Tag: research
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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 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 blessing the boats or what I call Onyelo!
I see the tide clearly. I know the edge of understanding too. Both have carried me out, beyond fear, through right paths and in a darkness so deep. We have been kissed, like a morning star and the wind has turned. We find ourselves near pools of fresh water. We are certain that water loves…
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Keep listening and learning from communities!
I have been thinking lately about how we listen and learn from communities. Couple of weeks ago, I was in a room full of experts who noted that young people as a group do not have the right to speak for themselves about things that matter to them like their health. Imagine, in 2024, we…
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Keep listening and learning from young people!
Young people do not need adult-centric rules. They need you to see them in all their diversity. To listen and learn from them to. Not as afterthought. Not with limited voices. But with wisdom and grace for the lives they lead. I have always known young people to be creative, resourceful, with informed ideas that…
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Keep all ways you close a door!
Do not lose sight of those who dream, those who begin, next to coconut trees they drink at their will. Pain they already know, joy they know too, yet still they begin even if with their dreams again. Some mornings they will begin with a dance, those full of pride for the day, those in…
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Keep this simple word for single dose HPV vaccines, It works!
I plucked these words in a room full of powerful women and men this week. It works. A single dose. Like a tree with a million roots. A simple word, is the shortest distance between minds. It works. A single dose. The truth of today. Ripe for tomorrow. For an eternity of dreams. Like seeds…
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Keep the voices of communities!
A friend once said, eyes are how we begin conversations, begin to deeply speak, a friend whose deepest wish was to connect, whose highest dream was community, their voices vividly clear, yet many ignore the thing passing in the sky, thick clouds gathering in sky, eyes blind see nothing, people who claim to fight for…
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Keep “this voice from I don’t know where” or felicity for 1000 blog notes!
If I was to listen to all the voices within from all the places that I don’t know where, if I were to share all the lessons keeping words have taught me, as I crossed the 1000 notes threshold yesterday, the word felicity would come to mind. Yes, because I just finished reading Mary Oliver’s…
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Keep treading softly in a place where the skies are grey and look out for places where the skies are blue!
My heart lingers in a place where the skies are grey. My head lingers in a space where the skies are grey. The days are grey. The people I meet are grey. I live through days with people who wear masks and the skies are grey. Come, come see my heart. Some may wonder, is…
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Keep change!
We accept change without reason, for good or bad or wise. We accept it even if we never understand. We accept it when questions still remain. Like drops of rain, that fall unrehearsed, like a fragrance that clings to air, like joy that evolves over time, we accept change, day by day like the silence…