The 2nd Annual CASA Service Awards were presented by Dean Mary Schutten and Associate Dean Pamela Richardson on Wednesday, November 15, at the San José State University Student Union Theater. There were four service awards given to deserving faculty and staff. Service and putting others first is so important to the culture of the college, university, and society.
Congratulations to the following CASA Service Award Winners!
CASA Administrative & Professional Service Award:
Mai Phan, School of Social Work
CASA Annual Faculty Service Award for Tenure/Tenure-Track Faculty:
Yinghua (Michelle) Huang, Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management
CASA Lifetime Faculty Service Award for Lecturer:
Daniel Murphy, Department of Kinesiology
CASA Lifetime Faculty Service Award :
Caroline Haas, Department of Nutrition, Food Science and Packaging
Alice Hines, Associate Dean, College of Applied Sciences and Arts
None of this could have taken place without the work of the CASA Service Award Selection Committee which included: John Delacruz, School of Journalism and Mass Communications; Emily Bruce, School of Social Work; Kristina Luna, School of Information; Faranak Memarzadeh, Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management; and Emily Wughalter, Department of Kinesiology.
Ysabel Duron, 22nd Century Medicine: Life Care Not Health Care
After the awards were presented, Dean Schutten introduced Ysabel Duron who spoke on 22nd Century Medicine: Life Care Not Healthcare. Duron is a 1970 SJSU Journalism graduate and was SJSU’S 2017 commencement speaker. Her career paths are filled with a service oriented approach to life.
Duron stepped away from a 4+ decade, multi award-winning television journalism career, to focus on a non-profit she launched in 2003, to serve low income, Spanish speaking and immigrant Latinos around issues of cancer. The Silicon Valley based agency, Latinas Contra Cancer (LCC), created programs to address gaps in services, contracted with public health and clinic delivery systems to provide patient navigation and psycho-social support, engaged and trained community health workers as part of a workforce development plan to increase the numbers of linguistically and culturally appropriate employees to serve the underserved.
Duron convened the Biennial National Latino Cancer Summit starting in 2008 to turn the spotlight on the increasing cancer incidence and mortality rate in the Latino community. Since then, participants across the sectors gather to network, learn from each other and find ways to collaborate in research and translation programs in community.
Recently, Duron left LCC to roll out her third startup – the Latino Cancer Institute – a national non-profit, currently in development stage.
Through Duron’s involvement as Executive Director of Latinas Contra Cancer, she shared with the audience where you live, work and play is an indicator of not only your quality of life but your future health outcome. This is because where you live and work determines your access to health care.
Duron longs for a healthier equitable society. She said, “research shows that in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Latino children are actually born with mutations in cancer cells.” This means they are prone to get the disease from birth.
She also shared statistics that from 2010-2014, Texas had the highest maternal mortality rate among Hispanic women. She said these statistics could be attributed to Texas removing all Planned Parenthood Clinics.
Through research from the LCC, Duron says “breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer and death among Latino women.” Duron’s parting words were “in order to change the system, you’ve got to shock the system to change the system.”
To view the CASA Service Awards and Duron’s speech, click here.
