All Things Asks: Emma Cook
All Things’ mission is: To provide feminine hygiene products to women and girls in Zambia in order to encourage and empower women in education and the workforce. What does this mission mean to you?
The mission of All Things is really special to me because it addresses the important point of access to healthcare. Increasing access to feminine hygiene products enables women and girls to manage their periods with dignity and independence. By providing this resource, women and girls know that they are capable of caring for one fundamental area of their wellness. By addressing this one dimension of health, women and girls are further equipped to pursue other opportunities, including school and work.
What experiences in your life have informed your passions for empowerment, women’s health, and service?
1. When I was a 16-year-old high school student sitting in a sexual education class, I wondered why our teaching barely touched on the specifics of having a period, taking care of your body if you have female anatomy, and so many other women’s health topics. There were many simplified explanations of puberty and limited anecdotal discussion about the experience of having a period. I remembered asking myself, “Is this all there is? Where do I go with my other questions? Is it normal or allowed to ask other questions about my body?” Between my limited exposure to period health and sexual health education from my public school and a short, somewhat awkward, very sanitized discussion about periods with my mom, I lacked many tools in my toolbox to take care of my own health and to recognize if there were any abnormalities with my health. Thankfully I had a fairly easy time with my periods growing up, but my sisters and many of my friends had much harder times.
2. From an early age, I learned that access to education and resources can greatly impact a person’s health and empower a person to make great, positive change in their life. I have met many women that have felt like their questions and concerns about their own health have gone unheard, disregarded, and invalidated. Concerns about pain, changes in period symptoms, and seemingly unrelated symptoms, all dismissed as “not significant enough,” or “normal,” or “part of being a woman.” These statements and the experiences that people in my life and others in my community have experienced over time opened my eyes to the need to empower women in taking ownership of their health. I wanted to be part of a group focused on empowering women in all dimensions of their health, especially through health education. It is a special opportunity to serve my local community and other communities globally and to be part of opening doors to resources and education. It is a privilege that I am thankful for often! It is incredible to get to empower and honor another human being to live a full, high-quality life by providing dignified care and resources.
What excites you about the intersection of public health, medicine, and service?
1. The intersection of public health, medicine, and service excites me for many reasons, but I am most excited that the field of medicine has been re-orienting to integrate a more preventative approach to healthcare rather than a curative, reactive approach.
2. It has become apparent to me over the past few years that working in medicine and having a long career in medicine require a lot of endurance. I foresee maintaining that endurance in multiple ways in the future, but I think a huge motivator as a clinician will be remembering my “why.” I hope to be a community-oriented clinician that is in touch with the lifeblood of my community’s needs. I think staying aware of the needs in my community and staying engaged in addressing those needs will help to sustain that endurance after a longtime serving my community.
3. It is exciting that, as clinicians, we can also advocate for public health by sharing resources with patients, providing health education, and directly investing in service opportunities in our communities.
4. It is really exciting that a clinician can spend parts of their career in clinical practice while also devoting time to serving their community in other capacities. While a clinical team in a clinical setting can meet the needs of multiple community members, a clinician can bring their resources, talents, and time to their community and impact even more community members by removing barriers to access to healthcare.
In your opinion, what are ways to alleviate stigma associated with women’s health?
One way to alleviate stigma associated with women’s health is to use correct terminology when discussing female anatomy. This can reduce shame and normalize talking about one’s own body by treating that area of the body like any other area. Additionally, normalizing periods, feminine hygiene products, and the different regular experiences of uterus-owners in our conversations with friends, family, and peers can help to alleviate stigma in our immediate circle (especially if the people in our circles are open to dialogue about these topics) and ultimately in our greater communities. Another fundamental way to alleviate the stigma surrounding women’s health is for women/uterus-owners to change how they think about women’s health issues themselves. Deconstructing our own misconceptions about female anatomy, periods, ovulation, and other “normal” physiological experiences allows us to dispel those misconceptions in our close circles and communities and to better care for ourselves and for other uterus-havers in our communities.
Who is your biggest inspiration, and why?
Choosing my biggest inspiration is a tough question for me because I’m easily inspired by the character, passion, philosophies, and actions of others. If I had to pick one person who has inspired me significantly throughout my life, I would have to pick my mom. From a very young age, she instilled in me a passion for learning and demonstrated the impact of empowering others. After college, she worked as a social worker and advocated for vulnerable children, their families, and their communities. In her work, she was often frustrated that the children she represented ultimately were at the mercy of the courts and legal teams that didn’t know the children or their needs as well as her social work team did. This motivated her to go back to school to pursue a law degree and to practice child advocacy law. She saw an obstacle that limited her ability to support the children; she served as a social worker and did the work to get into rooms where people would listen as she advocated for them. She took her background in social work and counseling into her practice as a lawyer, which gave her a more compassionate, understanding perspective about the community she was serving. After having three children, she made the decision to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. While I know that was a very difficult transition in many ways, I’m thankful for the support and encouragement she has given to me and my sisters throughout our lives. Beyond taking care of the three of us, she has also always been very involved in our schools and has taken many opportunities to invest in other students in our classes. She taught me the power of listening to others’ stories and caring for every person who comes into your path. She taught me to be honest, to be bold, to be loyal, and to be brave. She taught me that standing up for others, advocating for others, and caring for others are all incredibly valuable and fulfilling as a human being. While I am pursuing a career in medicine and she pursued a career in law, she showed me that no matter your title, you bring yourself with all of your gifts into every room you enter and you have the opportunity to share them, to encourage others, to empower others, to uplift others, to bring hope to others, and to walk alongside others at any point in their lives. I know saying your parent is one of your biggest inspirations can be a bit of a cliche, but my mom was the first person to teach me that you don’t need to be perfectly equipped with all of the wisdom, strength, understanding, or skills to be able to generously care for others and show up for others.