Student groups across campus have come together to present Tufts' annual Healthy Week, a five-day series of lectures, film screenings and interactive demonstrations highlighting issues of public health and promoting wellness within the Tufts community and beyond.
Healthy Week began on Sunday with a presentation by Lisa Brukilacchio, director of the Somerville Community Health Agenda, and a kick-off brunch in Hotung Café, where students mingled with alumni who are pursuing careers in public health.
"What we wanted to do was just get word out about all the different health-oriented student groups at Tufts and what their focuses are," said senior Andrea Northup, president of Public Health at Tufts (PHAT). "We chose each day of the week to be a different aspect of health."
Monday's theme was public health and human rights. The day featured a lecture by Jacqueline Nwando-Olaywiola, medical director at the Community Health Center of Meriden, Conn. and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.
Nwando-Olaywiola spoke about the increasing health disparities within the United States, and explored the forces causing minority groups to have poorer health and inferior access to health care than whites.
"The United States spends $2.1 trillion per year on health, but this does not translate to better health for all citizens," she said.
She cited access, insurance, lingual and cultural barriers and quality of health care as some of the main problems facing minorities.
"All of these things will ultimately lead to a poorer quality of life," she said. "Many Americans still suffer from poor health."
She explained that as minority populations grow, a larger portion of the American citizenry will be at risk of having poor health.
"Health disparities end up affecting all of us," she said. "The nation is becoming increasingly diverse, and the burden that this causes on the system will ultimately be appreciated by all of us."
Nwando-Olaywiola urged members of the audience to get involved in public health care, listing careers as policy leaders, researchers and community organizers as ways to help.
"Public health is a very broad field. There are so many avenues you can take if you really believe in public health as an opportunity to promote social health. I'm asking you to join me in the fight against health disparities," she said.
Monday's events also featured a "wheel of public health" in the campus center, which gave students the opportunity to test their knowledge on a number of different health issues, said PHAT Special Events Coordinator Katherine Diaz-McInnis.
PHAT also sold t-shirts to benefit the HIV/AIDS group Ubuntu, an organization based in South Africa.
Tuesday's theme was sexual health, with a presentation in the campus center hosted by Tufts' Voices for Change (VOX), an organization dedicated to exploring issues of sexuality and reproductive rights and health.
The group highlighted the rising costs of birth control pills by comparing the price of one month of the pill to packets of Ramen Noodles, which were stacked on a table.
"It's actually something that a lot of the Boston VOX groups are doing. We're just trying to show how ridiculous the prices are," said sophomore Alyssa Ursillo, the group's vice president.
Ursillo said that most non-generic brands of birth control cost $25 per month when obtained through an insurance company.
"What we're doing is comparing that to how many packs of Ramen Noodles you can buy. It's over 200 Ramen packs for one month's supply of birth control, so per year it's over 2,000 packs
of Ramen."
VOX also urged students to sign a petition asking politicians to pass a bill that would force insurance companies to lower the price of birth control.
"We're encouraging people to call their senators, and we'll be thanking Massachusetts senators that have already signed on," Ursillo said.
Today's events will provide students with health career information, and the popular medical televisions dramas "Scrubs" and "House" will be screened in Sophia Gordon's multipurpose room from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Food, nutrition and wellness are the themes for Thursday. Nutritional food and other health-related items will be given out in the campus center, and students can stop by for a free massage or information about Tufts' Health Service.
This week, "we just wanted to do lots of fun events so that people will get involved about health in a fun and interactive way," said sophomore Nadine Kesten, a member of PHAT.
