The Fuld Leadership Program
Fuld Fellowships
Emile Crosa Toufighian
Biographical Sketch
Activities and Observations in the first two months
of 2004
Fuld Fellows, Emory Magazine
Making Bigger Beds, Nursing Magazine
Biographical Sketch
Emile Crosa Toufighian is a graduate student who is passionate about healthcare as social justice and sees nursing and public health as ways to extend health care resources to all people.
Previously, Emile conducted field research in India on women’s experiences of marriage, conception and birth. She observed that many women without resources were having children too early and, too often, were unable to receive education and, therefore, unable to play an active role in determining their future status and welfare. These women had little opportunity to change the quality of their lives even if they strongly desired to do so. Her interest in healthcare was first sparked in India.
She holds a Bachelors Degree in World Religions and has studied in India, Korea, and Cuba. She has participated in a variety of activities that support the health of traditionally underserved populations including a healthcare clinic for migrant farm workers and their children in South Georgia and writing and presenting a position paper that promotes legislative actions that support breastfeeding initiatives. She sees herself impacting change both on an individual level by working with at-risk adolescents as well as by becoming involved on a broader level by participating in government legislative processes that affect healthcare policies.
She is currently a graduate student in the Women's Health/Adult Health Nurse Practitioner Program and is a member of the Georgia Nursing Association, the American Nursing Association, and Sigma Theta Tau International, a nursing honors society and also serves on the board of HealthSTAT, a health professional student-led non-profit organization that works to mobilize students to take action on health issues confronting Georgians.
Activities and Observations in the first
two months of 2004
In January of this year (2004), I had the amazing experience of traveling to Cuba on an academic nursing program to study the healthcare system there. In the ten days that I was there, I visited multiple levels of the healthcare system from the most basic family nurse/doctor team to tertiary care centers and several community health centers as well. I was very impressed by what I saw – a system of healthcare delivery that was apparently free and accessible to all. On the other hand, many aspects of the Cuban society provoked questions in my mind. Among the more poignant to me were those regarding privacy and choice. In the end, I have come away feeling that there is a price paid for the healthcare in Cuba, but it is a less tangible one.
I choose to refrain from attaching a value judgment to this difference because while I pay cash for my healthcare and live knowing that many around me go without, I also know that I have a degree of freedom and self-determination that many people will never know, but that I enjoy. However, in sorting my values, I come across the following question and wonder at its answer: What is the value and/or worth of primary preventive healthcare, especially in the life of a child, and what wouldn’t you personally sacrifice for all people to share that gain? Perhaps the answer is some semblance of freedom, or perhaps, there is more freedom in receiving healthcare in a strict environment than not receiving it at all in the land of the free?
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