Whoa, welcome everybody. My name is Alley Masocco and welcome to How the Health Did We Get Here?

I'm Alley. And I am Dr. Dotson. Oh, this is so exciting. So, you know, Dr. Dotson and I came

together about a year ago and we were like, you know what we need to do? We need to start talking

about health equity. We need to start talking about it as a lifestyle choice. We need to start

talking about health equity as an everyday thing that you can bring into your everyday life from

washing the dishes to taking your child to soccer practice to studying from SAT score.

So, this episode is just to talk a little bit about who we are, what we aim to do with our

how the health did we get here podcast and talk about how the health did we get here.

So, how did you get here? I don't know how the health did I get here. I think we should start

with you. Dr. Dotson, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that, you know, as we go through

this like episode zero, just kind of setting the groundwork, getting our basis down, telling people

like what makes our podcast special. So, how did you get here? How the health did you get here?

What's your role in public health? What do you know about health equity? All the questions.

I'm representing the best generation here. I'm in that space between Gen X and that other one

that we don't talk about. So, now they need some of those, some symbols, whoever they are.

And I've been an academic for our 15 plus years and a number of institutions, a number of places,

schools of public health, and in my work life, right, as an academic as a professor,

I love talking about this topic. In my home life, I'm the one that everyone asked the question,

how the health did we get here for this and how the health did we get here for that. So,

Alley, I figured this would be the best place to help everyone, all the generations. And so,

I want to speak and represent the academics. I want to represent the old folks. I want to represent

the families and the professionals and kind of our conversations and what we do here.

Yeah, I think that that's a great way. So, I'm sure we'll hear like throughout the podcast,

you know, those stories of your family interactions asking how the health did we get here? I know,

especially with some of our, the point of our podcast is to cross these generational lines.

So, I'm sure like when we're talking about certain podcasts, you'll bring in those family

stories about them just asking probably some of the most outlandish questions, but also make the

most sense. This is so, they're so insightful, right? They're just the greatest. So, yes,

absolutely want to add that perspective. And so, let's turn the tide and switch it on you.

how the health did you get here? Who is Alley? Who is Alley? Well, that I don't know if we have all

that much time for that today, Dr. Dotson, to figure out who is Alley. But I am a current student,

grad student about to graduate in May. I am counting the days as we speak. And I am

doing my masters in theological studies and my masters in public health. And I know that that

sounds like what a combination. But basically, I've been focusing on how people's morals or

theological perspectives or their ethics shape the way they see the world and then how that then

changes their experience as in the healthcare system, whether it be as a patient or a parent

or a provider. So, that's kind of been my focal point. And I'm sure like throughout this podcast,

like you'll see that insight. And the cool thing about this podcast and really what I wanted to do

when we were brainstorming with Dr. Dotson is that I really wanted to have this cross-generational

conversation. I think that there's a really cool thing that we're doing here because Dr. Dotson,

the way that we view him and his work and research, you know, he's just a couple generations above me.

So, and we're at this, this, this change of public health, especially with the COVID-19

pandemic and kind of the stressors that came on our healthcare system. And I'm currently in grad

school reading Dr. Dotson and his generations of work. So, I really wanted to have this podcast to

like cross the generation and see where we're going. So, that was it. And then how the health

that I get here, I'm super passionate about health equity. I'm super passionate about

positionality and the way that you see the world and your placement in the world. And I'm very

passionate about healthcare access for people. I'm passionate about advocacy and making sure that

everybody can get health for the way that they want to get health and the way they want to experience

health. So, I think that a lot of my grad school work, a lot of my personal work, a lot of my

passion work has just kind of been focused and driven by that question of how do we make sure

people can access health. And then the second part of that, the way to achieve that is to understand

how the health do we get here. And this is everyone why we have Alley because as soon as she gets it,

she gets going. And the passion soapbox is huge. It's really large. And I think it's really nice.

And this version for us will jump on a topic. And I think some of the generational health

equity stuff that we talk about should be at least the teaser here in this way. And I think

healthcare means so many different things to us and all the generations, right? And between the two

of us, we bridge four different generations. You have Gen Y and Gen Z and I'm in

Gen W and X, how it works out, right? And I think between those things, we will get a chance to

talk about health equity and how to hope that we get here where we are today. And that should open

up our conversation for a lot of the other topics, the lifestyle topics that all of us deal with every

day. Yeah, I think going off of that point, and I love that you bring up that like, you know,

we both sit on kind of the cusp of two generations. And I think that as healthcare is moving so fast

and also the world is becoming so much more, you know, pluralistic and their technology is

getting better. We have health care is becoming more complicated. So we're at a really, really pivotal

and really almost, I use exciting time kind of, you know, spiraling because like,

we have an opportunity for a lot of change. And we also have an opportunity for so much technology

coming into the space that the way that we experience healthcare and the information that is at our

fingertips completely changes that experience within the next three to five years. So we're looking

to you. We're looking to you and your generation. We're looking at you. I'm giving you the fingers

going. We're looking at you to make some changes. We're setting this up, but we're looking at you

to bring it home. Yeah. So, so, you know, going off of that, you know, you said you're looking at us

and we had something happen three years ago. And I think that that's what, you know, brought my

generation really drove this big push into entering into the academic field of public health.

The COVID-19 pandemic sent most of us home. You know, homes became offices, classrooms, you know,

home ec classes and all those fun things that became with the pandemic and also all the, you know,

stressors that came with it. Like how, how have you seen that pandemic like shape this conversation

of health equity and like, and how does that lean into this new concept of health equity that I think

that we're trying to achieve? Yeah, it's really interesting, right? The definition that we think

about when we use terms health equity, of course, I'm just going to the doctor out in just for a second

to make sure, right? There's a general consensus of health equity. It's like the state in which everyone

has a, say, a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health.

At the broadest sense, not even any of the cool definitions that we use, but just so broad.

What was happening in 2019 is we were all trying to get our best health equity life that was possible.

We were looking and going to healthcare organizations and looking for access and talking about health

insurance and getting it for everyone and expanding it and doing all those things.

And then the pandemic hit. And we couldn't go anywhere and could necessarily access healthcare

services because so many people needed it, essential healthcare services for survival.

And then we saw what equity looked like in healthcare because people started dying.

And they started dying not just because of the illness or the virus COVID-19.

I started dying because you couldn't get to the places of care and those places of care

were in our neighborhoods, we couldn't access them. Those places weren't in our neighborhoods and we

couldn't go to them. And so many people started losing their lives and we were at home trying to

figure out how to do things better. And so many of us had to rethink all the things that we were

doing and the healthcare system had to seriously rethink what it was doing because the implications

and the outcomes said very clearly that when we think of healthcare and for the most critical

individuals, it had a racial component, had a socioeconomic component. And all those things,

including just where you live, what kind of education you had, what neighborhood,

what degrees you had, what your affiliations were, what your employer was, all those things started

to matter differently. And at the heart of that, there were some things that we noticed.

We noticed that those who were dying were older in places like nursing homes that didn't have

the same level of care as you would think that they would. We started to see that neighborhoods

and enclaves the clustering effect. Once one family got it, every family ended up getting it

because they were so closely connected because we're cut off from so many other things. So

all those things started to take place and we now had to think differently.

And so I just, I adore that this is a conversation and this is a brainchild of you because now we get

to talk about what happened during that time. To talk about it from a lens, different generations,

what were we experiencing? And now we can take that as a starting point to say, how the health did

we get here to where we are today. But some of those things were so critical and so important

to give us an impetus on what to do and how to do it and what we should do next. So I cannot

wait to have more of these conversations and I cannot wait for us to dive into some of the topics.

We want to give them some of our topics. Yeah, no, I think we have to save some of the topics

and you know until the end, you know, because we got a couple more things to talk about. But I like

that the point that you kind of, you know, not trying to discount the extreme stress and grief

that came with that time, but there there was a silver lining in the sense that that I think the

COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to call out structural issues. It allowed us to hold

institutional accountable. It allowed us to begin to be very truthful about the history of certain

people of all people in America. And then it also allowed us to call out and start to work

for a more efficient healthcare system. For me, that is, I really, I think, a driving force,

like I said earlier in this podcast of why I wanted to get involved in healthcare to make a

difference, to make sure that healthcare is accessible, to make sure that it's affordable,

and to make sure that like, you know, when I'm raising children, hopefully one day,

that there's infrastructure that my kids can access efficient and safe and affordable healthcare

as well. So I think that there there's a lot of conversation here to have. But I do want to talk

about why people should listen to our podcast, Dr. Dotson, what are we doing special besides

the cross-generational component of our conversation of like two kind of people who are in the field

of public health? Like, why would somebody want to listen to this outside of the field of public health?

I think this were awesome. That's the first thing. Listen, because they're awesome. The second thing

is our background is like, we know a lot of information, and I think that the way in which the two of us

in Iraq, we're talking about the basic things. We want to know about community health. We want

to know about access to healthcare, your brick and mortar, healthcare services. We even want to

talk about telemedicine and see what it does. We want you all, that everyone who's listening,

to sort of get this understanding that we're talking about topics we care about.

And when we examine the why or examine the we, we're trying to explore those factors that,

for us, contribute to what's happening in our communities, right? My family. I can tell you,

they, and in the time of COVID, I lost a lot of family members, right? It's a few years past,

and you kind of go, oh, yeah, that was a time. But I'm at the 567, and I know people who were at the

10, 11, 12 of their family members, passing because of either COVID directly or complications

or situations related to that. That's amazing and scary, amazing, not in a good way, right?

But those kinds of things, the why are we here and the why do you want to talk about this? That's

important to me. The access to healthcare is important. Social determinants of health,

they're important. Systemic inequalities and inequities are important. Like all these topics that

in my world, I talk about every day with students, I train them to become better so that they can

serve everyone, but guess what? They're impacting all of us every day. And so I don't think that we've

truly learned our lesson. I don't think that we've truly gotten to the point where we understand

the healthcare system from any angle for any person. It's so vast, but the pandemic forced us to think

about it differently and to think about preparing differently and preparing for a health emergency

that we know it's coming because everyone said last time, this is just one. It's going to be another

one. And it feels as if we need to prepare differently. And so if we can do anything for everyone and

everyone wanting to listen, part of what we talk about is these healthcare topics. The other part is

we want to give you and give us life kits. We want to make sure that this idea of who we are

and what we do by the end of our conversation, we want to make sure you have something to walk

away with. And so to walk away with, for our podcasters, just to say, what are those practical

tools and resources? Health equity is a lifestyle. That's what I'm hearing. I love that, right? We

need to have that and we need to have everyone advocate for themselves. And we are here. And I

think that's the other conversation, right? Again, in my soapbox. But the other conversation is we

are advocating for them. I'm advocating for my family and I'm advocating for families all the

time. And I want people to know that. But we have to earn people as well with some of these tools

and some of these resources as well. Yeah. And I think that this is a podcast. I know that when

we were in discussion of kind of aims, this is a podcast for everybody. This is a podcast for the

grad student. This is the podcast for the professor in academia. This is the podcast for the parent who's

just trying to protect their child in youth sports. This is the podcast for, you know, our older

generation of all walks of life. And we're just really trying, like you said, to provide those

practical tools so you can advocate for yourself and you know what is going on with your health.

And more importantly, how the health did we get here? So we're going to encourage you to subscribe.

I hope you've liked a little bit about what you've heard today. I hope you come and join us

and join the How the Health family. And some of the topics that we're going to be talking about

this season are, I mean, I'm so excited for some of the topics. You know, I wanted to tell everybody

already like, I'm back. We're going to do this. We're going to have this conversation. Click.

But I know that some of the topics that we're going to talk about is like money,

communities, and how that relates to health. We're going to talk about music and messaging.

We're going to talk about sports and health maternal and child health care. You know, we're

going to get we're going to get our pastor on to talk about faith and public health. And then we're

going to talk about like, you know, systematically making change through like voting and politics

and those conversations about health equity. And and eventually, you know, we're going to invite you

to submit some topics that you want to hear as well.

Right. But we're going to have to tell them who. No, we can't tell them who yet. We're going to

tell them the music and entertainment. We can't tell them the sports individuals and the

coaches that I didn't say. We can't tell them who we're going to have here as executives and

health care organizations. Those people who are making these million and billion dollar decisions.

But I'm excited when whoever it is that comes on here comes on here. So I can't wait.

I like it. I like it. Keeping people on their toes. Well, we just wanted to thank you so much

for your time for spending these last couple of minutes listening to our podcast.

And we hope to see you back on how the health did we get here.