A Parent’s Role in Delivering Sex Education to his/her Adoloscents
According to UNESCO’s “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education,” sexuality education can provide “age-appropriate, culturally relevant and scientifically accurate information” to young people. It also helps dispel myths related to sexual and reproductive health. Exposure to sex education also assists youth in developing life skills such as decision-making, confidence, assertiveness, responsibility, asking for assistance and […]
I don’t call them “crimes of passion”, I call them Feminicides / Yo no los llamo “crímenes pasionales”, yo los llamo feminicidios
Colombia legislators have recently voted in favor the “Rosa Elvira Cely” Law, which seeks to increase the penalties for crimes against women in my country. The bill proposal came as a struggle for justice from civil society organizations after the brutal rape and murder of Rosa Elvira Cely, a night school student, in one of […]
Behind Bars: Women’s Restricted Access to Reproductive Health in Prisons and Detention Centers
Today more than 200,000 women live in correctional facilities nationwide, and these numbers are continuing to grow at an alarming rate. In particular over the last ten years alone, the female prison population has grown faster than the male prison population. The conditions for prisoners are very difficult to withstand and many women in need […]
The Potential Harms in Helping Others
Several weeks ago, my driver’s license fell out of my pocket during a rainy outreach shift with HIPS, a harm reduction organization that works with injection drug users, sex workers, and their communities in Washington, D.C. I assumed that it was lost forever to the storm drains of D.C., until I received a call from […]
The GHC Secret Family Recipe
Since I know you have been salivating in anticipation of enjoying your very own GHC experience, I have taken it upon myself to spill the beans about this famous, secret family recipe. For too long, the proud GHC family has developed young change makers in the global health field without revealing the special and loving […]
What Drives Me? My Family Curse
Kerala, India in the 1920s. My grandmother was giving birth in what I can only imagine was a hot and unventilated birthing room with low-skilled attendants performing her blood transfusion. That day doomed our family. Fast forward 65 years to the mid-1980s. My father, a pediatrician working in Saudi Arabia, was the youngest of seven […]
Harlem: Social Determinants of Health, Asthma and the American Dream
Harlem By Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? […]
African Development and Public Health
A month ago, I attended the African Development Conference hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School of Policy. The conference’s theme was, “Looking South – Moving Forward – Fostering Development collaboration within the Global South.” The main emphasis throughout the conference was private public partnerships, talent and resources for development within the African continent. The conference […]
Health policy activism
Policy activism is now gradually appearing in the public health lexicon. Though still embryonic in professional practice, there appears to be a modest conceptual foundation that supports many of today’s public health policies and programs designed for expansive community engagement. Like many newly minted Masters in Public Health (MPH), I was also lost when I […]
Naloxone: Another Tool in the Toolbox
Every day in the United States, 120 people die as a result of drug overdose. Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the last two decades and are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States [1]. In particular, deaths from overdose involving heroin have almost quadrupled from 2000 to 2013, with […]