Design Research for Global Health

Korean tacos and Twitter

Relevance to the theme of the blog? An innovative model of using new media to motivate the masses. Might sound like a stretch, but Dr. V from Aravind often talked about emulating the McDonald's model and when I was at Kaiser's Innovation Center last month, they discussed how they visited In-N-Out to learn from their operations model. 

More from the LA Times on Kogi. (And Yelp.)

Photos below from last week in Venice:

   

  

"Happy Obama Day!"

Overheard today from the street while sitting at home working on my computer.  Some photos from last night, watching the results come in and celebrating down by Luka's at Grand and Broadway in Oakland.  Some Latarious locals strategically repositioned a few construction pylons, blocking off most of the intersection.  Then the East Bay Rats MC helped direct traffic until Oakland PD showed up.  The police ended up blocking off even more traffic, down to Telegraph, letting the party people do their thing.  At peak, there were several hundred folks down there, mostly dancing to the music of a gang of drummers.  There was even an Obama-themed Bentley (see photo), which should make this list.  Last photo is from this morning from Cafe 504 - if you want it to be post-Obama symbolism it can be.  Otherwise, just have a happy Obama Day!

U.S. Election 2008: Election Day (post 3 - Prop 8)

Joined the "No on 8" [more on 8 here] crowd on Grand Ave. near the Lakeview Branch Library polling place (first photo).  Then Ben showed up.  We were asked to support the effort at the Fruitvale exit off 580, where there was a strong "Yes on 8" presence (photo 2).  I recognized faces from a couple weeks back.  These were the (API!?) folks who told me and Tito to "Go back to Arabia".  Ben (third photo), ?I and our teammates were outnumbered abut 3-1 when we got there, but after a couple of hours when we left, we'd evened up.  Whatever happens with Prop 8, I have to say I was really heartened by the strong support of all the people on their way home ... men and women ... single folks and families ... seniors, adults, teenagers, kids ... and most importantly people of all ethnicities - if you know the area, you know that means the pretty much represents the whole world.  I (heart) Oakland.

U.S. Election 2008: Election Day (post 2)

Phonebanking.  I made 50 calls to Montana and a few more to Colorado before noon today.  Makeshift call center with Andrew and Menaka, who I ran into at voting this morning.  They called Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Montana, and Pennsylvania...

U.S. Election 2008: Election Day (post 1)

Some photos from voting at our local precinct, the Rotary Nature Center, around 7:00AM today.  I was #12 out the door...

Kenya next week + updates

Posting more infrequently these days as I'm trying to finish this dissertation thing by December. Off to Nairobi tomorrow with MIB to facilitate a workshop on ICT for development.  My emphasis will be on ICT for health issues.  Should be interesting to be in Kenya right before US-election time.

Some updates:

• Thanks to Ben for the heads up on this one...  The Feds are going after the Mongols Motorcycle Club - who purportedly have a role in the recent violent episodes with Hell's Angels in the Bay - including their trademark.  I first heard of the club a month ago when watching the program Gangland on a OAK-IAD flight.  From the Times (UK): "The Mongols are named after the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia and their website quotes Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire." Not to be confused with this Mongol brand.
• A couple weeks back Tito tivo'd the tail end of Roughing it: Mongolia, part of a new PBS series, for me.  I didn't think it was terrible, nor was I terribly impressed.  Reading reviews like this one, don't help: "'Mongolia' reminds us that there are still places on earth that have been minimally disturbed by the 21st century."  We watched as the protagonist Keith visited Naran Tuul and was approached by a man who spoke English very well.  Tito jokingly asked, "Do you know him?" "Yes! That's Batman!" It was Batman (the name he goes by with foreigners), the guy with the Batman tattoo, who spent some time in Vegas, and used to sell North Face Jackets on the street opposite Ih Delguur.  On tape, he says he was in Utah, and then proceeds to get a little bit of extra money out of Keith.
• If you didn't see Colin Powell's entire endorsement of Barack Obama from this past Sunday, read this and then look at this photograph.

U.S. Election 2008: Trumka's anti-racism speech

Thanks to mib for sending me this NPR Morning Edition story about Richard Trumka's pro-Obama, anti-racism speech.  Trumka is the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer and gave this speech at the U.S. Steelworkers annual convention in July.  A video of his speech (see below) was posted to YouTube a couple months back, but judging from the comments, it seems that almost all the 356,954 current views are recent - only 30 of the 773 comments are from more than a week ago.

He addresses the issue of race head-on, like few people have this election.  He tells a story about a woman in his hometown of Nemacolin, PA who claims Obama is a Muslim.  He explains that Obama is a Christian, "as much a Christian as you and me". And then he asks the question that has rarely been asked this election "So what if he's Muslim?"

As for his delivery, I was captivated.  Just watch.  Given the current atmosphere of the campaign, it's even more important that people see this speech now.

Full transcript of Trumka's speech here, from John Nichols at The Capital Times (Madison, WI).

Today at a McCain town hall meeting in Lakeville, MN, a woman voiced concerns that Obama was an Arab.  McCain explained that Obama was not an Arab.  Presumably she meant that he is Muslim.  Or that he is a terrorist. Or that he is black.  I don't think her concern was with Obama's plan for healthcare reform or early childhood education.

That so many of us cannot distinguish Arab (ethnic grouping) from Muslim (religious grouping) given our involvement with both Arabs and Muslims on the world stage is a failure of our society.  The bigger failure, though, is that so many of us directly associate these groups with the nasty rhetoric that has recently been emerging from the McCain+Palin campaign (yes, I said that right - if they don't make efforts to stop what happens at rallies, they are approving the message of hate).

There are more than 1 million Arabs in America, 3/4 of them Christian (Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant), and 1/4 Muslim.  There are Arabs who are not Muslims, Muslims who are not Arabs (Chinese Muslims, for example), and Arabs who are Muslims.  And there are millions of Muslims in America, as many as 5-6 million by some estimates.  And many of them will be voting this November.  Can someone please explain this all to Caribou Barbie, the one who calls Alaska Natives "Arctic Arabs"?

Health Affairs on McCain & Obama plans - did anybody read these articles?

Yesterday, Health Affairs, a well-respected publication, self-described as "the leading journal of health policy thought and research", released 2 Web-exclusive articles analyzing the healthcare plans of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.  I first heard about this from Kevin Freking's AP story.  Here are links to the articles, which are openly available to the public free-of-charge for the first two weeks after posting:

• Cost And Coverage Implications Of The McCain Plan To Restructure Health Insurance, T Buchmueller, SA Glied, A Royalty, K Swartz  
• The Obama Plan: More Regulation, Unsustainable Spending, J Antos, G Wilensky, H Kuttner

Thanks to Aman for recognizing the difference in language used in the titles of these 2 articles.  It seems much more obvious when looking at them here.  I'm not a linguist, but the first title reads as if it will be a fair treatment of McCain's plan, while the second suggests we should expect an expose on Obama's general irresponsibility.

I read these articles today.  The stronger bias reflected in the Antos title carries through the entire article.  It culminates with recommendations on how to improve the Obama plan.  They begin by suggesting that he adopt 2/3 of the main points of McCain's plan (eliminating the tax exclusion, providing a refundable tax credit).  As they say, "Given the deep concerns we have with key aspects of the Obama plan, it is difficult to suggest improvements that do not also change the focus of the plans' proposals in significant ways" (p w470).  The Buchmueller article was more balanced and less partisan in its recommendations, suggesting various alternatives, even plans originally unveiled by President (GHW) Bush.

More concerning than the disclaimer for Wilensky ("Gail Wilensky is an unpaid adviser to the McCain campaign") and more concerning than the fact that this read like a brief from a political campaign spokesperson ("there needs to be more honesty about what the public can reasonably expect from the Obama plan") were the weak arguments and assumptions presented in the Antos paper.

Neither am I a health economist, but I suspect some hand-waving was going on with it.  So I did what any good academic does - I looked at the references.  Not everything published in a journal represents good science (case in point), but journal articles carry more weight than websites, newspapers, reports, and the such, since the intention of journal articles is to specifically to contribute to scientific knowledge and since they are peer-reviewed.  Antos et al. cited 3 journal articles, Buchmueller et al. cited 12.

Here's the author information for the 2 articles for you to look at yourselves:

• Tom Buchmueller is the Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance in the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Sherry Glied (...) is a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City. Anne Royalty is an associate professor of economics, Indiana University--Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). Katherine Swartz is a professor of health economics and policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Joe Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Gail Wilensky (...) is a senior fellow at ProjectHOPE in Bethesda, Maryland. Hanns Kuttner was, until recently, a senior research associate at the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Wilensky is a volunteer adviser to the McCain campaign.

Strange days

Back in the US from Mongolia now, so I thought I'd post this photo from last week's Olympic celebrations.  This was on Sunday evening after Badar-Uugan's gold medal victory in bantamweight boxing.  I was on my way home from drinks with friends, around 11pm, when I met a gaviat conductor from the state symphony on Suhbaatar Square.  He was as ecstatic as everyone else about Mongolia's 2 gold medals, so he invited me for beers while wandering around the street celebrations.  I spent most of the next 8 hours together with him.  At some point we ran into this kid who was more than happy to have me take his photo.  It was a very strange night.

Fights today!

This afternoon in Beijing, Mongolia has two boxers fighting for gold, Serdamba in light flyweight (vs. Zou Shiming of China) and Badar-Uugan in bantamweight (vs. Yankiel León of Cuba).

I missed the Ulaanbaatar pandemonium after Tuvshinbayar won Mongolia its first ever Olympic gold medal, including the President and Prime Minister showing up drunk on TV, since I was in the countryside.  If things go very well today, I expect a street party tonight like no other.

Photos below yesterday from the Central Sporting Palace (Sportiin Tuv Ordon).  For Mongolian ex-pats and non-Mongolians who have been here, the new paint job was completed just before the beginning of the Olympics.  The photo on top is announcing Serdamba's fight and the bottom shows the expectation of more medals from Beijing.

Also, in case there was any doubt, Michael Phelps is now a household name in the countryside and the city.