Voices

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Voices: Marcus Penn (5 minutes, 52 seconds)

MP: I was born and raised in San Francisco; I know it's very few folks who can actually claim that title, and I'm glad that I can. I grew up in the Ingleside/Lakeview area, real close to San Francisco State. It's a nice neighborhood. Our block actually was predominantly African-American; I'm very much proud of my heritage there, too. I'd gone to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia; biology, pre-med, major. Interestingly, my minor was German.

Alluding back to my parents, we very much traveled a lot. I think for ten years, every other year we would travel around the world, and I have a feeling that their intent was to not limit any exposure of mine, and to allow cultures to be embraced.

As my photography comes in, I had no real intent other than to just share my experience. I simply wanted to just capture life in its purest form. I captured a lot of happiness. One of my most favorite photos, that I've entitled "Eyes of Truth," is of a little girl, probably about four years old. She was looking at me, just kind of staring at me intensely, and I felt that she was actually kind of peering through my soul. As I look at that picture now, if ever I get derailed or detoured in just life's, you know, happenings, I look at the picture and am reminded of myself, of my own truth, and am reminded of the truth that was seen through her eyes, and the truth that I can see back.

In choosing my own career path, being a coordinator of outreach for the UCSF Cancer Center, I always wanted to ask my inner voice, and I really see that just having a good spiritual grounding would provide me with a better background in choosing a career path.

Having grown up in a very spiritual household, I had known that there's a peace in knowing myself, and spirituality is a big part in that happening. And so, growing up in the church, growing up with a grandmother that said, you know, "God's always with you," had always given me comfort to know that whatever direction I choose, whatever career path I have, will work out.

I'd seen a lot of the importance, from my time in undergrad, from my time in medical school, to my time now, the importance of the church. –Not only in the African-American community, but in all communities where there's a sense of safety, a sense of oneness that the congregants feel. And, that would be a place to advocate for healthy living. Healthy living spiritually I truly feel translates to healthy living spiritually.

My position at UC San Francisco offers a lot of opportunities for me to be out and in the community. With UCSF's strong commitment to the community and my work very much involved in that effort, I'm happy that my role here at UC San Francisco allows for that connection to take place, and allows for more novel methods of health education, of empowering patients, of empowering the community.

Being the coordinator of outreach for the Radiation and Oncology Department, I had the opportunity to work at the Martin Luther King, Jr., celebration in San Francisco. This serves as an opportunity for men to get their blood screened, to get health education. We're largely working with a lot of the African-American churches, and with the sense of disparities, largely, and many of them are within the African-American population, going through faith-based organizations, going through organizations that really have that sense of oneness, seems to be a perfect platform. The Cancer Center has a community advisory board faith-based subcommittee, and one church may be a center for education and screening for prostate cancer; another one may be for breast cancer education, and we see that incorporating these programs into the churches will allow a sense of empowerment in the community. I think it will allow the churches to know they have a partner, to know that they have UCSF with them in the effort of increasing the health of their own community.

It seems very important that I see that I am part of a greater whole, and those who I interact with are a part of that. There's no sense of true separation; it's one race, one race of people, and I've always felt that sense of oneness with people, from a young age to now, and I see that that's really allowed me to connect with people on a very much deeper level, in work and personal and in my spiritual life.