San Francisco Strong

Written By: Konika Ray Wong, Founder of Girl Power Science

The pandemic has helped me distill my priorities in life and undoubtedly my family’s health is number one. Actually, my personal health should be the number one priority because we must put on our proverbial oxygen mask first before we can support others.

I am deeply grateful to live in San Francisco right now.  “The Bay Area is the golden child of COVID mitigation. Our people are public health savvy. They align politics with science,” Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF said, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Marin County has the highest vaccination rate in California with 90% of eligible residents fully vaccinated. Go Marin! This just makes me want to rally our competitive spirit and aim for the 100% in San Francisco.

Our world wouldn’t be in the mess it is right now if everyone understood science is real and aligned politics with science.  I am choosing to focus on what I can control. Launching “Girl Power Science” and offering the tools for parents and their daughters to become agents of change with lasting transformations feels like a step in the right direction. Research shows that confidence and self-esteem plummet during adolescence especially for girls. We can change that. We can prevent the next generation of #metoo narratives.

I always tell my students that if their bodies go through all of the pubertal changes, then we know they are healthy and should have an attitude of gratitude. We are so privileged to have access to clean water, nutritious food, and good health. There is no other place I would want to live outside of our strong San Francisco bubble.