Michigan Dreams
Fall 2009/Findings Alumni Magazine
By Mary Beth Lewis and Leslie Stainton
Michigan Dreams
Michigan
has been hit hard during America’s economic downturn. Like a
slow-moving tsunami, trouble began arriving here years ago, as
manufacturing (particularly the auto industry) downsized painfully.
University of Michigan economists are predicting that 2010 will close a
decade represented by nearly 950,000 jobs lost in the Wolverine State.
We
wanted to find out how people here are holding up, particularly those
with some connection to UM SPH. Tell us how your work and your life are
affected, we said as we got in touch with alumni, faculty, and
community partners. How about your dreams—are they derailed, or simply
changing? What will rebirth look like for Michigan? What is the good
news?
Two Findings writers talked to more than a dozen
people—and we didn’t just call the stories in. We got out into
Michigan’s cities and green open vistas, to spend days shadowing many
of our interviewees at work: on a sun-drenched vegetable farm near
Manchester, a guarded UAW building on Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, in
hospitals, in the ravaged but hopeful neighborhoods of Flint, in the
sacred native lands of the Upper Peninsula. It helped us better
understand—and tell you more—about the state of our state, and what we
can expect next.
MANCHESTER: Charlie Perez and Karina Rodriguez, Health Aides, Infórmate Teen Health Program
“My
dad worked here in this field, and my mom, too, when she was pregnant
with me. But I don’t want to be here my whole life. I’ve always thought
I am going to be someone. I’m really good in school. I want to go to
college and study political science, and I want to be the first Latino
president of the United States of America. I would like to help a lot
of people, because there’s a lot of people in need.” —Charlie Perez
“I
want to finish high school and go off to a community college and study
to be a midwife. I wanted to be an architect originally. But I had to
be realistic, because who in the world was going to want to pay me to
make some kind of house the way they wanted? So I was like, OK,
nobody’s going to want to do that, the whole economy’s going. So I
needed a job that I knew was going to be secure—and that’s how I ended
up wanting to be a midwife.” —Karina Rodriguez
Karina Rodríguez, 17,
Ben Rubio, 19, and Charlie Perez, 16, traveled from Texas with their
families this summer to pick vegetables in Michigan. With SPH alumna
Amy Frank, MPH/MSW ’04, and UM graduate Alexandra Lazar, of Migrant
Health Promotion’s Infórmate program, the three trained to be teen
health aides in their community.
FLINT: Bettina Campbell, Founding Director, Your Center and Your Blessed Health
“AIDS
is the number-one cause of death among African-American men between the
ages of 20 and 49 in Genesee County, and our 13 to 19 year-olds have
the highest rates of HIV in the state. We have the second highest rates
of chlamydia and gonorrhea in Michigan, and we’re currently
experiencing a syphilis epidemic. Our teen pregnancy rates rival the
national rates, and that’s unacceptable. But we always have hope. We’ve
seen the health department, the medical community, politicians,
businesses, and everyday residents all come together to work on these
issues. We’ve had town hall meetings. We’ve been able to train 44 faith
institutions to be able to talk about health and sexuality, and as a
result we’ve seen more young people come in to pick up condoms, people
coming in to be tested, churches opening their doors to have testing
sites, pastors inviting us to talk about it from the pulpit. So they
are saying we get it, we want to help.”
A UM alumna (BS ’93, MSW
’95) and an SPH community partner, Bettina Campbell directs the
faith-based Flint initiative Your Center, which focuses on sexual
health and infant mortality. “It’s our responsibility as Christians,”
she says, “to step up to the plate and do whatever we can to make sure
that our brothers and sisters are on the same level playing field that
we are.”
GRAND RAPIDS: Erin Schlemmer, UM SPH epidemiology student
“In
terms of health care, Grand Rapids is really booming. The city is
getting a lot of different health care centers and research going.
Because of the contributions of several families, we’ve got
state-of-the-art facilities like the Van Andel Institute, which does
cancer research, the Fred and Lena Meijer Heart Center at Spectrum
Hospital, and the De Vos Children’s Hospital. Michigan State University
is also starting to build a big medical teaching and research complex
in Grand Rapids. Even though Michigan is having a lot of economic
problems, we are still a big leader in terms of health care research
and quality of care across the whole belt of Grand Rapids to Ann Arbor
and Detroit.”
Over the summer, Grand Rapids native Erin Schlemmer, a
second-year M.P.H. student at SPH, completed an internship with the
Michigan Department of Community Health, where she worked on HIV/AIDS
surveillance. She enjoyed working for the state government, she says,
because “you have the luxury of seeing overall trends and trying to
help make decisions about where to focus resources.”
DEARBORN:
Adnan Hammad, Senior Director, Community Health and Research Center for
Arab-American Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
“ACCESS
has been receiving and serving immigrants and refugees for almost 38
years, and it has never been as hard as it is now to help them. Last
year we received 2,050 refugees, and we have been informed by the
Office of Refugee Resettlement that we can expect 4,000 Iraqi-Chaldean
refugees by the end of this fiscal year. Our focus-group meetings with
refugees indicate that currently 70 percent of the refugees who come
here can’t find work. They live with their extended families, because
they cannot afford to live independently. They are really in need of
everything, including mental health services, because you have human
beings who are victims of torture and therefore victims of
post-traumatic stress syndrome. Refugees are the future of the American
dream, and we have to realize that. We have to allow them to integrate
in the larger community by employing them, opening doors for them.”
SPH
community partner Adnan Hammad grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp
and came to the U.S. in 1994 to establish and direct the Community
Health and Research Center at ACCESS, a human services organization
committed to the development of the Arab-American community. “America
gives people opportunities to make their dreams true,” he says.“I see
myself as part of the American dream.”
DETROIT: Angela Reyes, Founder and Executive Director, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation
“Working
for a nonprofit in Southwest Detroit these days is like living in the
eye of a storm. Our neighborhood’s mostly Hispanic population feels it
with higher unemployment, immigration problems, and an educational
system that’s crashing and burning around us. The recent Chadsey High
School closing, for example, is bringing rival gangs together at
Southwestern and Western high schools. Gang mediation is a part of what
we do, and we know gang activity is inversely related to economic
prosperity. Gangs expand when adults fail to provide kids with what
they need: jobs, value, respect, and a sense of belonging. So we work
on social entrepreneurship with these kids, and redirect their
leadership potential into more positive projects. We’re fortunate to
have strong Latino men working with youths here, and we provide a safe
haven, a place to belong, year-round. We know we’re making a big
difference now and for the future.”
Angela Reyes earned her MPH from
SPH in 1998, a year after she founded the Detroit Hispanic Development
Corporation from her living room, “because I was tired of burying
children.” DHDC serves as headquarters for 45 staffers, hundreds of
school-age children, and clients such as local women training in HIV
prevention with coaching in self-respect, self-defense, cultural pride,
and condom negotiation.
DETROIT: Sarah Mayberry, Senior Medical Producer, WDIV TV (NBC)
“We’re
doing lots of pain-related segments—migraines, back pain, it’s all tied
together with links to stress. This economy has hurt our viewers, no
doubt about it. Whether they’ve lost health insurance or not, people
are seeing doctors less. They rely on the information we provide,
because there’s more fear at work of looking weak or missing days for
sick kids. We’ve always received calls asking for help, but now the
volume is higher and the problems are more serious. We publicize
anything that’s free, especially health tests—that’s a huge priority.
Some of my professors used to overlook television as a way to talk to
the public about health issues, but people e-mail every day with
questions that they’re embarrassed to ask their own doctors. I feel
like I’ve found my place to make a difference—to give people access to
what they want and need to know.”
Sarah Mayberry was already working
general assignments at WDIV television in Detroit (Channel 4) when she
earned her MPH from SPH in 2000. She has won several Emmy awards and an
Edward R. Murrow Award, and continues to find the people she interviews
“surprisingly willing to share their stories, because they want to help
others.”
DETROIT: Luis Vazquez, United Auto Workers Health and Safety Specialist
Luis
Vazquez“America has the UAW to thank for the eight-hour workday, decent
vacation time, healthier workplaces, you name it. And not just in the
auto industry—we’re in water-treatment plants, appliance companies,
even ice cream factories. These days, we’re actually seeing an increase
in the number of requests for safety training. That’s because it’s the
proportion of experienced workers that’s decreasing, as they take
buyouts. Companies bring in new hires at lower wages, and suddenly
we’re back to square one, needing basic hazmat training for employees
who have to learn how to read a material safety sheet to determine
venting for a job. So much experience and know-how has been lost.
There’s less money, resources, personnel—and stress is way up. In terms
of safety, more stressed workers can mean trouble. We’re probably in a
very dangerous time ...”
Luis Vazquez, who completed the MPH program
in environmental health at SPH in 1989, has been working for 18 years
under federal grants to improve worksite health and safety. In April,
he worked with Detroiters for Environmental Justice to train 20 young
Detroiters, all of whom reached technician level and half of whom
immediately got jobs in asbestos remediation.
SAULT STE MARIE: Rick Haverkate, Director of Public Health, Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan
Rick
Haverkate“There’s a lot of bad news coming out, sure. But we have good
news to share. The socioeconomic status of American Indians has risen
over the past generation. More American Indians are getting college
degrees. For the first time ever, we have native physicians at tribal
clinics. We finally have Indian people getting law degrees and working
for tribes. And the health statistics of a lot of American Indians are
rising. We’re surpassing the general population in areas like health
screenings and quit attempts for smoking. We have really high rates of
early entry into prenatal care. We’re partnering with places like the
American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association to create
outreach and education programs that include American Indians and other
minorities. During the economic good times of the past, I think a lot
of minorities felt excluded from the American dream. But now, in the
‘browning’ of America, I think people see the possibility of being
included.”
ST. JOSEPH/BENTON HARPER: Joe Wasserman, President & CEO, Lakeland Health System
“I
think our community is a good example of how to do things right in
terms of working with a distressed community such as Benton Harbor. The
St. Joe River divides St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, but there’s been a
lot of hands extended across the river to work together. This summer, a
Jack Nicklaus signature golf course opened along the river, turning a
formerly polluted industrial brownfield area into a magnificent course.
A number of condo and hotel developments are being planned. There’s a
new streetscape in downtown Benton Harbor, an arts district, loft
apartments, restaurants, a dance studio, and those have been bringing
people into the prime part of downtown. Is it perfect? Not by a long
shot. The economic downturn has caught individuals from all economic
strata—it doesn’t matter whether they’re high school or college
graduates or professionals. It’s impacting everyone. But I think
there’s been a real sense of working together.”
In addition to his
work with Lakeland Health System, SPH alumnus Joe Wasserman, MHA ’70,
has served for many years on the board of Cornerstone Alliance, a
nonprofit community and economic development organization dedicated to
tax and job-base creation in the communities that comprise Northern
Berrien County, Michigan. |