My work at ASIAC (formerly AIDS Services in Asian Communities), an HIV service organization in South Philly that primarily works with immigrants, has pushed me to recalibrate how I understand peace, conflict, and social justice at very fundamental levels.  During the first year I was at ASIAC, I helped to work on a Needs Assesment of the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) immigrant community in Philadelphia. As I wrote in a blog entry, last December, challenges facing HIV-positive Asian and Pacific Islanders range from their limited proficiency in English, to lack of access to insurance, to poor nutrition, to harsh immigration policies.  These obstacles have been especially apparent during the work I do with clients, particularly Indonesians who I can talk with directly in Indonesian.  It is jarring to realize that many people sought asylum in the US to escape violence in their home countries, only to become sick with a life-long illness here and lack the proper resources to treat it.

I heard Carol Rogers speak at Bryn Mawr while she was a Hepburn fellow in 2009.  I was incredibly impressed with her work at the Department of Health, and am even more awed that – in a very small way – I am now helping to continue the work she began.  Among many other things, Rogers helped to initiate a program that distributed free female condoms, which women can insert themselves up to five hours before having sex, to residents of Philadelphia.  The program proved very effective – women were more likely to use barrier protection during sex, felt more in control, and felt better about their health. The female condom “was developed as an alternative to male condoms, in recognition that the decision to use male condoms was highly dependent on the willingness of the male sexual partner …The female condom has been widely labeled the only "female initiated" method of preventing STIs.”

When I first traveled to Indonesia, I was very excited to find out that a large UNAIDS conference would be overlapping with my trip, and that my professors had connections who could help sneak me in.  The conference itself was wonderful, in the sense that I was able to speak to and meet many scholars who were doing work in the field I hope to eventually go into.  It was thrilling to hear about the preeminent HIV research being done around the world at the same time I was taking my first stab at doing independent research.  But the experience also disillusioned me, and made me rethink my admiration for big international organizations whose mission it is to fight health inequality.  The conference was held at the Bali Convention Center, an upscale conference building adjacent to some of Bali’s must luxurious hotels, which was built after local residents were “bought” out of their homes.  The beaches in front of the complex have become de facto “whites only,” as locals are strongly discouraged from spending time there.  Moreover, the large amount of water used by the convention center and surrounding hotels (and their pools and fountains) where conference attendees stayed means that local populations are forced to ration water, and often only have running water for a few hours a day.

Peggy Macintosh, who came to Bryn Mawr during my freshman year, was one of my favorite speakers I’ve heard throughout my time here. Four years later, however, having dissected her writing in a number of my classes, what remains distinct about the workshops she led was not the content of what we talked about, but the way in which we did the talking.  Macintosh’s workshops were one of the first times I saw students and teachers interacting on an equal level – equally vulnerable and equally worthy of speaking – and it upended some of my assumptions about what school should be and how professors should behave.  I would later go on to attend Posse retreats and be in classrooms with some pretty radical educators, but these workshops were the first time I saw teachers and students discussing the complexities of their lived experiences.  I saw students comforting professors who were crying and professors in awe of what students had to say.  I now think that that schools should be egalitarian environments where learning is mutual, and Macintosh was the first to introduce to that model.

Throughout high school and my freshman and sophomore year at Bryn Mawr I volunteered at the local Ronald McDonald House, an organization that provides a place to stay for families with children who need to travel for their healthcare.  I loved interacting with the families I got to know from around the world, and always looked forward to spending time with them.  But I also began to think critically about the health inequities I saw amongst the people I met, including lack of access to insurance, limited health resources in rural areas, and “diseases of poverty,” such as lead poisoning.  Without knowing it, these observations were my first foray into public health research, and made me hungry for more.  I have since jumped into the field from both research and service angles, and understand many of these inequalities from a more nuanced perspective, but this initial awareness still dictates how I think about health and healthcare.