YES! I was excused from school for TWO days to attend this conference! (haha) I woke up SUPER EARLY this morning being really excited for today's event! =)
On the drive to Long Beach in the Metro (the ride was a cool experience), Vanessa informed me about the Conference. She explained that it's a conference where US grantees and community partners come together and confront the health related issues in ethnic communities and come up with procedures that will make it better.
Well we got to the Hyatt hotel and we settled into the dining room for the program to start. In between all of that I met Falelima who was supposed to be my intern partner for this program, but things did not go the way we planned. It was great meeting her though. I found out that she also works with Diana Tisnado at UCLA and helps a lot with Diana's own research. That was cool because she's actually getting hands on a real research project. SHOUT OUT TO LIMA! (haha)
What really woke me up in the morning session (haha) was the Chamorro dancing. (Not that I was really sleepin. Haha.) I never seen a Chamorro dance before and it was exciting getting to see their cultural dance. The girls were BOMB! I loved it when they sang during their dance because it made their dance very original and authentic. Joey and Jay played in the band and I loved how they played also! Joey! You sang beautifully! =).
Afterwards, we had speakers like Don Knabe (LA County Supervisor), Wayne Giles (Director of Division of Adult & Community Health) and Camara Jones (Research Director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity in the same division as Mr.Giles).
My favorite speech was Dr.Jones speech about the red and pink rose. It's a LONG story, but the main point of the story was that the red rose flourished better than the pink rose because it had a better source of soil. Well the moral (to my understanding) was that people can live a better life if they have better resources. It doesn't mean that any one is better than anyone else, it's just because they had better resources and grew off of that. That's what this conference is partially about, creating better health care access to people so they can have better resources and maybe have better health conditions.
We had lunch and BOY was that food something. (haha) I should've known it was going to be healthy. (haha) Obviously! I'm in a health program! (haha) All in all, it was good food and even better because it was healthy.
The sessions were GREAT! I learned a lot about hepatitis and how you can be infected with HIV, but not know that you are co-infected with hepatitis. It's really serious when the presenters were breaking it down and giving all the info of people who tested and knew little about it. That keeps me curious about seeing how aware my people are of Hepatitis B and C.
My highlight of today's conference was the impacts of racism on health. I never knew racism had anything to do with health. I understood it when Dr.Jones brought up "Reactions to Race" because people judge you on the way you look. I go through that EVERYDAY. People underestimate me or judge me from what I wear or how I look like. (That doesn't phase me though. haha)
I spent time with the other Pipeline Interns and it was a great experience. I got to know more about them and what they were doing within their research. Lena and 'Ono told me about their research on health access/health insurance. I met the scholarship recipients George Mataele and Anna Tapu. They were cool and very open about what they were pursuing in college.
I look up to all these people, literally too (haha). That's because they are all older and are doing big things in education to show that our people are coming up in society. =).
Well after P.F. Chang's I was the happiest girl alive. (haha) I had the honor to meet all these people and have dinner with them. With all this, I truly feel blessed. =)
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