Gauze and Effect Volume 6: Health, Data, and the Golden State
By: Dr. Sarah Marie Martin
Tags: Startup Life, Public Health, Healthcare, Innovation, Health Equity

By Dr. Sarah Martin and the mySidewalk Health Squad

Photo Credit: Tim Mossholder for Unsplash

Volume 6: Curation

Dearest Readers,

I’m staring at the sun setting over the Kansas side of my house. I live in a neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri, that is very close to the state line. I can see KS from my backyard. The sky has been hazy for a week, and I’m not a meteorologist, but I think it’s blowing in from the West Coast. Peculiarly, it is making me more homesick than usual.

Most of my loyal readers know that I was born and raised in California. My first home was in the Los Angeles/Orange County area. But my working-class family soon followed the affordable housing to the city of Bakersfield. Sometimes when I tell people that’s where I’m from, I am met with a look of pity. It makes me intensely angry — only people from there can judge it. My favorite line from a recent movie is the scene near the end of The Last Black Man in San Francisco, where he scolds some girls on the bus for speaking ill of his city. “You don’t get to hate San Francisco.”, the main character says. “You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.”

The theme of this issue is curation. Long ago, as a college student in Bakersfield (go Roadrunners!), I chose Art History as my 2nd major. I knew that it wasn’t going to be my career, but it was the discipline that excited me most. I was incredibly passionate about curation. If you have heard a mySidewalk demo, you know that curation is how I often explain the need to design data experiences with the user in mind. You don’t go to a Matisse exhibit and see his work in alphabetical order — you view the story and take the journey the way the curator translates themes for maximum emotional impact.

Photo Credit: Cameron Story Photography

Curation is at the heart of our newest bold project — a partnership with Blue Shield of California to bring a curated, personalized story of health equity to every household in the state. Together, we took great care to set a curatorial intention. You will not find an exhaustive laundry list of out-of-context data points. Instead, you will walk through your neighborhood (on a digital SIDEWALK!) in a way that pays respect to the complexity of health. See it for yourself here:

https://healthreimagined.blueshieldca.com/neighborhood-health-dashboard

While this newsletter is about curation, it’s also a love letter to my home state. This project has exposed glaring inequities in cities that I love, and it has made me reflect on the complicated nature of the 5th largest economy in the world. In the same state that basically invented the internet, parts of the state are so sick that — were they to be their own state — they would be the second most unhealthy state in the country. The same state that gave us the Doors and other music legends also gave us Summer Girls by LFO. California gave us progressive policies that served as a model for national transformation. Still, it also voted to strip away same-sex couples’ rights and implement racist laws that oppressed immigrants. It gave us the beauty of the perfect Halo clementine, and also the Kardashians. It is the birthplace of Kamala Harris and the place that elected the Terminator. It is a good place, a bad place, and everything in between.

In this issue, we pay tribute to the concept of curation and the Golden State. Don’t worry — we will be back to spreading some national love in Volume 7. Indulge me a bit in celebrating the wonder and the weirdness of the place that raised me.

PS: Just as I finished the first draft of this letter, I got a package in the mail (see below)from my dear friend’s shop. He’s curating the best home goods in California, focusing on lifting up the work of small maker-businesses. Check it out at Sandstone Goods and get yourself some things!