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Pandemics and the Poor
Ben Oppenheim
Gavin Yamey
This article was first published on the Brookings Institute Future Development Blog, found here.
When epidemics or pandemics hit, they usually hit the poor first and worst. We have known this for a while. The German pathologist Rudolf Virchow described this link between poverty and vulnerability to outbreaks in his 1848 study of a typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia: "For there can now no longer be any doubt that such an epidemic dissemination of typhus had only been possible under the wretched conditions of life that poverty and lack of culture had created in Upper Silesia."
What we have not known, until recently, is how best to help the poor protect themselves from pandemics.
To understand why the poor are more vulnerable to epidemics and pandemics and what protections are required, we need to consider how outbreaks first start, how they spread, and how they affect individuals and societies.
Fighting Big Diseases with Little Computers
Jordan Coriza
Photo Credit: Fabrice Duhal
How health workers use technology to combat illness
Treatments for diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and HIV are lengthy and complex. Medications need to be taken regularly and for extended periods. Interruptions come at a high cost for patients, their families, and the health systems that treat them.
Over the past several years, professionals across a range of disciplines have focused on creating solutions at all levels of the health system. From a tool that helps governments calculate the economic cost of medicine stock-outs to a piece of software that allows doctors across Ukraine to follow a patient's complex TB treatment, technology can play a critical role in bringing solutions to scale and making significant progress in the age-old fight against deadly diseases.
Here are two examples of how MSH is helping health workers use computers to fight back.
Person-centered group antenatal care in Eastern Uganda: Reaching women through pregnancy clubs
Shafia Rashid
Kate Ramsey
Women examine cards depicting health information during a pregnancy club session in eastern Uganda.Photo: Kate Ramsey/MSH
Improving the quality of care that women experience during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period has become a major global priority. Achieving good quality care requires not only clinical improvements, but also a person-centered approach that takes into account women's and health workers' needs and perspectives.
In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its antenatal care guidelines, calling for a positive pregnancy experience through holistic, person-centered antenatal services that provide pregnant women with emotional support and advice in addition to the standard clinical assessments.
Building Health Systems that Work for Mothers, Newborns and Midwives
A midwife in Uganda leads a group antenatal care session, an approach that can transform how quality care is delivered and experienced.Photo credit: Kate Ramsey/MSH
For many people living in poor and underserved regions – whether rural communities or growing cities – midwives are the health system.
Midwives play a vital role for women during pregnancy and childbirth, but their care expands much more than that. Midwives provide solutions that ensure girls and women have access to a comprehensive range of services promoting their right to physical and mental health. They provide family planning and reproductive health services and care for newborns and young children not only at health facilities but also in communities. They deliver the respectful and excellent quality of care that can prevent more than 80 percent of all maternal deaths, stillbirths, and newborn deaths worldwide.
Reaching Women in Uganda Through Pregnancy Clubs
Special Delivery: Transporting Lifesaving Supplies to Syria
Stacy Lu
SIAPS technical advisor Alan George (standing left) conducts an inventory management exercise.Photo credit: Gashaw Shiferaw/SIAPS
Some 13.5 million people desperately require humanitarian assistance in Syria, which includes access to essential medicines and other pharmaceutical products. Managing a sound supply chain is challenging in the best of circumstances—and in a crisis like this, there are many potential pitfalls and little room for error.
That becomes clear when health workers from relief organizations talk about their work in the country. The large number of displaced persons fleeing the conflict and the unstable, dangerous conditions in Syria require a tight strategy and concerted international effort to deliver vaccines, medical products and devices, and medicines.
First, there are the painstaking tasks of procuring supplies, including negotiating prices, estimating consumption rates, and quantifying stock—all against the backdrop of a situation in flux. Items shipped across the border require a specific type of sealing and more than a year of shelf life. Stock needs to be transported and stored in temperature-controlled trucks.
What's the ROI on investing in health systems?
Francis Aboagye-Nyame
A strong pharmaceutical system with a skilled health workforce translates into savings in health service costs.Photo credit: © 2013 Alfredo L Fort, Courtesy of Photoshare
You can't put a price tag on health, but we do have budgets that determine what we can spend to help countries improve their health. At Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services (SIAPS)-- a USAID-funded, MSH-led program-- that means we need to look closely at the impact each dollar we spend has on achieving our goal: strengthening the management of essential medicines and supplies so they reach the people who need them and are used rationally. Here are some of the evidence-driven activities SIAPS has been pursuing, with their results.
Increasing global health security
As Bill Gates recently noted, foreign aid keeps people safe and makes the world more stable. The three countries most affected by the Ebola epidemic—Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia—had weak health systems that provided little or no warning of the impending epidemic and few resources with which to fight quickly.
Health Systems Strengthening in the Spotlight at the 70th World Health Assembly
MSH Delegation: Matthew Martin, Crystal Lander, Catharine Taylor, Marian Wentworth, Stuart Knight, Barbara Ayotte, and Alison Corbacio
As the Trump Administration released its truncated global health budget last week, ministers of health, members of civil society and the private sector, and government delegations met in Geneva for the annual World Health Assembly to discuss programs that exemplify the value of foreign assistance and its tangible effect on families in some of the poorest countries. In advance of the meeting, MSH released position statements on WHA agenda items. Dozens of governments led by Germany and South Africa, signed the Global Compact for Universal Health Coverage 2030 committing to make affordable and quality healthcare accessible for all. This year's WHA was particularly historic with the nomination of the WHO's first African Director-General, Dr.
Encouraging Healthy Practices Among Pregnant Women through Active Listening
Amélie Sow-Dia
Charlene Chisema, a community mobilization officer, conducts an Education Through Listening session on antenatal care.Photo credit: Amelie Sow-Dia
It is early afternoon in the village of Kanjuwale at the foot of Nguluyanawambe Mountain in central Malawi. Charlene Chisema, a community mobilization officer, asks a group of local women about best antenatal care (ANC) practices.
"It should start early – in the first months," said one woman.
"You need four visits," said another.
"Great!" said Chisema, who works with the Organized Network of Services for Everyone's (ONSE) Health Activity. "How many ANC visits did you all have during your last pregnancy?"
Suddenly, a frail woman with a baby on her lap stood up, wiped a tear from her face, and said, "I will not return to ANC."
The women looked shocked – they were not used to such candid talk.
"Thank you for being honest," said Chisema, leaning forward with an encouraging smile. "Please tell us why."
Factory Farms: A Hotspot for Emerging Pandemics
Scott Weathers
Last week, the World Health Organization elected Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as its next Director General. Amid his controversial campaign, I coauthored an open letter to the next Director General to prioritize factory farming, an eminent threat to global health.
Only a Strong Health System Can Stop Tuberculosis
Health worker in TB ward in Ethiopia.Photo credit: Warren Zelman for MSH
One Project in Ethiopia Shows Us That Investing in Health Systems Pays Dividends
Over the past five years, the Ethiopian government and MSH have been working shoulder to shoulder to improve and expand the country's tuberculosis services with the goal of alleviating the burden of the disease.
If you wonder whether foreign assistance is money well spent, just look at the remarkable progress we've made in Ethiopia, where only a few years ago the stock out rate for TB drugs was as high as 20 percent. That number today is about two percent.
Our tuberculosis work in Ethiopia supported 55 million people between 2010 and 2016. During that period, we improved case detection, diagnosis, and treatment mechanisms; strengthened the laboratory capacity of more than 2,000 facilities to diagnose TB; improved the supply management of TB drugs; and trained tens of thousands of health workers at all levels of the health system.
The upside is not just the thousands of lives saved or improved, but the strengthening of a health system that is now better equipped not only to respond to TB, but also to other diseases, therefore helping the people of Ethiopia live healthier lives, contribute to their economy, and make their country a more stable and peaceful place to live.
Tao of Leadership: The Core Values of MSH


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Failure to timely operate on epidual hematoma results in paraplegia, bowel and bladder abnormalties, sepsis and death.
In May 2013 the decedent underwent spinal cord stimulator placement with the defendant to treat chronic back pain. The surgery was noted to go well, and the decedent was discharged to home in stable condition. He did well for the week following surgery.
See also: Paralysis Following Spinal Hematoma: $3.75 Million Settlement
Six days post-surgery, the decedent experienced an acute onset of numbness and weakness of both legs with an inability to walk. Upon arrival to the hospital he was found to be acutely paraplegic. The defendant was several hours away from the hospital. The on-call surgeon indicated he would not operate on the patient. There was a significant dispute in the case as to which surgeon was responsible for the decedent when he returned to the hospital. Ultimately, the defendant returned to the hospital after the decedent waited for several hours with paralysis.
During surgery an epidural hematoma was found and decompressed. The decedent's paraplegia did not resolve following the surgery, and he suffered from both bowel and bladder abnormalities. As a result of the urinary abnormalities, the decedent ultimately contracted an infection which resulted in sepsis and death in May 2014.
The plaintiff consulted with an expert witness who opined that the defendant was negligent when he failed to immediately recognize the signs and symptoms of an epidural hematoma and ensure that the patient was taken into surgery immediately to correct the paraplegia.
The case settled for $2,250,000.
Hampden Superior Court
Lubin & Meyer attorneys Robert Higgins represented the plaintiff in this lawsuit.
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Rays News
Tampa Bay Rays should consider Shawn Kelley
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 03: Shawn Kelley #31 of the Oakland Athletics throws a pitch against the New York Yankees during the fifth inning in the American League Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium on October 03, 2018 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
Regardless of a 40-man roster filled to the brim with young pitchers, many of whom could play a significant role in the 2019 bullpen, the Tampa Bay Rays still may add a proven pitcher to the pitching plans.
I recently wrote an article in which I discussed longtime Yankees reliever David Robertson as a perfect fit in Tampa Bay. The next day he would sign a 2/23M contract with the Phillies. I don't know if the Rays ever even reached out to Robertson, but at that price the Phillies got a great pitcher at an even better price. With the aforementioned depth in the pen, the Tampa Bay Rays may not want to spend that much money on relievers, so instead I am turning my attention to Shawn Kelley.
Like Robertson, Kelley is approaching his mid 30's and has appeared in his fair share of games throughout his 10 year career. He has a career earned run average of 3.67 across 417.1 innings pitched.
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After an abysmal 2017 campaign, Kelley rebounded nicely with the Washington Nationals, that is until he threw tantrum on the mound after giving up a homer in a game where the Nats were up 25-4… He was DFA'd the following day. Five days later the Athletics traded for the righty, who would go on to surrender only 4 earned runs over 16.2 innings.
He was good for Washington prior to his release and he was even better for Oakland. All in all, he finished with an 2.94 ERA and 50 strikeouts to 11 walks over 49 innings. His .185 opponents average is impressive and he struck out 9.18 batters per 9.
I mentioned he struggled in 2017, and he did indeed, posting an ERA north of seven. But in 2018 he threw nearly twice as many innings as he did in 2017 and he made the necessary adjustments. His strikeout percentage rose almost 5% and his walk percentage dropped nearly 4%.
Of his 49 innings pitched this past season, 33 of them came against right handers who posted a minuscule .195 OBP. These numbers are better than Chaz Roe's versus right handers, who had a .253 OBP.
He was worth .5 fWAR in 2018 which in terms of monetary value is worth 3.6 million according to Fangraphs. At that price the Rays can afford to add Kelley to the pen. Like I said when I discussed the state of the Rays pen entering 2019, your bullpen can never be too good nor too deep.
Next. Rays should eye Matt Davidson. dark
In 3 of the last 4 seasons, Kelley posted a sub-three earned run average. The exception being his rough 2017. If the Rays bank on him doing more of the same he could be a nice under the radar signing.
Want your voice heard? Join the Rays Colored Glasses team!
I don't know if Kelley is even on the Tampa Bay Rays radar this offseason, but if signed he could be a pivotal piece to a Rays team looking to compete in October. He fits the bill as an under the radar signing who the Rays can plug into the pen and know what they are going to get. Keep your eye out for Shawn Kelley's name in the coming weeks as we approach spring training.


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Multibox America
Stories of race and ethnicity.
The Black Identity Within the Native American Community
Photo courtesy of Starman322
By Mia Taper
The complexion of these people is black, not much different from that of the Ethiopians; their hair is black and thick, and not very long. It is worn tied back upon the head in the form of a little tail. In person they are of good proportions, of middle stature, a little above our own, broad across the breast, strong in the arms, and well formed in the legs and other parts of the body; the only exception to their good looks is that they have broad faces, but not all, however, as we saw many that had sharp ones, with large black eyes and a fixed expression. They are . . . acute in mind, active and swift of foot, as far as we could judge by observation. In these last two particulars they resemble the people of the east
Giovanni di Verrazano, Italian explorer, 1521
When Jeff Sott, an American of black and Native American background, lived in a white neighborhood, he was referred to as "a nigger," he said in a documentary titled Black Indians: The American Story. When he moved to a black neighborhood, his Indian background singled him out a "yellow nigger." He couldn't quite fit in.
During the potato harvesting season, the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island were on the receiving end of insults, not by non-Natives, but by fellow tribes. "Potato niggers" is what they were called, referring to their black mixture. In a time when America's race dialogue is more open than ever, the black American Indian, perhaps one of history's most interesting identities, begs to be addressed.
According to the 2010 US Census, 5.2 million people identified themselves as American Indian, some of those only as American Indian, others as American Indian plus another ethnic group. However, only 1.9 million people are actually registered to one of the 562 federally recognized tribes. The registration comes at with a caveat: how much Indian blood do you have in you, formally known as Blood Quantum laws, or the US law regarding membership of those attempting to register with a tribe. Depending on the tribe, you either have to be 1/2 – 1/32nd (equivalent to one great-great-great grandparent) of that tribe or show documents that you have a family background in that tribe. The result is that many of these people who go ahead to register with tribes are often of mixed backgrounds. One ethnic group that's often mixed with Native blood is black. According to the US Census, out of the 42 million African-Americans in the country, almost 270,000 identify as being mixed with Native American blood. With the racial dialogue more open than ever, more people have been exploring their heritage in order to gain a sense of who they are as a whole.
The Shinnecock Indian Nation of Southampton, New York was just federally recognized in 2010, despite having documented history since the 1700s, and their roots going even further back in history. The Shinnecock people currently number a little over 1,400 people, with 662 residing on the reservation. Though it's hard to pinpoint what an exact Native looks like, it's no doubt that the Shinnecock people look black, a product of black slaves and Native Americans intermarrying and producing mixed offspring in the times of slavery. According to the US government census of the reservation, 13.6 percent of the population consider themselves black or black and American Indian, while 88.2 percent consider themselves to be just American Indian. Similarly, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe of Connecticut are also black at first glance, but identify with both their black and Indian roots. The Pequots are 725 strong, with around 300 living on the actual Connecticut reservation, with 28 percent recognizing both black and Indian sides. They're one of the few American tribes to not retain their Algonquian-based language, a big faux pas amongst other tribes, and they're also one of the richest tribes for they own one of the world's largest casinos, Foxwoods Resort Casino. The casino pulls half a billion each year.
The black American/Native American identity can be somewhat of a difficult thing to identify as. For those who actually identify as both, it's beyond frustrating. Jay Waya Gola Sunoyi, or Jay Nightwolf, founder of the National Congress for Black American Indians, needed to find a way to express himself and allow other people like him to do the same. So in the mid-2000s, Sunoyi founded the National Congress for Black American Indians, and in July 2014, the organization had its first big gathering in Washington, DC. Hundreds showed up. Black Indians came from all over the country, including from California, Alabama, Georgia, New Mexico, and Oklahoma just to name a few.
"It was time, you know, that black Indians should come together, in a place where they wouldn't feel left out or pushed aside or ridiculed," Sunoyi explained. He remembers the day vividly, there was laughing, there was crying. "They finally had a place to go."
But not all were pleased that the organization existed. Many Indian Nations were not happy, in fact, there was a lot of pushback. "There's not a problem with a white Indian, but there's a problem with a black Indian," Sunoyi sighed with frustration. And that mindset, he believes, dates back to America's foundation. "America was founded on white supremacy," he says. That idea of the lighter the skin, the better has affected the way he and his fellow black Indians have been treated, with some leaders of Indian Nations denying the existence of the black Indian. "God put us all here for one reason: to get along, to take care of each other," Sunoyi said irritated.
Producer Steven Heape wondered what happened to the black slaves that were taken into Native tribes during The Trail of Tears. Steven Heape is a co-founder of Native American production company Rich-Heape Films. Since 1994, Heape and producing partner Chip Richie have made over nine documentaries concerning the issues of the Native people. His documentary Trail of Tears examines what Cherokees call the period when members of the Cherokee Nation were forceably removed from their land, east of the Mississippi, and relocating to Oklahoma under President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. More than 1/4 of the Cherokee Nation died during the journey, forever earning the episode in history its fitting name: Trail of Tears. While doing research for that documentary, Heape noticed that there were black slaves, often runaways, that lived with the tribes. He soon realized that there was a whole group of people, the black Indians, who have barely received any recognition, even from the tribes themselves. "It's a story that most people had no idea existed," he explained. "[The story] has to do with repressing two groups of people, and those two groups really came together and united as one." That's when Heape and Richie decided their next film would be Black Indians: The American Story, narrated by the great voice of actor James Earl Jones.
Released in 2001, Black Indians explains the relationship, its history and the evolution of the black and Native identity. The relationship dates back to the Triangular Trade. The Europeans brought over the Africans as slaves to the New World. Though the Europeans imposed the idea of racial inequality, the Native Americans didn't see race in the way that the Europeans did. They didn't differentiate the Africans and the Europeans as being of a different, in the way that Europeans saw Africans and Natives differently. The Africans, mainly runaway slaves, were let into tribes because they knew how the Englishmen functioned but soon after the American Revolution, inter-marriages began, some out of genuine love, some out of strategy. The strategy that the children born out of this marriage, especially between a black slave and a Native woman, would be free, even if their father was still considered enslaved.
As the Africans and Indians grew closer, the Europeans saw their close relationship as threatening. In times of war against Natives, the slaves were enlisted in militias to fight against them. In times of slavery, tribes were hired as bounty hunters, or "slave catchers," to find runaway slaves. Sometimes, the slaves would be found by the bounty hunters but were let into the tribe until there was enough pressure from the slave owners to return their property. With regards to identity, there were no problems…yet.
Around the time of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Indians, if they chose to identify themselves as such, were forcibly removed from their lands and pushed West. However, the people of both black and Native backgrounds had a tough choice: to identify as black and remain in their home lands and potentially become enslaved or identify as a Native American and be forced off the land they called home for thousands of years. In 1887, the Dawes Act was introduced, which pardoned off certain lands, or reservations, for Indian tribes. The act also introduced another sinister caveat: Blood Quantum. Blood Quantum laws are laws that determine, through documentation, how much Indian is in your blood. Blood Quantum laws helped to figure out who could and couldn't live on reservation lands and who could and couldn't receive benefits from the government.
Soon, "pencil genocide" became a normal process at town halls – changing the race on a chid's birth certificate to better fit their skin color. Those of mixed backgrounds were forced to only claim their black background because of even a drop of black blood meant you were black. Detribalizing hearings began in many tribes, using one's heritage, as one of the factors of kicking them out of the tribe, deeming them not "authentic" to be a part of the community.
"It may take one drop of black blood to make a person black, but it takes a lot of Indian blood to make a person Indian," UNC-Chapel Hill professor Theda Perdue proclaimed.
It wasn't until the 21st century that those of mixed backgrounds began to reclaim both cultures. The black power movement in the 1970s also spurred the red power movement for Natives. But for many black Americans, coming out as part or half-Native was a whole other can of worms.
The Montaukett people of Long Island, New York were taken off of federal recognition in 1910 in order to further build the Long Island Railroad. The judge's reasoning? The tribe has intermarried with African-Americans so much that it "diluted" their blood, therefore the original tribe was extinct. According to the tribe's official website, the now-defunct Brooklyn Eagle published an article in 1877 declaring "there is a large admixture of African blood in the tribe as it now exists and only one or two families remain pure Indian," and only twelve full-blooded Indians remained. The tribe has been tirelessly fighting for federal recognition ever since. In May 2014, the tribe submitted a bill to the New York State Legislature, asking to be reinstated as a New York State-recognized tribe.
These Eastern tribes have a "disruptive history," says professor Tiya Miles of University of Michigan. Miles is a scholar in the interrelations between black Americans and Native Americans. Tribes of the West often "take jabs" at Eastern tribes, like the Pequots because of their mixed lineage, but "who took the hits first?" Miles asks. The eastern tribes had first contact with the Europeans and their slaves. The African men were imported and the native men killed, it was only natural that the new offspring of tribes were of black and Indian background. "It's completely unfair and wrong to say 'you're not Indian" because you have black ancestry," Miles says.
It's not just the outsiders who are not onboard with the idea of a black Indian, some Natives themselves are also skeptical. In a controversial 2002 article, scholar and writer Delphine Red Shirt of the Ogala Sioux tribe, penned in the Hartford Courant a piece called, "These Are Not Indians." With a scathing tone, Red Shirt writes of how Eastern Indians, specifically those in Connecticut like the Pequots, aren't true Indians at all. To her, these tribes "look more like they come from European or African stock." She questioned the idea of Blood Quantum, and how those who may have 1/32 of Indian blood can register to a tribe, with financial motives in mind. These people are "so-called "newly born" Indians," she boldly wrote, "who had not identified themselves as Indian until it became profitable to do so."
The currently ongoing lawsuit, originally filed in the Cherokee Supreme Court in 2011 but has now been taken to US federal courts, between the Cherokee tribe and the Cherokee Freedmen adds to the harsh identity crisis. The case, formally known as Cherokee Nation v. Raymond Nash, if it rules in favor of the Cherokee, will essentially kick-out the black Americans from that tribe, revoking their membership and any Cherokee benefits. In 1866, the United States and the Cherokee Nation signed a treaty stating that any slave or free man can have the rights of a Cherokee citizen. Those slaves or free men were known as Cherokee Freedmen. Now, the Cherokee nation argues that having the same rights as a Cherokee isn't the same as being a citizen of the Cherokee nation. The Cherokee Freedman, who don't just identify as black, but as Cherokee as well, currently number around 30,000 people. The very public lawsuit has sparked Op-Ed pieces, debates, and numerous articles about what it truly means to be an Indian. The pieces have been seen in Indian media outlets, The New York Times, and Henry Gates Jr's publication The Root. Writer, law professor, and black Indian Kevin Noble Maillard authored a pieced called "Define 'Real Indians'" for NYT. He recalled of a time when his own tribe, the Seminoles of Oklahoma, were going through a similar Freedman case. The black Indians of the Seminoles were chased around town with cries of "Go back to Africa!" Most interestingly, he notes how the white bureaucrats, likely from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, classified those of mixed black and Indian backgrounds as Freedmen while those of mixed white and Indian ancestry were allowed to be just Indians, no further questions asked.
Professor Miles is heavily disappointed in the Cherokee attempt to kick out the Freedmen. "You can't use people and build your wealth on their suffering and then say 'we don't want anything to do with you,'" Miles says. The Cherokee Indians were also slaveowners. Professor Fay Yarbrough of Rice University says that the Cherokee sided with the Confederates during the Civil War, and the last Confederate general to surrender was Cherokee. While some of the Freedmen don't have direct lineages to the Cherokee tribe, there are those who do have Cherokee blood, but they're considered a Freedmen so it, seemingly, doesn't matter.
UCLA professor of American Indian studies and Indian Country Today Media Network contributor, Duane Champagne, has frequently written about identity and culture within the Native community, as well as indigenous communities abroad like the mestizos in Latin America and the métis in Canada. In a piece for ICTMN called "Are Ethnic Indians a Threat to Indigenous Rights?", Champagne defines ethnic Indians as "those persons who have an Indian identity and lineage, but are not members of a tribal community [for reasons such as not qualifying to join]." What he argues in his piece is that the ethnic Indians are more American, and are more assimilated to American culture, than their fellow tribal members are. If they want to continue to align themselves with these tribes, they have to be allies and rally for indigenous rights to be the same as the rights as the country's majority.
I always knew I was part Native American. It was a part of me that my mother told me to be proud of and to recognize. Sometimes, she'll send emails and texts that end with our tribe's motto: "Always Sovereign." As I grew older and really began to embrace this side of me, all those outside my family didn't quite buy it.
"But you look black! You don't look Indian," friends would tell me.
"I've never even heard of your tribe," others would say.
Even though I have the lineage to prove my heritage and I am an official card-carrying Shinnecock Indian of Southampton, New York, I decided to keep quiet about this part of me. Well, if people saw me for just black and would furrow their eyebrows or shut down my claims of being Native American, then why bother even bringing it up, right?
Only recently did I learn that my issue is not just my own. There are thousands of Afro-Natives out there in the United States who struggle with their identity. Though, there are many that mold their struggle into a creative outlet.
The Groovalottos, a 3 piece funk outfit from Mashpee, Massachusetts, comprises of three black Indians: Mwalim, Christopher Sweeting, and Eddie Ray Johnson, of Wampanoag, Cherokee, and Choctaw backgrounds. Finding their beginnings in 2009, The Groovalottos blend elements of their black and Native roots in their music. Mwalim, Director of Black Studies at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and professor of English, had been doing musicology research when he began to see elements of Native elements in African-American music. Melodically, blues and spirituals are Native-based.
"Funk music is more Native American than African-American," Mwalim says.
The band has enjoyed their share of success, with hundreds of Facebook fans to support them, but they've also had their own struggles with identity. "It's a stigma [to be black and Indian," Sweeting says. Mwalim and Johnson agreed. In Mwalim's tribe, the Wampanoag, a council member declared that Mwalim was "confused" because of his decision to lock his hair. Johnson remembers a time in grade school when he became "the biggest joke of the class" when he declared that he was Native American. For his classmates, he was "too dark." Those moments are barely blips on their radar. The self-proclaimed "Song Keepers" keep making their Afro-Native music, taking it upon themselves to keeping their rich mixed history alive.
That's how it's been with the black Indians. A history of denied identity and a lifetime's worth of struggle to find acceptance. When professor Yarbrough presented her findings on the interrelations of black Americans and Native Americans at Trail of Tears conference, she was unsure if those attending Natives wanted to even hear her presentation.
Someone pulled her aside and said "no, they need to hear this."
How To Officially Enroll In Your Tribe: A SlideShow
May 7, 2015 by miataper
3 thoughts on "The Black Identity Within the Native American Community"
sevenwilliams says:
Good article!
Scott Collins says:
"There's not a problem with a white Indian, but there's a problem with a black Indian," Sunoyi sighed with frustration." Sunoyi is Jay Winter Nightwolf. My response is that you got to be out of your mind. Someone claiming Native American Indian and looking White is harped on ALL THE TIME…called "Wannabes", "thinbloods" and made fun of endlessly. From my own experiences I call BS on this statement and it's implication.
Terri Hall says:
Really enjoyed this article. Hope to see more. I am from the Shinnecock Tribe and will share this article to those not on Facebook . Looking forward to more


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Almost every invention can be traced back to a mechanical engineer, or someone who drew from mechanical engineering principles. The first wheel and axle, the clock on a classroom wall, the family car: all of these exist because of mechanical engineering. To celebrate the amazing feats of mechanical engineering and to inspire the next generation of engineers, we are highlighting some of the world's most famous mechanical engineers from history and today.
Famous Mechanical Engineers in History
While less famous than historical movie stars or politicians, there are many notable mechanical engineers from the past. Each of the following engineers has made the history books for good reason: they have all contributed something that has shaped how we live our lives today.
George Stephenson (1781-1848)
A British civil and mechanical engineer, George Stephenson is known as the "Father of Railways" thanks to his innovations in locomotives. In fact, it's largely due to Stephenson that trains became a popular form of commuter transport in 19th-century Europe. Throughout his career, he designed and built many steam engine trains, established standards for the size of train rails, and even helped bring to life the first public English railway in 1825.
Elijah McCoy (1844-1929)
Elijah McCoy is the real McCoy. Literally. The son of slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad, McCoy was born in Canada in 1844. After studying mechanical engineering, he went on to work in the rail industry, where he invented many useful technologies, including automatic oiling systems that helped trains run faster. This invention was so reliable that railroad engineers were said to have requested "the real McCoy", coining the phrase that lives on today. McCoy also has other inventions under his belt, including an ironing board and lawn sprinkler.
Lillian Gilbreth (1878-1972)
California-born Lillian Gilbreth was one of the first female engineers to earn a Ph.D. She dedicated her life to improving the efficiency of workplaces, particularly in the home. Gilbreth made a number of breakthroughs in her career, including designing the modern kitchen layout for the best efficiency and ergonomics; inventing the foot-pedal trash can; and designing fridge door shelving. Her work has been hugely influential and changed kitchen standards across the world.
Best Mechanical Engineers in the World Today
Inventions and mechanical engineering innovations aren't a thing of the past. Every day, mechanical engineers across all industries are coming up with new solutions to improve how things work. Here are some of the leaders in mechanical engineering today.
Ursula Burns
Ursula Burns is a mechanical engineer and businesswoman. Her professional career began when she joined an internship program at the printing company Xerox in 1980. She stayed at the company for decades, working in product development and eventually was appointed President and CEO. Burns holds the title of being the first black female CEO at a Fortune 500 company.
Bill Nye, better known as "the Science Guy", was a student in mechanical engineering and started his career at Boeing, making airplanes. From there he made a rather unusual but highly successful shift into entertainment, hosting a massively popular kid's show about science and introducing new generations to the world of STEM. To this day, he remains a pop culture icon and an advocate for science and the environment.
Born in India, Subra Suresh got his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and has led innovative research focused on controlling the mechanical properties of materials. Suresh served as Director of the National Science Foundation from 2010-2013. He has since worked as President of Carnegie Mellon, where he helped to increase the number of women in STEM programs, and is now President of NTU Singapore, where he focuses on making the campus smarter and more eco-friendly.
Aprielle Ericsson-Jackson
Aprielle Ericsson-Jackson was the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Howard University. Much of her career has been at NASA as an aerospace engineer. Her work at the space agency has been critical, contributing to better spacecraft stabilization, satellite development, and the design of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in orbit since 2009. She is also committed to promoting STEM, particularly among minorities and girls.
Walt Braithwaite
Jamaican-born Walt Braithwaite got his start as a mechanical engineer and went on to study computer science. He used this combination of knowledge in his career at Boeing to pioneer the company's use of computer-aided design (CAD) software to design commercial planes, like the 747 and 777. Braithwaite's work has been highly influential and helped the aerospace industry adapt to a digital future.
How to be a Successful Engineering Student
Mechanical engineering is a rich field of study that lets students learn about different industries and choose their own path. Interests, like space, building blocks, robots, and video games, can translate into prolific careers with a degree in engineering. By encouraging kids to hone skills like drawing, communication, and problem-solving, and by promoting interest in STEM topics from an early age, students will be well-equipped to pursue mechanical engineering.
Sphero's programmable robots and STEM kits allow PK-12 kids to explore mechanical engineering and computer science at an early age and are a great tool for inspiring students to pursue a fruitful career in the field. Who knows, a child you know could come up with the next great invention or product innovation when they grow up, joining the list of the most famous mechanical engineers in the world.
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Microsoft Office 2016 review: It's all about collaboration
Go team! That's what Office 2016 is built to encourage, with new collaborative tools and other ways to tie workers and content together.
By Mark Hachman
Senior Editor, PCWorld |
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With PowerPoint, however, most of that goes out the window. You can ask coworkers to collaborate, and you can still send them links by which they can edit your shared presentations. You can still comment, and coworkers can still make changes to the text as they wish. But you can't really manage their changes, or restrict what they can or can't do. (You can compare and reconcile versions of the same document that a coworker has worked upon separately, however, which is vaguely similar.)
MARK HACHMAN
In PowerPoint, you can still make changes and add comments, but the overall collaboration experience is slightly different than Word.
But—and this is a big but—any revisions to a document show up only if you click a teeny-tiny Save icon, way down at the bottom of the screen, that serves as a sort of CB-radio-style 'Over' command. It's almost impossible to find unless you know what you're looking for. Click it, and changes made by others show up. When your colleague makes another change, you have to click it again. It's a pain.
The "Updates available" gear is way down at the bottom. Click it to view updates to the document.
Granted, collaborative editing wasn't in the Office 2016 preview Microsoft released earlier this year. And, given that there's an enormous blank space in the ribbon header to the right half of the screen, you have to imagine that more managed sharing is heading to PowerPoint. (Microsoft tells me it is, shortly.)
Here's the news on OneNote: linked OneNote notes. The feature's actually been around since Office 2013, but it seems to be more prominently displayed under the Review tab of apps like Word.
Linking documents to OneNote is easy, but you have to link the source document (in this case, PowerPoint) to OneNote, instead of the other way around.
A linked OneNote note can be a bit confusing. In a OneNote note, you can add a hypertext link to a Web page that allows you to jump directly to that site. But what a linked OneNote note does is create a separate window pane that allows you to reference another document or Web page as you're reviewing your notes.
In some sense, this duplicates your working environment. Imagine your boss discussing a grant proposal. ("Oh yeah, he was talking about this Word document when he said this.") With Linked Notes, you can open that document, link it to a note, then begin typing commentary. When you review those notes, OneNote knows that you were referring to the Word document and can bring it up. If your boss then moved on to a PowerPoint document, you can link that too: moving your focus as your boss shifts gears. (Excel isn't supported, yet.)
OneNote linking doesn't apparently allow you to highlight a word or page of a document. It links to the document, which opens in a separate window, not a pane. And, of course, it would be nice if the feature were ubiquitous across Office. But with markup, live collaboration, and OneNote linking, Office 2016 should make it easier to recall earlier meetings that have blurred together.
Outlook has a new job: The collaboration hub
Normally, Outlook would seem to pale compared to the leading lights of Office. At one time, email was both the medium and the metaphor for managing business relationships. Now, however, modern social networks threaten that model—and Microsoft has no answer to that. Nevertheless, Outlook remains the connective tissue for many of the Office apps, and now it's the hub of Microsoft's collaborative vision.
Microsoft has added a number of small conveniences to Outlook 2016. For one thing, if you want to add an attachment, Outlook pulls down a list of recently used and modified files across all of the Office applications. If you want to email an enormous file (say, 700 megabytes) Outlook will email a link to the file stored in OneDrive, rather than clogging your network and mail folders by emailing the file itself.
The new Outlook Groups, within Outlook 2016.
Microsoft also added a more important addition, Clutter, a sort of second-level spam folder. Clutter, which has been available on the Outlook.com Web app for months, takes work email it deems unnecessary (notices for a fun run; "donuts in the break room!" and the like) and puts them in a dedicated Clutter folder.
Clutter isn't perfect: It tries to determine what you want to save and what's irrelevant, but you'll tend to find some email you'd want to read in the Clutter folder. (You can turn it off entirely if you so choose.)
The flagship feature of Outlook 2016 is a new Groups feature, which carves out a portion of Outlook—and Office, to a lesser extent—into a series of small, flexible teams that you or a colleague can create. Instead of exchanging emails, the dynamic here is more conversational. But that's not all: Groups interacts with a Web app that Microsoft calls the Planning Hub (sort of an online version of Trello) as well as its new app for surfacing enterprise content, Delve. So it probably makes the most sense to view them as a cohesive whole.
But wait, there's more collaboration: Outlook Groups, Office Planner, and Delve
If you're a typical Outlook user, your left rail in Outlook is already jammed with various folders: Sent Items, Deleted Items, Important, Starred, and many more. At the bottom, Outlook now adds Groups.
Groups can represent an ad-hoc team formed to hammer out a feature request, an entire sales organization, or anything in between. In previous versions of Office, you could create an email alias, such as "West Coast Edit," that stood in for this. But with Groups, you can create a shared calendar and OneDrive, then track the progress of various group projects via the Planning Hub.
Creating a Group inside Office 2016.
It's not immediately obvious how to form a Group. I right-clicked the Group label to form one. (An admin can also take care of this for you.) Outlook asks you to create a group name, and at least in my organization, assigned it its own email address. For now, much of this takes place at Outlook.com, in a Web browser. Using it via Chrome gave my boss some problems, but Edge worked fine.
In general, I like Groups, if managed appropriately. Microsoft put some thought into how Groups messages are passed, allowing you to send in-Group email (known as Conversations) into your general Outlook inbox—or in its own workflow. Outlook already offers a number of ways to connect with contacts, via messaging Skype, email, or phone. Some people want to see all that communication in a single, unified interface; others want to break it out into discrete conversations. Groups allows you to do both.
This took me just a few minutes to create, and it looks great. But there's a formality to it, too. You'd probably still want to use Facebook or a social network to plan a lunch outing, while Groups works better in a business environment.
As you and your teammates plan and move forward on your various projects, Delve and Outlook's Office Planner help manage the effort. Both are (or will be) web apps, available from the Office "waffle" menu in the upper corner of Office365.com.
Delve is sort of an odd fusion of OneDrive and Lync. One portion of it is devoted to surfacing relevant documents that you know are buried somewhere in your Outlook folders, while the other will show you more information about a particular colleague, such as her resume and where she sits in the organizational hierarchy. (If you open a contact card in Outlook and view the Sharepoint profile, it will open this Delve page.) I couldn't care less about where a coworker went to school. But in my own workflow, Delve automatically shows me the documents I use most frequently.
Delve's profile view.
I'm torn on Delve's usefulness. Quite frankly, I think that there's a case to be made that if Delve needs to exist, then something in modern business (or in Office) is broken. Delve does find documents I need, and I like that—but it also displayed a flurry of test documents I had created and will never use again. Not so great. And I really don't understand the concept of the standalone Delve mobile app—I can surface relevant documents, but I have to go to another app to contact people about them? Finally, Delve is also only good for finding attached documents—if a co-worker dropped a critical bit of information into an email, you're out of luck.
Keep reading: There's this new thing called Office Planner.
Microsoft adds two new apps to Office 2016: Sway and Delve. But while Microsoft's newfound focus on collaboration makes real sense for businesses, home users should also consider Microsoft's free, excellent Office Mobile apps for mobile devices.
Microsoft adds two new apps: Sway and Delve
Outlook Groups forms foundation of new collaborative focus
Business intelligence now integrated inside Excel
Real-time editing still to come in Excel, PowerPoint
Free Office Mobile apps make paying for Office a tough choice
Office's collaborative vision works best for businesses, not consumers


It hasn't been a good year for Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The country's petroleum-based economy continues to suffer from the low price of oil.
Radical Islamists made international headlines by attacking a gun store and a National Guard facility in the western city of Aktobe early this month, killing 20 people. Kazakh authorities killed 18 radicals and arrested several during and after the attacks.
But the worst news for Nazarbayev was nationwide protests since May against the government's plan to increase from 10 to 25 years the length of time that foreigners can lease public land for agriculture.
That provision was part of a government land-privatization reform package aimed at increasing the amount of land under cultivation in Kazakhstan, the world's ninth-largest country.
Many Kazakhs rose up against the government in the mistaken belief that the new package allows the country to sell -- rather than lease -- land to Chinese farmers.
Kazakh officials contend that the Nazarbayev administration's political opponents spread the Chinese land-sale rumors to try to foment a popular uprising that would lead to a coup.
They are probably right. Political opponents elsewhere in the former Soviet Union have also seized on bread-and-butter issues to stoke popular unrest.
The best examples are uprisings over electric-rate increases in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.
In many ways, using bread-and-butter issues to stoke unrest is smarter than asking the public to rise up for political reasons.
For one thing, most people in the former Soviet Union hold the cynical view that a change of government will simply replace one set of crooks with another, and do nothing for society. That means a lot of the public can't get excited about political appeals to them.
But they can get fired up about bread-and-butter issues that could affect their futures.
In the case of Kazakhstan, the bread-and-butter appeal is the contention that millions of Chinese farmers could flood into the country and refuse to leave, jeopardizing Kazakhs' livelihoods and making the country a virtual Chinese colony.
In the case of the electric-rate increases in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, the bread-and-butter appeal was the contention that there would be less money in people's pockets for food, rent and other necessities.
The Kyrgyzstan rate increase actually led to President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's ouster in 2010.
Much of the public was unhappy with Bakiyev for other reasons, particularly the belief that he used fraud to steal his re-election in 2009.
But Bakiyev's decision to double electric rates was what ultimately proving his undoing by provoking the uprising that led to his fleeing the country.
Learning from the Kyrgyzstan situation, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan took steps to co-opt street demonstrations against a 17 percent rate increase that the country's Russian-owned main utility planned for August of 2015.
Sargsyan announced that for an unspecified period the government would cover the difference between the old and new rates so that consumers wouldn't have to.
Armenia is one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union, so the rate increase would have taken a big bite out of people's incomes.
You can be sure that opposition forces in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia smacked their lips over the public anger that the rate increases generated. That anger presented them with an opportunity: If they could figure out how to channel it, they might be able to foment a general uprising that would usher them into office.
Russia was so concerned that the rate-increase protests in Armenia could lead to an uprising against its ally Sargsyan that it warned the Armenian public against trying to pull off a color revolution in the country.
Opposition forces across the former Soviet Union learned from the Kyrgyzstan and Armenian rate-increase uprisings that seizing on bread-and-butter issues may be a better way to precipitate regime change than using political appeals.
Kazakhstan officials became convinced that the opposition was using the land issue to try to spark a popular political uprising in the same way that the Kyrgyzstan and Armenian oppositions had seized on the electric-rate-increase issue.
To warn the opposition that it was treading on dangerous ground, Kazakh officials went public with their belief that those spreading the Chinese-land-sale rumors had the ulterior motive of trying to seize the bread-and-butter issue to precipitate a general political uprising.
For the time being, both Armenia and Kazakhstan have checkmated the opposition's use of bread-and-butter issues to try to foment a general uprising.
Having learned that bread-and-butter issues can be effective change agents, you can be sure that opposition movements are looking for the next one to seize on -- and that governments are brainstorming counter-measures.


Amy Chua talked convincingly of the significance of 'tolerance' in the rise of powers... something for Kentucky, for Louisville to take to heart: The more we open our doors to the Other, the Outsider, the more we grow and gain power. I'm doing a creative mishearing of her talk - her discussion was of Hyperpowers, but the sideglance thought is inevitable: the more voices, talents, variations in a society, the more it grows and produces.
For four days I was in the heady atmosphere of smart people talking smart ideas, creative people inspiring us and each other. This was here in our town and our smart and creative people were there in large numbers. We asked good questions, we talked, we were engaged and we engaged ourselves. The participants and audience from outside - from around the country and around the world were impressed with the event, the city, the people, the response. To all the negative-thinking folks on this forum, I just have to say, "I wish you had been there."
man i would have loved to have gone but I have been in and out of town on business. i think its great the ville is really buillding a creative class, despite what the naysayers say, this is one creative town. this is from one well traveled guy.
I agree about the creativity. My daughter, a young sculptor, is impressed with all the public sculpture here. And the funky art.
I also posted a link to stories on the general Kentucky page Louroclou if you would like to see it.


text:
Dieter Reiter (born 19 May 1958) is a German politician and the mayor of Munich, the capital of the state of Bavaria. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party.

Career
Reiter was born in Rain, Swabia. He studied at the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung und Rechtspflege in Hof, where he finished 1981. On the 30. March 2014 he was voted with 56.7% of votes mayor of Munich. He succeeded Christian Ude, who served as mayor from 1993 to 2014. Reiter was a SPD delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017.

In 2021, Reiter proposed illuminating the stadium for UEFA Euro 2020 in rainbow colors to protest the Hungarian anti-LGBT law, but this was rejected by UEFA.

Other activities

Corporate boards
 FC Bayern, member of the advisory board
 Stadtwerke München (SWM), ex officio chairman of the supervisory board
 Munich Airport, ex officio member of the supervisory board
 Messe München, ex officio member of the supervisory board

Non-profit organizations
 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, member of the board of trustees
 Technische Universität München, member of the board of trustees
 Deutsches Museum, member of the board of trustees
 Ifo Institute for Economic Research, member of the board of trustees
 ver.di, member

Personal life
Reiter has been married twice, and is the father of a son from his first marriage. His second wife, Petra, has two children of her own from a previous relationship.

References

1958 births
Living people
Mayors of Munich
Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
People from Rain, Swabia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Martial Musings: A Portrayal of Martial Arts in the 20th Century.
By Robert W. Smith.
Published by Via Media Publishing Co., 1999.
US$39.95. ISBN: 1-893765-008.
6" x 9" vii, 390 p. hardcover.
Over 300 illustrations, bibliography, and index.
I had to wrestle our preview copy of Martial Musings away from Meik in order to finish up this review. His comment, "But it's just too damned interesting."
Settle into your favorite rocking chair and get ready to listen to one of the "grand old men" of martial arts entertain and inform. Reading Martial Musings is much like listening to your granddad, sitting on the porch at sunset, weave tales of the olden days. Absolutely absorbing, opinionated, and spellbinding.
Robert W. Smith: Marine, CIA, judoka, taijiquan exponent, author of numerous books on Chinese arts and co-author with Donn F. Draeger of Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts; he's been just about everywhere, seen and done just about everything, and he shares his reflections on his experiences with us in his book. Martial Musings is essentially a series of essays in more or less chronological order, coupled with beautifully reproduced sepia-toned photographs. This format suits the subject matter, which ranges from "Boxing" and "Judo" to "The Bogus: Hollywood" and "Nothing Could Be Finer: Down to Carolina." In between, Smith reminisces on the characters he has known, like E.J. Harrison (he recounts an absolutely hilarious tale of Harrison's first encounter with New Year's mochi in Japan), Donn Draeger (excerpted here), the real "John Gilbey," Zheng Manqing, Ben Lo and others.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the international spread of Eastern martial arts, and for serious students of judo, taiji, bagua, and xingyi (that covers pretty much all of us, I'd say). It'll make you howl with laughter, and provide plenty of food for thought. There are just a few (entirely overlookable) shortcomings to beware. Smith is primarily an essayist; he interjects frequent literary quotes. This is charming on occasion, but gets to feeling a bit overdone in a book-length work. Consider doing your reading in snippets to compensate. Smith makes no bones about his opinions and biases and this is commendable. Just don't forget that we all tell our own life stories from our unique point of view--this work is autobiography and not intended to be a scholarly treatise on any of the people or topics. Some of Smith's accounts have other sides to them. Finally, I must complain about the index--and yes, I do know how difficult they are to do properly. I also know (Masters of Library Science) how extremely important it is to get the index right. Although the need to provide a glossary can complicate matters (and again, I've faced this same decision), when that glossary (or in this case, two, Japanese and Chinese) also serves as an index, it should be alphabetized together with that index. You may need to look in three different lists to find what you are looking for. My advice to the publisher is to simplify and either keep the definitions in a separate glossary list or combine the definitions into the index.
The short version of this review is: "Don't miss this book."
Read an excerpt: "Donn Draeger"
Or another: "The Mutts and the Mochi Cakes" by E.J. Harrison
A Koryu.com original.
URL: https://koryu.com /books/mm.html


On Lake Okeechobee with me today, was Bob and Zack from Massachusetts. Super nice guys, a father and son combo. Son is getting ready to go in to the United States Coast Guard, and it an honor to be with him before he goes to service. We were doing some light tackle fishing, catch some. Doing a little bit of swim-bait fishing, nothing caught supper big today but had a lot of fun. We caught some good fish and really enjoyed spending the day with these folks.


Part of retaining employees starts with how to attract them, too. Learn some of the factors that go into building an amazing Employee Value Proposition in our latest eBook.
For many, it's the physical; keeping your great staff and making sure your turnover numbers stay low. When you consider employee turnover, it's hard not to connect it to a negative impact on an organisation's performance.
But this is just one dimension of retention; there is a further element that is often overlooked, and that's the engagement dimension, which deals with the emotional and behavioural aspects of an employee's role. Why keep employees if they're not contributing and engaged? Sometimes, it's best to part ways and as I've talked about before, HR professionals can gain valuable information from exit interviews.
We know we cannot keep everyone, but during an employee's time with us, we want them to be supported to be the best they can be.
But before someone walks out your door, you have to ask yourself, are you doing your best to keep them engaged? Maintaining high staff spirits, a key part of engagement, results in continued dedication to both their role and the company as a whole.
Employee retention is important no matter what industry you're in, or how many employees you have. However, the task of attracting the very best employees in the first place can often take the limelight, vacuuming up effort and funds while retention is left to languish.
So how can you improve this part of your business? How can you keep these (easily breakable spirits high) and ensure that you don't lose your strongest assets?
To figure this out, we first need to explore the main reasons that employees leave.
And he's right. According to another LinkedIn study, 74% of candidates want a job where they feel like their job matters. Although this doesn't directly refer to retention, it highlights the fact that employees will quit if they believe that their company and their job doesn't actually matter.
These findings teach us several lessons. Firstly, if staff feel like they can't be themselves and like their colleagues don't support them, they will walk out of the door. If they feel like their company isn't giving them motivation, in the form of recognition or of non-existent or poorly matched benefits, that's driving a feeling of disrespect among employee and employer. And last, but certainly not least, leaders who are not engaged with their staff will inevitably lose them.
Think about how your benefits address this – are you taking steps to improve mental wellbeing, put money back in the pockets of your employees or offering opportunities for your employees to add to their physical wellbeing? Focus on what your employees want, and replace those well-intentioned but less impactful ideas.
Concentrate first on the employee benefits of substance; ones that truly make a difference to the lives of your workforce.
Addressing a lack of diversity in your workforce is also a contributing factor here, as it can help your staff feel as though they are accepted and supported. Put simply, workplace diversity and inclusion makes everyone feel better, about coming to work and also working for a company that cares about them. If you haven't already, consider creating a diversity and inclusion statement, creating an open space for employees to share stories or speak more openly about the demographics of your company and how it affects their day-to-day contributions.
Next, are you shouting your purpose as a company from your rooftop (or at least the top floor!)? You must – because if an employee doesn't understand your company's mission, purpose and values, they might deduce that their job doesn't matter.
Employees not knowing these elements is more common that you might realize. A Reward Gateway study found that less than half of employees felt fully informed about their company's mission and values. And that's just not good enough.
So, refresh and communicate your company values as a matter of priority.
That's a huge percentage! So, only hire and retain leaders that will role model and live your company values. As Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, says, "The single biggest decision you make in your job- bigger than all the rest- is who you name manager. When you name the wrong person manager, nothing fixes that bad decision." I agree.
Finally, always default to transparency. What I mean by this is that employee trust can only be obtained and retained by open and honest communication. Stop telling lies or half truths, and put all the facts and information on the table.
In Catrin Lewis' blog about her first 100 days as Head of Global Engagement with Reward Gateway, she cites this as one of the most crucial things she learned to value and implement in her new role.
The benefit of making these changes will be truly tangible. Employees who won't just go to bat for your company, but will stick around and help you succeed; today, tomorrow and right down the line.


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World Health & Population 17(1) September 2016 : 16-20.doi:10.12927/whp.2016.25041
Advocacy for International Family Planning: What Terminology Works?
Douglas Huber, Raymond Martin and Mona Bormet
Full Issue PDF
Advocating for international family planning while avoiding miscommunications with politically and religiously conservative policy makers and the public requires care and clarity with language. We find that terms such as "international family planning" are well received when the meaning is clearly explained, such as "enabling couples to determine the number and timing of pregnancies, including the voluntary use of methods for preventing pregnancy – not including abortion – harmonious with their beliefs and values". Family planning also helps reduce abortions – a powerful message for conservative policy makers and the public.
We concur with Dyer et al. (2016) that the messenger is important; we find that many of the most effective advocates are religious leaders and faith-based health providers from the Global South. They know and validate the importance of family planning for improving family health and reducing abortions in their communities.
"Healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy" is positive language for policy makers, especially when describing the health impact for women and children. Universal access to contraceptive services is emerging as vital for family health and also to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015). Language on international family planning will evolve, and clarity of meaning will be foundational for effective advocacy.
The report by Dyer et al. (2016) gives good insights on the importance of language when advocating for international family planning with politically and religiously conservative policy makers and the public. They confirm that terminology and rhetoric can deliver very different messages depending on the audience, and that furthermore, the messenger can also make a significant difference. Given the polarization in the US on family planning and reproductive health, it is encouraging that in a short few years, from 2013 to 2016, there is growing support for the concept of family planning in the Global South. They found strong agreement, 74% of those surveyed, that women in developing countries want greater access to birth control and contraceptives, and 79% believe greater access to contraceptives could save more women's lives.
Since 2008, Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) has advocated for support of international family planning with our members, religious leaders in developing countries, the public and with policy makers. CCIH (www.ccih.org) is a global membership network of 140+ diverse Christian organizations. To guide our educational and advocacy efforts, CCIH conducted a survey of our members in 2008 that included a close look at acceptability of various terminology. We quickly learned that clear explanations were required when using family planning terms (Huber et al. 2008). We crafted the following language that has been used in many CCIH publications: "The term 'Family Planning' as used by CCIH means, enabling couples to determine the number and timing of pregnancies, including the voluntary use of methods for preventing pregnancy – not including abortion – harmonious with their values and religious beliefs" (CCIH 2016).
The 2008 CCIH study found discomfort among our members with terms such as "control" and "limitation". The question on language, which tested 11 different terms, showed that no one term was universally preferred. There was some skepticism about the term "contraceptive," primarily out of concern that some contraceptives may be abortifacients. Subsequent CCIH advocacy experience showed that although the choice of terminology can be important for different audiences, even more important is to provide very clear definitions of terms.
We note that Dyer et al. (2016) tested language defining international family planning as "enabling women and couples in developing nations to determine the timing and spacing of pregnancies in a manner that includes voluntary methods of preventing pregnancy – not including abortion – that are harmonious with their religious beliefs and values," basically CCIH's definition of family planning. Using this definition, they document that "international family planning" received the highest positive rating. Therefore, we would differ with the recommendation of Dyer et al. (2016) that the terms "international family planning" and "family planning" should not be used among religious conservatives. We find good acceptance when clearly defining what we mean by these terms. The terms "healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy", "family planning", and "international family planning" all have a place in communications with religious conservatives.
CCIH's advocacy for international family planning, when clearly defined, has been accepted by political and religious conservative staff in the US Congress; the same applies to our education and advocacy with the US public and with religious leaders in Africa. We also find that the terminology of healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy is positive, especially when linked with the evidence of the impact on women's and children's health and the desire by women in the Global South to have adequate spacing of pregnancies (CCIH 2015a).
CCIH's common ground definitions have not hindered our membership, as we have grown from 92 Christian organizations in 2008 to 140+ today using all these terms.
We found an additional element of success in advocating for international family planning not mentioned in the Dyer et al. (2016) report – namely, that family planning and increased contraceptive use reduces unintended pregnancies and abortions. The powerful association with reducing abortions leads to common ground across faiths and secular organizations on the basis of health and ethical values. Evidence-based communications that family planning reduces abortions and that faith-based organizations want to help (CCIH 2015a, 2015b) is valued by political and religious conservatives. Furthermore, there is growing evidence in the US and elsewhere that increased access to modern, highly effective contraceptives has a major impact on reducing unintended pregnancies and abortions (Goldthwaite 2015, Secura 2014). The high level of "pro-life" sentiments found by Dyer et al. (2016) underscores the huge potential in educating political and religious conservatives, as well as the public, on the impact of contraceptive access and services for reducing abortions.
CCIH's experience also finds that a strong element supporting international family planning advocacy is having a trusted messenger. Many of the most effective are faith leaders from the Global South who are living the health realities faced by their communities. These are validating voices from religious leaders and faith-based health providers of why international family planning is an important part of women's and children's health in low-resource countries. Their stories and perspectives from the field are valued by US policy makers and Congressional leaders as evidenced by the time and attention given to them during visits.
Additional supportive evidence for advocacy with Christians in the US is the documentation that women and men within the major US Christian traditions also use modern effective contraceptives at a high rate. For those desiring to delay or space pregnancies, the levels of contraceptive use are similar among Catholics, Evangelicals and mainline Protestants, irrespective of their level of religiosity, based on frequency of church attendance (Jones 2011).
Another relevant observation from CCIH experience is that often it may be more acceptable and effective to position family planning or healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies in the context of larger maternal and child health goals and programs, rather than as a separate, stand-alone activity.
For example, the aforementioned education piece (CCIH 2015a) includes the following content:
The lives of 1.6 million children could be saved each year if births were spaced three years apart.
Family planning prevents unintended and dangerous pregnancies, thus reducing abortions and protecting mothers' health.
Family planning enables families to better care for their children, especially when food and other resources are scarce.
After CCIH shared this communications piece and other information with congressional representatives and staff, they have expressed appreciation for helping them make the connection between spacing pregnancies through the use of family planning and healthier mothers and children.
Similar results have been found in the field. Contraceptive use increased by 200 and 300% in two comprehensive health centers within two years when the Christian Health Association of Kenya piloted enhanced family planning services and trained religious leaders to teach their communities about the health benefits of family planning.
When the target audience, whether conservative or not, sees the issue as a wide range of interventions affecting the overall health and well-being of women, children and families, with contraceptives and child spacing as one of many components, skepticism and fear tend to dissipate.
The Dyer et al. (2016) report also hints at this conclusion.
Our experience, along with the overall findings of the Dyer et al. (2016) report, can provide a framework for messages when advocating for international family planning with political and religious conservatives. We find key elements for guiding successful advocacy include:
Define clearly what you mean by terms, especially "family planning" and "international family planning." Assure your audience that family planning is voluntary, does not include abortion, is designed to meet the desires of men and women for their own family formation and includes a range of methods consistent with the beliefs and values of the recipient.
Give evidence that family planning reduces abortions and promotes the health and well-being of women, children and the family (CCIH 2015a, 2015b).
Choose effective and trusted messengers, such as religious leaders and faith-based health providers from the Global South who can speak with authority from experience about the importance of family planning for promoting health and reducing abortions in their communities (CCIH 2016).
Advocacy language is evolving as family planning becomes increasingly accepted as an essential part of maternal and child health. Universal access to contraceptive services for couples is emerging as a priority component of international development. For progress towards achieving the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015), men and women should have clear and correct information about family planning methods; to be free from coercion or pressure to use family planning or particular methods; and to have access to a range of safe, affordable, acceptable contraceptives and services, according to their own needs and values. In the future, we can expect these concepts to be integral components of advocacy messaging for international family planning and clear definitions and explanations of terms will be needed.
Douglas Huber, MD, MSc, Co-Chair, Family Planning/Reproductive Health Working Group, Christian Connections for International Health, Newton, MA
Raymond Martin, MPH, Executive Director Emeritus, Christian Connections for International Health, Sterling, VA
Mona Bormet, MPH, CHES, Program Director, Christian Connections for International Health, Sterling, VA
Correspondence may be directed to: Douglas Huber, MD, MSc, 1175 Chestnut St Unit 6, Newton, MA 02464 Home/Office: 617-244-0843; Tel.: 617-335-4499; E-mail: DouglasHuber777@yahoo.com.
We gratefully acknowledge the editorial assistance of Kathy Erb and the ongoing contributions from our members in the US and the Global South who help shape CCIH's communications. The content and views of this article are solely those of the authors.
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH). 2015a. Why Do Christians Promote Healthy Timing of Pregnancies? Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved October 4, 2016. <www.ccih. org/Why-Christians-Promote-Healthy-Timing-of-Pregnancies.pdf>.
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH). 2015b. How Faith-Based Organizations Can Help Reduce Abortions. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved October 4 2016. <www.ccih. org/FP-Reduces-Abortions.pdf>.
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH). 2016. Think You Know Where Christians Stand on Family Planning? Think Again! Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved October 4, 2016. <www.ccih.org/Hill-Fact-Sheet-FP.pdf>.
Dyer, J.E., B.L. Heuser and S. Franklin. 2016. "International Family Planning: How Political and Religious Conservatives Respond and How to Shape Messaging for Successful Advocacy." World Health & Population 17(1): 5–15. doi:10.12927/ whp.2016.25042.
Goldthwaite, L.M., L. Duca, R.K. Johnson, D. Ostendorf and J. Sheeder. 2015. "Adverse Birth Outcomes in Colorado: Assessing the Impact of a Statewide Initiative to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy." American Journal of Public Health 105: e60–e66. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302711.
Huber, D., E.R. Yang, J. Brown and R. Brown. 2008. International Family Planning: Christian Actions and Attitudes – A Survey of Christian Connections for International Health Member Organizations. 2008. Washington, DC: Christian Connections for International Health. Retrieved October 4, 2016. <www.ccih.org/ccih-fp-2008-report>.
Jones, R.K. and J. Dreweke. 2011. Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use. New York, NY: Guttmacher Institute. Retrieved October 13, 2016. <www.guttmacher.org/report/countering-conventional-wisdom-new-evidence-religion-and-contraceptive-use>.
Secura, G.M., T. Madden, C. McNicholas, J. Mullersman, C.M. Buckel, Q. Zhao et al. 2014. "Provision of No-Cost, Long-Acting Contraception and Teenage Pregnancy." New England Journal of Medicine 371: 1316–23. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1400506.
United Nations. 2015. Sustainable Development Goals: 17 Goals to Transform Our World. Retrieved October 14, 2016. <www.un.org/ sustainabledevelopment/news/communications-material/>.
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text:
August 31, 2003 ñ New York Times
Finding Comfort in the Safety of Names
THE NEW GROUND ZERO
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
THE capitalized words printed just above these, which you may have read or maybe your eye skipped over them, are my first and last names. In the cafeteria of the building where I work, a similar name ó Jay M. Kimmelsman ó appears on a plaque commemorating New York Times employees killed during World War II. Jay M. Kimmelsman worked in the department of outgoing mail. When I pass the plaque, I think of him. I feel a connection.
What is it about a name? Its power is palpable but mysterious. Without thinking, we say we know someone when we know his name. "Do you know who that is?" "Yes, that's Jay from outgoing mail." But how much do we know? We react to names that resemble ours, or resemble the names of people we know, in the same vague way that we scour other people's family snapshots. We hunt for clues to what they tell us, often idly. We look for something of ourselves.
But names, like photographs, unless they are ours or those of our friends and family, say much less than we expect.
The competition guidelines for the memorial at ground zero require that the design "recognize each individual who was a victim" on Sept. 11, 2001, and on Feb. 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked. It's a safe bet that many of the 5,200 submissions interpret that as some kind of list of names. By aesthetic and social consensus, names are today a kind of reflexive memorial impulse, lists of names having come almost automatically to connote "memorial," just as minimalism has come to be the presumptive sculptural style for memorial design, the monumental blank slate onto which the names can be inscribed.
During the past week the news broke that the remains of more than 1,000 of the 2,792 people who are missing from the Sept. 11 attack will be buried at the memorial. Investigators cannot identify more than 12,000 body parts ó the DNA is too badly damaged ó and so the remains will be dried and vacuum sealed, preserved, like ancient mummies, in white opaque pouches, in the hope that technologies of the future can decode who is who. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, in addition to requiring recognition of each victim, instructed entrants in the competition to include space to store remains, just in case.
So now the memorial becomes a literal cemetery, with the oldest form of human identification, names, most likely testifying to victims the newest science can't distinguish. The ethos will be different from that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There are no bodies buried at the Vietnam memorial, nor any unaccounted-for remains. That memorial is a list of names, a neutral place to meditate abstractly on the war and on the dead and missing, who are elsewhere.
By the afternoon of Sept. 11, people were already taping photocopied fliers with the names and pictures of their dead or missing friends and relatives at makeshift shrines around the city: instant, homegrown demonstrations against the anonymity of mass killing. The fliers, which were at first missing-persons posters, quickly became private memorials, reminding everybody that the people who died at the World Trade Center were not numbers but someone's husband or sister or son.
This isn't new. The impulse to name names already became commonplace with World War I. Partly, it democratized war. Foot soldiers were recognized not as nameless peons but as individuals, like the generals who sent them to die. The war had made many people cynical about everything except the doughboys in the trenches. These men emerged as the everyday heroes, if there still were any heroes, instead of the military leaders or lone Paul Revere types who had traditionally been singled out for memorials. The listing of their names reduced the distance between the recruit and the officer but also represented a tacit protest against the anonymity of modern warfare. Names both stood for the individual soldier and, correlatively, pleaded for a more humane approach to battle, which is to say they gained both literal and symbolic value.
World War I also inspired tombs of the unknown soldier. The tomb tried to reconcile two conflicting ideologies about war: the dehumanizing anonymity of death and the nobility of personal sacrifice. The unknown soldier symbolized both the masses of anonymous dead and each missing soldier, whose name we were implicitly meant to attach to the tomb.
To this morbid history, World War II contributed lists of innocent victims. Fifty years after its founding, Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, which in Hebrew means "a monument and a name," is still recovering the names of the Jews who died during the Holocaust, a vain and fruitful enterprise in that all the names will never be accounted for, so that the process of trying to remember cannot end.
By the time of Maya Lin's Vietnam memorial in 1982, the idea of names, engraved simply and identically ó a visual equivalent to the monotone roll-call of the dead, which has also become a standard memorial ritual ó achieved Platonic form, more moving for being so spare. Minimalism proved itself there as the sculptural language of the memorial sublime, combining the abstraction of the memorial's physical form with the absolute specificity of the names of every dead and missing soldier. It was the inverse of the tomb to the unknown soldier, which had become nearly obsolete, thanks to improved forensic science and record keeping, or so it seemed until Sept. 11.
Ms. Lin's memorial, which carefully took no side in the debate about Vietnam, was made out of polished black granite so that people would literally see themselves reflected in the names on the wall, a mirror of perception. The Vietnam War was an unresolved issue, but the dead and missing from that war could be listed. Names seemed morally neutral. They were a compromise in a society that could not decide where it stood. Today, it is too early to know the historical lessons of the attacks on the World Trade Towers, but the casualty list can be drawn up. A world that does not seem to agree about anything can settle on the names of the dead. Lists of names promise closure, a conflict-averse path to catharsis in an age of instant gratification and short attention spans.
But written words, as Shimon Attie, an artist of memorials, has said, are images, and images have an aesthetic component and a political one. A long list of names is, first of all, an incantatory sight, the length of the list implying the scale of the event memorialized. Seeing 57,000 names is not the same as seeing 168 (the number of people killed in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City) or 2,792 or 6 million, by which point a list becomes almost unreadable. Numbers suggest the enormity of loss but are a dubious measure of history. Not many people died at Lexington and Concord but what happened there changed the fate of the nation.
And names only seem morally neutral. Ms. Lin's Vietnam memorial made names the basic irreducible fact of this episode in history. Names were all that was left after the pomp and flourish of old-fashioned memorial design were stripped away. In hundreds of years, when the historical debates Ms. Lin studiously sidestepped may be forgotten, the names of the men will be what remain written in stone. Picture, for a second, that memorial without the names: a plain black tombstone, an open wound on the Washington Mall, which was how Ms. Lin imagined the design sculpturally. The message about the war would be very different.
Names animate space. They are like ghosts. We read into them. The ethnic variety of names on the Vietnam memorial summons up an image of a diverse population, a model democracy, a political portrait that belies the rifts of the culture. One nation. One family.
The Vietnam memorial is also shaped like a book. Ms. Lin purposely chose a small typeface, unheard of in monumental design, so that reading the names would seem more intimate, like scanning a printed page. The memorial is supposed to be our national story. She also listed the 57,000 names not alphabetically but chronologically according to when the soldiers died or went missing, an artistic device. Imagine all the John Smiths who died in Vietnam listed alphabetically. Now imagine that your father or son or brother or husband were one of them. Which John Smith on the wall would you touch or pin a photograph beside or leave flowers underneath?
The engraved style of these names, sans pomp and serif, is now standard. The names on the 168 chairs that, like headstones in rows, represent the dead in Oklahoma City are graphic descendants of the names on the Vietnam memorial. But names are fickle signifiers, containers for information that can be filled differently by different people, depending on what they know or think or hear about the person named. In Oklahoma City, some parents, unhappy with their sons-in-law, wanted their dead daughters' maiden names on the memorial, not their daughters' married names. Names are loaded. A list of the dead SS officers buried at Kolmeshohe cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, would have a different effect on their relatives than on Jews.
We engrave the names of donors on walls of museums and other public buildings. Your money or your life. Lists democratize veterans in battle, but they are also signs of difference. At Oklahoma City, a committee needed to be formed to decide who qualified for a list of survivors. If you were injured and went to a hospital, you would be eligible; if you went to a doctor's office, you might not be. If you lost friends and colleagues and your life was turned upside down but you had left the Murrah building for a dentist's appointment before the explosion or had stayed home sick that day, you were not a survivor, although of course you were. Just not in name.
Edward Linenthal, who wrote a book about the memorial in Oklahoma City, has described memorial hierarchies. Resolving them ó who gets named and how ó is, he argues, part of the process of setting history right, a service
to the dead, the essence of what memorials are for. In Oklahoma City, there are the names of the dead on the chairs but also a museum, in which anyone can tell his or her story. Ground zero may consider something similar: the museum as egalitarian bulletin board, a repository of consolations to survivors, who can decide how they want to remember their dead. Families of the firefighters who died in the World Trade Center, for example, have pleaded publicly that their dead relatives be identified as firefighters in the memorial. The families said the men lived and died as firefighters. Their ladder units were their other families. It isn't that they were greater human beings than the stockbrokers and restaurant workers who died, only that the dead men would want to be remembered as firefighters. They belonged to a community. Their names should be accompanied by F.D.N.Y., maybe even grouped separately. But then how does a list not rank the dead?
The memorial at ground zero, with its unidentified remains, will be a special kind of memorial. It is partly a tomb of the unknown victim, with the abstract language of memorial design, if it ends up being abstract, that much more in tension with the literal: in this case not just literally lists of names but parts of bodies, the corporeal and the symbolic. Many people may think about these bodies when they stand there reading the names: about their own inability to connect the remains to names, about the insufficiency of names to conjure up and stand in for the people who are lost.
What's in a name? Memorials are ultimately local, as the historian James Young has said. They are above all for the families and for a community, common ground to grieve. There are many ways to enshrine and recall the dead. Memorials can be places of contention, which keep alive history through debate. Names, foreclosing political conflicts that may be the real unhealed wounds of the event memorialized, provide instead the possibility of solace for the relatives of the victims. Strangers show up and may be overwhelmed by the sight of long lists of people they did not know, with whom they can only try to identify, just as we all greet unfamiliar names, whose meanings remain elusive.
Finally, only the families and friends of the dead can really know what those names mean.


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