Standpoint helps spread global health awareness
By John Mitchell, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, March 3, 2006
Standpoints magazine, a Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health publication, hit shelves across campus this week. The organization held a celebration at Boloco on Thursday night, which included several speakers and free food.
The magazine, which is sponsored by The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, includes stories and pictures from members of the Dartmouth community who have spent time working on poverty, starvation and disease in developing nations.
While Standpoints has been published several times in the past two years, the DCGH publicized their event at Boloco as a "Kick-Off Party," signaling an effort to spark renewed interest in the magazine. The four student speakers at the event shared some of their personal experiences dealing with health issues in developing nations.
Standpoints' publication adds to a recent increase in global health awareness events on campus, including a series of talks this term organized by the Tucker Foundation and Dartmouth Experiences in Global Health. The DCGH has also worked to raise on-campus awareness of global health issues and successfully arranged activities at freshman orientation.
"I think orientation's [health awareness] focus helped increase freshman interest," DCGH publicity director Santhi Voora '06 said.
Standpoint's current editorial board and staff are trying to revive the publication after its founders, Jhilam Biswas '05 and Shivani Parmar '05, graduated.
While the publication seeks to spread awareness about global health issues, it does not seek to promote a specific agenda or policy, according to Voora. It hopes to simply present the experiences of students who have had powerful personal experiences with global health issues to the rest of the Dartmouth community.
"We pretty much try to leave the writers' original intent alone. We don't do a ton of reworking," Voora said.