The Journey Continues...

A picture taken by my son on our Hawaiian vacation before the start of school.


It’s my last semester in the Master’s Program in Public Health at USC and I feel the need to revive my blog. This will serve as my journal and countdown to the end of my experiences in the Global Health Leadership track.

It’s hard to believe that I started the program one year ago. The year has passed very quickly, but not without much sacrifice, challenges and pain. I have learned so much and am so grateful for the learning opportunities that I have had. I know that my learning will not end at the close of the semester. And, that’s really the exciting part. I know that I have so much to learn in my quest to help improve the health of disadvantaged populations around the world – it will be an exciting journey!

Sharing the Wealth

Dr. Shahi, thanks for the quote from Plato…“There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth”, he wrote, “for both are productive of great evil.”

I thought this was a great quote. I reminded me of one of the articles I reviewed in PM 566. The article was entitled “International Efforts to Control Infectious Diseases, 1851 to the Present.” The authors noted the comments of Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs regarding the MDG’s. He commented that if all the wealthy nations devoted 1/10th of one percent of their GNP to support health services for the world’s poor that this would translate to about $25 billion annually. These funds could markedly reduce the world’s disease burden and save about 21,000 lives each day. WOW!

They also closed with a statement that I really liked: “Public health is purchasable. But it is an investment that works best when purchased in advance rather than paid out as each crisis arises.”