Doctor Mehret

The de facto frontline of HIV work lies in urban centers where teachers, preachers, and outreach workers are battling social context everyday. Last year, on this day, I was speaking about HIV in a church in Atlanta. This year I will be speaking about HIV with the youth of City Year in Washington, D.C.  In both instances,  the front line is the audience.

This is the same audience I have been listening to for the past two years since the release of All of Us as well as the audience that continues to find me through my work. From Addis Ababa, to D.C., to New York, to Philly, to Los Angeles, I have been inspired by the many emails I have received from  front line workers.  So first and foremost, I want to say - I hear you and I am with you!

In preparing my comments for the good people of City Year I thought it would be a good idea to check in. I know I have been neglecting the blog - but trust I have been busy in D.C.

The theme of World AIDS Day 2009 is Universal Access and Human rights. Both issues are about the front line. Human rights hinges on three principles: indivisibility, agency, and accountability.  All three are also important for innovation.

I think the next wave of HIV front line work must focus on innovation. This is the message I will bring to the good people of City Year. I have been blown away by TruthAIDS volunteers that have devoted their creative energy and time to help push front line work along and I believe that are many more innovators out there who want to get involved.

So what is innovation about anyhow? According to John Kao, the author of “Innovation Nation”, innovation is “applying work ethic to a dream.” I love this definition and I think it applies directly to front line work. The teachers, preachers, and outreach workers in urban centers are working everyday to make the dream of a better America a reality. Health equity is central to a vision of a better America. The distribution of health matters for the opportunities available to the citizenry.

In closing, on World AIDS Day 2009, I salute all front line workers and encourage all nascent innovators to join the front line. Aint nothing like it.

I have to share what happened to me yesterday because it gives me faith in the good Samaritans that are around us all the time even if we don’t always notice them.

I have an amazing propensity to misplace my phone and keys. It happens all the time. The running joke among friends is that I usually find it in the next minute. Well, yesterday the fated happened. I actually lost my iPhone. I left it on the Amtrak train coming back to Philly from NYC.

The added complication was that I figured it out around 6pm and I was scheduled to have movers come 7a the next morning to help me finally relocate to D.C. The only form of communication between the movers and me was my phone! This was a second attempt at moving to DC after a fiasco with my last moving company last week.  I couldn’t help but feel like I was destined to be stuck in Philly.

So, I ran down the street to the gas station and proceeded to have a very nonproductive conversation with the gas station owner about allowing me to use his phone. A fellow East African from Eritrea, Yonas, over hears and offers to help.  He lived down the street and went home to bring his cell phone for me.  We called my number and I thankfully learn that another good Samaritan had found the phone on the train and taken it to the information desk at the 30th street station. I couldn’t believe it!

Yonas then proceeds to drive me to the train station, drive me back, and buy me coffee for having a hectic day. We joked and laughed about how many times he had seen me in the local laundromat over the two years but that it took losing my iPhone to actually meet and greet!   All in all, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Karma y’all… be good to people and it will come back to you.

Thanks Yonas and the passenger that found my iPhone!

Those of you who have been following my blog know all about David the Piano Player, the film project I have been working on the past two years. Well, I was able to do this as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar which is a program in the human capital portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The RWJF is the America’s largest philanthropic organization dedicated to improving health and healthcare.  They invest in many great projects but they also invest in people, hence the term human capital.

I am incredibly thankful to the RWJF for allowing me time and space to think, dream, and be creative about health. Not having to worry abou a salary for two years and have protected time to continue to do ethnographic work has been critical for my career and for stregthening TruthAIDS.  I am sure my upcoming Washington D.C. move would not have been possible without their support.

That said, RWJF just posted an article about me and David the Piano Player for their website. Click here to read.

I have been working on a new film project for the past month and a half that has me very excited. I literally feel like the film found me.  I was minding my own business at a Health and Human Rights conference in Los Angeles when it happened.

Truth be told, the story actually start in Washington, D.C.  I was attending my cousin’s film premiere Guzo when the cinematographer on the film, Zeresenay Mehari, started to tell me about his own project Oblivion.  The film is about the story of a legal precedent setting case against the abudction of girls into marriage in Ethiopia. My ears immediately perked up because I recognized it was a story of women’s rights and justice.

Fast forward, a few weeks later, I am in L.A. for a conference and I connect with Zeresenay, who happens to live out there.  He gives me a copy of the screenplay and I am literally blown away by the story. I had to be a part of it. More importantly I had to help! TruthAIDS is currently designing the outreach plan for the film and helping out in any way possible to get the project done.

The production of this film will mean big things for women’s rights in Ethiopia. So thankful that it found me!

It’s been a good week. I found out I was appointed to be a part of the 2009-2010 Class of White House Fellows on Thursday and I have been receiving so many kind messages from loved ones all weekend. (To learn more please check out the official press release.)

I am excited about moving to D.C. and being a part of a historic administration.  I plan on soaking up all I can regarding how policy change works and listening in on as many conversations as I can find myself in.  Will keep you posted on all I learn.

In the meantime, there is a great Gordon Parks quote I will leave you with:

“There’s another horizon out here, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.”