Dr. Bita Amani Discusses the CDU MPH students’ trip to Cuba( continued)
MPH program, or were formerly enrolled in the MPH program. Because we have missed a couple of years, we opened up the opportunity to previous cohorts that could not go. I think we have about 11 students from this cohort, and another three that are alumni. This year, I’ m taking another professor in the department with me so that she can sit in and learn the class. We might open up other delegations but also because I don’ t think that only one person should know how to do a certain thing at the University.
That’ s really number one. It’ s very smart. It also provides cross training opportunities and who knows, you might train the right person and they have ideas to platform even off of this because there are plenty of areas where education on the healthcare side takes place.
Over the years, there’ s been a number of CDU faculty that have come with me on this delegation as MPH students. For example, Dr. Sharon Cobb, Dr. Melanie Osby, and Dr. Shanika Boyce. They came as students, and they studied. And Dr. Cobb in Nursing did as well. But this is the first time I’ m taking an MPH faculty member there. And we also have our facilitator, Professor Catherine Hall-Trujillo who actually came to partner with us and be part of the department through this initiative. She is the founder of Birthing Project, USA. She has been a part of the program that has managed the US students getting a medical education in Cuba. She’ s taken tons of delegations of students there, and she takes community delegations. She has taken them for other universities. I am going to say she loves us the most. I think she would agree because she herself is from Compton.
So, what’ s your background? What draws you to this work?
My PhD is in epidemiology. I had probably more infectious disease training as an epidemiologist along with behavioral EPI, but I’ ve been practicing as a social epidemiologist. So, most of my work is around looking at systems and structures and the impact they have on health. Which is why the model becomes very interesting. My work also includes criminalization and its impact on family. My family is from Iran. I was born in Dallas, Texas.
Because I’ m interested in criminalization and its impact on health, that takes up my work time. Really kind of locally into systems or policing systems of surveillance, for example, it also includes sanctions and the health impact of sanctions. And so there’ s a shared connection of wanting to know more about how sanctions impact, health of people, what does that mean, and what kind of global barriers. But my connection to this comes from growing up in a house where internationalism was very important. And thinking about local is global and, struggles in one place are struggles everywhere.
The South LA-Cuba connection is so deep. A number of my peers have always gone to Cuba. You could just think about the images of Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, the Venceremos Brigade. It’ s like they were always there.
I remember the first time I saw Cuban doctors in action. I was young, not really knowing what I was doing and there were disaster relief efforts underway in Pakistan because of the earthquake. And that was not much after the tsunami in Sri Lanka. It had a huge impact. I was in the right place at the right time. I was able to go for a quick trip to Pakistan to see what the impact of that disaster was and to think about what would be resources that would make sense. And fast forward many years later, now we are in Cuba. I take my students, and it’ s not uncommon for a faculty member in Cuba who’ s also a practitioner because there you don’ t teach unless you practice. You elevate to the level of teaching once you’ ve had the right the practice.
There was this morgue that nobody wanted to work out of because it was a morgue. But the Cubans had set up surgical units inside. They were helping to facilitate complete amputations and then working with the local engineers of the local universities to think about how to create new plastics that would make sense for how people would actually be living their day to day lives there. But that was the work that nobody wanted to do. They were there to do, and they had already an approach to doing that. That was thinking about what you are leaving behind when you’ re gone. What people will need.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 24