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Indigenous Perspective
UNM Students Present at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting
Indigenous students from The University of New Mexico and their peers from elsewhere in the state recently shared their perspectives with public health leaders from across the country at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Denver.
The young people were accompanied by Anthony Fleg, MD, associate professor in the UNM Department of Family & Community Medicine, who helped to organize the trip.
It was wonderful to see indigenous college students holding themselves proudly as they presented their work and vision for healing to public health leaders of the country, they made all of us from UNM and New Mexico proud.
“It was wonderful to see indigenous college students holding themselves proudly as they presented their work and vision for healing to public health leaders of the country,” Fleg said. “They made all of us from UNM and New Mexico proud.”
The team presented on four topics, including “Indigenous Health During COVID: What We Know, What We Can Learn,” a virtual health equity summit, and the Running Medicine program of the Native Health Initiative.
The conference included the APHA Film Festival, which also accepted a film made by team members on mental health challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I feel that as young indigenous youth attending APHA, we were capable of bringing our own cultural professionalism that other non-indigenous health professionals could not,” said Jules McCabe, a senior in the UNM College of Population Health.
Zelo Jade Rael, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a graduate of a program run by the UNM Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the Santa Fe Indian School, also enjoyed the experience of presenting at the conference.
“Seeing a space where intergenerational learning is considered sacred makes me so happy,” Rael said.
Others presenters included Sydnie Pino, a freshman at UNM-Taos, Jessica Sanchez, a senior at Fort Lewis College, and Alicia Gallegos, a junior at UNM.
Funding for the trip came from the Department of Family & Community Medicine, the College of Population Health, the UNM Foundation’s “Empowering Native American Families and New Mexican Families to Health, Movement & Wellness” Fund, and the Native Health Initiative.