By Fiona Ritchey, BA
Being the proud lifelong nerd that I am, I started counting down to APHA from the moment I heard we’d be funded to attend. I’ve spent the five years prior to this program in the world of clinical psychology, and was so excited to be able to get up close and personal with all the fabulous research of the public health world.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed.
The first session I attended was about the legacy of Maternal & Child Health (MCH) in Chicago and nationally. It was in this session that I was exposed to my new academic crush: Dr. Linda Rae Murray. One of three panelists (all women of color), she spoke engagingly of harnessing the wisdom of the old and the energy of the young to revive innovation in MCH and renew our dedication to social justice. She set the bar quite high for engaging presenters throughout the conference.
This conference experience really highlighted the importance of presentation skills for me. Dr Freeman Hrabowski spoke in the style of a Southern Baptist preacher in the opening general session, high volume and enthusiastic, prompting active participation from the audience. The style fit the context well; Dr Hrabowski was the final speaker in a large 2-hour session at lunchtime and the audience was starting to fade. His energy immediately commanded the attention of the room, and his varying cadence and use of humor maintained a high level of attentiveness throughout.
In terms of content, my favorite session was on the social determinants of mental health by Drs. Shim and Compton. Something they said that really resonated with me was to ask questions like a third grader when thinking about disease causality: keep asking why until you hit a wall. Their point was that too often, we mistake an intermediate cause as a fundamental cause and fail to appreciate the structural issues underlying health inequities. The focus on structural causes leads inevitably to advocacy, and I was happy to hear Drs. Shim and Compton urge the audience to maximize their effectiveness by contributing expertise to lawmakers and advocating for mental health.
I was really happy to see a presentation on the economic benefits of preventive mental health initiatives, since I think these data might be key in garnering bipartisan support. Dr. Scott Ashwood from RAND ran a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis on a suicide prevention initiative from California’s Mental Health Services Authority, and found that the state will see a $51 return for every dollar invested in the program. I think this type of analysis is going to be key in building the overall case to fund statewide and nationwide mental health promotion initiatives. Much of the pushback against measures to fund mental health initiatives has to do with up-front cost, but what these data show is that investing in prevention saves a lot of money over time.
I left the conference with more questions than answers, and I definitely count that as a win. Fundamental causes of disease are hard to tackle, and require a high level of creativity and collaboration. One of the challenges of the next generation of public health professionals will be to reframe the messages with which we’re currently advocating to better reach potential partners in different sectors who traditionally have not been thought of as allies. Public Health is a moral and economic win for everyone, and it needs to be marketed that way.
Fiona Ritchey is a first-year MPH student concentrating in Maternal & Child Health and Epidemiology at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She plans to graduate in May of 2017, and pursue a doctorate degree. Her interests include social determinants of mental health, toxic stress and allostatic load, and health inequities.
