Posts published in August, 2017
Health resources for families in need
By Miguel Ceniceros, ’19 (Human Biology)
As a woman got her blood pressure checked, her young daughter ran up to my table and smiled wide as she pointed at one of the coveted balloons we were handing out at South Bay Family Healthcare’s National Health Center Week Health Fair. I handed her one, and she ran to the next table to learn about the importance of brushing her teeth.
In the summer of 2016, I had the opportunity to volunteer with South Bay Family Health Center, engaging with community members and health providers. I learned about inequities in women’s and children’s health, and the efforts of health providers to bridge these gaps.
To say that South Bay Family Healthcare is just a health center is an egregious understatement. This organization, with its wonderful and dedicated staff, provides relief and resources to hundreds of families who would otherwise have little or no healthcare available to them. The caring staff taught about the value of teamwork, and the importance of advocating for those who need and ask for help. I am honored to have worked with an organization dedicated to the health and well being of the community.
Research + community engagement
By Christopher Rodriguez, ’17 (Human Biology)
Pale wisps of steam flutter and twirl above the cup of tea on the table before me. The living room is narrow; the floor is rough, faded; the chairs feel like boulders. Sunlight scarcely saunters in through the window.
Beside me, Lilia Perez speaks in a soft cadence. She is the director of a branch of Samusocial Peru located in the secluded district of Ate-Vitarte, and my community partner. Lilia comforts a woman who holds back tears. She reminds me that most of these women are not normally granted the opportunity to disclose their abuse experiences.
This past summer, my goal was to better understand the resources that survivors of violence against women in suburban Peru find most useful to facilitating their social reintegration. The Public Service Scholars Program at Stanford has offered me the avenue through which to intersect scholarly research with community engagement.
Interviewing survivors of interpersonal violence was not easy. When they were not hesitant to share their stories, they delivered years of silent suffering in a flurry of crackling words. But as painful as it was to hear these stories, I do not forget how meaningful this research is.
The Public Service Scholars Program is a year-round program that supports students’ efforts to write a thesis that is academically rigorous as well as informed by and useful to specific community organizations or public interest constituencies.
Engaging new audiences
By Patricia Flores, ’18 (Communication)
After my first day at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, I felt like I was in way over my head. I wasn’t a STEM major, so how was I expected to write and create content about highly technical science information? Additionally, how could I approach my work through an angle that made me feel like I was making some sort of impact?
With the help of mentors and by not being afraid to ask questions—even ones that seem extremely basic—I discovered that I could find the way in which my work for NASA Goddard felt meaningful to me. Specifically, the projects I worked on to increase NASA’s Spanish outreach were very fulfilling. I had the opportunity to interview three amazing and incredibly intelligent Latinx engineers about their research and write feature-length profiles on each of them in Spanish. I translated outreach material, did voice-overs for mission videos, and crafted some tweets for our @NASA_es Twitter page. At the end of the summer, it was so rewarding to know that my work distilled very technical information on extremely relevant science topics to an audience that normally doesn’t engage in these spaces.
