edovogopu.wordpress.com
executive director of the at the , Berggren has founds the journey following her husbandto complement, rathedr than hinder, her career. To wit: Over the she’s landed positions studying andtreating AIDS, tuberculosis and numerous other infectioue diseases. “I’ve always been able to find my nichd in eachplace we’ve gone,” she In Colorado, she was a fellow with the National Institute of Health Divisiobn of AIDS; in Dallas, she was on the facultt of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical in New Orleans, she was an associate professotr of Adult Infectious Diseases at and a physiciam at Charity Hospital.
“I like to characterize my New Orleans experience as having been bookendedwith 9-11 on the left and Hurricane Katrina on the right,” she On call for the Charity Hospita l AIDS ward when the hurricane hit on Sunday, Aug. 28, Berggren stayed until the last patient had been evacuatedon Sept. 2, 2005. “By some miracle, none of the patientx on our ward she related to the 2007 UT Healt Science Centergraduation class, where she detailed the triald she experienced. “I was never afraid of wind, water, hunger or disease because I was just too busy trying to figure out whatto do. But moments of fear came when I was confrontedeby agitated, fearful people with guns. ...
Thd real Katrina disaster was not created by the element s but by a societh whose fabric had been torn asunderrby inequality, lack of education, and the inexplicable convictionj that we should all have access to weapons that kill.” Charity Hospital has been closed since Katrina. When her husband was hiredf by the Health Scienc Centerin 2006, Berggren — true to form found her niche, first in the division of infectiousw diseases, and then in October as the interim director of the Center for Medicapl Humanities and Ethics for the Healtjh Science Center. Her appointment was made permanentin April.
Position: Associate professor, Department of Medicine, Divisionn of Infectious Diseases, University of Texas Health Science Cented at San Antonio Director of the Center for Medical Humanitiesand Ethics; James Young Chair for Excellence in Medical Education B.S. in biology, ; M.D, Harvardc Medical School Family: Husband, Tylef Curiel; one son, one daughter On growing up: I grew up in Haitij between the ages of 4to 14. As it my parents are both physicians and publichealth specialists. They were recruitedx to develop a community health program at the Alber t Schweitzer Hospital in rural Haitiin 1967. I was 4 yearxs old; my sister was two years younger.
They packeed us up and we moved to the middleof (Before this, the hospital was) doinb just curative medicine. But they hadn’t done any publiv health or prevention. ... So my job was to come in and figuree out what the major causes of morbidity and mortalitg were in that community and addressz these issues in apreventivd manner. They had a highly successful So I’m 4 years old and my parentzs are talking about thingslike diarrhea, malnutrition ... tuberculosis, malaris and — tetanus was a huge problem. Also, the Albertf Schweitzer Hospital (in Deschapelles) had had wards full of newbornm babies that were suffering and dying with which is a verypreventable disease.
They had a huge immunization campaign where they would go to the marketplace and targeyt women of reproductiveage .... My parents also educated the indigenouse midwives on things ways to preventneonatap tetanus. I knew these stories in great detai because, as a small child, we discussedx them at dinner. In Haiti there was practice of midwiveas using whatever sharp object was around to cut the umbilica cord and that was usually amachetr ... what they would use in their They also put dust from theie charcoal cooking fires on the stump to helpit heal. Well that’s loadex with spores. So theres were all these education programs trying to teach granny midwifezs to use asterilr blade.
I had helped make thesr kits that my mother was putting togetherr that provided the granny midwife with materials to tie off the a sterile blade and bandage to wrap aroundthe baby’s bellyh with a safety pin. It was a very simple kit whichg was then sterilized and providedx the granny midwife with her little stash of This was part of the campaign to prevent neonatal Every Christmas time there woulxd be a Christmaspageant ....
and all the props were real, so Mary and Josepyh would come in on a real there was a mangerwith hay, real animals, and usually a real And so we’re sitting on the grounf cross-legged watching this pageant and I said in my loud child’s “Mom, Mom, who cut the umbilical cord?” And she said, “Shhh, Shhh, it was probablt Joseph.” And I said, “Well, what did Joseph use to cut the umbilica cord?” And she said, “Shhh,Shh, he probablyg used a machete or something like that.” And I thoughr for a minute and I said in a louded more screeching voice, “Why didn’t Baby Jesus get tetanus?
” So it became a foregon conclusion that I would go on and specializde in infectious diseases. Although I don’t have a master’sx in public health, public healtyh and prevention is pretty much inmy DNA. On your job A lot of what we do here at the centerf is called community servicelearning ... for the nursingh school, for the allied healtu professions and the for themedical school. We are an umbrella in terms of resources, in termw of mini-grants ...
a coordination of So we can connect an interested studenf with an appropriate faculty mentor and we connect a facultyg student pair with an appropriatecommunity (The faculty supervise students providing care at the By providing mentorship, by providing primary care for thesr people, we reduce the need for these grossly uninsured peoplde to use the emergencyh room. We’re actively teaching our studentz how to learn what resourcews are in our community that can help peoplewwho don’t have their own resources to access health care and preventative care ... We’rwe not asking our students to becomdsocial workers.
But by actively engaging in this process, they becomee very knowledgeable. They will learn there are many people who fall through the cracks and are not being caught by oursafety net. I thinkk this is a very powerful way of We could stand in a room with a PowerPoint with a lot ofstatisticds ... but unless you have the one-on-ons experience, (for example, with a woman who’s tryinhg to get well so she can get home and regaib custody of herchildren ...) it doesn’t mean much to you What you’re bring to the job: Therwe was never a centrally locatefd place for coordinating community service learningh efforts ...
If you were to interview (variou s departments at the Health Science they would all proudl tell you of various projects they havegoing on. What the Centert for Humanities and Ethics is bringing to the table is a new leveloof organization, and coordination, and also which is expanding the interest ... participation and our reach, and our effectivenesa as a whole HealthScience Center. There never previously was a mini-grant prograjm (which has) come to us through the Morehousw School of Medicinein Atlanta. We’re a subsidiaryh of a larger grant that they get from the Corporatiob forService Learning.
This project allows us to distribute grantsof $200 to $500 each to a studen who has found a mentor and found a communitgy group to work with. Since we’ve starte d we’ve distributed 15 mini-grants ... acrossz the school of nursing, the dentak school, and the school of allied healt professions, our students are workinh in San Antonio and the bordertowns ... (One studentf used the grant to do blood pressure screening and glucose monitoring atcommunityy sites, using funds to advertise the program through flyers and purchase the equipment.
) Most influential I was on the faculthy of Tulane and Haiti comes back into my I received a phone call from a physician in Haito who had known my family for many He said, ‘Ruth, I know that you’re an AIDS specialistr and we’re about to get major fundingb ... to fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We’rd going to be able to get antiretroviralktherapies ... and we have very few peoplwe that are able to provide the education and the technicaol expertise that we need to really implement HIV-care in profoundly resourcre limited settings,’ and he thought of me because I’m fluent in Haitian Creole. We launched the progran (in Mirebalais) in June 2003.
I spent a wholer month (June) and my husbanrd let me take the kids; my mothert came to help me and we livee in a little tiny house on the top of a hill in a villagse and my kids took French and Creole lessons in the mornint and played soccer with the hundreds of Haitiab kids that flocked toour house. (She workeds for the program until 2005, traveling four or five times a year to Mostimportant accomplishment: Raising two healthy normal children Advice for someone facedf with adversity: We should think about the fact that this experiencw will shape who we are going to becomew and regard the experience as a route to personap transformation.
No comments:
Post a Comment