Midwest Chapter/MLA &
WHSLA & SWHSL Annual Meeting
I attended the Midwest
Chapter/MLA Annual Meeting in October 2019 with the generous financial support
of a $500 WHSLA stipend award. This was one of the best Midwest Chapter
Meetings I have ever attended because of the timeliness of the program and
poster topics, authoritative and interesting speakers, diversity of exhibitors,
and excellent conference venue.
In this blog post I would
like to focus on two of the presentations I attended.
Keynote Address
The Keynote address given by MK
Czerwiec, RN, MA aka Comic Nurse, was illuminating and moving. She
spoke of how she began drawing as a way to cope with her grief after one of her
AIDs patients died. Since then MK has authored 8 graphic medicine comic
books and is currently working on an anthology of comics about menopause to be
published in Spring 2020 and a graphic medicine memoir about caring for her
mother and aunt.
MK explained that comics are
used because of the effectiveness of the medium as a powerful teaching/learning
tool when there is a high density of information, a high level of importance,
and high stress involved. Storytelling in this way can help us heal, move
past barriers, and bear witness to other’s stories. For example, see Mom’s
Cancer, Marbles,
and My
Degeneration. MK is the co-manager of GraphicMedicine.org,
a site that provides links to author and artist sites, online articles, comic
sites, blogs, comic reviews, podcasts, conference information and much more.
Social Determinants of
Health: From the Patient to the Community and Beyond Panel Presentation
Anne
Getzin, MD, a family physician with Advocate Aurora Health, gave a very
passionate presentation, Health Equity and the Patient Experience, about
her experiences providing prenatal care and delivery of babies via the Aurora
Midtown Health Center near 60th and Capitol in Milwaukee. She
stressed the importance of providing equitable
healthcare at the level of need required. She mentioned the American
Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) The
Everyone Project which “focuses on providing family physicians and their
practice teams with education and resources, advocating for health equity,
promoting workforce diversity, and collaborating with other disciplines and
organizations to advance health equity.”
Dr. Getzin said that her
patients experience bias all of the time in their lives. Her patients
have conditions such as hypoglycemia, hypertension, and lead poisoning.
She is doing a research study on the impact of lead exposure during pregnancy
and advocates for the necessity of testing women for lead poisoning.
She does centering
pregnancy and parenting programs, which are 2-hour doctor visits in a group
setting at a local Family Resource Center. They talk about health
maintenance topics to help decrease the numbers of low birthweight babies and
infant mortality. Often the group meetings result in the women supporting
each other in ways she could never do. For example, a mother provided her
cell phone number to another mother who had difficulty affording baby formula
and told her to call at any time for help rather than considering stealing
formula from a grocery store. The Family Resource Center has a food
pantry; they also screen for food insecurity and provide $20 vouchers for the
Fondy Farmers Market nearby.
Deborah Ruck
Information Resources Librarian
Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries
No comments:
Post a Comment