Aidan Noble-Goodman, a socially engaged student uses SolutionsU
to prepare for her career in the healthcare field and forge connections with people
Aidan Noble-Goodman is pursuing a career in the health sector. She is a phlebotomist at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and is completing her Bachelors of Science in Nursing in a collaborative program between Portland Community College and OHSU. She is also the former health story fellow for the Solutions Journalism Network.
Aidan says she uses SolutionsU and solutions stories not only in her work as a fellow, but in class research, in her daily conversations, and to gain knowledge about the health sector.
As the former health story fellow, Aidan spent seven to ten hours a week reading stories, noting key themes, and creating collections based on those themes. She describes the process of creating story collections this way:
“I’ll read a story about how people are de-stigmatizing the dying process. Then, I’ll see a story about how people are talking to their loved ones about dying. As soon as I see a theme in two stories, I’ll put them in a collection.”
The process continued, she says, until she had enough stories to create a full collection, typically four to five stories. Then she’d read them all again and write a description, focusing on the “teachable” aspect of the stories as a whole. Sometimes, she says, she received requests for a collection on a particular theme. When this happened, she used the SolutionsU search function to quickly find relevant stories.
When asked what has been the most profound impact on her from reading countless solutions stories, she says it is the passion of individuals and their belief in their mission or goal.
“There are all of these amazing humans out in the world devoting their careers, their free time, their resources to a cause they believe in. It is so powerful to see that type of care and compassion in the world.”
Aidan says she tries to use this inspiration and channel it into knowledge and action for the future. “I am someone who gets overwhelmed by social problems,” she says, “and solutions stories show me the myriad of ways I can have impact.”
Beyond her job as a story fellow, Aidan is preparing for a career in the health sector. Reading stories, she says, helps her stay up to date on the innovations, challenges, and potential in her field. And the knowledge she procures, she says, she often shares with others, whether that’s sending articles to her friends, or talking to her neighbor.
“We got to talking about the rural healthcare crisis and what can be done to expand access to healthcare, and I mentioned telemedicine because I’ve read several solutions stories about it. It turns out that he (the neighbor) is implementing telemedicine” in his clinic in Nevada. “I use solutions journalism to to forge connections with people I meet,” she says, “and spread ideas that can work as agents for change.”
Check out Aidan’s favorite story: “Charity’s vision for a blind-free Indonesia,” AzerNews, Arlina Arshad
