Soup Kitchen Insights

I wanted to highlight another pretty great organization I volunteered with in Saginaw, the East Side Soup Kitchen.  This is a charitable organization that has been around for almost 35 years.  We had originally learned about ESSK through our Leadership in Medicine for the Underserved (LMU) program, but unfortunately I hadn't had a chance to work closely with them until after graduation because they operate a full-service kitchen Monday-Friday (a great service to its attendees, but not an ideal schedule for a busy med student!).  In addition to the daily lunches, ESSK also provides bag lunches to latch-key programs and hosts periodic optical & medical volunteers.

Food for the Soul

Finding myself with some extra free time during my downtime between med school and residency, I was looking for a volunteer opportunity that would leave me feeling soul-filled.  I remembered a pretty awesome organization that does amazing work in the Saginaw community, First Ward Community Center.  First Ward is a support/advocacy network, providing services for children, adults, and seniors.  

The east side of the Saginaw River, where First Ward is located, is generally the part of the city most fraught with poverty, crime, abandoned homes, etc.  For some people, it's a no-man's-land, a forgotten sector where few outsiders dare to traverse.  If only they knew the richness of community and the incredible potential hidden within...

Brave Advocacy

When I was at a meeting of some of the awesome leadership of MedFLAG (Medical Friends of Lesbians & Gays, the queer/ally group of my med school), I remember one person brought up her frustration with always having to carry the burden of being the "spokesperson" for her class, the token med student who could explain concepts that were foreign to her colleagues, like how to avoid heteronormative speak when interviewing patients, how to be culturally sensitive with LGBT folks, etc.  While it can be rewarding to be an advocate, of sorts, for oppressed individuals and communities, it can also be exhausting to seemingly always have to be the one person who addresses problematic issues - like lobbying for a unisex bathroom that is inclusive for transgender/genderqueer people, or campaigning to bring more diverse faculty members into an ethnically homogeneous academic environment.

Male Sexual/Reproductive Health

I've been meaning to post about an interesting topic that piqued my interest at the Michigan Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP) Scientific Assembly -- men's health.  This talk was given by Dr. Wendy Grube, sexual health guru at Penn School of Nursing.

FUN FACT:
2/3 of female teens get STI/HIV/pregnancy counseling, compared to only 1/3 of their male counterparts.