Completing her second year as a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Riverside, Adwoa was focused on providing clinical training for her medical students. A retired UCR history professor, Carlos had no way of imagining that he would soon be joining the staff of a medical school. .
Then the UCR School of Medicine decided to establish a new required curricular thread on Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism. Shortly after that, the School asked Adwoa and Carlos to become co-directors of the thread in order to get it started.
It was decision time for the two of us. Still at an early stage of her medical teaching career, Adwoa had numerous obligations. Experienced in health care cultural competence training, Carlos had been giving annual workshops on that topic to UCR’s incoming medical students. But establishing an entire curricular thread? That was a challenge. But also an opportunity. We couldn’t turn it down. Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 14: Health Equity – by Carlos Cortés, Adwoa Osei
Introduction
In the early days of the coronavirus, during the Lunar New Year Celebration, I asked my cousin who had worked in Asia years ago if Americans would pay attention to what was happening. The coronavirus family include the common cold, but this virus had never been seen before. Despite reports that 41 people died and 1,400 were infected, my cousin was not optimistic that Americans were paying attention, at least not yet. Early information reported that only a quarter of cases were severe and the dead were mostly elderly people with pre-existing conditions.
I recently enrolled in MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction) course at Chattanooga’s Mindfulness Center, along with several other mature women. One of the items on my mindful To Do list was to attend a wellness panel co-hosted by Chattanooga’s Jewish Federation and Hadassah, a women’s organization with decades of involvement in healthcare of Israelis and Palestinians and who’s hospital in Israel saved my own life years ago.
A dear friend of mine passed away from breast cancer and I’d like to write about her experience and how we became friends.