By Susannah Anderson, MPH
In many ways it was much easier to navigate APHA this year. I didn’t have to look up directions. I didn’t have to figure out how to eat for 4 days from a tiny hotel refrigerator. After having attended several previous meetings of the APHA, I finally know how to better navigate this enormous event and figure out how to balance all of the events that I’m interested in. I know that the opening ceremony will run late. If a session is crowded/difficult to hear/uninteresting, I know that it’s usually worth moving on to something else – but not to bounce around too much.
For me, the most successful part of APHA was a networking event organized by TSSHaG (the Tulane Society for Sexuality, Health, and Gender) with the APHA LGBT Caucus at the Rusty Nail. After much planning, several trips to the Uptown campus, and many, many forms, we held a successful event that brought together Tulane students with Caucus members from around the country.
APHA worked to include references to New Orleans’ history and culture into its events. At a session organized by the Spirit of 1848, the activism-focused event ended with a visit by Lagniappe Brass Band. Charlotte Parent, the New Orleans health director, spoke at the opening ceremony and at a session on violence prevention. Also in the opening ceremony, Executive Director Dr. Georges Benjamin acknowledged APHA’s commitment to avoiding cities that allowed smoking indoors – but that an exception was made for New Orleans. I was reminded of this decision as I looked without success for a bike rack near conference venues, and ended up locking it to a bench in the hotel’s “designated smoking area.” I’d like to think that a conference as large as APHA could incite positive change on a small scale, such as encouraging cycling or requesting that the hotel put up bike racks.
Overall, I managed to learn a lot and still get most of my work done during APHA. I attended events on reproductive health, sexual consent laws, violence, and public health activism. It’s always encouraging to hear perspectives from other parts of the country with different political climates.
Susannah Anderson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, studying adolescents, education, and trajectories of risk. Her work focuses on social justice and public health.
