All posts by wendywelch

Covid Conspiracies

GMEC Publication POINTS OUT Tuskegee LEgacy

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Ashley Marshall, a CEO of the YWCA non-profit in Lynchburg, is a contributing author to COVID Conspiracies, edited by GMEC’s CEO Wendy Welch.

Marshall discussed the legacy of true conspiracies such as the Tuskegee Project on Black community responses to COVID-19 vaccine trials, in a podcast for the Virginia Rural Health Association.

The National Rural Health Association expressed appreciation for the insights via their newsletter:

COVID conspiracies and African American communities The latest Rural Health Voice podcast hosted by NRHA member Beth O’Connor of the Virginia Rural Health Association focuses on COVID-19 conspiracies in African American communities. Ashley Reynolds Marshall of YWCA of Central Virginia, who coauthored a forthcoming book about COVID-19 conspiracy theories, discusses how mistrust of public health initiatives is sometimes well earned, particularly among minority populations. “It’s actually very serious when people stop to think about how many of these conspiratorial thoughts are actually rooted in historical facts and historical events for communities of color,” Marshall says. NRHA is currently seeking session proposals and original research for presentation at the association’s Health Equity Conference, which is scheduled for May 4 in New Orleans.
public health, Southwest Virginia, Uncategorized

PLEASE SEND MASKS!

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CHECK YOUR BARNS! (and garages, workrooms, etc.) Have you got boxes of gloves (latex, plastic, or vinyl), N95 face masks? Those are badly needed and GMEC can make sure they get redistributed. Have you got surgical masks, face shields, plastic dust masks, safety goggles? Those are needed as well.

If you are hand-sewing masks, we also have locations that need those. They are not front-line COVID but are VERY useful for other parts of care. If you would like to sew masks, we can send you patterns.

THANKS and PLEASE check your basements et al. We’ve sent several N95s to small clinics because of kind people willing to share what they have. EVERY donation will help keep our rural communities safe.

Contact director@swvagmec.com so we can tell you where to mail, or collect. Thanks!

cultural competency, hospitals, medical education, public health, research, residency rotation opportunities, rural health issues, Uncategorized

If You Like to Write…

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Request for Proposals –

The Graduate Medical Education Consortium of Southwest Virginia has proposed a collection of essays to McFarland Press. Titled Healing Ourselves, with a tentative subtitle along the lines of Physicians Respond to the Opioid Crisis in Appalachia or Healthcare Providers tell their stories of Appalachia’s Opioid Epidemic.

We are looking for a wide range of approaches to the topic, with the intent that these individual narratives should tell together the larger story of what is happening in the region. If you are actively involved in treating pain and/or addiction in Appalachia, we would like to hear from you. We are particularly interested in stories that focus on reflective awareness or solution-driven activity. If you’ve been part of a working solution, tell us about it.

We understand that many substances continue to play a role in Appalachia’s addiction story; your proposed story should not focus on other substances to the exclusion of opioids.

Please send a one-page write-up of your approach to telling a piece of the big story on opioids/substance abuse in Appalachia. Do not put your name on this page but please include why you are well-positioned to write this unique piece.

On a separate page, please give us your name, profession and titles, geographic location, work location (are you based out of a hospital, private or free clinic, college or university, etc.) and why you are interested in writing for this collection. Please include e-mail and phone contact details.

McFarland is primarily an academic publisher; we are looking for writers who can address their topic with narrative skill and present data or complicated terms in language appealing to readers overloaded with faceless statistics. Tell us a story. Tell us YOUR story.

We look forward to reading your proposals on Monday, Sept. 9. Email them to director@swvagmec.com