnancy, I was relieved. She was one of my smartest friends, but like all of my friends, she was so young to me. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like for her or the baby. […]
Speaking Truth to Silence
It’s incredible what putting an end to silence and fear can do. When AIDS first appeared on the scene in the U.S in the 70s, it was initially called the “gay-related immune deficiency.” It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the Reagan administration even mentioned the word “AIDS” publicly. The stigma and discrimination that hounded this […]
Universal access to HIV treatment as a Global Public Good
The concept of global public goods is a traditional way of classifying goods and services based on two factors: 1) rivalrous consumption and 2) excludability. Global public goods are non-rivalrous, meaning their use by one individual does not reduce their availability to others and they are non-excludable meaning people should not be prevented from accessing […]
Six Month Highlights
My friends and family in the Northeast region of the United States will find this incomprehensible, but it is too hot to think straight in the mid-afternoon sun that streams through the window of our (very) well-lit new office. For a girl who spent 28 of the previous 29 holiday seasons in wintry Massachusetts, this […]
Market Shaping- Improving access to ORS and Zinc
Diarrhea kills about 800,000 children each year, making it the second leading cause of death in children under five years worldwide. In Uganda diarrhea kills ~ 10,000 children every year, and is the third largest single cause of child mortality. Despite the existence of a simple, life-saving treatment (ORS[1] and Zinc), access to the medicines […]
Work for the joy of it
Many nations in the world, especially in the developing world, are experiencing poor health indicators and high mortality rates. This has normally been attributed to brain drain, inadequate staff, inadequate drugs, corruption, environmental factors and health seeking behavior. In my opinion, health worker strikes are a barrier to public health and health equity, yet it […]