Shelly Shaw,
Associate Director, Office of Community Health

I’ve been wondering about how we define wisdom in a world full of credentials: MDs, DOs, PhDs, MPHs, MBAs, the list goes on. What credential do you get for being a young, black, or brown kid growing up in Madison, WI? What credentials do you get for being their parents? What credential do you get as a person seeking healthcare, in a system full of forms and boxes to check, and as you scan all those boxes you don’t see a single place where you belong? How do we name and credential that wisdom? With all of that experience, why is that wisdom too often missing from decision-making tables? Why is that wisdom missing from our faculty rosters? Why is that wisdom missing?