The Health Disparities Podcast

As COVID-19 emerged during early 2020, people all over the world were feeling similar negative emotions. Operation Change leaders were learning the extent to which participants were feeling let down and unsupported, so they urgently looked for solutions. In this episode, our panel of Operation Change community leaders reflect on the impact that COVID had on the groups they had convened, and share some of the ways they responded to the pandemic.

For this episode of the Health Disparities Podcast, three members of the LaSure extended family gathered at the annual Movement is Life caucus to discuss their tradition of working in service to the greater good, a tradition which goes back many generations. Their discussion touches on aspects of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that these family members have witnessed in different spheres of service, but where similar patterns rise to the surface and reflect ever evolving norms in the context of racial diversification, inclusion, and advancement.

Hawaii has long held the record for the highest average life expectancy in the US. The islands also enjoy some of the lowest COVID-19 infection and mortality numbers along with high vaccination rates. Dr. Green attributes near-universal healthcare coverage and a strong emphasis on primary care with Hawaiians good life expectancy, but Native Hawaiians live comparatively shorter lives. Parts of Hawaii are still in many respects the frontier, with poverty rates exacerbated by COVID’s impact on tourism, and difficult access to specialist care being important aspects of the disparities equation.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, SUNY Downstate President Dr. Wayne Riley found himself leading a major health system responsible for the care of some of the most vulnerable communities in New York City through unprecedented times. As the hospitals filled up with COVID patients his teams had to simultaneously support their staff and plan their response for patients. Dr. Riley discusses some of the immediate steps they had to take in response, from dealing with a lack of PPE to mitigating an immediate oxygen shortage. Many hospitals have found themselves stretched to breaking point both financially and in terms of staffing, and many hospitals have closed. Dr. O’Connor and Dr. Riley discuss the vital role that safety net hospitals play in care of patients in both urban and rural environments, and the margin pressures and funding shortfalls that are causing a crisis in the care of underserved populations.

Recorded at the Movement is Life Caucus, our panel of health law thought leaders continue their discussion about the shaping of American law to reduce health disparities and protect human dignity. Featuring Frank McClellan, JD, LLM, Law Professor Emeritus from Temple University and author of “Healthcare and Human Dignity”; D. Deone Powell, ESQ, from HIV and primary care organization Philadelphia FIGHT; Cara McClellan, JD, from The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; and caucus keynote speaker Daniel Dawes, JD, from Morehouse School of Medicine, author of “150 Years of ObamaCare” and “The Political Determinants of Health.”

Dr. Calvin Johnson, MD, MPH, has built his varied career at the intersections of medicine, data science, and public health. This episode explores a wide range of topics related to health equity in a fascinating discussion, including the historical significance of Morehouse School, the importance and vulnerability of safety net hospitals, addressing the enduring issue of limited access to care for some populations, and the importance of data analysis and proactive information dissemination for problem solving and crisis management.

Kelly Bruno, President & CEO of the National Health Foundation joins us to discuss healthcare for the homeless. California has a disproportionate share of the nation’s homeless population, approximately 161,000 of the total homeless population of 580,000. The National Health Foundation, a California-based organization focused on recuperative care in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, offers medical respite care programs as an equitable pathway to health and housing for people experiencing homelessness. It’s an approach that can mitigate some social determinants and barriers to care and build community in the process.

October is Physical Therapy Month, and this year the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) has a new campaign. Orthopedist Dr. Mary O’Connor meets with Dr. Hadiya Green Guerrero, a senior practice specialist at APTA, and Dr. Drew Contreras, APTAs Vice President of Clinical Integration and Innovation, to discuss the #ChoosePT campaign. Dr. Green Guerrero and Dr. Contreras also share some of the reasons they became physical therapists, and explore the many benefits of PT, including its potential for addressing chronic conditions and health disparities. Dr. Contreras also shares the advice that he gave to help President Barack Obama move more, something which everyone can follow.

“From the health community, we recognize that climate change is a public health issue, and we stand ready to address that. I’m so proud that this administration has named the first office in HHS that is going to address Climate Change and Health Equity.” ~ Dr. Doris Browne. Sequel to Episode 101.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), originally called Workplace Affinity Groups, began in the 1960s in response to racial tensions in the United States. These groups have roots in the desire to advocate for employees and give them a space at work to be their best authentic selves. To what extent are ERGs making a difference in benefiting employees, their employers, and the many stakeholders engaged with organizations, including patients?

In her book Flatling, released in 2019, Dr. Adia Wingfield articulated how the burden of equity initiatives furthering diversity and inclusion in healthcare is being disproportionately shouldered by the very populations these initiatives intend to support. Today our panel revisits Flatlining and explores the additional implications of the pandemic for equity work during this “new-new economy,” and discuss some of the challenges and solutions in leading organizational change towards culturally sensitive care and minority representation.

After experiencing care that did not align with her expectations, Sheena Franklin has embarked on a mission to make dermatology more accessible and equitable. In today’s episode K’ept Health CEO Sheena Franklin discusses how innovation can take us closer to personalized and equitable healthcare.

Our diverse panel of professionals share many experiences that shaped their development, and insights they gleaned along the way, as they overcame barriers such as bias and microaggressions to achieve their career and life goals.

Part 2: COVID-19 context. A group of independent and competing organizations decided to work together collaboratively so that their community health needs assessment (CHNA) covers more people and a larger area. Our panel continues their discussion about this novel, collaborative, community-wide model for completing a CHNA, and explores how it enabled them to build a more coordinated response to the pandemic.

Part 1. Community health needs assessments and implementation strategies are required for tax-exempt hospitals as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They provide a framework to improve coordination of hospital community benefits with other efforts to improve community health.

After building a career in hospital management and healthcare consulting, Duane Reynolds gravitated towards the health equity space after leading several inclusion-focused initiatives.

June 5th is World Environment Day, an initiative of the United Nations, and part of the framework that ended the ozone layer crisis. But now there are new environmental crises looming large and threatening our most vulnerable populations.

Podcast host Sharon LaSure-Roy and series producer Rolf Taylor discuss the overall mission of The Health Disparities Podcast, a program of the Movement is Life Caucus.

Professor Augustus “Gus” White III didn’t just pioneer the understanding of unconscious bias through research methodology during his illustrious career as an orthopedic surgeon. The author of “Overcoming” & “Seeing Patients” has also spent a lifetime fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion wherever he has worked, often by emphasizing our common humanity – his use of the term “fellow humans” to start speeches has become legendary.

At the height of the pandemic, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Nur Nurbhai found himself helping out his colleague Dr. Eddie Black in the emergency room. All elective surgeries were cancelled, cutting off a vital revenue stream for the hospital.

This week our panel discusses the approaches that their organizations, community leaders and faith leaders have taken with bringing pandemic vaccine clinics to underserved populations, and their commitment to equitable vaccine distribution.

The community health design and innovation team at Sibley Memorial Hospital, a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine, invited communities in DC’s Wards 7 & 8 to help define their own solutions to health disparities and inequities. The resulting Ward Infinity social innovation program is now a model for community intervention.

For many years a familiar face on CBS in Washington DC, and winner of 22 Emmys, Bruce Johnson has made health awareness and equity part of his life’s mission. In this episode Bruce joins podcast host Dr. Mary O’Connor to explore the power of the media to solve our health disparities crisis.

More than 181 million Americans receive health coverage through employers, the largest source of health coverage for the nonelderly, covering 58% of the U.S. population.

Dr. Omolola (Lola) Eniola-Adefeso and Dr. Kelly Stevens are part of a nationwide network of BME women faculty who are collectively arguing that the racial funding disparity by NIH is the most "insidious barrier to success of Black faculty in our profession".

Recently featured in the Forbes 30 under 30 list, M.D. candidate Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako, M.S. channels a passion for health equity and racial equity to produce and host “Flip the Script”, a highly rated podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes and Spotify.

Dr. Nereida Correa, who began her career as a registered nurse, became the first Hispanic woman to be named chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, a large, hospital-based group practice in the Bronx.

With new payment models further complicating a difficult situation, are some Kentucky residents struggling to get the care they need and the respect they deserve from rural healthcare systems that are under increasing strain?

With more and more physicians choosing specialty care over primary care, Nurse Practitioners have an increasingly important role as providers on the front line, serving more vulnerable populations who experience limitations in accessing healthcare, particularly in rural areas.

Rural communities experience significant health disparities along with the above-average prevalence of chronic conditions, and a lower-than-average ratio of providers to patients.

Podcast host and NYC Physician Assistant Klarisse Mathis welcomes two colleagues and mentors. Infectious disease specialist Sondra Middleton, MHS, PA-C, is Assistant Professor at the Touro School of Health Sciences, and Associate Director of Physician Assistant Manhattan.

Dr. Dwight Burney welcomes back orthopedic surgeon and outcomes expert Dr. MaCalus Hogan, M.D., M.B.A. to the podcast. Dr. Hogan is the Vice Chair of Education, and Residency Program Director, in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a health system serving 3 million patients.

Dr. Jannifer Harper welcomes rural health and legislative affairs expert Bill Finerfrock, and Root Cause Coalition Director Tom Dorney, who previously served as Senior Policy Advisor to Congressman John Lewis.

Dr. Mary O’Connor hosts a discussion about the potentially detrimental impact of value-based care models on vulnerable populations, and how the safety-net hospitals that serve these patients are further strained, particularly in rural and inner-city areas.

Risk is an intrinsic part of medical decision making. Every drug and every procedure must justify their benefit relative to any risks involved, so healthcare providers are very conscious of these risks and outcomes.

Dr. Sherry Segura continues our exploration of Hispanic education and workforce diversity. Dr. Segura is CEO of the Foundation for Hispanic Education in San Jose, California, where she is deeply involved in community efforts to ensure high quality and innovative educational services are available to all students.

Ed Alvarez is President at the Latino Education Advancement Foundation in the San Francisco bay area, collaborating with other experienced nonprofits in developing initiatives focusing on college and career pathways, college persistence and completion.

Dr. Leigh Callahan is Professor of Medicine & OAAA. As an epidemiologist, Dr. Callahan seeks to understand how outcomes of osteoarthritis are influenced by factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, location, and social determinants of health (such as socioeconomic status).

When healthcare quality management expert Donna Kurek made the switch to a more rural hospital system, she realized that there exists a whole different set of social determinants to consider in Appalachia, especially in the context of bundled payments.

Physician Assistants are a relatively new specialty created in response to the shortage of primary care physicians in rural areas, and the PA profession is now well established with over 100,000 graduates of accredited PA programs.

Orthopedist Dr. Eric Santos sees a diverse range of patients in his two Texas practices in Corpus Christi and McAllen, which have very different patient populations. He works hard to provide culturally competent healthcare services to his Hispanic patients, which includes providing consultations in both Spanish and English.

Rural Wyoming is a beautiful place to live, but those wide-open spaces on the frontier create a number of health disparities, with the presence of Native American reservations, COVID-19, and hospital closures adding more complexity.

Operation Change is a community intervention designed to address chronic health conditions and to mitigate some of the related social determinants of health, for women in mid-life and later-life. A fundamental part of the program is to help participants find their own sources of motivation for creating a healthier lifestyle.

Operation Change provided Lynn with invaluable knowledge and a new support network. In her 70s and busy in retirement with volunteer work, Lynn became more conscious of her diet, her physical activity levels, and she became a FitBit enthusiast.

Mt. Vernon, N.Y. resident Olivia found new motivation to take care of her own health by learning about health disparities in her community.

Bringing clinical research to Latinx communities has become a joint mission for today’s podcast guests, Dr Fabian Sandoval and Dr Gustavo Corrales.

The relatively low uptake of flu vaccinations in Black and Hispanic communities is a longstanding health disparity and a public health concern. What if this pattern is repeated for the coronavirus, which is already having a disparate impact?

Meet Freda from St. Louis. Over many sedentary years Freda experienced chronic conditions such as back pain, diabetes and high blood pressure and she found it difficult to follow her doctor’s directions to exercise and lose weight. “I desperately needed to garner better health habits, or I would have deterioration in my conditions and need […]

Meet Sonja from St. Louis. Sonja was intrigued when her husband brought home a flyer describing a health education program soon to start nearby.

Meet Laura from San Diego. Like many women of retirement age, she has experienced the joys of building a family and the challenges of staying healthy.