As we take this blog's energy to a new project, build with us...

It's time. It's time to take the energy from this blog, which has served as the intial experimental space and the foundation for a larger project, to a bigger space. The same notorious team who put this blog together (Andru Ziwasimon and myself) and an amazing team of others (including my brother Nalin) have created the first health justice focused online community space -- titled Cure This. Here's what it's about:

For two and a half years, "Cure This" was a pipe dream shared by just a handful of us. We envisioned a grand goal: to create an online space to discuss health in its broadest sense, share personal stories, creatively make positive change, and build an online community along the way — connecting us locally, nationally, and perhaps internationally. We envisioned a humble beginning: here and now.

Cure This has now transformed into a reality, and we’re excited beyond words. We welcome it into this world with a loving, gentle nudge and an encouraging whisper in its ear. Let the beautiful journey begin.

But first, thank you to everyone who read To the Teeth -- written by Andru, myself, and guest bloggers Sri and Rahat over the past few years. This blog saw its start back in January 2003, when there weren't many health justice-oriented blogs on the internet. We poured a great amount of love and passion into the creation and maintenance of the blog. It was exciting receiving comments and emails from folks who really believed in what we were sharing. For those of you who have not perused the archives or the rest of this front page, I especially encourage you to read Andru's posts -- whether on building his innovative clinic or on pushing the edges of health justice work. They are truly inspiring pieces of writing. Come back to read them if you don't have time now -- this site will be archived indefinitely (for as long as blogger allows it to be!)

The last few months have been met with very sparse posting here on To the Teeth, as Andru and I have been involved in quite a few other projects. Andru has been building an amazing innovative clinic (which he shares stories from in this blog) and railing against the injustices of the New Mexico public health and hospitals system, in a quiet but hugely successful coalition-based people-based way. He's also been leading the Racial Disparities initiative of the National Physicians Alliance, a young organization of progressive physicians. I've been writing at my personal blog -- Los Anjalis. I've also been involved in intense training in my family medicine residency program at Harbor-UCLA (check out our resident blog), doing some international medicine, and serving on the Board of Directors of the National Physicians Alliance (check out the NPA's blog, full of energetic physicians' posts!) During this time, we were also holding secret meetings with team members on the creation of the not-so-secret-anymore Cure This project.

Now, what a way to end a blog project! The last post on this blog, entitled "Support the Bhopalis right to live", was written in March 2007, about the hunger strike that 6 community leaders undertook in Bhopal, India (read the post for more info). Satinath Sarangi, one of the bhopalis fasting, wrote a comment on the blog WHILE fasting, on the 12th day of the fast as his body was breaking down its own stores into ketones. He thanked us for spreading the message. Talk about the power of the internet to bring the day to day activities, direct actions, and strategy of health justice work to the rest of the world -- so beautiful and so humbling at the same time.

With this spirit and energy and awe, we hope you will join us at Cure This, create an account, share your own thoughts, and promote greater collaboration among various groups and individuals separated by geography, on various issues of health and health justice. because we love the internet and its ability to bolster movements. because our health (personally and collectively) is ours and nobody can take it away from us. because it's time we dreamed instead of only reacted.