My journey was quite circuitous. I first started undergrad as a pre-med, but really did not want to practice in the US, and didn't know what else I could do with an MD. So I decided to go abroad. And I ended up doing a masters in Asian Studies, where I focused on Buddhism. And I got to live in China and India. And between living there-- and South Africa, during my study abroad-- I got a good glimpse of this recurring theme-- how social forces conspire to make people sick. And I thought, OK well, I'd like to help out. So I started volunteering for some public health campaigns. And I ended up working at the CDC and the WHO, Partners In Health. I was a lab supervisor for Doctors Without Borders in the Sudan. And after all these experiences, I thought to myself, I really like being abroad. I really like engaging with this idea that we can make a difference in the structural determinants of health. But I need more tools. I need a bigger skill set. And that's when I decided to return to medical school. Get the skill set, and then maybe come back and do some more work. And I think while I was doing the medicine, I thought, OK well this isn't quite enough a skill set. This is really teaching me how to be a technician in the US system, which is a lot different-- the US being not very good on primary care and not very good on prevention-- when so much of what I was seeing abroad would benefit from good doses of that. And so that's when I decided to do the PhD in anthropology, so that I could get a better understanding of the cultural and social forces that were also involved, and how they manifest as disease. And the idea now is to try and combine the tools-- social science, or the human science tools, and the medical tools, to find ways to intervene on health problems that really take into account the structural determinants, or the social forces behind them. And to make the technical side-- the biomedical camps-- aware that sometimes they don't have all of the answers. And sometimes they're going to run into walls. And when they do run into walls, it's important to create space for the other people working on the problem, because-- like the example of the card games. When people get too used to seeing something one way, i.e., there's always going to be a technical solution to a problem, they start to forget that there may be other ways of being in the world-- other ways of intervening in the world. And it's important that we open the space so that we can implement those as well. I have one last question. And that is, you mentioned that you had studied Buddhism-- I don't know if you actually became a Buddhist or you've studied Buddhism. And it seems, just from your last remark, that that study has influenced very much your medical health interests. Yeah, it very much has. I think the idea-- I was into the philosophical Buddhism. The idea that there are no separate beings. There are no-- it's a mistake for me and you to refer to each other as me and you. We are really just fingers on the same hand, and we just need to look down and see the palm that connects us. And so I think that's what the anthropology allows me to do. It allows me to see the interconnectedness and how not looking at things in such a reductionist way can allow you to maybe make a difference in a different way. The biomedical paradigm is predicated upon reducing things into its smallest parts, and then treating away this, and treating away this. And I think more holistic world views are also in order, so that we don't forget things like the way we treat our women-- the way we treat our young girls. That also can result in an infection five years down the road. It's not that novel a concept to the freethinkers of the world, but for the people that actually are pulling the strings, it is somewhat novel. And so I think that's what I'm trying to do-- is convince the people with their hands on the strings that it is as simple as that. It is as simple as the way we treat our young girls. Results in these big numbers you see, as far as HIV prevalence and whatnot. So that's what I'm working on.
