I have to second Jo-Anne Elder's opinion about what ultimately makes a difference and it 
is NOT an understanding of biochemistry.

My dissertation advisor used to admonish us all the time with the following hierarchies of 
knowledge:

A mathmetician only needs to understand math to be able to be excellent in the field.
A physicist needs to understand both math and physics to be excellent in the field.
A chemist needs to understand both math, physics and chemistry to be excellent in the 
field.

---- I have to diverge a bit here --- the so-called brain chemist who was financed by a 
well-known pharmaceutical company that is heavily marketing the fear of a specific 
nutrient deificiency fell prey to what we in nutritional epidemiology called the Linus 
Pauling syndrome of thinking that if you are an expert in one field you can extrapolate 
your area of expertise into another----  or, if you read the NYTimes Magazine article on 
the Nutrification of foods - this person forgot that not all of us are into supplements ---- 
some of us still like to eat food.

A biochemist needs to understand math, physics, chemistry, biochemistry.... 

And you can continue on up into understanding psychology.

You cannot work with individual mothers and expect to give them the "ideal"  and have 
them do it.  You MUST understand their individual psychology on top of everything else.  
A few days in the hospital is not a long enough window to really help a mother process 
this --- it is but a step towards a longterm relationship with her child.

Social marketing (a la the pioneering work of Richard Manoff) eventually led to Marcia 
Griffiths developing the Trials of Improved Practices (TIPS).  It was a radical notion for 
me.  Yes, we may know the biological ideal.  Sometimes, however, you do better by 
working with mothers to tell you about the practical reality of what is doable.  Richard 
Manoff did this excellent talk whereby he deconstructed all the things that UNICEF was 
telling women in developing countries to do.  By the time he got through with all the 
tasks, all the mothers in the room totally got how impossible those tasks were and even 
the nonmothers (at the time myself) got it too.  He then put back together all the 
supports of others that were important.  What Marcia Griffiths added to the picture was 
the radical notion that nutrition education could leap out of the tired old telling women 
what to do and actually create a dialogue whereby mothers tried it out and gave feed 
back about what techniques actually worked --- TIPS!

Anyway ---- I have taken more biochemistry than I care to even think about.  I can't even 
count on my fingers how many courses I have had in straight biochemistry, molecular 
biology and nutritional biochemistry.  In the end, I can't even say that I remember even a 
fraction of it and I could care less -- that is not the part that counts.

Best Susan Burger

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