"For science. For action. For health." - A recap of the 2019 APHA Annual Meeting
“For science. For action. For health.”
by Ashlee Van Schyndel
“Creating the Healthiest Nation: For science. For action. For health.” was the overarching theme of this year’s American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA from Nov. 2nd - 6th. It was my first APHA annual meeting, and I was fortunate to be supported with a scholarship. In my scholarship essay, I wrote about how I intended to learn from the experts in the field to bring back to my community and implement as much as I could, even as a student leader in APHA. In keeping with the theme from this year, here are some of my take-aways from the meeting.
In terms of science, there is work to do. Dr. Mary Bassett of Harvard University presented on the colonialist leftovers in both public health and medicine. As a result of generations of medical injustices including historical atrocities (such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments or Henrietta Lacks), we are seeing what happens when health institutions cannot be trusted including a lack of trust in these institutions. This can lead to poorer health outcomes, as people avoid help when needed as they aren’t sure if their provider is acting ethically or for their own benefit. Furthermore, this is what leads to actions such as reticence to vaccinate or to establish a primary care doctor. Even locally, we see these effects in places such as Smoketown, where a recent survey by Mallika Sabharwal and Theo Edmonds measured medical mistrust and found significant differences in trust between community members and providers who took the survey. Through collaborations with the community and the local university, work IDEAS xLab does including Smoketown Hopebox, seeks to work towards correcting this by collaborating with University of Louisville and working to provide a clinic with a community health navigator and other resources for the community requested by the community.
For action, one of the things that was clear to me is that public health is an inherently activist discipline, but one that needs to be refocused. By this, I mean that we are constantly working with the intention to better our communities in which we live, but using what we have at our disposal in addition to evidence-based practices. This was made most clear to me by the work of the women in the #ListentoBlackWomen panel, moderated by Dr. Monica McLemore of University of California-San Francisco and presented by Dr. Brittany Chambers (UC-SF), Brianne Taylor, and Brandi Gates as they shared Black women’s experiences with structural racism with pre-conception, pregnant, and post-natal focus groups. Brandi Gates put it best: “Public health is more concerned about risk than community assets.” If we are to improve health outcomes and create a more equitable society, we must also act with our community—not on its behalf. We see this accomplished through work here as Our Emotional Wellbeing acts as an asset-based approach to Louisville through utilizing artists within our community to help cultivate hope and belonging in our youth.
I intend to take these lessons I have learned and implement them not only with my work with IDEAS xLab for projects such as (Un)Known Project, Our Emotional Wellbeing, and Smoketown Hopebox, and when I do electoral activism in Louisville and online. My interests in public health lie at the intersection of health policies and outcomes; or investigating that policies are doing as they intend. As a future health policy researcher, I want to help create the best evidence-based policies that positively impact the sexual and reproductive health of all, and determine when to implement change to make these policies better. While I work on my research at my time as a graduate student at the University of Louisville, serve as a student leader in APHA, as a Legislative Fellow at Planned Parenthood of Kentucky, and as an AmeriCorps VISTA, I intend to help work towards creating the healthiest nation possible.
Ashlee Van Schyndel is the Hope + Wellbeing VISTA at IDEAS xLab. In addition, she is a MPH Candidate in Health Policy at the University of Louisville in the School of Public Health and Information Sciences. She was recently elected to be the Governing Councilor as well as the AJPH Editorial Board Representative for the American Public Health Association Student Assembly.