Thanks to generous donations from our supporters, we created “Q & Abe” – a podcast that investigates real questions from visitors to the Cottage. This bonus episode accompanies the third episode of Season 6, “When was DC its unhealthiest?”.
As we’re interviewing experts for the show, we sometimes end up with fascinating information that doesn’t quite fit in the main episode, but we don’t think that should keep you all from hearing about it. While we were talking to the inimitable Dr. Ayanna Bennett, she was very clear that the Covid experience was a moment where the interconnectedness of everyone’s health became clear. We asked her, how else did Covid affect way she and her team approach their work?
In addition to the embedded media player below, you can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts. You also can read below for a transcript of the episode.
Bonus 6.3 transcript
Callie Hawkins: Hi everyone – This is Callie and Joan from Q&Abe, a podcast by President Lincoln’s Cottage.
Joan Cummins: As we’re interviewing experts for the show, we sometimes end up with fascinating information that doesn’t quite fit in the main episode, but we don’t think that should keep you all from hearing about it.
CH: This bonus episode accompanies episode 6.3, When was DC its unhealthiest?, so if you haven’t listened to that one yet, it might be a good place to start.
JC: While we were talking to the inimitable Dr. Ayanna Bennett, she was very clear that the Covid experience was a moment where the interconnected ness of everyone’s health became clear. You might have a better chance if you could stay home and wear a mask, but in the end the virus didn’t care about your status and infected all kinds of people.
CH: We asked her, how else did Covid affect way she and her team approach their work?
Dr. Ayanna Bennett: Well, I think public health as a field has had a lot of impacts from COVID. I, I think they’re not so different than past large epidemics that have happened. They are exhausting, so lots of people have left the profession, have left medicine, and have left public health. I hope they rest really well and come back, but I don’t know that they will. Um, we have a tension at the moment, which is always a benefit, lots of infrastructure dollars came back to public health that had not been there before. The budgets of the health side of government have been ratcheted down pretty continuously for at least 30 years, probably more like 50, and that’s had an impact. We had far fewer staff, far fewer resources to do anything about Covid. I don’t think there’s anybody who is exactly resource rich at the beginning, but that changed – money came. And so people built infrastructure and data systems and all kinds of stuff. The downside of that is that we have built an expectation in people of what it is that public health is capable of, and it is capable of that with a absolute river of federal money, and the combined attention of the entire planet. Yes, we got a vaccine in a year. Why don’t we have vaccines for everything else? Because we don’t have every researcher on the planet doing a single thing. We’re not going to do that again, probably. And so the pace is going to be slower on everything else that we want. The same is true for being able to pop up vaccine sites and do other things in people’s churches, and other – we don’t have the resources to do that. That’d be great, and that’s probably the best way to get things to people. It requires, um, funding and staffing that are not there anymore. And, and attention, just people’s willingness to vote to change things, to take advice, to all of those things will change. So we’ve had some positives, and hopefully we can hang on to all of the lessons and resources that built things, but we’ve also had negatives in that people think I can give them data on absolutely everything in real time, which is 100 percent not true. I think of it as very much like, anytime we have a technological jump, it’s usually quite narrow. And then everybody goes, why can’t we have that? And it expands, but at the moment, that’s not where we are. Right now, Covid has data and the rest of everything else does not have quite that interoperability, and you could see what’s happening across the country, and it was like, we can’t do that. And we can’t respond as quickly because of that. But that does not mean we aren’t striving to get there. It’s one of my key areas of focus to stick at us as close as we can to those really responsive, nimble, able to do innovative things when we see there’s a problem with the way we’re doing it. Government is incredibly slow. Health doesn’t really work that way very well. So, trying to get us to be faster and more flexible, even within the confines of government is a challenge, but it’s what I’m trying to do now.
CH: Here’s what she said about how she got into public health in the first place:
AB: I did, um, a combined medical, MD, MPH program, between Berkeley and UCSF. So I was always leaning in that direction. When I graduated from residency, I, um, started a youth clinic with some folks in the, um, historically poor historically black neighborhood of Bayview in San Francisco, and that was very much on the ground public health. How do we get people to do this? Where should we put our resources? All of those things, with really no money. But that taught me lots of lessons. I also did private practice because a non profit you start does not pay, uh, medical school bills… But I did both of those for a long time and finally decided I would jump back into, in, finally into full time public health, and I worked for the San Francisco Public Health Department leading their health equity program, actually building the health equity program over the last eight years or so, and then this offer came in a phone call, and I decided to take it.
CH: Maybe one more reason to pick up the phone when it rings next time!
JC: Thanks for listening, and please tell a friend about the show. We appreciate you coming along with us for Season 6, and you’ll hear from us again soon. This episode was produced by me, Joan Cummins, with Callie Hawkins and additional support from the President Lincoln’s Cottage team. Music for Q&Abe was written, performed, and is copyrighted by Clancy Newman.
CH: Q&Abe is made possible by listeners like you. You can support the show by joining Team Lincoln at lincolncottage.org, where you can also check out our other online and in-person programming. You can reach us at [email protected].
JC: President Lincoln’s Cottage is a home for brave ideas. Stay curious!
