RWL #187 - we’re still here in Quarantineland
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire - Forward Operating Base Last Homely House (FOB LHH)! Sadly I’m still writing to you from Quarantineland. But not being able to travel this summer has left me a lot of time to work on my research projects. I’ve made a lot of progress, and hope to be getting a new paper out in a couple of weeks. The paper is a look at the experiences of Medical Service Corps officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force who have retired (i.e., served 20-40 years in the military) and transitioned to civilian leadership roles in civilian healthcare. It’s a qualitative study, so I have all these wonderful quotes that I am working to weave together right now, but I think one of my favorites is this one of a retiring Army officer telling his wife he’s ready to go (cue Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road):
“I said I think I'm ready to give it a whirl and try my hand at the civilian world and so we did... She's said, ‘well if you're telling me you're done, then let's do it. If you want to take the leap of faith, I'll hold your hand and I'll leap with you.’”
I really love the work I get to do. I love teaching and I love being a qualitative researcher. I’m working with a friend to help her start her first qualitative study and I was told her yesterday, sometimes it’s a grind, but so often I walk out of an interview with my recorder in my briefcase and I want to just clutch it to my chest because I know I have gold in there. It’s really a privilege to have people tell me stories like this. I can’t really imagine wanting to do anything else.
“With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair?
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere”
Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road
Stay well and stay safe.
(picture above is a lobster trap buoy by Goat Island in Great Bay)
Read
What: The Conversation, Your childhood neighbourhood can influence how your genes work – new study
Why: The idea that genes can be switched on and off based on environmental stimuli is fascinating. This short article does a nice job explaining how living in deprived environments can have long term negative effects on children as they grow up. This provides an interesting biological underpinning for the social determinants of health.
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What: The New Yorker, My Stupid Quarantine Body
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-stupid-quarantine-body
Why: More about social determinants of health, but in a humorous form. Hard to believe this one is from late May. That was almost three months ago. The time ticks by and we are still here in Quarantineland, wherever that might be for you. It’s important to keep up your spirits.
Watch
What: The Phoenix Chamber Choir, The Longest Time - A Social Distancing Project (3 min)
https://enchantmentathamilton.org/20200601ForTheLongestTime.mp4
Why: I’m totally a sucker for acapella. This is a COVID-inspired take on Billy Joel’s The Longest Time. It’s very cute. Actually, I have to admit as I get to the end of the song, I always get emotional. Something about the lyrics, the Zoom windows, and the familiarity of the music all combine to really hit me right in the feels - it’s a sweet spot between despair and hope, together apart.
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What: Fahad Saeed, What dying patients taught this doctor about the fear of death
Why: In this TED talk, nephrologist and palliative care physician Dr. Fahad Saeed talks about his experience with different patients who are facing the end of life. It’s an uplifting talk, believe it or not.
Listen
What: Freakonomics Radio, How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race-rebroadcast/
Why: I have done some research on food deserts and have an ongoing interest in the political economy of the food supply. Access to affordable food is one of the most remarkable changes to the economy and well being of humanity in the last ten thousand years or so. Even as late as the 50’s households were spending close to half of their income on food - now that number is more like 5%. While we have a serious problem with obesity, in part arising from the very policies discussed in this podcast, we don’t have health issues arising from undernutrition. For example, undernourished populations were much more vulnerable to disease and infection. At the same time, the policy environment is always complex. There are always second and third order effects downstream from what seems like a good idea at the time.
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What: The President’s Inbox, China’s Uighurs, With Gulchehra Hoja
https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/chinas-uighurs-gulchehra-hoja
Why: This episode of the President’s Inbox is worth reading for two reasons. First, the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in a horrifying effort to destroy the Uighur culture. I won’t call it genocide because I don’t think they are actively murdering the Uighurs, but the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a systematic effort to make the Uighurs into servants of the Han Chinese. The Communist government’s policy makes Jim Crow look like patty cake, but of course the Chinese Communist Party wants to draw false equivalences to our flawed but improving race relations to their active efforts to crush people who don’t look Han. It’s some of the most profound racism in the world right now and we as a country are largely ignoring it. Second, and importantly is the negative example of how the Chinese Communist Party is abusing its access to social media to surveil and hurt the Uighurs or anyone who does not bend the knee to them. In the podcast, Gulchehra Hoja, a Uighur journalist for Radio Free Asia, talks about how she had reconnected with her family who were still in the Xinjiang region using the Chinese app WeChat. After a few weeks of contact, everyone inside the Xinjiang region who was connected to her through the app were suddenly arrested in one night. The Chinese Communist Party had used WeChat to reveal who had connections to the outside world and punish them. While this just continues to show the horrors of the autocratic Chinese Communist Party, it should also be a lesson for us here in the US, and particularly those of us thinking about electronic medical records. Privacy is important, and I would say a fundamental human right. It should be considered part of liberty when we think of the Lockean expression of the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. The Chinese Communist Party demonstrates why.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)