“Working with People Living with HIV in West Baltimore”

Mary Beth Sodus RD/LD, will share her experiences working with people living with HIV in West Baltimore, white privilege, and what she has learned in her first year of patient care as a Registered Dietitian. She will share a powerpoint illustrating and describing her first year working as a registered dietitian, with people living with HIV at a clinic that seeks to serve all patient needs in a very impoverished area of West Baltimore. The job was certainly not what she expected.

The presentation will include lessons she has learned and is continuing to learn on:

• Working with people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
• Her experience of white privilege and how she has tried to increase her compassion for “the other”, and for herself.
• Finding resources to get fresh produce for her patients in a food desert.
• Stories illustrating the work she does with people who have a wasting disease.
• What she has learned about drug abuse, the diet of addiction and the treatment of opioid addiction.
• The rewards of working with the people who have compromised immune systems.