Editorial: Women in science: Public Health Education and Promotion 2022

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Editorial: Women in science: Public health education and promotion 2021

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Fearless Friday: Kelsey DeRaffele

SURGE is honored to feature Kelsey DeRaffele ’16 for Fearless Friday! Kelsey is a senior Sociology major. She’s originally from Golden’s Bridge, NY and has spent her time at Gettysburg College getting as involved as she can. Kelsey was the president for the Autism Speaks club for three years. [excerpt

Fearless: Kevin Lugo

This summer, recent graduate Kevin Lugo will bike over 4,000 miles across the country to benefit the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. His choice to bike for seventy days from Baltimore to Seattle makes him fearless! His goal is to raise $7,476 for the organization, and he reached that goal last night (although more donations are always welcome in support of fighting cancer)! Kevin explains that when he studied abroad in Denmark in the fall of 2011, he “fell in love with sustainable transportation, especially cycling.” Not only does his fearless endeavor raise money to fight cancer, but he is also supporting healthy environmental practices. [excerpt

How to Get Rid of Thunder Thighs

I appreciate the insightful and important things your muffin top has to say to me, but my thunder thighs still think they’re fat. I’m overweight (sometimes). On a BMI scale, I fluctuate in and out of the dreaded “overweight” category. While I acknowledge that the BMI scale has its flaws, it was designed to be a quick approximation of weight to height; it is not designed to be a scientific test. Sometimes I tell myself I am super muscular and the scale doesn’t apply to me, but it’s actually not true. [excerpt

Reimagining My Body

I stood there, shoulders slouched, elbows locked, hands glued to the side of the toilet. My body convulsing, I told myself, “this is the last time, just one more time and you’ll get back on track tomorrow.” It wasn’t the last time. I had been forcing myself to purge for months at this point, and each time I hated myself for it. It was something I couldn’t control. It wasn’t out of a need for attention as so commonly thought, but a pure need to be the unreachable level of thin that I thought would make me beautiful. I was thirty pounds underweight and I still hated my body. There is no “good enough” when suffering with this type of illness–every pound you lose just encourages you to continue purging until you are reduced to bone and skin. [excerpt

Workplace Wellness Programs: Are They Part of the Answer to the U.S.’s Growing Healthcare Crisis?

[Excerpt] Of the $2.8 trillion that the United States has spent on healthcare in recent years, the majority of it (75%) is spent treating chronic disease. Chronic disease is “a long-standing condition that can be controlled but not cured… It is the leading cause of death and disability in the U.S., which is 1.7 million lives each year.” To make matters worse, chronic disease indicators in the U.S. have been on the increase recently. And, even though chronic disease is commonly thought to be more prevalent among the elderly, in the past 10 years, it has increased by 25% among working-age adults. The cost of chronic disease to the U.S. economy far exceeds the money and resources spent to treat it. In fact, a study by the Milken Institute found that the indirect costs of chronic diseases (such as missed days from work) are higher than the direct costs to treat them. Furthermore, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that these indirect costs are four times higher for individuals with chronic disease than for those without them. Therefore, chronic disease is strongly affecting employers’ increasing healthcare expenditure. A joint study by Tower Watson and the National Business Group on Health found that 67% of employers identified employee’s poor health habits as one of their top three challenges to maintain affordable health coverage

Climate Change and Resulting Floods: Using Social Capital to Strengthen Community Resilience in Eastwick, Philadelphia a known floodplain

• Climate change will produce intense weather events like increased precipitation and flooding • Based on climate projections, Philadelphia will be hotter and wetter, and will experience more frequent and intense weather events (OOS, 2016) •Floods are the second most common hazards in our city (OEM, 2017) • Vulnerable population such as children, people of color, elderly population and people with disability are severely impacted by climate change Poster presented at AHPA conference in Atlanta Georgia, United States.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/jcphposters/1013/thumbnail.jp

Bone Marrow Drive: Will Linfield Be the Match?

Ashley Filler discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to organizing a bone marrow registration drive.https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/inauguration2019_students/1008/thumbnail.jp

ACE’s Contextualization for Healthcare Workers

There is a well-established causative relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) and pathology. Despite strong supporting evidence, some healthcare workers are unaware of how deep this relationship is. I conducted an educational session surrounding ACEs targeting healthcare workers in an attempt to contextualize the relationship between ACE’s and consequent disease.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1431/thumbnail.jp