“Doing” Public Health in Mississippi
Sasha Tretyakova
1st Year MPH Student- Epidemiology
Taking 615 allowed me to actually “do” public health. Although I’ve done smaller projects before in Ann Arbor, this was the first time that I actually worked directly with a community on a project that had tangible outcomes –– specifically, the Food is Medicine program in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. While I’d like to say I was prepared for the experience from my classes, I really don’t think that was the case. There’s such a stark difference between what you learn in the classroom and what you actually do in person. In class, we learned what focus groups are and where they can be utilized in research. In Mississippi, we conducted focus groups and learned everything that we didn’t cover in class. Things like how to actually communicate with the members of your target community. It is a skill in itself to help people feel at ease around you as an academic interviewer –– to be charming, ask non-script questions (like how are you), use local jargon (yes ma’am!), and ensure sure a conversation flows naturally.
In our program orientation, we talked a lot about personal identity and how that may impact a focus group –– differences in race, educational status, SES, etc. I reflected that I am a high SES, college-educated, young white woman who might have a focus group with someone who is totally opposite in these categories –– a low SES, middle-school educated, elderly black man, for example. We talked at length about how these differences might impact how participants of a focus group feel and their answers. But at the end of the day, the most baseline thing to remember is that every participant is simply a person, not a real-life statistic to be “helped”. Conducting real-life focus groups was certainly one way that I grew professionally. Another skill, both professional and personal, that I was able to grow was teamwork. On the fourth night of our trip, we had a group meeting to pull our final presentation together. We were supposed to have a complete product by 9:30, but there we were at 10:47 pm discussing semantics, the appropriateness of using clipart, and whether or not it is good practice to admit when your results are statistically insignificant (it is). In a situation where people were yelling over each other and patience was wearing thin, we learned about some very valuable tenets of teamwork. Take turns speaking (even though it seems childish, raising hands works really well!), treat every person with respect (use their name and allow them to finish speaking), and separate the idea from the person (he is not stupid; his idea is stupid). Although these nuggets seem obvious, they become difficult to implement when you and your teammates are running on 5 hours of sleep and have very specific and different visions for the final project.
I am happy to report that all turned out well and we completed our presentation! I have certainly grown both professionally and personally in Mississippi and am looking forward to applying the lessons I learned tao future public health projects.