Ah Judy, 

Your sisters here in New York City will try to work on many different fronts to build "a consortium" even if it does not enjoy legal status.  And we have one board member who is definitely not giving up on small women business owners either.  In other male dominated fields we would be celebrated as entrepreneurs and given stimulus and start up money to develop new models such as your melding of your physical therapy skills with other practitioners in ways that will deepen our understanding of how to work with mothers and babies.  Such work can only be accomplished with the deep through assessments and thorough analysis of the type you excel at.  

We are closing in on new codes with with our "billing person" as I write this.  Wish it could happen faster but going through codes is tedious.  I actually just read all the instructions for the HCFA 1500 which was even more boring than reading the entire manual for Microsoft Word from cover to cover in 1987 when I was procrastinating about writing my doctoral dissertation.  Amazingly, I actually learned some good tricks that have lasted through the many additional versions which have never been as good as the version I completed my dissertation with.  So, the HCFA 1500 is full of silly instructions about not putting in periods or using # symbols or the insurance Gods of the Third Party will reject you.  

Furthermore, having looked at countries that actually have a health care system with a Minister of Health, unlike the United States which does not have A system nor A minister -- it takes more than a single tactic to improve provision of any type of health care.  In all the years that I worked in international development, most successful programs adopted a multipronged approach.   The "magic bullet" approach as we used to call it, may make for convincing clinical trials but may fail when it comes to implementing that approach in the real world of programs.  Chasing single nutrient deficiencies with supplements is one such magic bullet approach.  And indeed in emergency conditions it may be absolutely necessary to save lives.  Nevertheless it does nothing to build a sustainability, leaving families dependent upon health care systems to dispense those supplements.  Moreover, it doesn't address all the other nutrients which might be deficient.  On the surface a thorough and comprehensive gardening program that improve women's earning power, enables them to become seed producers and trainers of other women, and enables them to enhance the variety of their family's diet is far more likely to reap a rich array of benefits.  So, too does your marvelous in depth and comprehensive work with moms.  

Best, Susan

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