Tag Archives: Medical University of South Carolina
Zooming in on Autoimmune Disease and Women’s Health
Tune in to the 36th episode of “Zooming in on Sustainability” as Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation (www.QueenQuet.com) speaks with Dr. Diane Kamen of the Medical University of South Carolina about autoimmune disease and women’s health as well as the environmental work of the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank.
Gullah/Geechee Safe and Healthy
Part of my blessing has been sitting on community committees with partners at MUSC-the Medical University of South Carolina. My first steps into that institution happened over two decades ago when I was asked to come and do a keynote address for mental health professionals. I was to assist them with cultural competency since they had to work in the Gullah/Geechee community. The Q & A that day was as life changing as my presentation for the APHA. The dialogue gave me insight into the vast differences that people of various cultures have regarding stability and how that balance is to be maintained. Some continually seek outside measures through pleasure, drugs-legal and illegal, thrill seeking or risk taking and others go seeking inside spiritually, but sometimes miss the mark and think that is also an external action. Thus, they walk into and out of churches, synagogues, mosques, and locations of spiritual rituals unchanged and off balanced. I was there to help the doctors to be more receptive to overstanding spirituality and the Gullah/Geechee community and how this helps with mental stability. It was about trust. Trust in GOD. Trust in spirit. Trust in who is delivering the message. Trust in their cultural legacy as it relates to who is bringing the message.
Lupus Awareness Day the Gullah/Geechee Way!
May 19th is “Lupus Awareness Day” which takes place annually during May which is “Lupus Awareness Month.” On May 10th which was “World Lupus Day” the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank partners at the Medical University of South Carolina’s (MUSC) MUSCLE program held “Lupus Patients Day.” On an on-going basis, they work with people to determine whether or not they have lupus and if they do, they can remain a part of the MUSCLE program and work toward finding a cure for this chronic autoimmune disease that ravages different parts of the body.
The Gullah/Geechee Nation’s leaders are concerned about lupus and have been looking at the preventative measures that can be taken by examining environmental and dietary triggers amongst their people. This is a major concern because lupus occurs two to three times more frequently among African Americans, Asians, Hispanics/Latinos, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans than among Caucasians.
De Gullah/Geechee and National Public Health Week
The Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank has been blessed to be able to convene a cadre of doctors that have been working within the Sea Islands of the Gullah/Geechee Nation on numerous environmental and human health studies. The outcomes of these studies and how the Gullah/Geechee population can be an active part of healing processes has become central to our interactions and our discussions. So, I felt blessed and impressed to emerge from another enlightening engagement with several of our MUSC community outreach partners to see a banner that indicated that it was “National Public Health Week.”
Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation Presents at MUSC
Medical University of South Carolina Department of Public Health Science South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute Multicultural Student Advisory Board Student National Medical Association SEMINAR “Cultural Collaboration Pun de Gullah/Geechee Coast” PRESENTED BY Queen Quet Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation (www.QueenQuet.com) returns to MUSC to discuss how …