Changing the face of the Alabama country doctor
Birmingham News – Jan. 21
When Dana Todd was in high school in Hale County, the idea of being a doctor was pretty far-fetched. She didn’t know any physicians and, at that point, no one in her family had completed college. Then she decided to try a summer program designed by the University of Alabama to lure rural students into health care careers. “I just thought it would be fun and a chance to get away from home and see what college life was like,” said Todd. The Rural Health Scholars Program convinced Todd to go into medicine, and she’s now in her first year of a family practice residency…The University is trying to reach out to more students like Todd in an attempt to fill a shortage of rural doctors. It’s hosting its first Rural Minority Healthcare Summit in Tuscaloosa on Friday and Saturday. As many as 100 high school and college students, most of them black and from Alabama’s poorest counties, will get pep talks and practical advice on how to survive medical school…
Summit has health, hip-hop
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 21
Dr. Rani G. Whitfield uses his knowledge of hip-hop music to relate to today’s young people and open their eyes to the career possibilities in medicine, earning him the name “Hip-Hop Doc.” Whitfield, who has appeared on CNN and BET, among other media outlets, will be the keynote speaker for the University of Alabama’s first rural health care minority summit on Saturday in the Ferguson Center on the UA campus… “We wanted someone who could connect with young people,” said Pamela Foster, assistant professor in the Department of Community and Rural Medicine. “I feel the medium of hip-hop will resonate with young people and get them excited.” She said the goal of the summit is to inspire more students, especially minorities, to consider becoming health care professionals in rural Alabama, particularly the Black Belt…
NPR features local photo project
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 21
As the joint Cuban-American photography project “Lado a Lado — Side by Side” progresses toward a 2012 University of Alabama Press book, the teamwork of Tuscaloosan Chip Cooper and Havana’s Nestor Marti continues to draw notice. NPR’s Debbie Elliott visited the UA exhibit of pieces from the project last fall, and has produced a segment scheduled to air on Saturday morning’s “Weekend Edition.” Elliott was taken by the novelty of a renowned photographer from Alabama making time over two years to travel back and forth to Havana and shoot alongside a Cuban photographer. “Nestor Marti is the younger, urban, street photographer, while Chip Cooper is known more for his rural, countryside kind of work, pictures that were thought about and composed,” she said…Philip Beidler, a UA English professor, accompanied them as they worked, and has written some of the text for the upcoming book. In it, he describes how Cooper and Marti began to creatively merge. “The dance of the photographers, I came to call it — trailing them down the street, watching them work, enjoying their sinuous, athletic paso doble — some uncanny synthesis of religious procession, it sometimes seemed to me, with the silent stealth of the squad infantry patrol,” Beidler wrote. Elliott saw the results of what Beidler describes in the exhibit, which was displayed in Havana in spring 2009 and at UA in fall 2010.
Free tax preparation offered Saturday
Decatur Daily – Jan. 21
…Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, student volunteers with the nonprofit group Impact Alabama will offer free tax preparation for low-income residents at the Turner-Surles Community Resource Center in Decatur…Taxes will be prepared by volunteer finance and accounting students from the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Rowe said each student volunteer has undergone special training and passed the Internal Revenue Service’s certification test…
UA real estate conference in Birmingham to focus on ‘refining your competitive advantage’
Associated Press – Jan. 21
More than 400 real estate and business leaders will gather at the Cahaba Grand Conference Center in Birmingham on Jan. 28 for panel discussions and networking opportunities focusing on the topic of “your competitive advantage,” according to the University of Alabama…