Week 17
View from the houseboats
Theo is back at preschool! All things considered it’s gone quite well. Only one really rough drop off, and successful use of things to look forward to negotiate leaving for school the other days (e.g. we promised an after-school hike one day, mac & cheese one day, and a “prize” for wearing his mask all day). We tried to keep his morning routine the same so we are leaving for school at 9 when we used to leave for hiking.
(Re)Learnings and observations
Allowing space for emotional reactions: Any change is really throwing me for a loop right now! I had strong emotional reactions to Theo’s return to school and news that the move of our offices from Laurel Heights to Mission Bay is coming as soon as August. It was strange to work in the morning, to attend meetings that I have not been able to attend for months, to both more zoom meetings and more quiet. I’m again attending to my emotional reactions and considering what data they give me (e.g. maybe I should skip some of the meetings).
Time to think: Since I gave myself a (mild?) case of self-diagnosed plantar fasciitis for the first time in my life, I’ve decided to do more cycling this week. I discovered that the upside is I don’t multitask, so my brain has a chance to actually think. It’s very novel. When I run I listen to podcasts or call someone; when I hike with Theo he asked me to tell him stories. Thinking is what I’ve had the least time to do since February and is much needed.
Attending to what I need right now in mentoring: One of the realizations I had while cycling-thinking was that it was time to re-evaluate what I need right now for mentoring in month 4 of the pandemic and after a year of ongoing changes to my professional setup. I need more practice at thinking about and asking for what I need, and that includes in professional relationships.
On mentoring styles: In the above reflective cycling, I realized I’m likely mentoring people how I want to be mentored, rather than how they want or need to be mentored. I’m going to start asking my mentees if they’d like to change things or things they like about how others mentor them. Relatedly: I saw on Twitter that a parent asks her kids “what do I need to know about you to be a better mom” – I love this! I asked Theo and he told me I should know that he’s Spiderman.
Actions to support Black and other people of color (mostly through research this month)
Lists of Black-owned businesses to support: wellness products, Beauty products, products ethically made in Africa,
Methods resources I’ve bookmarked to review (e.g. haven’t managed to do it yet) for quantitative methods for analyzing data that includes a race/ethnicity variable; shared by sociologist Alyasah A. Sewell, associate professor at Emory, on Twitter (most of these are their own work)
Podcast on Mortgage Markets and the Roots of Racial Health Disparities
20-minute video lecture “From Collateral Damage to Carceral Grief: Race, Illness, and Policing”
2 hour video recording of a lecture on “Nested Models for Critical Studies of Race & Racism: Creating Measures of Supraindividual Racism” from the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research (summer camp for social scientists)
Article “The Racism-Race Reification Process: A Mesolevel Political Economic Framework for Understanding Racial Health Disparities” (A multilevel root-cause conceptual framework, the racism-race reification process (R3p), is proposed and preliminarily tested to delineate how institutional conditions shape the health of racially marginalized individuals through the reification of race)
Other methods resources Dr. Sewell and others on Twitter recommend
Resources to learn about Race & Racism in Medicine
Braverman: paper review of Health Disparities and Health Equity: Concepts and Measurement
Hicken: paper on Racial inequalities in health: Framing future research
Hallinan: paper on Sociological Perspectives on Black-White Inequalities in American Schooling
Paper on Achieving Health Equity in Embedded Pragmatic Trials for People Living with Dementia and Their Family Caregivers: description of “what is currently known about the inclusion of health disparities populations of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers in ePCTs, highlights unique challenges related to health equity in the conduct of ePCTs, and suggests priority areas in the design and implementation of ePCTs to increase the awareness and avoidance of pitfalls that may perpetuate and magnify healthcare disparities”
Unrelated to race-related issues, but related to methods: heard about the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump technique for lit reviews.
Similarly: Manifesto for mathematical modeling now that people have remembered the potential policy impacts.
Books I’m reading by Black authors: Ta-Nehisi Coates “The Beautiful Struggle”; Yaa Gyasi “Homegoing”; also recommended to me was Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” and associated TED talk
Gratitude & appreciation
Theo returning to preschool!
Lots of sun this week
It’s been 5 years in California but I finally bought my first pair of Birkenstocks (see above mention of plantar fasciitis)
SOM Grand Rounds this week focused a lot on an update on the state of the science of COVID in kids and implications for school openings
I gave myself permission to take time from the “work day” to cycle 3 days and hike with Theo after school 1 day
I didn’t try to do much writing or thinking or analysis of my research projects this week – it’s annoying me to not make research progress but I need to make healing/emotional progress too and tend to multiple professional relationships and reconnect to various academic communities. That’s work too!
I invested time in restructuring my work schedule for the coming month(s), investigating new desk/chair options, and other ways to promote productivity.
Things I’m looking forward to
When people who don’t have training in medicine, public health, or epidemiologists just listen to what scientists tell them about methods to reduce risk
Things we made
Sam made another Kevin Forkish sourdough, yogurt, and these sourdough rosemary crackers that I immediately devoured
Update on goals from last week
Turns out I did none of these and these are my goals for next week.
Code another 2 prion transcripts
Create new table shells for prion manuscript
Find new target journal for paper after second desk reject (I have some ideas for this one)
As in past weeks, I invite you to report in on your wellbeing, share 1-2 small goals you are hoping to work on next week (especially related to our collaborations, if we have one), and report in on your progress from last week's goals.
Thinking of you and hoping you and your loved ones stay healthy and safe.
Krista