The End of Public Health with Sarah Ziegenhorn Art at the End of the World Class

THE WORLD IS ENDING! Again. Doomsdayers and apocalyptic prophets have warned of coming calamity for millennia. Still, humanity persists. 
This podcast invites entrepreneurs, scholars, community leaders, artists, and many others to envision the end of the world according to their expertise.
Art at the End of the World is a hybrid class and public program series supported by the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Artand the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, and taught by Associate Curator of Special Projects, Vero Rose Smith.
Today we welcome Sarah Ziegenhorn, founder and executive director of Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition. Sarah holds an undergraduate degree in geography and biology from McCallister College and has many years of experience in public policy and community organizing. In addition to her advocacy work and non-profit leadership role with the Iowa Harm Reducation Coalition, Sarah is currently pursuing a medical degree at the University of Iowa. 
Music was written, performed, and produced by Gabi Vanek.
Transcript produced and edited by Molly Bagnall, University of Iowa Class of '20.
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VRS: The world is ending again. Doomsayers and apocalyptic prophets have warned of coming calamity for millennia. Still, humanity persists. This podcast invites entrepreneurs, scholars, community leaders, artists, and many others to envision the end of the world according to their expertise. I’m Vero Rose Smith, your host, and this is Art at the End of the World. Today we welcome Sarah Ziegenhorn, founder and executive director of Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition. Sarah holds an undergraduate degree in geography and biology from Macalester College and has many years of experience in public policy and community organizing. In addition to her advocacy work and nonprofit leadership, Sarah is currently pursuing a medical degree at the University of Iowa. Our conversation was recorded on Wednesday, April 8th 2020. 
VRS: So thank you so much for taking time to do this interview and could you introduce yourself and a little bit about your current role?
SZ: Sure, so my name is Sarah Ziegenhorn, I’m the founding executive director of the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition. Um, for short we go by IHRC commonly and we’re a statewide nonprofit that does advocacy, technical assistance, training, education, and direct services for people who use drugs. So all of our work is really focused on protecting and promoting the health, rights, and dignity of people who use drugs in the state of Iowa. 
VRS: Amazing, and how did you get interested in this work? 
SZ: Sure, so I uh- about ten years ago I was living in South Africa and um- I had a home stay family that I lived with for about a year during my study abroad as an undergraduate and um- in in the neighborhood where my homestay family lived was fairly low income and there were a number of women who worked in the neighborhood as, um, as street based sex workers and so I got really interested as I developed friendships with people in the neighborhood and with the folks that were engaged in this kind of survival economy. I got interested in sex worker health and rights and so when I came back from my study abroad experience, I did a research project on um- on urban transportation project in the Twin Cities, at time they were starting to build a light rail and in this area that had been notorious for people doing outdoor and street based sex work for many many decades and so I was really curious how the street project which many people saw as gentrification is going to impact the health and well being of people who were working outside on the street where this light rail was meant to be built. And so kind of from there everything else sort of flowed and developed really easily. I moved to Washington D. C. after I finished my undergraduate degree and because I had had these these research experiences and done this work in South Africa and in the Twin Citie