Kale and Rabies

This year is certainly starting off busy! There's always something happening on campus or in town. This weekend, I went to the New Pioneer co-op's Kale Fest, had a blast at the Old Capital City Roller Girls' Roll Out Party (a fun event hosted by the local roller derby team), and played the board game Arkham Horror for the first time with some friends (the verdict: fun but very time-consuming!).

The only time I really eat kale is when it's in kale chip form (a delicious and easy snack recipe my coworker introduced me to), but kale fest was quite interesting and featured some unexpected recipes (like "kale kupkakes," below). Dr. Terry Wahls came and spoke about how she reversed many of the effects of her multiple sclerosis by changing her diet to include more mitochondria-supportive foods. I'm usually fairly skeptical of first-hand accounts like this, but her story was fascinating and had an important take-home message: healthy food can have a powerfully positive affect on your life. Many people in public health are trying to come up with ways to not only increase knowledge about the benefits of healthy foods and how to prepare them, but also increase access and affordability. There are a number of barriers to getting healthy foods, including cost or living in a food desert.

Other eventful things this week include that the first MPH Professional Development seminar happened. Maj. Loren Adams spoke about his practicum in Afghanistan, which involved setting up a rabies prevention program. He worked with local veterinarians to vaccinate 1,500 dogs against rabies and educated children about how to prevent been bitten by dogs. His presentation was incredibly interesting and he talked about how he hoped it would keep going now that he's gone and that ideally a neutering component would be added (although it sounds like much of Afghanistan lacks a lot of the infrastructure to put that aspect into place right now). His talk was definitely great way to kick off the MPH seminars.

Anyway, here are some articles I read in the past week that you might find interesting:

Uninsured Largely Unaware of Benefits Coming from Overhaul - Julie Rovner
I would love to see what kind of campaign some health communication experts would come up with to help remedy this.

Vaccine Cleared Again as Autism Culprit - Gardiner Harris
Not surprising, but still good to be reminded that vaccines have no link to autism.
On a related note, This American Life had a great (and by great, I mean mostly horribly depressing) story on the harms of not vaccinating about three years ago called Ruining It for the Rest of Us. (Full disclaimer: I'm absolutely obsessed with This American Life.)

Size Advocacy: An Inclusive Vision of Justice - Leah Krandel
Leah went to Grinnell with me. I'm very interested in fat discrimination and I thought her article was thought-provoking.

If you're in school, I hope you also had a good first week of classes!