Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
March 29, 2024

MEDTalks panelists address health in Baltimore

By PETER JI | April 13, 2017

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Courtesy of Peter Ji Students gathered in Charles Commons for the first annual MEDTalks.

The first annual MEDTalks conference invited a group of eight professionals, with backgrounds in medicine, research and community health, to discuss how their studies could be applied.

The Hopkins chapter of United Against Inequities in Disease (UAID) and MEDLIFE co-hosted the event, which took place in Charles Commons on Monday, April 10. 

The students had a series of roundtable discussions with the panelists and asked them questions about what they learned while practicing medicine during their careers. About 40 undergraduate students attended, rotating between the discussion tables.

Dr. Peter Agre, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of aquaporins, presented the keynote speech. He addressed the differences between medical schools today and in the 1970s, when he was a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Agre noted that within his graduating class, he was one of the few students admitted from the U.S. North Central region. He said that today, the School of Medicine continues to add geographic, ethnic and gender diversity to its class.

“I found the people in the [research] lab extremely colorful,” Agre said. “Some people have this idea that scientists all are very stern and have messy haircuts and pocket protectors. In my lab, there was a person from Hawaii and a Spanish anarchist.” 

He believes that his research career also made him more appreciative of the diversity that he had lacked in his home state of Minnesota.

“Until I came to Hopkins, I knew very few African Americans,” he said. “In my graduating class, there were only two or three African Americans. Now going back to Minnesota in an all-white community doesn’t sound very interesting.”

In one roundtable discussion, Hopkins Oncology Professor David Ettinger and Director of Public Health Campaigns at the Baltimore City Health Department John Comer told students to consider the implications of serving people who face inequity in care, especially in Baltimore.

“I’d encourage you to learn as much as you can about Baltimore,” Ettinger said. “With the amount of disparity in Baltimore, you should be interested in working on behalf of local community. It has rural areas, poor areas and many types of areas.”

Comer believes health professionals and volunteers who enter these communities need to work on earning the people’s respect. He told students to go beyond providing medical services and to get to know the people who live there.

“Giving people the opportunity to tell their story, that’s a big part of building trust,” Comer said. “A lot of people have been sold up the river in the past, so you have to demonstrate real commitment. Do a check up, a phone call when you don’t usually give checkups or phone calls.”

According to Agre, although technology facilitates the practice of medicine, it cannot replace the personal connections needed in healthcare.

“Technology is a tool that provides information. Practicing medicine is a lot more complicated than that. If you’re a pilot, you’ll have an altimeter, but putting it together is complex. Many of you have become medical doctors. In talking to your patients, you’ll learn important information,” he said.

Alica Diehl, who graduated from Hopkins in 2007, took the realities of healthcare inequity in Baltimore to heart. After graduating, she worked for a national nonprofit called HealthCorps, which hosts health workshops at schools across the country.

Now, Diehl works at the Institute for Integrative Health in Baltimore. She runs a cooking workshop called “Five Times a Feast” that partners with schools, community sites and churches to provide information on nutrition and affordable, healthy eating.

“I arrive with my cooking supplies and I get ingredients delivered and we talk about health... we break up into small groups and cook together,” she said. “Each family unit that comes makes six servings of whatever that recipe is. Building a community of support around healthy eating really makes it something ongoing that happens for people.”

Recently, Diehl has started training people to become “cooking coaches” to teach others about healthy behaviors. She stressed that, for her, medicine is not necessarily pharmaceuticals or surgery.

“To me, food is medicine, exercise is medicine, stress reduction and love, laughter are medicine and way we approach that is through education,” she said. “We go out in communities and give them the education that we have... activating these public spaces around healthy behaviors.”

Valeria Fuentes, a senior at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), also runs a healthy food program. Having majored in architectural design, she hopes to integrate social work with design. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in social design at Hopkins.

Fuentes designed a mobile kitchen as part of her volunteer program and it inspired her to incorporate design into aspects of her social work.

“A kitchen is a central part of the home and I noticed that when there’s no kitchen, people don’t sit down to eat together anymore,” she said. “How can I create a mobile kitchen where I can carry my kitchen anywhere? I think anybody can be a chef. The kids I work with, they are inspired to work, create and eat healthy.”

Junior Anjie Ge especially liked that the event facilitated personal discussion between the participants and panelists. For her, it set the MEDTalks conference apart from other events.

“This gave me the opportunity to ask them questions,” she said. “I was with Valerie Fuentes and it was interesting [learning] how food is an integral part of being healthy.”


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