Tag: public health
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Keep this Bright Star!
I love balance with life. Where something stands, Achebe once noted, something else will stand beside it. I’m a researcher, a professor of medicine, a public health scientist and one focused on sustaining evidence based interventions in resource limited settings. It’s my head. I am also a mother, a wife, Onyelo’s Isi-baby, a sister, a…
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Keep this peace!
Here is the truth. Run across a bridge. Inhale its links. Exhale its air. Joy will be there, inner peace and golden trumpets too, where skies are grey.
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Keep ordinary moments
Despite the skies being grey, we drive up the street to the place where it all began. Seven of us in a white bus, driving every morning to the place where anyone can lead change. There is an ostrich dressed to blend with grass. A giant head smiling as we drive pass every day. Meat…
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Keep those that are there always!
find and keep those that talk to you like roses that bloom those whose words are thin as wire whose depths like mirrors that unveil whose proverbs like birds that soar whose care divine like pearls whose presence like mines of treasures whose chorus fine like crystal whose counsel solid like roots whose direction lead…
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Keep ending cervical and liver cancer deaths!
When my Papa died, I wanted to die with him. He was the first man I loved, the first man who loved me just as I am, the first man who helped cement storytelling in me, the first man who reminded me always of my name. His death was the second death of a close…
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Keep the joy of eating jollof rice together!
My jollof rice is joyful, so it’s heavenly taste with my people. Every Sunday afternoon is joyful. So the smiles of my people. Joyful also are our gathering. Joyful also are these memories with my people. I have been reading Braiding Sweetgrass and the idea of the holder and the braider reminded me of what…
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Keep all that makes you create!
I have been in class the past 4 weeks. It ended today hence my absence here. Ben Okri once shared that the most authentic thing about being human, is our ability to create. We can create, overcome what we create, endure as we create, transform what we create, love all we create, and still be…
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Keep the memories of LIGHT Year 3 and Rest in Peace, Dr. Ivis M. Richardson!
Our LIGHT festival just ended. I was supposed to close and inform people about the plans for next year. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Our last speaker, Christell Roach lost her grandmother, Dr Ivis M. Richardson yesterday. She could have cancelled, she could have called and told us about her death. We would have understood. My…
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Keep the 3rd annual LIGHT festival for the public by the public with public health!
When we started this three years ago, we imagined we would do as Audre Lorde’s once noted and bring a burst of light to public health. The world was in a pandemic, health was in a disarray, everything with the public was complex and messy and at that moment we knew that light was needed.…
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Keep, keep, sustaining the public’s health!
In 1988, the Institute of Medicine published a report that explored the future of public health. They concluded then that “public health was a vital function that requires broad concern and support in other to fulfill society’s interest in assuring the conditions in which people can be healthy.” Back then, they echoed the critical importance…
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Keep these STARS!
Our NIAID-funded STARS summer program began yesterday, with many new faces wondering what it’s like to become STARS. We shared our stories, we gave them a bit of context and opened up the door on what it means to be STARS. Today, we sat through a masterclass on the landscape of HIV research in the…
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Keep the lessons of cicadas!
We saw the limits of everything, for cicadas, saw them delicate like old skin, shedding their innermost being. They would give anything, it seems, as they suckle on the trunk of trees, to live. Now I see why rest, even if for 13 years, is the beginning of everything. I pray nothing, not even the…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 