Some Top Blog Posts

A collection of some of the more popular blog posts from the past:

Top 5 Posts:

1) MLK Day Insights

2) No One Actually Knows About Income Inequality

3) Top 5 Public Health Jobs (That Have Nothing to Do with Public Health)

4) Grocery Delivery Services: A Means for Food Justice

5) Why to Vote for the Unopposed

Spotlight Charity Posts:

charity:water

VillageReach 

Help Create a Non-Profit Photography Enterprise

I just posted on my idea for a new non-profit photography company: PhilanthroPhotos. It recruits photographers to “donate” their photographs to be used in products that are sold, will all proceeds going directly to a charity of the consumer’s choice.

The products can include items like coffee table photo books that are really pretty cool (to get a sense of what I mean: my close friend Pete just uploaded some photos of a coffee table book of his  awesome photographs–check it out).

Even if you didn’t read the entire post, what are your thoughts on the idea?

Now Struggling Artists Can Donate to Charity

After a while in the making, I wrote up a PhilanthroPhotos “business plan”. It details the ideas of a new business that seeks to recruit budding photographers to utilize their photographs for philanthropy.

If you’re in a rush, read the summary only. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated via comments or email. A downloadable version can be found here. I want to make this happen, but would love input from others.

PhilanthroPhotos Business Plan (1/28/11)

PhilanthroPhotos: Photographs for a Cause.

Summary:

PhilanthroPhotos is a non-profit social business idea that seeks to spotlight budding photographers while selling photo products that support a charitable cause. The company will sell framed prints, calendars, coffee table books etc. using donated photographs and each product will include a gift card to an organization such as GlobalGiving (where consumers will be able to donate to a charity of their choice) or a local non-profit partner. A website will spotlight the contributing photographers (and aggressively market their personal websites), and all products will take advantage of cause-marketing. Essentially, PhilanthroPhotos will do all the professional services (editing, printing, framing, marketing) that amateurs wish to avoid because of the time and expense, while also allowing professional photographers to donate their artwork to a good cause and expand their marketing.

Mission:

The mission of PhilanthroPhotos is two-fold:

1) Spotlight budding photographers

The work of contributing photographers will be prominently featured in a professional product.  For many amateurs, this may be their first opportunity to see their work disseminated to consumers. For young professionals, this could simultaneously help bring heavy exposure to their photograph collection while empowering them to use their photos for philanthropy.

2) Recruit consumers to donate to charity

With each product purchase, the consumer will receive a gift card that can be donated to a charity of his or her choice. This will not only help support other non-profit organizations, but also expose consumers to the ease of online fundraising outlets such as GlobalGiving.

PhilanthroPhotos will also prioritize complete transparency in all of its business operations: all budgets, costs, revenues, and marketing decisions will be published online. In this way, it will be open to criticisms and suggestions to ensure optimal efficiency and cost-effectiveness. PhilanthroPhotos hopes to achieve the highest standards of transparency and accountability.

Non-profit Status:

The organization will seek non-profit status to ensure a maximal amount of revenues will go to other charities. The charitable involvement will incorporate three consumer options:

1) Included gift cards to a charity network (for online purchases)

Part of the cost of each product will include a set gift card amount that will be delivered to the consumer. For example, if the consumer purchases a $50 coffee table book, $35 may go to cover production costs while the remaining $15 will go to cover the cost of a gift card. The gift card will allow the consumer to donate online (to a site such as GlobalGiving.org) and personally choose a charity to support.

2) Support local charities (for local events)

The products can also be sold as fundraising items, with all proceeds supporting local non-profits. For example, the product may be sold at a silent auction for a non-profit gala event, or as a general fundraising effort for 501(c)3 organizations.

3) Support the photographer’s chosen charity (for purchases of some framed prints)

If the photographer has a specific charity of interest, (s)he may suggest all proceeds of his or her framed photographs go to a specific organization.

Cause-marketing has created some welcome debate within the philanthropy realm (Stanford Social Innovation Review 2009, Selfish Giving 2009). The major criticisms are that cause-marketing distracts consumers from the issues, distances donors from their beneficiaries, and fails to address the fact that methods of cheap production often produce many of the social problems that charities try to fix. By offering GlobalGiving gift cards, PhilanthroPhotos seeks to overcome these potential disadvantages by empowering consumers to give on their own terms, to see the projects that non-profits are working on, and to choose their own beneficiaries.

Products:

As an organization, PhilanthroPhotos will collect, evaluate, and edit photographs and produce a limited menu of items that will be sold online, in local auctions, and in local fundraising events. Successful products will likely include professional coffee table books, photo calendars, and professional prints. With greater market research, other items may be included.

Coffee table books will be designed by PhilanthroPhotos staff and then submitted to an online photobook production company. Possible suppliers include Lulu, Blurb, MixBook, VioVio, and MyPublisher. Orders will be made in bulk and products will be sold at the cost of production plus the cost of the charitable gift card. Estimated price of production is currently between $20-$60, depending on size, paper quality, and quantity purchased.

To develop professional prints, PhilanthroPhotos will likely develop a partnership with a local photography production company though will seek opportunities to outsource printing, framing, and shipping at low cost.

Talent Recruitment:

PhilanthroPhotos will recruit amateur and professional photographers who are willing to “donate” non-exclusive rights to use of photographs to the PhilanthroPhotos company. Ideal candidates for contributing photographers are amateur photographers who produce high-quality photos but do not want to take the time to edit, frame, market, or sell their art. Professional photographers may also be willing to donate limited rights to their photographs for a charitable cause.

For amateur photographers, PhilanthroPhotos will offer to print, frame, and market the photographic art at market prices with all profits going to GlobalGiving gift cards or the charity of the photographer’s choice.

For professional photographers, PhilanthroPhotos will offer the same services (if preferred) or will use the photographs in compilation products such as coffee table books. The central website will clearly link to the professional’s website if the consumer would like to buy individual prints.

All contributing photographers, regardless of their professional level, will benefit from the widespread distribution of their artwork and a new venue for advertising both their talent and their goodwill.

Photo contests will also be a key method of obtaining high-quality photographs. By offering a cash reward, PhilanthroPhotos will receive photo entries that can be used in future products. Part of the contest agreement will stipulate that non-exclusive rights will be granted to the PhilanthroPhotos corporation.

Marketing:

The final product is a social good and will be marketed as such. One consumer behavior study conduced by Cone showed “cause-related marketing can exponentially increase sales, in one case as much as 74 percent, resulting in millions of dollars in potential revenue for brands.” According to the study, Americans want more cause marketing: 83% of Americans said that they wish more of the products, services and retailers they used would support causes.

Additionally, cause-marketing increases value. One in five consumers will pay more for a cause-related product. A cause will prompt 61% to try a product they’ve never heard of. And a great majority (80%) of consumers say they would switch to a brand that supports a cause when price and quality are equal. [Thanks to Selfish Giving for the great summary.]

Certificate of charitable authenticity, social branding, and other strategies employed through cause marketing will be utilized. Ideal consumers will be interested in the product because of its social mission and because the product can be clearly displayed as a reminder of the charitable purchase.

Customers will be exposed to the prints and products through art galleries, coffee shops, word of mouth in the non-profit community, Internet advertizing, and other sources of advertisements.

The Current Market / Competitors:

1) Similar products = Photo coffee table books

There are plenty of great travel photo coffee table books out there. National Geographic and Lonely Planet offer two of the most well known. PhilanthroPhotos products would distinguish themselves from this market through social advertizing and cause marketing

• Amazon.com list of world photos through coffee table books:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Photos-Coffee-Table-Galore/lm/R2TA7A5PCRQK4K?tag=bfac-20

• Barnes and Noble page featuring coffee table books:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Art-Photography-Architecture-Books/379001269/

2) Similar cause marketing organizations

Many cause marketing organizations sell items ranging from t-shirts to bracelets to iPods.

• Project(RED) Products
• Komen for the Cure Shop
• Fundraising for a Cause

3) Similar cross-over products

The one social-cause photo book that I know of is Blue Planet Run’s incredible coffee table book. They charge $30 for their book and still manage to donate proceeds to a terrific cause. (And what a cause it is.) I’m currently unsure about their exact expenses but I am looking into it.

PhilanthroPhotos will aim to eventually have similar distribution and cost-structure as the Blue Planet Run book, but will also offer printing, framing, and marketing services to amateur photographers in a way that allows them to “donate” their photographic art to a good cause. PhilanthroPhotos will distinguish itself from companies like Blue Planet Run by offering an additional service to budding photographers: the opportunity to distribute their art while participating in a social enterprise. In this way, PhilanthroPhotos will assist photographers in expanding exposure to their work, catalyze photographers’ ability to support non-profit organizations, and appeal to consumers that have charitable interests other than water scarcity.

Example Budget for Coffee Table Book Production:

EXPENSES	Cost	Notes
PRODUCTION COSTS
PhotoBook Printing	$35	per book (*PP will also seek in-kind donations to reduce this cost)
Charity GiftCard	$15	per book
Production Total	$50	per book
ADVERTISING COSTS
Website Maintenance	$125 / yr	Register.com e-commerce business account
Demo Samples	$175	5 samples at $35 ea.
Direct Mailing Postcards (or other form of ads)	$500	Estimates for 1000 postcards w/ mailing
Advertising Total	$800
START UP COSTS
Photo Contest	$500	Prize money for talent recruitment
Legal filings	$500	501(c)3 fees, state fees, other forms
Website Design	$500
Product design	$200	Involves designing photo products
PO Box	$50 / yr
Start Up Costs Total	$1250
Total Not-Production Costs	$2050	Advertising + Talent + Start-up

For 250 books, the non-production costs will equal $2050 / 250 = $8.20 per book, suggesting a total price of around $60 to the consumer. With other revenue sources, including prints and other photo products, the non-production costs (e.g. advertising) will be distributed across products and therefore may decrease the price to consumers.

According to this budget, if 250 books can be sold at $60, then PhilanthroPhotos will break even and $3,750 will be donated to charities.  With further research, PhilanthroPhotos believes that it can decrease the total cost of production (therefore decreasing costs to consumers) and increase the volume of sales.

Other ideas for consideration (An open bleg to all opinionated readers):

• Themed photo books? (e.g. Southwestern landscape, Yale University, forestry)
• Other photo products? (e.g. calendars, mugs, posters, stretched canvas, coasters)
• Art other than photographer? (e.g. paintings, graphic art)
• Corporate sponsors? Subtle ads or a Sponsorship page printed in each book?
• “Featured cause” pages (informational pages on global issues within each book)
• Connect with college networks (as a fundraiser program)
• Recruit local sponsors for in-kind donations to reduce production costs?
• Limit contributing photographers to amateurs? students? locals? professionals?
• Better tagline?

Spotlight Charity: VillageReach

One of my more popular posts focused on an extraordinary organization, charity:water. I wanted to bring some attention to another group of people that are doing amazing things (and achieving tremendous results): VillageReach. They build medical infrastructure in underserved areas of Africa to ensure delivery of vaccines, medicines, and technology to overcome the “last mile challenges” of delivering  innovations that will benefit the world’s poor.

The Problem
More than 2.4 million children die annually from vaccine-preventable diseases. Families living in rural areas of developing countries lack the medical infrastructure to deliver essential medicines, transport equipment, or provide these life-saving vaccines. Challenges include: maintaining a cold supply chain to keep vaccines from spoiling, optimizing inventory management to prevent drug stock-outs, and overcoming physical and administrative obstacles that prevent delivery of medical supplies.

What They Do
VillageReach improves access to healthcare for remote, underserved communities around the world. In 2001, VillageReach launched their first initiative to ensure universal access to medical supplies in Mozambique. The VillageReach model is now being implemented in 251 health centers covering a population of over 5.2 million people. From their website:

VillageReach’s model improves access to healthcare by providing a logistics platform to facilitate delivery of medical supplies and by starting and managing social businesses to improve local infrastructure. Our solutions and programs are innovative, efficient, collaborative, and sustainable. By implementing its logistics platform through field programs, VillageReach has developed and refined a set of tools and methodologies to allow for efficient replication and customization of its model.

These tools include a management information system (vrMIS) to track inventory of medicines and equipment and generate accurate, updated information about the needs of individual health centers and the communities they serve. This information enables medical supply distribution systems to increase their efficiency and become more effective in reducing diseases and death rates among the world’s most underprivileged.

Check out one of their videos:

The Results They Achieve / GiveWell
GiveWell, an organization that seeks to determine the most efficient way to donate your money (and possesses a very clever tagline) has done a comprehensive analysis of VillageReach’s programs and has determined that they have achieved an impact at under $1000 per infant death inverted. In fact, after reviewing over 400 charities (and recommending less than 3%), GiveWell has ranked VillageReach as the #1-rated charity, achieving the highest ranks in evidence of effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, funding gap, transparency, and monitoring & evaluation programs.

Jeopardy
Remember Ken Jennings? He was the Jeopardy champion that holds the record for the longest winning streak. Well, he’s going toe-to-toe with an IBM computer on Jeopardy on February 14 and guess what charity he is supporting: VillageReach.

More info
Somewhat related, there is an incredible TEDTalk by Sendhil Mullainathan on “Solving social problems with a nudge.” It highlights the importance of behavioral economics in solving social challenges and how the “last mile challenge” can be turned into “last mile opportunities.”

Find out more about the organization and donate here.

PhilanthroPhotos: Intro

I’ve been working on my first real entrepreneurial pet project.  In attempt to gain some feedback, I’m gonna post a comprehensive business plan in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I thought I’d post the initial idea in much shorter form, in hopes of gaining some criticisms, some suggestions, and initial thoughts from potential consumers (or contributors): you.

PhilanthroPhotos: Art. For a cause.

PhilanthroPhotos will be a non-profit photography business that will catalyze photographers’ ability to support charitable causes. Contributing photographers (amateur or professional) will “donate” non-exclusive rights to their photographs to be printed, framed, marketed, and developed into a range of photo products (e.g. coffee table books, calendars, coasters, stretched canvas). Ideal contributors may be amaetur photographers that have spectacular photographs, but would otherwise not seek to sell or market them because of the expense of time and money.

Where does the philanthropy part come in? Each product will include a GlobalGiving gift card that allows the consumer to donate to a cause of their choice. Additionally, PhilanthroPhotos can also partner with local NGOs and donate the charitable revenues directly to their organization.

The items will be cause-marketed as social goods: a way to add to the household decor, support budding artists, and donate to a charitable cause. A good example of a similar product: the incredible Blue Planet Run coffee table book.

NYTimes OpEd: How Brazil Fights Poverty

In follow-up to a (somewhat) recent post on income inequality in the United States:

There was a New York Times “Fixes” Op-Ed yesterday on how Brazil has drastically decreased income inequality over the past 7 years. Author Tina Rosenberg writes:

“Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world. Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country. Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians. Poverty has fallen during that time from 22 percent of the population to 7 percent.”

How did Brazil achieve such a feat? By giving money to the poor. Or, in more technical terms: conditional cash transfers.

“The idea is to give regular payments to poor families, in the form of cash or electronic transfers into their bank accounts, if they meet certain requirements.  The requirements vary, but many countries employ those used by Mexico: families must keep their children in school and go for regular medical checkups, and mom must attend workshops on subjects like nutrition or disease prevention.”

Brazil has been a progressive force in other ways. At the School of Public Health, we often hear of Brazil’s pioneer decision to offer free HIV drugs to all their citizens: a “controversial” policy that saved lives by ignoring intellectual property rights. Hundreds of thousands of lives were likely saved. The United States put Brazil on the “Special 301” watch list.

In this case, however, Brazil was not the first-mover. In 1997, Mexico created a social program called Progresa (now renamed and better known as Opportunidades) which has demonstrated the success of conditional cash transfers.   Positive results include increased school enrollment, retention and attainment; improved nutrition and other preventative health behaviors; and reduced maternal-infant mortality rates. (I always like “public health interventions” that are really just social economic programs).

The Oportunidades program has served as a model for similar programs in other locations including Brazil and even New York City. (Spoiler alert: The NYC program didn’t work.)

2010: Blog Stats

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010; pretty cool stuff. Last semester was pretty brutal as far as classes go, but I’m hoping that this Spring will bring a series of new posts. I’ve already got outlines going for two, so get excited.

In the mean time, here’s a high level summary of the “overall blog health”:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 15 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 39 posts. There were 14 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 6th with 97 views. The most popular post that day was SPOTLIGHT CHARITY: charity:water.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, stumbleupon.com, twitter.com, linkedin.com, and collegeblender.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for global income inequality, justin berk, global income disparity, global income distribution, and world income inequality.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

SPOTLIGHT CHARITY: charity:water October 2009
2 comments

2

About Me. October 2009
1 comment

3

No One Actually Knows About Income Inequality September 2010

4

Microfranchising Health Care April 2010

5

MLK Day – Inspirational Quotes January 2010

Peapod: A Means for Food Justice

I admit that I have done little research before writing this post, but there is an idea that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently and may update over the next week:

The Peapod grocery delivery service could end access-related food security issues in the urban United states.

For those of you that don’t know about Peapod (i.e. for anyone that, unlike New Haven, actually has a nearby grocery store) – it’s a grocery delivery service run by Stop and Shop. You can order just about anything that Stop and Shop would usually have in their grocery stores and all your groceries will be delivered to you in plastic bags, often within 24 hours (you can pick a 2 hour delivery time window)

You can buy everything: milk, meat, fruit, vegetables, cheese, coffee, spaghettio’s, marshmallows, beer, and even items outside the common graduate student’s diet. I’ve used Peapod for a few months now and have been really happy. Others claim that bananas show up brown or the lettuce goes bad quickly. Regardless, it has made life a lot easier for me: a graduate student without a car and limited food budget.

The public health implications of this service are incredible. Low-income families often suffer in a automobile-dominated society. If you don’t have a car, you can’t drive to the grocery store. Low-income neighborhoods aren’t a great market for big supermarkets, so you don’t find many Whole Foods in inner-city Detroit. These “food deserts” are becoming a major social problem and were recently featured by a  New York Times Magazine article:

The term is generally used to describe urban neighborhoods where there are few grocers selling fresh produce, but a cornucopia of fast-food places and convenience stores selling salty snacks.

“Food injustice” has become a buzzword term featured in several articles to discuss the disparities that exist in the US regarding the access to groceries:

If you don’t have access to groceries, you don’t have access to healthy foods, and therefore you don’t have access to proper nutrition. In case you haven’t read a newspaper in the past ten years: obesity is a pretty massive problem in the US, particularly affecting low-income families. If you can improve access to fresh produce, you can improve diets, you can improve health (or so the arguments goes).

Clearly, Peapod isn’t a perfect solution:

1. There is a delivery cost that might make grocery delivery financially unavailable to the low-income families that need access to groceries. Government subsidies (or Stop and Shop philanthropy) could make this a non-issue.
2. Without education, access means nothing. If you have access to all these new healthy foods but just buy beer and marshmallows, your health probably won’t improve (though apparently a twinkie diet can make you a lot healthier).
3. Rural areas are still kinda left in the dust. Peapod’s grocery delivery probably is not a cost-effective way to improve access to foods to the boondocks.

But there is still a lot of potential.

I think there is an ideal pilot project here somewhere that combines:

• food stamps
• Peapod promotional materials
• education materials regarding diet (including quick, cheap meals cookbook)
• some kind of subsidy to cover delivery costs

Someone make it happen.

No One Actually Knows About Income Inequality

h/t to Paul Kedrosy for posting about an interesting income inequality article:

Dan Ariely et al. conducted a recent research study on people’s perceptions of US income inequality. They had three major findings:

• Respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality.
• Respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution.
• All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

Just recently in a Global Health course, we were shown the breakdown of global income inequality. It’s also pretty ridiculous. In fact, 40% of world’s wealth is owned by 1% of the population. In fact, the richest fifth of the population receives 82.7% of the total world income.

 

One can also see that the disparity is widening:

Data taken from (Dikhanov 2005)

In a recent Financial Times comment, Kermal Dervis (Director of the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution) argued that this global income inequality is not only immoral, it threatens future global economic growth:

Less inequality in income distribution may not only be ethically desirable – it may be a necessary condition to resolve global macroeconomic fragility and ensure more sustained growth. It is time to analyse income distribution also with a macroeconomic policy perspective.

 

 

References:

Dikhanov, Yuri. 2005. Trends in Global Income Distribution, 1970-2000, and Scenarios for 2015. Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). http://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:hdr:hdocpa:hdocpa-2005-08.

 

 

Top 5 Public Health Jobs (that have nothing to do with public health)

For a long time, I’ve had an idea for a post that I never fully developed. Finally, I’m going to post it. Perhaps some of the potential insights are only partially percolated in the post; regardless, we proceed.

To me, the question “How can I save the world?” always seemed to imply “How can I help the sick? How can I make people live longer, happier lives?” I’m not sure if this is a common association, but an enormous amount of impact can be made through broadly improving public health.

Almost all of the world’s greatest tragedies are issues of public health. While the discipline often focuses on disease epidemiology or health policy, other major events clearly affect the health of populations: war, climate change, mental stress, natural disasters. Objectively, public health is not just vaccinating children but bringing conflict resolution, preparing for hurricanes, improving family dynamics, paving roads, building bridges (physical and metaphorical), and improving the quality of life for large numbers of people.

Unfortunately, such a broad scope can’t really be covered in a Masters program. Instead, we learn biostatistics and memorize long lists of risk factors for cancer, infectious disease, and other behaviors that lead to sickness. (It turns out, being really poor makes being healthy really difficult).

All of these many health-related disciplines, however, need leaders. And since getting an MPH can slow people down for two years, I’ve compiled a personal list of the top five occupations that I believe achieve the most public health (i.e. save-the-world) impact.

1) Teachers
One of the most impressive correlations that exists (in my opinion) is the correlation between health and education. From a 2007 NY Times article:

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.

Education improves the economy, decreases risky behavior, and even cuts down smoking; not to mention the vocational training in finding stable employment and improving the economy.

2) Engineers
According to charity:water, unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. The social consequences are equally destructive:

In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick.

Time spent walking and resulting diseases keep them from school, work and taking care of their families. Along their long walk, they’re subjected to a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault.

In many places, water is hard to come by. There needs to be water infrastructure and to create this infrastructure we need innovative engineers. Plain and simple.

Engineers have done a lot to help the world. From the CBS Business Network:

Engineers have built more than 36,000 large dams around the globe to control floods and provide hydroelectric power, irrigation, industrial supplies, and drinking water to an expanding population and economy.

3) Politicians (kinda)
Poor governance in low-income countries ultimately causes A LOT of global health problems. Poverty becomes exacerbated. Public interventions fail due to corruption. Private markets cannot be efficiently regulated and open the door to exploitation.

Maybe Wycleaf Jean had the right idea on how to help the poor: become a politician.

Admittedly, although many problems are caused by governance, I don’t know that being a non-corrupt, intelligent, or even musically talented politican is the best way to overcome the problem. Bureaucracy, international relations, and other social, political, and economic dimensions discussed in a long list of Yale seminars aren’t easily solved by one Senator’s voice.

But hopefully there will always be people like Nelson Mandella, John Adams, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and others to prove me wrong.

4) City Planners
There are more people in the world that face obesity than malnutrition. When I first heard that I was amazed. Now, admittedly, it makes sense.

Coined the “obesity epidemic,” a epidemiological transition has led to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other BMI-related chronic diseases to (appropriately) take the foreground in Western health policy. (In just about every public health class I have ever taken, obesity is one of the first issues that is discussed).

What can be done to prevent obesity? There are lots of alternative ideas being thrown around: sugar taxes, gym subsidies, improved health education, high quality healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods. All have potential, but one area that needs more emphasis is city planning.

To improve food security, encourage walking, and get people out of the BK breakfast->cubicle->episodes of Lost->bed routine, we need city designers.

In New Haven, I ride my bike or walk everywhere. I have access to nearby healthy foods and a gym. I have groceries delivered to me from a nearby grocery store. (Incidentally, grocery story delivery man could deserve an honorable mention for this list: finally, a way to maybe get produce and fruit to low-income neighborhoods).

By creating cities that can be navigated on foot (with efficient transportation) instead of relying on cars and highways, urban planning can create metropolitan hubs that have improved access to healthy foods while increasing exercise and even decreasing a reliance on (economically- and environmentally-) costly vehicles.

5) Journalists
I like to think I’m an idealist and an optimist. Yet, I get overwhelmed with global problems and discouraged trying to make an actual difference. It is during these times I consider dropping out of school, becoming a Park Ranger, and leading a content life in the wilderness. Or, investment banking.

Despite basically focusing on many of the world’s greatest tragedies, journalists like Nicholas Kristof inspire me and get me back on track. In order to truly address the plethora of public health issues (whether germs, genocide or gender inequality), we need to hear about them. Journalists bring these issues into the spotlight. They inspire. They mobilize. They tell people about the enormous disparity and they recruit the future leaders that will devote their lives to ending them.

Oprah can mobilize a social movement. Ben Franklin used journalism to influence the American Revolution. Glenn Beck can (unfortunately) get millions of people to hang on to his every word. This is a powerful tool to create enormous shifts in our world. Unfortunately, the economic future of journalism remains uncertain so it probably won’t pay that well.

At least there are always blogs.