Tag: research
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Keep alert!
A swarm of insects stroll in perfect stride, one after the other, all heading somewhere, any where, no where. The skies above them, stretch out like curtains, something reduces them to nothing, something leaves them light as dust. Something in the wind. Lord, it’s coming for us.
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Keep knowing that research is people!
I remember her smile like it was yesterday. She always smiled. She was tall and very beautiful. The look on her eyes was like paradise, always mesmerizing, always kind, always tender, always love. Her name was Selena and she was loved by so many. I share her story today, not to grumble, but as a…
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Keep notes to Angi’s cervix or cervical cancer!
In a little over a year, now, our life as we knew it came tumbling down. We called her Angie or Angi and to know her was to know life. I am reminded again, that death should never have the final say. Not when those alive can continue the story of a live well lived.…
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Keep your struggles.
I am always mesmerized by an interview Chinua Achebe gave on NPR back in 1988. In it he told a story about a tortoise and a leopard. The leopard meets the tortoise on a lonely stretch of road. He had been trying to catch the tortoise for a long time. Tortoise, being a trickster, always…
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Keep what matters to you!
A couple of days ago, my daughter shared a drawing of all the things she loved. She call it her tree of love. Her name was nestled in the middle of a big green tree and surrounded by all the things that matter to her like playing music, writing, sleeping, swimming and doing somersaults. This…
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Keep grants as stories with lessons from Lorraine Hansberry!
Of what use are grants? If you think about this deeply, you will discover that it’s use are infinite. Of course some use it for their research. Some to propel their careers. I have always believed they can be used to tell stories. I remember the very first grant I wrote over 14 years ago.…
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Keep first jobs!
The first job I got right after my undergraduate degree was an internship at the World Organization’s InfoBase. It was for 3 months and I was assigned to work under Dr. Kathleen Strong. My first assignment, look through online databases for the burden of stroke globally. Then enter all the risk factors you see into…
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Keep being rooted!
Being rooted in all I do is free. I know my roots. I know my struggles too. I have lived through their lessons. Freedom takes a long time. With despair and fear, and a sprinkling of failure buried deep within. I have seen darkness of what it means to work. Roots buried deep only know…
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Keep nothing for youth without youth!
I have taken plenty short trips in life. But few are as unforgettable as the past 4 days in Lagos. Imagine arriving to blue skies. No soon after we arrived, even after all the chaos we encountered at the airport, I arrived to skies perfect and blue. I entered Lagos too with clarity. Day after…
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Keep praising children who know love!
We remind ourselves, each day, all children are precious. Black, Brown, White, no matter the color, or creed, all children, whether strange or foreign, are precious. Recently, I have been struggling with the reality that some children have nothing precious or valuable within them. I often wonder too what happened to them that at their…
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Keep charting a burst of light with science/public health writing.
How might we make scientific writing inclusive? How might it move beyond its style and form, beyond its static blueprint to adapt to lives that are constantly changing? How can we speak of advancing racial and ethnic equity in science, health or medicine, if we continue to court tools and language that remain colonized? How…
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Keep knowing where you stand with public health!
At the end of his book Health and Culture beyond the Western Paradigm, my doctoral advisor ended with these words: ‘To engage in a healthy culture project is to question one’s location constantly, always remembering that wherever something stand, another thing will stand beside it.’ It’s from Chinua Achebe and to him, it meant that…
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