Category: #4 Reading Reflection

Well, I suppose this isn’t totally random. I found this paper during my search for a project as I was internet stalking my prospective mentors.

Dr. Jade Burns, Ph.D., RN, CPNP-PC is a post-doctoral fellow here at U of M. Part of my private investigation process included googling not only the letters behind her name (Registered Nurse, Primary Care Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner), but also what exactly a “post-doctoral fellow” actually is (especially since I had to personally derive that title based on what I read). She has a Ph.D. in Nursing from U of M and is currently doing research with the University. Her CV is 6 filled-to-the-margins pages of how she has hardcore dedicated the last 19 years of her life to Nursing.

TBH – I found her amazingness daunting. Meeting her was fantastic. Her glory is clearly effortless because she seemed just as excited to spend an hour talking to me about life as I was. I don’t know how she was able to impart so much knowledge and wisdom and encouragement and inspiration and omg in such a short time.

Okay okay….on to the paper.

In their Public Space: A Qualitative Analysis of Young African American Males’ Views of Social Media as a Mode for Condom Use Education

The project that Dr. Burns is working on now is a multi-peg approach to investigating how to get young African-American males (referred to as “YAAMs”) to be more proactive about their reproductive health care, as well as making that care more accessible to them. She aims to promote ways to decrease the prevalence of STI’s which is huge in Wayne County. I was looking forward to being a part of that project, but ultimately I decided a different project was in my best interest. *semi-sad face*

Dr. Burns noticed how integral social media has become in the lives of young people and wondered how it could be used to advance reproductive health care and advocacy in a meaningful way. Please don’t assume I read the entire thing word for word because I totally didn’t. However, I spent far more time casually reading this than I have voluntarily read anything else in a while.

After examining the attitudes of adolescents towards social media, both for leisure and as a means for sexual education, and even further exploring the mechanisms by which social media is most influential, she was able to conclude that use of social media platforms could be an incredibly effective tool for reproductive health education and reinforcement for youth. One obvious but not so obvious conclusion is that memes are an important part of the social media experience, some youth citing memes as their primary purpose for visiting platforms and their favorite part of social media. My favorite part was obviously the memes.

I think this is crucial because as a young woman from Detroit, where her work is primarily focused, I’ve witnessed first-hand the lack of education and access to care, and I’ve seen the repercussions. A simple google search will help you find that Wayne county has enormous rates of STI’s in comparison to not only other counties in the state but outside the state as well, and the majority of those cases come from African-Americans. Dr. Burns does work to support a specific kind of treatment that would allow patients seen for STI’s to obtain and relay treatment to their potentially infected partner without them being physically present in the clinic. She’s also working with community partners to create more care facilities inside the city that also host focus groups where YAAMs can candidly discuss their fears or concerns about sexual health and receive education in a candid manner. Social media is going to be a huge player in making these endeavors successful at large rates.