NSC 312: Race and Gender in the Study of Neurological Disorders

The intent of this project was to educate high school students about a serious neurological disorder that disproportionately affects their population. WHEELS is a K-12 school located in Washington Heights in New York City which is a historically large Latinx community. The importance of this project was to give students access to information that they wouldn't have normally received that could help them in serious situations and allows them to share this information with their family and friends.

This website was made to be a resources for the Latinx community in the US. Specifically, this website is meant to be a source of information for young Latinx people to share with the older members of their family. The site includes bilingual information on prevalent diseases in the Latinx population and medical translations to bring awareness to Latinx health.

This term paper on the current state of migraine research investigates the historical significance of gender and race in the study of pain and how stereotypes and misconceptions of biology create great disparities in access to migraine care. The most recent theory on the mechanism of migraine is discussed, as well as its relationship to reproductive milestones in women and pain management along racial lines.

For my project I looked at how we use diet and lifestyle as preventative care for neurological disorders and disease. I spoke with a dietician to discuss the intersections and tensions between these practices and fatphobia, medical bias, race, and gender.

Over the course of the semester, we researched and presented various neurological diseases as a class. For my final project, I took inspiration from this exercise and presented on the neurological disease myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). I primarily aimed to bring awareness to my peers and have us think about the what is seen a a legitimate physical disease and why ME/CFS might be so underfunded and under-researched.

This presentation highlights the understanding of students not continuing onto the medical field and looking back to the reasons of why that might be the case, alongside some solutions at Smith in particular that can be helpful.

In this final project presentation I discuss a highly-cited 2016 paper by Hoffman et al. entitled "Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites”. I provide background information about the study, critique their presentation of their results, display the results of my own mini-analysis using their data, and discuss the history and implications of these false beliefs concerning Black people's pain.

A podcast aimed at understanding the actions being taken in Western Massachusetts to address inequities in healthcare. Listeners will hear from a local researcher working with the community to address this issue and a doctor who is working within the healthcare system.

I wanted to make information about warning signs of stroke more accessible and relatable for younger children of elementary school age. Therefore I created this video to educate children about stroke, and had my children participate in making it!

The purpose of my project was to frame neurological disorders and disabilities as a whole as being caused by the inability of our social system to support those who are differently-abled. Specifically, I reported on statistics of neurological disorders in people who died by suicide or physician-assisted death and presented reasons that those people may feel the need to choose death over life. I hoped that my op-ed and presentation would help others note the differences between how the diagnoses of a neurological disorder vs. a more "controllable" one (i.e. cardiovascular disease) are perceived and how we can change that.

Science Against Solitary is a website I created to provide information about solitary confinement and encourage activism against it. The site includes a general overview of solitary confinement, brief descriptions of its psychological and neurological effects, links to videos about individuals who have survived solitary confinement, and information about local and federal anti-solitary campaigns. There is also a page that outlines the process of contacting your representatives to support legislation that aims to regulate or end solitary confinement.

Medical illustration is a form of biomedical communication in which biological structures are rendered, simplified and/or exaggerated for learning purposes. As a medical illustrator myself, I wanted to further explore the impact of medical illustration on systemic racism, systemic sexism, and healthcare. I also created a poster summarizing basic information on common neurological diseases we covered throughout the seminar.