{"id":165348,"date":"2020-11-09T07:31:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T12:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=165348"},"modified":"2023-02-23T14:41:40","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T19:41:40","slug":"bridging-the-gaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/11\/bridging-the-gaps\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridging the Gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

So many common ills in our society are caused not by microorganisms but by social constriction \u2014 poor education, poor housing, poor food. Even when a virus is the primary cause of illness, social conditions can exacerbate the disease. The Covid-19 pandemic shined a bright light on the unhappy truth that structural inequities limit access to health care in America. Doctors who are unaware of these systemic barriers to health cannot truly help their patients who face them, and doctors who are aware of them can feel powerless to do something about it.<\/p>\n

But they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The students at UConn Health\u2019s schools of medicine and dentistry know that. Beginning with the 2021 graduating class, every medical student at UConn Health must complete a capstone project in public health before graduating with their MD.<\/p>\n

Health disparities and health equity \u201care a fundamental thread that runs throughout the curriculum from the first days and weeks that students arrive until they graduate,\u201d says Zita Lazzarini, director of the Division of Public Health Law and Bioethics in the Department of Public Health Sciences at UConn Health and an associate professor in the School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

UConn Health\u2019s School of Medicine was the first in the nation to require students to complete a certificate curriculum in social determinants of health, and the program is being emulated by other medical schools, according to School of Medicine dean Dr. Bruce Liang. Students in the UConn School of Dental Medicine have the option to complete the certificate.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth disparities among racial and ethnic minorities and between the most affluent and least well-off remain unacceptably high in the U.S. We want our graduates to be fully equipped to recognize and reduce health disparities in their communities through direct patient care, research, and advocacy,\u201d Lazzarini says.<\/p>\n

Jump (For Your Health)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I was aware of disparities,\u201d says Srinath Ramanan, who immigrated to West Haven, Connecticut, from India with his family at age 6. His own family never suffered from food insecurity, but Ramanan wasn\u2019t oblivious to the struggles of others in his diverse apartment building. And now, the second-year medical student is doing something about it, helping families get fresh food and educating kids about sugar and health.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Srinath Ramanan ’16 (CLAS), a second-year medical student, with aeroponic gardening at the Urban League of Greater Hartford on Sept. 25, 2020. (Peter Morenus\/UConn photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI want to get as many people involved as possible! The magnitude of the effect will be greater,\u201d Ramanan says of the next UConn Just Us Moving Program (JUMP) event, which is scheduled for the week after we talk. JUMP\u2019s mission is to get people moving more and eating more healthy food.<\/p>\n

The program, which is sponsored by the Aetna Foundation and run by the Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering at UConn Health, is situated in the Urban League of Greater Hartford and provides the tools to avoid or control diabetes, a big problem in the neighborhoods of North Hartford that lack grocery stores.\u00a0<\/span>Ramanan will be manning the sugar table, a display and short presentation he designed along with fellow student Vishruthi Palanivel. They use piles of sugar packets to illustrate to kids just how much sugar you should consume in a day versus how much sugar is in common convenience foods. (Spoiler: a single Gatorade\u2019s mountain of sugar dwarfs the daily limit.)<\/p>\n

Ramanan learned of JUMP through through associate professor Zhao Helen Wu during his first year. He and a buddy from engineering school in undergrad had already started working on health disparity issues, and JUMP\u2019s mission fit right in. He began working on the presentations, and then this summer he started work on aeroponic food towers in the Urban League\u2019s building in the Asylum Hill neighborhood. The food towers can grow greens, herbs, and small vegetables year-round using water, nutrients, and light provided by the Urban League. Essentially, it\u2019s an indoor community garden \u2014 the plan is to have each one adopted by a local family, who can plant what they want and harvest whenever they like, just by visiting the Urban League location where their food tower lives.<\/p>\n

For Ramanan, empowering people with the knowledge to make good choices is a key piece of addressing disparities. \u201cIf we have education, we have more control over what we do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n