Cruising the 'hood

The 'hood? No, this post is not about Oconee County. Or is it?

As I drove through northeast Washington, DC, last Saturday night, on my way back to the University of Maryland campus from a dinner downtown, I thought about Rebecca Skloot and the research she did in coming up with her bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot had spoken at UGA two days earlier and had dinner with the health and medical journalism students that evening at the home of our professor, Pat Thomas.

In the book and at dinner, Skloot described one of her early ventures in search of the descendants of Lacks, whose cervical cells, dubbed HeLa, initiated a revolution in cell biology. In the late 1990s, she drove through a decaying subdivision where many African Americans had lived since the time Lacks died in 1951. Skloot drove in circles, going time and again past groups of current residents who stared at her, wondering what this white lady from Portland, Ore., was doing in the 'hood.

Having grown up in the South during the civil rights era, I have known blacks all my life. Some were the maids who raised me. Others were lifelong workers on my father's and his father's farms. Some were in my classes in the eighth grade, the first year of "freedom of choice" integration. And others came to the "white" high school in the 10th grade, when the traditionally white and black schools were consolidated and our mascot was changed from the Rebels to the Cougars.

Skloot lacked such a background when she began pursuing the Lacks story. The 'hood where she searched for clues to Lacks's story is about 45 miles north of the Washington 'hood through which I was driving, and it probably was worse in the late 1990s than what I was seeing in DC last Saturday night. But, if I had been looking for a story that night, would I have had the nerve to stop at these stores, drive through these neighborhoods, and get out and talk with people in search of a story?

I guess the question comes down to whether I've ever been so intrigued and obsessed by a story as Skloot was with the Lacks legend. I have written and edited hundreds of articles and even a few books, but they were ones I could usually research at a computer screen or in a library. Until I entered this master's program, my search for news sources had been on a well-lit path, one where I could rely on corporate and government announcements and a softball interview or two.

But now I've been confronted with real life, with the need to talk to people, as Prof. Thomas put it once, who don't look like I do. In the fall, that meant African Americans, Hispanic Americans, the unemployed. This semester, with Oconee County for a beat, everyone pretty much looks like me. But they often don't share my personal views on a lot of hot-button issues. I'm not sure which one has been more difficult—it's been just as hard to approach people who don't think like I do as those who don't look like I do.

All of which means that I have a lot of respect for Rebecca Skloot and her perseverance in getting this book researched and written. She really wanted to give voice to a woman whose life was taken silently during a period of segregation but whose cells live on today.

Maybe one day I'll have enough passion for a story that I will go into the 'hood in search of answers--perhaps even into some of those frightening 'hoods in Oconee County with the half-million-dollar McMansions. Maybe.

Brilliant ideas: Always a staple at ACC

By the time I arrived at the Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology on the morning of Tuesday, March 16, I had already had my fill of conventioneering.

Having just spent the past five days in Washington, D.C., at the Annual Meeting of my employer, the American Pharmacists Association, my brain was tired of being on autopilot (Hi. How are you? Good to see you). The sleep deprivation, complicated by the lost hour on Saturday night when Daylight Savings Time began, had me barely awake, much less functional.

But it's hard to be at ACC and not pick up on the energy. People are hustling this way and that, attendees sitting in the conversation pits at Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center excitedly trade information about stents and surgical staples, hawkers try to stuff the convention daily into the hands of some 30,000 passersby, and the television crews liven up the press area.

So, after a few minutes in the hall, I was wide awake. The day went swimmingly. The first news conference was fabulous, with lots of great information about warfarin and genetic testing. I was able to reach a presenter from a previous day as she traveled home by car. I walked into a session just as the speaker I wanted to hear began and was able to get interviews of two other speakers at the end.

Soon I was cruising the exhibits, about as fresh as one can be on a couple hours of sleep. I ran into someone I know at McGraw-Hill, which publishes a couple of my books. We had a great conversation until the show closed and workers began rolling up the carpet while I was standing on it.

On the way back to the media center, I walked past a video recording studio set up in the hallway. I stopped to watch. At my own convention, I had interviewed several people on camera, but I did so from off camera. We had recorded in a normal convention center meeting room, and the noise spillover from outside was a problem at times.

That's when I realized this studio-in-the-way was a great idea, one I want to implement at the APhA meeting next year in Seattle. Not only does it look really cool, but people will later want to watch the video they saw being recorded. The natural sounds of the convention center are expected in that setting, thus avoiding the need to try to create the total silence of a television studio. And maybe by next year, I'll be more comfortable being on camera myself!

Conventions, tiring as they can be, are a great source of ideas. Even when your job is communicating trends in medicine and health care to pharmacists, you can pick up a wonderful new concept at a meeting about the heart. As I drove back to Athens, chugging Coke Zero and chewing on ice and peppermint candy to stay awake, I realized what a great six days it had been, networking and hobnobbing with thousands of my closest strangers.