In 2003, when I was first starting graduate school, I expressed a desire to work in global public health to my major advisor. I never forgot what his response was ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Manila. My bags are mostly packed. My return flight is confirmed. My ride to the airport is arranged. NB and I had dinner with Doctora Lai at Kashmir, the Indian restaurant from our first week here. I stopped at the Razon's of Guagua stand in the mall on my way to the hotel for some halo-halo (literally, mix-mix ( Read more... )

Friday was the wrap-up of our last week of nurses trainings in Pampanga. Since then, NB and I have been working feverishly on our Region 3 presentation, which was delivered today. It was a tricky piece of business....next to ARMM (which is an armed conflict region), Region 3 has the most unimmmunized children in the Philippines. It's an area ( Read more... )

So, it's 9:15 PM (or so) on Monday evening here in the Philippines. I just got back to the Catholic boarding house, where I'm comfortably housed in the St. John Room (see previous posting about Jesus being everywhere.) I'm checking the email, updating the Facebook, and checking the headlines from the news, when I run across this gem of a headline ( Read more... )

The United States is a dominantly Christian nation (unless you live in New York City or the surrounding communities, where the argument could be made that Jews run the show.) Growing up as one of the few Jewish children in my part of North Dakota, I've always been slightly more aware of this in daily life, perhaps more so than most. I always ( Read more... )

When traveling, the tourist attraction of choice for anyone in my family is generally the aquarium. So, it was an easy decision for me to take my free day and check out the Manila Ocean Park, located along Manila Bay, a short 20-minute walk from my hotel. It featured the usual aquarium attractions, namely lots of fish. In particular, there was a ( Read more... )

This past week was spent in the province of Zambales, where we stayed at a beach resort in the capital city of Iba. Of course, most days we didn't get back to the hotel until quite late, so there wasn't much of an opportunity to actually enjoy the place. Same work, different place, lots of data collected. Next week, Nueva Ecija, and the story ( Read more... )

There are two things that make life very difficult when it comes to eating in the Philippines. The first is being a vegetarian. The second is being a diabetic. Fortunately, I am neither of these things, but if I stayed here too much longer....let's just say I can understand why the diabetes rate in the Philippines is so high ( Read more... )

Many people who choose to go into a degree-seeking program focusing on public health have a single desire, which is both focused and entirely vague at the same time. We want to save the world ( Read more... )

This week was spent in Bulacan. We showed up on Monday AM to have a record turnout of nurses. We had over 50 attendees, which was much more than the 1 nurse per municipality (roughly 24 nurses) than we were expecting. But being the good STOP volunteers we are, we pinched hit, gave out all our REB copies, and made the best of it ( Read more... )