APHA Concluded

The 2009 APHA Annual Meeting is officially over. It was an exciting meeting for me. I loved networking and talking with folks from all over the country who are doing work in food and nutrition policy, public health communications, and the use of social media.

Here I am, in the picture above, presenting my summer work from Nicaragua and Costa Rica and a study that was recently published looking at the intersection of sex work and human trafficking in the International Journal of Gyneacology and Obstetrics. About 60 people were in attendance.

My fellow presenters from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Hispanic Health Council were excellent. Each of us had different approaches to the problem and/or were working with different strata of the sex worker population. The audience asked some great questions about the implications of our findings, for instance -- how can public health practitioners meet the needs of both trafficking victims and sex workers?

I hope I was able to communicate effectively the ripe opportunity for research in this area, as well as organizations' enthusiasm in Central America to partner with researchers to improve their programs and prevention activities (for instance, to inform and evaluate social marketing campaigns).

Safe travels, fellow attendees.