Global Health Service Corps

Please read this message from the Global Health Service Corps.

We are reaching out to ask for your Public Health Student Organization support for a program – the Global Health Service Corps: An Unconventional Prescription for Diplomacy (www.globalhealthservicecorps.org).  As you are well aware, the last decade has seen a massive surge in interest and attention for Global Health.  As a Marshall Plan for Health, the GHSC would support skilled health professionals – physicians, nurses, public health professionals and others - to work in developing countries through loan forgiveness and scholarship. These corps members would be positioned in structured programs and partnerships to serve as well as to provide education, training, and capacity building efforts for long-term sustainable development. The program is designed to help harness the vast energy and interest of many health professionals to engage in global health and to align it with prescriptive programs in partnership and collaboration with the countries where we work.  We believe that there is a new window of opportunity for the GHSC to become a U.S government program and to help change how we engage in diplomacy and development.  The GHSC can help bolster how the United States engages the world, invests in its global health initiatives, and can help strengthen health capacity in partner countries.

We have been working with Paul Farmer and other global health leaders to lay the groundwork for Congressional legislation and are now reaching out to student and youth groups for support and endorsement of this very worthy and important cause.  Please see our website for further information about the history and specifics of the program - and also to sign our petition! - http://www.globalhealthservicecorps.org/index.php/petition. 

We are incredibly excited for potential of this program to have a meaningful impact on health and development around the world and look forward to your support.  Please disseminate our website and petition to your members. 

Thank you,
Sara Auld  and Vanessa Kerry

Poverty Simulation

This year students enrolled in Dr. Nollen's Social and Behavioral Aspects of Health course (PRVM 818) will be participating in a poverty simulation.  A flier describing the experience is attached but, in brief, the experience is designed to help participants begin to understand what it might be like to live in a typical low-income family trying to survive from month to month. We are opening the opportunity up on a first-come, first-serve basis. The simulation will take place in the School of Nursing Atrium on Tuesday, March 8 from 1pm-4pm.  If you are not enrolled in PRVM 818 with Dr. Nollen this semester but would like to participate, please email Dr. Megha Ramaswamy at mramaswamy@kumc.edu.  We are excited about this opportunity and hope you can participate.

Wow, time is flying by!

We apologize for not keeping up to date with the blog.  We have been so busy we forgot to include this as a place to post updates!  In December we had an end of semester happy hour at the Jaywalker and January we held a back to school happy at Howl at the Moon!  Last semester was filled with a lot of projects and community service work!  A couple of our biggest endeavors were a successful donation drive to help a local community health fair, as well as finding volunteers for the event.  Many volunteers also worked with the Rosedale community promoting health at their farmer's market.  We have a lot planned again this semester so please look at for details via email, Facebook, and (hopefully) here!

Upcoming MPHSO Meeting

Hi everyone! Yes, it's that time again - MPHSO is having a meeting! This time the meeting will be at Jazz on Tuesday, November 16, 2010, at 6:30 PM. 6:30 PM is also known as "after data management class"! We'll be having appetizers, discussing our progress this semester, and our plans for the remainder of the semester and beyond. So be there or be square. (Yes, I'm a dork.)


Karisa

Volunteer December 11!!

Hey MPH students,

Are you looking for a volunteer opportunity that will also help out a fellow MPH student? I'm holding a health fair in a couple of weeks - Saturday,  December 11, 2010, from 11AM-2PM at Cross-Lines, a non-profit here in KCK - and I would LOVE to have volunteers help out with entertaining kids, greeting patrons and vendors, directing visitors, and post-fair cleanup. Spanish speakers are highly welcomed! I'll be eternally grateful to *anyone* who wants to come out and do some good for the community. Send me a message on FB - or at kdeculus@kumc.edu if you're interested.

-Karisa


**eta: the fair has been moved to December 11. same time, same place, different date.**

LAST WEEK FOR DONATIONS!!!

We will be picking up the donation boxes and sorting them during our meeting this Thursday. Feel free to join us! Orr Major cafeteria, 6:30pm! Thank you for helping us!!!

Guest Author

Smoking Hot News – Lose Your Manhood if You Smoke


The problem with some bad habits is that they are detrimental not just to those who’re addicted to them, but to the people around them too. While some cause active repercussions (like when someone who drinks and drives kills someone on the road or when an inebriated man abuses his wife physically), others like smoking are passive and tend to be harmful to bystanders and people in the nearby vicinity even if the smoker is just keeping to himself. This is why smoking becomes a social ill, one that plagues not just those who smoke, but the society they live in and the neighborhoods they frequent as well.

If you stop to think about it, you’re buying death and illness when you smoke – not only do you have to shell out money to buy your cigarettes, by smoking them and incurring momentary pleasure and satisfaction, you’re assured of a one-way ticket to hell, be it an early death or a lifetime of ill health and disease. It’s no secret that smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer; and besides this, it is responsible for conditions like high blood pressure, constriction of arteries that cause your heart and blood vessels to strain, heard disease and stroke, and emphysema (which causes the slow rotting of your lungs and brings on bronchitis and lung failure).

Besides this, it slows down your blood circulation, coats your lungs with tar, deprives your body of oxygen and causes your body to work harder because of its carbon monoxide content and blocks your blood vessels with fat deposits. It is especially harmful for pregnant and lactating mothers because the baby is affected too by the negative effects of nicotine and tar.

But what is most shocking of all and what would make most people instantly shrink back in horror is the fact that cigarettes cause impotence in men and infertility in women. Research has proved that male smokers with high blood pressure are 26 times more likely to suffer from impotence in the prime of their youth. Also, even smokers who have quit are 11 times more likely to be impotent than non smokers.

The best way to stop smoking as a social ill is to spread the news and promote the fact that smoking leads to impotence and that you cannot have sex or sustain your erection for long if you continue to go through packs of cigarettes – most men find that the shock value of losing their manhood alone is enough to spur them on to quit. And if they’re not inclined to stop, perhaps their wives and girlfriends will have more success at getting them to kick the habit.

There are people who refuse to accept the fact that smoking causes erectile dysfunction, but the very fact that cigarettes cause constriction of blood vessels and limit your blood circulation is proof enough that when you smoke, there is lower blood flow to your penis; and this automatically proves that you’re going to have trouble holding an erection and performing in bed.

So if you’re hesitating and deliberating quitting, now is the right time to do so, before you lose both your health and your manhood.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Paul Hench, he writes on the topic of mph degrees. http://www.mastersinpublichealth.net/
He welcomes your comments at his email id: paul.23hench@gmail.com.