Health equity is becoming increasingly important in communities and an area of interest for many researchers, health care providers, and public health practitioners. This week’s episode is a conversation about the Equity in Health Science and Practice group at the University of Iowa and their work in a variety of areas, including COVID-19 and diabetes care. 

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Anya Morozov:

Hello everyone and welcome back to From the Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa, College of Public Health. My name is Anya Morozov, and if this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and outside the field of public health. Today I’m speaking with four members of the Equity in Health Science and Practice Group, or EHSP for short.

Anya Morozov:

Dr. Martha Carvour is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine- Infectious Diseases. Aloha Wilks is the project’s Program Coordinator. Precious de-Winton Cummings is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology, and Alaina Elliot-Wherry is an MPH student in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Together this team is doing important community-centered work to address health disparities in COVID-19 vaccinations and care for diabetes, and I’m excited to discuss more about it with all of them today.

Anya Morozov:

Welcome to the show everyone. Since there are four of you, my introductions definitely didn’t do all of you justice. So can you each share a little bit more about yourselves?

Aloha Wilks:

I’ll go first. My name’s Aloha and I am a certified professional coder. I’m also a staff member that works with hospital executive leadership on diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives and strategic plans. I also coordinate with EHSP, I coordinate all aspects of the research project and I am the key contact person for community engagement.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

I’ll go next. Hi everyone. My name is Precious de-Winton Cummings, I am a PhD candidate in epidemiology. My research interests are health equity and infectious disease surveillance and control and global health. Myself and some other members of our team are leading the COVID survey for the EHSP.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

My name’s Alaina Eliott-Wherry and I’m a second year MPH student and student member of EHSP. I joined the group because of the focus on equity and the plan to use qualitative methods to collect data with non-healthcare frontline workers. I was also drawn to this group due to its interdisciplinary nature of the team.

Martha Carvour:

Thank you. My name is Martha Carvour, I have a couple different roles at the University of Iowa. One of these, which you mentioned, is in the College of Medicine. I see patients with severe infections. A lot of my time is spent on research. I’m actually an alumnus of the College of Public Health, the PhD program in epidemiology, so my scientific background is very much focused in population health science and some public health. And really focused on how the architecture of healthcare systems and public health systems can be more fair, more equitable. And so that’s sort of the approach to this project.

Martha Carvour:

As Alaina said, really focusing on how we work together in healthcare and public health to make the systems more equitable and how we improve communication across different types of disciplines. And really importantly, how community members and community partners are a part of that discussion. In part, thinking about getting resources and potentially opportunities or information that we have in the university into communities in a way that communities actually can use the information or want that resource. But really importantly, the community members and community partners get to tell us how we can improve the university structure to make it more fair and more equitable and more just.

Martha Carvour:

I think that’s a key approach. I grew up in Iowa and think of myself as a patient and community member and then as someone who became a part of the university. So it’s important to see all of those voices represented.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah, I like a lot of things that were said. It does seem like a very interdisciplinary team, which is exciting. I love the focus on equity and working with communities and I’m excited to hear more about things like the COVID survey that Precious mentioned. Before we go too far though, I also don’t think my introduction to what the EHSP group is probably did it justice, so can someone please give a quick description on the Equity in Health Science and Practice Group, or EHSP, for our listeners?

Aloha Wilks:

Our plan is to adopt rigorous research that focuses on identifying health disparities and creating community level interventions to address those. That’s a two-part approach, and so the first we’re looking at COVID prevention among frontline non-healthcare workers, so frontline workers. Looking at where we could have done better and acknowledging gaps and looking where we can create some interventions. The second part is diabetic care, the care that was neglected because of COVID. And so, just looking at those two. Working towards building infrastructure for health disparities throughout the State of Iowa.

Anya Morozov:

Two really important areas of focus, I think. It might just be the circle that I’m in, but I hear a lot about frontline healthcare workers and COVID-19. So, focusing outward more on non-health care frontline workers who are also definitely seeing the effects of COVID and also focusing on the things that maybe got put on the back burner a little bit because of the huge focus on COVID is really important. Moving on, this project has been going on for about a year now. I’d be curious to hear how you chose to focus on COVID-19 vaccinations and diabetic care and the other focus areas you mentioned.

Martha Carvour:

That’s a great question and I think our approach to the relationships between COVID and diabetes has continued to change in important ways over that year too, because the evidence, the public health evidence that ties together those two things has also changed a lot over that period of time. Really just echoing everything that Aloha said about the importance of thinking about COVID prevention, including vaccinations among frontline non-health care workers in particular. But then thinking about what are the other areas of healthcare and public health that we can’t overlook or where we can’t delay really important care, both for the types of things that can happen when someone does experience COVID.

Martha Carvour:

We know that COVID is much more severe and complicated on average in patients who have diabetes, but the many other types of complications, of diabetes or other chronic medical conditions. We have to have a huge focus on COVID, but we can’t miss the important opportunities for preventing complications of chronic conditions or preventing chronic conditions in general that are new. That’s where these two have really come together. We don’t know exactly what the mechanisms are that explain this, but it does look like there have been significant increases in diabetes during the pandemic.

Martha Carvour:

Some of that is probably related to social determinants of health that have been badly affected or deeply disrupted during the pandemic leading to a number of chronic medical conditions. Some of that also appears to be a result … again, the data are early at this stage, but a result of COVID. That patients with COVID, both adults and children, have a much higher risk of developing diabetes in that post COVID or long COVID period. We have really started to think about those as closely related. We hear that from our community partners in terms of the experiences that they’re having with public health and healthcare systems and symptoms.

Martha Carvour:

That’s also something that Precious can talk a little bit more about in terms of the survey and the way that we’ve tried to include thinking about those longer term complications as a part of the COVID work as well.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah, that is really interesting. The fact that you say the work is still so new, we’re still learning so much about COVID and how diabetes relates to COVID. You already asked some really important research questions, just is it due to changes in the social determinants of health as a result of COVID, is it a result of COVID itself? It sounds like we don’t know yet, so it’s great that you’re doing the work that you do. Precious, I don’t want to put you on this spot too much, but would you like to talk a little bit about the survey?

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

Of course, I can even go a little bit more in-depth on the vaccination aspect of the survey as well. Vaccination in general has been something that we’ve been talking a lot about in public health. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve seen that vaccine uptake has been declining, and we’ve heard a lot about the term vaccine hesitancy. Even in 2019, the WHO considered vaccine hesitancy as a global health fact. We know that vaccines are effective in infectious disease prevention and control. With the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination has been one of the strategies that we’ve used to combat the pandemic. When we’re faced with these large disease events, we want to respond effectively but also ensure that the strategies that we’re using to respond are accessible and equitable.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

What we saw, we are currently seeing in the pandemic is that there are so many disparities in vaccination, especially among high-risk disadvantaged populations. But oftentimes when we tend to focus more on vaccine hesitancy that is related to individual perceptions and beliefs and their attitudes, all which are very critical in understanding vaccine uptake. But then when we focus on those issues alone, we tend to overlook the structural factors that influence vaccination. So things like transportation barriers, or the language barriers, or people not having time to get off work to get a vaccine and things like that.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

With our survey, we’re using a community-engaged approach. We have three community partners and we’re looking at vaccination as one of the prevention and control measures for the pandemic. But we’re also looking at PPE use masks and gloves, we’re looking at long COVID as well which is also a public health emergency. As Aloha mentioned earlier, a study population is non-health care frontline workers. You’ve mentioned earlier too that oftentimes when we think about frontline workers, we tend to think of doctors and nurses. But with our survey, we’re also focused on people who work at grocery stores, and people who work at meat packing industries or daycare centers. It’s very important for us to understand these factors or these barriers of vaccination uptake so that we will be able to mitigate them.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

And of course the overall goal is for healthcare to be accessible to people especially during situations like the pandemic.

Anya Morozov:

I do think I’ve heard the term vaccine hesitancy a lot and sometimes that might overshadow the more structural things. It’s also great that you’re doing such community engaged work. It’s not top down where you’re reading a bunch of things and then saying this is going to be the best intervention for a community, you’re actually listening to the community to figure out what the best next steps are. Talking more about you working with your community, and let’s talk about your health fairs in Storm Lake. For listeners who don’t know, Storm Lake is a town in Western Iowa, a few hours’ drive from Iowa City. It’s got about 12,000 people and you all recently hosted some health fairs there.

Anya Morozov:

This was an event that had activities and health screenings for a variety of things. It included blood pressure measures, screening people’s tooth health, their eye health, their mental health, providing immunizations, diabetes screen, and even more. What was the process like to get these health fairs off the ground, and then what are your main takeaways from the event?

Aloha Wilks:

The process, it was actually a nice process. We had to go into the community and develop relationships that start building trust immediately, that’s the first step. Dr. Carvour did that for a couple of years leading into this project, so it was a very welcoming space as a coordinator for me to come into that space. They enjoyed working with Dr. Carvour in the past. They knew her goals, and her desires, and her commitment, and they were willing to meet those same commitments. Just entering the Storm Lake community and starting to build that trust was actually very, not easy, but less difficult because of the work that was done by Dr. Carvour prior to this project.

Aloha Wilks:

It’s a exceptional place. It’s a very tight knit community so that was something else that made it less difficult going in, going door-to-door, old school. Knocking on doors, face-to-face, how you doing? This is my dream job, I love doing it. It’s a small town so I didn’t have a lot of ground to cover, it was the perfect place to really start these type of initiatives. That was the first part. Then once I met all the different community partners, just organizing them all together in one space so we can see what are the … assess the needs. That’s from hospital administrators, community administrators, we had judges, I participated in food distributions. Just different activities that put me right into the N of the community.

Aloha Wilks:

They were very welcoming and I really enjoyed it. I did several trips out there before the actual health fair to obtain logistics and make sure what the needs were, that we were accessing them appropriately. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done and that has been done, and some of that, they just needed resources. We just had to get into the same space to realize, as a community, what do we need? Hey, we have that over here or maybe the university can help in that way to either give them access to the resource or us helping with that resource. That’s how it all started but it really came together in a very pleasant community with a lot of committed community members and partners.

Aloha Wilks:

Alaina and Precious, you jump in because the student leaders, they were above and beyond Dr. Carvour and I. I’m going to speak for her too because we said this to each other, they went above and beyond our expectations. They were phenomenal, they jumped right in. They met on their own. We did a lot of planning together but they met as a team and did most of the planning without me and Dr. Carvour, us just supporting them. They were able to do things on the fly and with the different disciplinaries, we had College of Public Health students, we had College of Medicine students, we had ophthalmology students. We just had just such good people ready and committed, and great personalities and just really eager and open-minded.

Aloha Wilks:

We probably was spoiled in getting this group. I’m not going to set these expectations on another group, but they were great, the student leaders. And so, that allowed me to actually go in the field in Storm Lake and meet people because they were doing all the logistics, all the planning down to supplies, equipment. People needed handouts, even giveaways. We went shopping for school supplies that we supplied for over 100 kids. We did a lot, it was a lot of planning and there was never … We had very little hiccups and they were just a phenomenal bunch of professionals. It was a pleasure to work with them and I’m very excited to do other stuff with them. We had some great talks, great jokes, great food, really good group of people.

Anya Morozov:

Alaina or Precious, do you want to talk a little more about what it was getting all of the logistics together?

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

Sure. Alaina, of course, please join and add anything. Like Aloha mentioned, we were a team of medical and public health students both grad and undergrad. It was just incredible how we all came together, I think. Even from such different disciplines, our goal is to help people, and that is exactly what I think we were all working towards in terms of the health fairs. Like Aloha mentioned as well, we would need regularly to decide how or what direction we want the health fair to go. I think the primary thing really was in terms of using community engagement and figuring out what the needs of the community are and coming together as a group and deciding the stations that we needed and prioritizing resources that we need and just preparing for the health fair as well.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

It was very informed by what Dr. Carvour and Aloha were finding out from the community about what the needs were. And so when we’d meet, we’d think about those things, talk about what supplies we needed, what the workflow was going to look like. What was everyone’s role going to be at the actual event, like students, faculty, partners, all of it. Once we knew the health priorities from the community partners, we designated a station to each health priority. For example, there was a vital station, a diabetes station, immunizations, vision screening, Covid, a resources station. Each student took on a different station in terms of planning and then helping run that at the fair.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

From a different standpoint, we made it so that no one had to go to all the stations or something. We made sure that it was very much whatever someone’s comfort level was, that they were able to access that. But it wasn’t required, which I thought was really great because it can be intimidating going into a space having health-related information coming about. So, I thought that was a really great way to do that. It was just a really great collaboration. Having medical students was great, as a public health student, collaborating with them since their approaches maybe a little different looking at the health issue as the health issue. Then the public health perspective is like, okay, what systems are playing into this to result in this health disparity, or something like that. We complimented each other in that way.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

I really appreciated the mentorship that Dr. Carvour and Aloha value. Having student ideas be heard and that kind of thing, that was really awesome too.

Aloha Wilks:

I could just add really quickly, we also created a community advisory board for our EHSP project. That community advisory board meets quarterly and it’s members of the community in various sectors throughout Iowa, the State of Iowa. We have from school, and health, and meat packing, and travel, just retail, just different community advisory members that actually give us direct feedback what’s going on in their neighborhood as well as their professional space and their personal space. Some of those same community members were actually community partners in Storm Lake, so it’s really just creating a space and maintaining those relationships so that space just widens and widens. You’re looking across, you see all the same people just working together in just varying spaces. It’s been a good process to get direct feedback in that way and to be able to respond in real time with interventions.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah, I think a lot of times you do have to think about who’s at the table in these discussions. And so, a community advisory board, what a great way to make sure you have everybody at the table. Martha, if you want to say something. Sorry.

Martha Carvour:

Sure. Yeah, no, I really wanted to reinforce, it was and still is, because our team is still working on this and still engaged with Storm Lake in an ongoing relationship with our partners there. What a pleasure it has been to work with this team. It really is a team of leaders and I think it’s taken so much time, and energy, and creativity from so many people. We’ve highlighted some of those certainly in terms of community partners who brought tremendous amounts of work and time and energy to this student leadership team. Each individual brought incredible creativity, brought ideas, and led specific sections of this initiative.

Martha Carvour:

I definitely don’t want to overlook, just acknowledging the time and energy and relationship building and trust building that Aloha has put into this, and the work for two trips before this trip to make that happen in Storm Lake. It’s wonderful to see teams working together. I think it’s one of the things that we have hoped for and continue to hope for with the project. Certainly, in the pandemic, there have been a lot of disruptions and a lot of systems have been disrupted. That’s hard, it’s been hard for everyone, and it’s harder for some than others to be sure. I think the truth is I recognize how difficult that’s been and how disruptive it’s been and it’s important to do something about that.

Martha Carvour:

I also from an optimistic perspective think that when systems are that disrupted, it’s a great time to change the system. It’s a great time to think about the way it’s organized. Who leads, who is at the table, who needs to be at the table, how do we think about that? There’s no doubt that community partners, that students in different disciplines, that people across different types of research disciplines and roles have crucial perspectives and expertise and skills to bring to the system. It’s really important that’s considered to build a system that works, that’s fair, that’s equitable.

Martha Carvour:

I think that the alternative is to separate out into our individual systems and get exhausted and burn out doing things in a system that doesn’t work. I think seeing something like this work was really inspiring to me and really gave me an additional boost to keep thinking about ways that something like this can continue to happen in the next steps. But I think this is something that applies more broadly, it’s not something that any one team, even a large team can do. So it was just an absolute pleasure to work with the team.

Anya Morozov:

I like how you talk about dismantling and changing the system in a way that doesn’t burn people out. It sounds like your team is doing something that requires a lot of time and energy but you all seem very enthusiastic about the project as well. It’s almost like the energy you’re putting in, it’s going to help make equitable systems. I don’t know where I’m going with this exactly, but that’s just a really great thing to hear that it’s an energized, hardworking team possibly because of the energy behind what you do and why you’re doing it. I’d love to also hear from the student perspective, the experience of actually being at the fair. What was that like?

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

It was really great to be in the community and connecting with members of the community. On the first day that we were doing a fair, we were at the Tyson Plant. We were on the morning shift at the shift change of two different shifts, so we got there around 3:45 and were there until about 8:30 or something. Seeing the energy of people coming in as they were getting off their shift or going into the next one, there’s a lot of support from management to have something like that. That was a really amazing experience. Also just connecting people with the resources that they needed and stuff. It was like seeing the things that we talk about in class happen in action, and that was a really great experience, honestly.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

Then the next day we went to a church, St. Mark’s church and had a community-wide event there. That was really amazing too because we got to have kids at that one and they were just so amazing. We had such a welcoming environment from the community and then it was a big community celebration essentially too. I can let somebody else talk a little bit too, but honestly would love to go back.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

Definitely, I agree with Alaina about going back. I think it was just a great opportunity for me, honestly, to be away from Iowa City, and Storm Lake is definitely not what I was expecting Iowa to be. It was very much diverse and it was just a beautiful thing to be a part of. Like Elena mentioned, we were at Tyson the Monday super early, and then Tuesday we were at St. Marks. In terms of takeaways for me from the health fair, I was at the COVID station, we had different stations. I was at the COVID station and it was just incredible to have been able to talk to people coming in, just stopping by the table. Some of what we talked about was Long COVID that I mentioned earlier, our team is also really interested in investigating long COVID which is in itself another public health emergency.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

But it was just really incredible talking to people and hearing that a lot of people are actually having Long COVID symptoms and them being able to share that they haven’t been able to see their healthcare providers. Again, thinking about these barriers that people have in terms of accessing healthcare and how important it is for us to prioritize vulnerable populations when thinking about Long COVID and all the conditions as well.

Anya Morozov:

I feel like we’re going to say community a lot in this episode, but that’s a really awesome word to be saying a lot. You learned from the community and then it sounds like you use that information to meet them where they are and not expect them to come to some institution like a hospital or a health department. You met them at a Tyson plant, which is a meat processing plant and a church, so you were able to meet them where they are. Then also Long Covid, that was unexpected but that is something, again, that we’re still learning a lot about. It’s great that you were able to learn about people who are experiencing Long COVID in vulnerable populations and not just the populations that are most convenient and are able to get easy access to a hospital.

Anya Morozov:

Now we’ll talk a little bit more broadly. Improving health is a monumental task and I think this theme has come up a lot in our discussion already, especially improving health equitably. Can’t just be done by one group alone so what are your broader thoughts on working with community partners and larger organizations like the university to make change?

Martha Carvour:

I think working with community partners is the way to do this work, it’s a must if we’re doing work with the community that it’s with them. I think it was honestly such a great experience to connect with them and then connect people together, like I said, to various resources. It becomes authentically about them and for them. I think having partners, like Aloha mentioned too, it takes time to get to know one another and build trust and that is an ongoing thing that you work to sustain relationships with your community partners. We had a lot of great partners in Storm Lake, we had ones here in Iowa City as well that helped us prep. I think it’s just such a special and important way to do this work.

Anya Morozov:

I would also be curious to hear the health fairs, they went on in late July. What are your next steps after the fairs now that they’re complete?

Aloha Wilks:

We plan to maintain our relationship with Storm Lake, and so we will circle back and do a debriefing to see what worked, what didn’t work, what we could do better? Actually assess what community needs might be at this point and just keep digging into that community. Right now, it’s a lot to us to maintain that relationship with them. It’s not about the first initial help or whatever, it’s about making sure you circle back and actually assess what was done and did it work? Did it produce the positive outcomes that we said it was specific to this community? You have to be really engaged in order to get that type of feedback, and to maintain that type of trust in order to get that type of feedback. You have to stay close, stay committed, and stay engaged. That’s what we plan to do.

Anya Morozov:

That’s great, I like that it’s not just a one and done. We did these fairs in Storm Lake, we got some vaccinations, did some health screenings, and see you in the next grant cycle maybe. It’s actually you’re trying to keep these relationships and build on what you’ve done.

Aloha Wilks:

Absolutely.

Anya Morozov:

More broadly, are there any lessons from your work over the past year with EHSP that you hope to apply to your work, either with the group or if you’re a student going off into some other place in the future and how you hope to apply your work with EHSP?

Aloha Wilks:

Doing health equity work gives you a lens that’s filtered with equity and accessibility and inclusiveness regardless of what space you’re in. That’s what I plan to take my show on the road with, that I continue to see those spaces where undeserved communities are needed. And they need support when it comes to equity, accessibility, and inclusiveness. I think we can take that in a lot of different spaces.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

For me, I think it’s moreso looking or having a more holistic approach of public health that involves community engagement. I think looking at public health, I think public health should be viewed through the lens of community engagement, centered around partnerships and collaborations with people who share similar interests. Also with my epidemiology background, I think it is also important to look beyond the data that we collect and focus a lot more on addressing the social and structural determinants of health. Because when we think about public health, again, we should be focused on a more consequential public health, what matters most. And so, thinking about the needs of communities and prioritizing what they need I think is very important for us, and for me in particular as I move onto whatever else is next.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

I think really echoing what Precious said, this has been such a pleasure working with so many different team members and the community. If I could replicate this same kind of thing and do it again and again, that would be absolutely wonderful because it’s just really shown me the work and the commitment to the work that are necessary to make more of that transformational change as opposed to just the transactional. Just working to build the community partnerships, I think that was something that I’ll take with me. We literally had a meal with community members on Monday night, that we we’re invited into someone’s home and shared a meal together. That’s the kind of thing I want to take with me, that’s a really meaningful time in my life.

Martha Carvour:

I think this really pulls from what Precious and Alaina have just said, but I think really thinking about the stories and the context and what community members and community partners express about what works, what doesn’t, that’s helpful. Thinking about that as a context for data or for quantitative measures that we come up with I think has really highlighted that approach, thinking about quantitative and qualitative methods. And thinking about getting input from lots of stakeholders, the way that you look at your own data or the way that you even frame a question. I think really thinking about that and continuing to process that and see how continuing to work with partners, with the team here.

Martha Carvour:

Continuing, I think, to work with, as Aloha described, the community advisory board for the project to see what those next opportunities to collaborate look like. I think this is something that … I know Precious said this earlier but I think it’s really important. The Long COVID epidemic, Long COVID pandemic really is where we’re headed is an active public health emergency, and it’s one in which we can intervene. We can’t stop a lot of COVID infections that have already happened, but we definitely have an opportunity to think about intervening here. And so, what can we learn and apply from what we’ve done to intervening in those things that are actively happening in communities? That’s an example, of which there are many others, but one that I think is particularly important in what we heard about while we were engaging with communities. We hear that not just in Storm Lake, but from other communities and nations as well. It’s a pretty widespread concern.

Anya Morozov:

I do hope that as a student myself, as we enter the public health field, it does become more about learning from communities, more about transformational change, more about creating those systems where we can handle an epidemic of Long COVID more effectively than we frankly are right now. Thank you all for sharing that. Then lastly, we do have one more question that we asked to all of our guests on the show. What is one thing you thought you knew but were later wrong about? This can be in any context, it could be about your work with EHSP or just as a person living in the modern world.

Aloha Wilks:

I’ll take a stab at this. As a New Yorker moving to the Midwest, I was prepared, at least I thought I was, diverse enough to handle any space. But I have to say that I’ve struggled in the Midwest personally and professionally, but through colleagues and community partners and different people, I’ve been able to go from surviving to thriving. I did not think it would be a struggle, but I was wrong. I’m happy to say that I’m thriving.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

I used to think that everyone had it together all the time, and then a friend pointed out to me the importance of sharing the human experience. Things that we don’t typically talk about like mental health, or financial struggles, or feeling lost in life. Those things that we can talk about can really help relate us to one another and know that others may have a similar experience. It was really a reminder to have empathy for myself and for others, and I liked that life lesson and strive to share that with other people.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

I think mine might be similar to Alaina’s. I think starting a PhD program and in a different state, I moved here from Florida to Iowa, very, very, different. I’m also someone who’s a little bit shy and so it took me a while to adjust. But also learning how to rely on other people in my cohort and helping, or them helping me and me helping them through whether it’s mental health issues or just going through the rigorous life of being a PhD student. I think with the pandemic as well what really helped was we had regular coffee time or Zoom calls, and so that was very helpful. Staying home and not seeing all the people around.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

Sometimes I do think I forget about just the joys of just having a coffee with someone.

Martha Carvour:

Those are really great examples. I think mine’s going to sound similar to Alaina’s too, but I think it’s this idea of it’s okay to be wrong. When I first heard that question, Anya, I was like, “Man, I don’t even know where to begin because I’m wrong so frequently about things.” But being able to embrace being wrong in a way that allows you to learn I think is the key to so many things in life. I think, unfortunately, sometimes in different layers of educational processes and training process and types of work that we do, it gets really focused on there’s a right or wrong answer and that is the evaluation of who you are. It’s a multiple choice, it’s one of these four.

Martha Carvour:

That’s not how change happens, that’s not how you learn, that’s not how you grow, that’s not how you become the person or the professional that you want to be. I think being able to ask those questions, being able to be okay being wrong and learning from those things is important. It’s also really important because it allows me to ask similar questions about the methods that I learned and whether they might be not as helpful either. I learned it this way, this is the way it’s done.

Martha Carvour:

Could that method that I know, that analysis that I know, that study design that I know, is there a way to think about that differently? Is there a way that can be a more equitable design or is there something structured into it that’s not fair? The healthcare, of course, is the same thing. I learned it a certain way, does that mean it’s fair? No, it certainly doesn’t mean that. So being able to understand that there are things that are not the best or that are wrong, and how to think about improving that or changing that and what that process looks like, I think has been really, really, helpful and something that I still think about every day reevaluating those things.

Anya Morozov:

It really sounds like working towards health equity really does require continuous learning from different stakeholders, from the community. And really self-reflection into is the way that we do things currently the best way to be doing things? Thank you for that, thank you all for sharing that wisdom. I think there was wisdom in all of your responses there. Thank you for sharing about the work that you’re doing with EHSP, and thank you for doing the work that you’re doing. Most importantly, like you’ve all mentioned, it is hard work but it is very important and hopefully very rewarding work. Thank you all. It’s been great having you on the show.

Martha Carvour:

Thanks Anya.

Precious-Junia de-Winton Cummings:

Thank you.

Alaina Eliott-Wherry:

Thank you.

Aloha Wilks:

Thanks Anya.

Anya Morozov:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Alaina Eliott-Wherry, Precious-de-Winton Cummings, Aloha Wilks and Martha Carvour for joining us today. This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by Anya Morozov and written by Rota Murray and Anya Morozov. You can learn more about the University of Iowa, College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by the University of Iowa, College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.