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On February 27, NYAM’s G.I.R.L.S (Getting into Real Life Science) and Health Professions program held a health education and career seminar on global health, with a spotlight on Ghana, Africa. The G.I.R.L.S. program is designed to increase the participation of historically underrepresented minority women (African-American, Hispanic, and Native American) in careers in the sciences, medicine, health, and allied health professions. The program offers girls, grades 7-9, in New York City public schools a wide range of after-school academic support and enrichment.
Nana Akua Asafu-Agyei, MD, MPH, a board-certified Pediatrician and Hospitalist at New York Presbyterian Children's Hospital at Columbia University Medical Center, who is known as “Dr. A.,” shared her professional journey, which began with her decision at age 11 to become a doctor when she grew up. Raised in Ghana, she came to the U.S. to study at Yale, where she received her BA, MD and MPH. She noted that the Master’s in Public Health helped her “think about health issues on a community and population level” as well as an individual patient level. Her advice to the students was to “stick to your goals, work hard, take risks, find a mentor, and surround yourself with supportive people.”
Dr. Asafu-Agyei also spoke about emerging health issues in Ghana including malaria, malnutrition, pneumonia, and typhoid fever, as well as what needs to be done to prevent child mortality from preventable illness. She urged the students to read more, be aware of what’s going on around the world, ask questions, and “believe that you can make a difference.”
A panel of four Speech and Language Pathology graduate students from Teachers College Columbia University who are involved in the school’s Ghana Program then spoke about the field of speech and language pathology and their experiences in Ghana. The panelists—Valerie Bazile, Danielle Lake, Claudine Petit, and Shemaiah Villani—engaged the G.I.R.L.S. participants in an activity about nonverbal communication. They also shared their experiences working with physicians and surgeons at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana’s capital, Accra, to repair children’s cleft palates, and shared video footage of their work with schoolchildren in Effiduase, Ghana.
Danielle Lake, Claudine Petit, Dr. Nana Akua Asafu-Agyei, Shemaiah Villani, and Valerie Bazile
Posted on March 5, 2012
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Reporters: to arrange interviews with NYAM medical and urban health experts, contact
Andrew J. Martin, Director of Communications
212-822-7285 / amartin@nyam.org
The 2012-2013 Duncan Clark Lecture - The Affordable Care Act: An Insider’s View
Featured Speaker: Sherry Glied, PhD, former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
November 19, 2012 - The NYAM Section on Health Care Delivery welcomes Sherry Glied, PhD, former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who will deliver the 2012-2013 Duncan Clark Lecture on "The Affordable Care Act: An Insider's View."
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The New York Academy of Medicine with support from the New York State Heath Foundation released a new report, Federal Health Care Reform in New York State: A Population Health Perspective.
This report identifies opportunities that build on both the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) and New York’s ongoing efforts toward improving the health of its 19 million residents.
Read press release
Read report
