5SR - September 19, 2023

Hitha on Iran, royal retirement, and rural healthcare

Author

Hitha Palepu
September 19, 2023

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

It’s been one year since Mahsa Amini's senseless murder at the hands of the morality police. After a year of protests and global attention, I’m disheartened that things have returned for Iran’s girls and women - enforcement of the mandatory hijab wearing in public, thousands arrested, and the West acquiescing to Iran rather than centering any diplomatic negotiations on women’s rights (though I am heartened that we brought home five innocent Americans who have been wrongfully imprisoned for far too long - I just don’t love the terms under which it happened).

Nazanin Boniadi, Sahar Sanjar Dejban, Mandana Dayani, and Mandy Ansari have continued to share the latest news out of Iran over the past year, and their voices are needed even more now.

I hope you heed Nazanin’s words about what this fight means, and to continue paying attention and amplifying the news about it.

“I hope the international community understands that the compulsory hijab is not part of Iran’s culture. For the entire time I’ve been an activist, I’ve spoken to well-meaning progressives who would say, “We don’t want to talk about the hijab because we don’t want to insult their culture.” I hope what’s happened in the past year has thoroughly debunked the idea that it’s part of Iran’s culture. Cultural norms shouldn’t be enforced through threats of death or violence.

Iranian society will never be the same again. I know this is the twilight of the regime. The question is how long will it take for it to end and for democracy to prevail. The onus is on us, the international community, to tip that balance of power in favor of the protesters.”

Nazanin Boniadi

Despite what the British tabloids would have you believe, Harry & Meghan’s choice to step back as working royals isn’t unprecedented.

It’s actually becoming a norm in modern royalty, along with streamlining titles and work expectations for the direct heirs (and maybe their siblings) and for reigning monarchs to abdicate and let their younger heirs reign.

But voluntary abdication goes much further back. From Roman emperor Diocletian choosing to tend to his garden in a villa instead of ruling over the empire to a Polish king running away to become a porter in a market, it’s a tale as old as time.

Royals and self care - they’re just like us!

This is one of the most fascinating history lessons I’ve read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I confess that I firmly believed that Texas’ attorney general Ken Paxton would be convicted in his impeachment trial.

I was clearly wrong, and dumbfounded at how he could be acquitted. Whenever I face a news story like this, I always seek out local reporting to provide a boots-on-ground perspective that national reporting often misses.

From the politicization of the trial from the beginning (from both sides, until a gag order was placed), to Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s handling of the trial as judge (demonstrating bias from the start), to an increasingly high threshold of what denotes a crime (subjective and unfortunately losing meaning with its increasing frequency), this trial was never fair.

I fear that impeachment is becoming increasingly meaningless, and justice is being weaponized to win rather than to rule fairly.

The Road Home (Zibby Mag)

What does it mean to go home?

I remember when my friend Jamie began talking about moving back to her hometown of Miami. It was fall 2020, and we were on one of our regular Central Park walks to escape the frenzy of Zoom school and business survival and living Groundhog Day over and over again.

As much as I selfishly wanted Jamie to stay, I also understood why she wanted to return home - and how complicated returning home felt for her. It’s been incredible to watch her go through this emotional journey, which she beautifully writes about in this essay.

“But now I’m back to my roots and bittersweet memories wrapped up in the subtropical sun’s warm embrace, I am planted with two feet on the ground. I check my phone, which shifts my focus back to the present and to the embodiments of my parents’ legacy––my children––who are eagerly awaiting me at the school carpool. I stand up, readjust my jeans, walk back to the car, and take one last look at our plot. The chimes sing as if to say, “Goodbye, until next time, and don’t be a stranger.”

Sitting in the carpool line, I look to my left and see diamonds flashing on steering wheels all around me. This is suburban Miami––a Miami I am very familiar with––starkly different from Mount Nebo Cemetery where nothing material matters. I am a guilty diamond-lover, too. As the niece of a fine jeweler, it’s in my blood. I am guilty of loving “things,” all the “things,” just like Miami wants me to. But my losses have also granted me a different perspective. I now know a version of Miami where things don’t matter, where it’s not about what we have, but who we have.”

Jamie Kolnick

Serving on the board of New Morning has given me a deeper look at rural healthcare in this country, and how fragile and vulnerable it is.

A rural doctor often does the role of multiple - pediatrician, internal medicine, endocrinologist, cardiologist, and so on. In towns like LaFayette in Alabama, residents go to their local fire station for emergency care, as the nearest emergency room is a 20 minute drive away (along with the closest pediatrician and urgent care). The town’s hospital closed in 1988, and their high school is about to be closed and its students consolidated into a nearby one.

It’s heartbreaking and increasingly the norm for rural communities. It also shows the value proposition for telemedicine, which is now offered in an OnMed Care Station where the patient enters a soundproof booth with health monitoring equipment and a camera and screen to connect with a healthcare professional to address immediate concerns.

In true 5SR fashion, this is a both/and situation. Telemedicine is an excellent option to expand access to care and offload these cases from a fire department or another emergency service, but it doesn’t replace a physician who knows you, the state of your health, and how to treat you from a medical and personal standpoint.

I would love to see a HealthCorps program launch nationwide, offering student loan forgiveness to healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, optometrists, and audiologists) to work in a underserved community for a period (3-5 years) to re-establish a network of healthcare access in the areas that need it the most.

Just an idea - your move, HHS.

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