Teaching Health with Passion

First and foremost, thank you for coming to Health Class @ Home!

This is my first post and I wanted to take this moment to give a deeper dive into where my passion to teach health came from. Maybe you will relate, or maybe you can just appreciate the story.

To start, I believe everyone deserves equal access to healthcare. However, I have grown up watching many friends and family members unable to access needed healthcare. These moments have completely changed their lives, their trajectories in life, and the possibilities to improving their family's lives. Some have died, but most have just dealt with prolonged bouts of suffering. But it hasn't all been terrible. The majority of people I know, including myself, have been able to access healthcare through insurance.

See... I have grown up in Massachusetts. A state known to be the best state for medical care and education (in the United States). I have grown up middle class but have experienced many different spaces where socioeconomic status, race, and gender are mixed, segregated, and intertwined into their access to medicare.

Let me explain... I attend 3 Boston Public Schools before I finished elementary school. Then I attended a private all girls school 6th-8th grade, and then attend a public suburban school for my high school years... Yeah, I've seen a wide range of educational spaces. In every school what kept me (mostly) sane was playing sports. As a sophomore in high school it looked like I would be offered an athletic scholarship for high jump, until I got injured. I got great medical care and although I couldn't recover enough to get back to my competitive jumping, I watched so many of my Boston friends and peers also get injured and not get care.

Why that's important - because many of my friends were more athletic than me. I was getting a college education no matter my average grades because my dad would make sure of it. I didn't need an athletic scholarship. On the other hand, my friends' and peers' athleticism was supposed to be their way to a college education. In the end, because I wasn't going to compete at the college level, I wanted a career that involved sports, and I hated the lack of accessible healthcare (and the potential for a college education) available to my peers, I chose to become an athletic trainer.

However, after several years as an athletic trainer I realized I needed to go back even farther. I wanted to teach kids how to take care of themselves. So I became a health educator. Specifically middle school because - phew - if y'all can remember your middle school years (11-14 years of age), it is HARD. All you are doing is trying to figure out how to fit in. And a huge part of that is decision-making.

And guess what... those same internal experiences have only been amplified over the years. Times have changed and as parents we need to be ready to have tough conversations earlier and more explicitly than many of parents had with us. And if we aren't, the worst you can do is completely avoid it or prevent your kids from getting factual information. This is my experience growing up and this is my opinion based on my experiences and statistical facts.

Learning is not just at school or from reading books. We learn everywhere! But I envision our future generations learning facts and being able to have eloquent and critical conversations about our food processing, our relationships, and our national healthcare. Lack of information - ignorance - will be the end of careers, end of lives, and prolonged suffering.

So join me in educating ourselves and our kids! With facts and not just tik toks. ;)

Dr. BG