Title: The Untapped Student Resource
Author:
Section/SPIG: Podiatric Health
Issue Date:
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| (L-R) Wen-yin Choi, Scholl '06, David Deng, Scholl '06, Jacqueline Truong, Scholl '06 |
“What did you say? There’s a podiatric section in the AP what?” This is the usual response I get when I tell other podiatric students about the American Public Health Association. And therein lies the problem – students simply do not know enough about the organization and its many opportunities.
I can only speculate as to why there is an apparent lack of interest in public health in today’s podiatry, but I can certainly testify to the wealth of resources that lay untapped within APHA from a student’s perspective. I felt overwhelmed after attending the Annual Meeting this past November in Washington, D.C., not because of fatigue but because of the volume of information that was pertinent and useful to future podiatric physicians. There were so many workshops, presentations, poster sessions and discussion groups on diabetes, aging, and obesity that I had a hard time trying to pick which ones to attend. With 14,000 attendees at the Meeting, it is no wonder the program book was an inch thick!
Within the first few hours of attending a presentation on diabetes mellitus, I met key figures in the podiatric section of APHA, including the Podiatric Section Chair-Elect Patricia Moore, and Director of Legislative Advocacy for the APMA Faye B. Frankfort. This set the tone for the rest of my time at the Meeting. For each session I attended, there was at least one person I met who augmented my understanding of podiatry’s role in our nation’s public health, and how I could be a part of that role.
For instance, there was Valerie Webb. She is the assistant health officer of public policy, planning, and government relations for the Cook County Department of Public Health. I met her in the exhibition hall while picking up some free pens from the exhibition booths. She was excited to hear that I was a student from Scholl College as she was in the process of trying to recruit more volunteers for a new project targeting foot health in the western suburbs of Cook County. Then I thought, “What better way to integrate public health into podiatry than having podiatric students run a community-based project for foot health?” Later in the conference, I met some people from podiatry who were successful in doing just that. Chih Yen, DPM, is currently a resident who is working with Chet Evans from the Podiatric Medicine & Surgery Graduate program at Barry University. They developed a community based foot health clinic overseen by students, residents, and at least one podiatric physician to address the growing disparities in access to health care for diabetic patients in the area. Their students benefit from the project by learning hands-on about a myriad of foot pathologies - including Madura foot – all the while gaining an appreciation for the need to have podiatrists in public health.
And for those students who are more research-oriented, there are plenty of opportunities and ideas that can be generated just by attending one of these conferences and meeting the multitude of health professionals who invest their time in public health related research. Ami Shah is a project coordinator for the Urban Health Institute at Mount Sinai Health System in Chicago. I met her after her presentation on the discrepancy between national data versus local data on diabetes risk in racially/ethnically diverse communities in Chicago. Her research is vital to understanding how better to concentrate efforts in preventing and treating diabetes among high-risk groups. Unfortunately, her data only covers communities within Cook County. But therein lies the opportunity for students to conduct similar, if somewhat smaller-scale, research in other areas of Illinois. Other ideas that came up at the Meeting were nutrition-oriented research for obese children, research on how to increase access to foot care for the impoverished elderly, morbidity rates regarding foot health in the general population, and health-seeking behaviors of patients when it comes to foot health. The list goes on.
Where do students get the funding for this kind of research? Every year APHA doles out hundreds of research grants to students and other health professionals that conduct research or coordinate projects related to the field of public health. These grants are not restricted to those with an MPH, so ANY student can apply for these grants so long as their project is public health oriented. Local public health departments also have similar types of grants that students can apply for.
APHA is an amazing organization for students to use. Nowhere in the health profession can you find this breadth of networking with numerous health professionals, and the depth of ideas to better serve our communities as podiatric physicians. As a growing health profession, it seems imperative that we step up to the plate as this nation’s leading experts on foot health in a global sense. Students have a distinct advantage in this growth as we have more years ahead of us to shape the nature of how we lead our nation towards a better quality of life. Through the APHA, students can gain access to the resources, the people, and thus the tools to generate the kind of results that we will need in order to establish ourselves as equal partners in our nation’s health. I highly recommend that students try to attend at least one of these annual meetings, and to contact the Podiatric Section of APHA for more opportunities.