Reorienting

I've noticed that lately, my posts have tended more towards the "doula" (or lactation consultant) in "Public Health Doula". I blame it on two things: 1) My classes this semester aren't giving me a lot of excuses to go play in my literature of choice and 2) This semester, while not having reached the total fever-pitch of insanity I dreaded, has been pretty busy and my veg-out time has generally not been donated to PubMed. It's a lot easier to toss out my thoughts on someone else's post, tell a story, or pass along a link!

But I am hoping to circle back around and look at more issues from the public health/research standpoint - I have a post cooking on maternal mortality statistics in the U.S. and a couple on infant mortality. And I have some exciting plans for next semester that will hopefully tie in: I will be the "third facilitator" attending CenteringPregnancy sessions at a local health center. They're facilitated by an awesome midwife, and for my master's project I'll be working with her to develop and pilot her idea for a CenteringPregnancy module on health disparities, focused on taking ownership of knowledge about health disparities and on exploring solutions.

(Sometimes I just want to pinch myself and think "Am I really getting to do all this? How did I get so lucky?" Then I remember that not everyone would consider my copious opportunities to interact with breastmilk and amniotic fluid, and to have conversations about vaginas, birth control, and infant feeding, "lucky".)

Anyway, if anyone has requests for research topics/public health perspectives/other posts let me know, but if you missed them they will be coming back!