0:02 Welcome to Advance the Dream, our interactive community chat where we celebrate legacy makers and family heroes who are actively advancing the dream in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We talk about health, challenges, highlights, and heroes in an intergenerational and multicultural fashion to help his legacy of hope, duty, and equality live on. this bi-weekly series powered by the force for health network is streamed live to facebook youtube and linkedin at eight a.m pacific time and eleven a.m eastern time then shared afterwards at advancethedream.com we welcome your comments from any platform you are watching from to join our discussion and encourage you to get engaged and to join our community for free Now let's meet our hosts, Dr.
0:52 Robert Giglio and Lucy Howell from the Force for Health Network, alongside our strategic partner and National Community Director for Advance the Dream, Mr. Joshua Williams. We hope you enjoy the show. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to our, what I was going to say, fourth season of doing these, um, advanced dream interactive community chats. My name's Lucy Howell. I am your co one of the co-hosts and founder of co-founder of the force for health network. Um, I'm joined here with my partner, Dr.
1:24 Robert Gillio in state college, Pennsylvania. and of course our strategic partner and national director here with advanced dream in education and health and everything else mr josh williams um it's been a wild team how's it going on october eleventh saturday let's let's talk about state of union before we get started just thirty seconds if you are watching live from facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn, feel free to join in the comments. This is set to be an interactive chat. We will see them pop up.
2:00 And if it's worthy, we will bring them on the screen and we'll talk about it. And if we do happen to pick your comment and you are not already a member, you just won a annual three sixty ambassador membership. at the Force for Health for a year. OK, so we encourage you to lean in. I'll set the stage. It's one of the tones that we're going to talk about today is Health Literacy Month. Right. So before we go to Josh, Rob, let's set the stage with Health Literacy Month. Health literacy. Thank you, Lucy.
2:31 Health literacy has a couple of definitions. I've always defined it as knowing the terminology, knowing, understanding the illness, The anatomy, the physiology, what goes wrong, which is the pathophysiology, the disease, and how it's treated. Medicine, surgery, careful observation, radiation, or whatever. That's one aspect of health literacy. What do you know? The other aspect is, do I have access to care? Is there a doctor or a practitioner? Is there an ambulance? Is there transportation to get there?
3:12 Once I get there, do I have insurance or a way to pay for it? Once I've gotten the care, how do I get the answers to my questions? How do I use the portal that many of these doctors' offices or hospitals are giving to us? So it's knowledge and access and skills. That's all part of health literacy. Knowledge, access, and skill. Josh, what do you think of when it comes to health literacy? It's interesting because in preparing for this month, right? We've got a couple of blog posts on our calendar at the Force for Health.
3:46 It was interesting. I was kind of reminded of what the actual meaning of health literacy was, which is a little different, you know, is a little broader, basically on kind of the things on what you just said, not just like how much you weigh or how much you should eat and, you know, how much you should walk. Josh, what do you think of when you think of health literacy? It's interesting that me and Dr. Rob talked about this a couple of weeks ago from the standpoint when I was dealing with some health challenges myself.
4:15 And we talked about what that really meant as it relates to health literacy. And one of the things that I talked to him about from the community in which I was dealing with was the fact that you have so many barriers in different community that you're dealing with when you're talking about health literacy. One is of course, like he stated, going to the doctor. The other one is the information known or knowledge about going to a doctor. Some people in these communities are now afraid of doctors and afraid of going to the doctor.
4:44 So that's one of our challenges right there. The other challenge is that they can't afford to go to the doctor. They don't have the transportation. They don't have the copay, insurance premium. There are different other challenges as well. But what we're trying to do is actually get them to understand the importance of knowing their own health. And if we can get that literacy part now from the standpoint of knowing that it's okay to go to the doctor, knowing that it's okay to actually call your doctor or just to check to see how you are doing individually.
5:21 So it's just basically, I think from the standpoint as we go along and try to continue to enhance people's knowledge as it relates to the importance of health literacy, I think that's one of the challenges that we're trying to overcome. Yeah, and this is kind of like what I took from both of you, really understanding your barriers. And your barriers might be, historic in family history, positioning you at a different opportunity or status point, right? Understanding how important it is to get to the doctor.
5:58 Although now, Rob, we've got an interesting environment, right? In terms of We used to be able to just go to the World Health Organization, or the CDC, or the NIH, or what does the doctor of the country say, our US surgeon general? Let's talk about that, because it's real, right? Does Tylenol cause autism? And what is some of your feedback as our chief medical officer when we are talking to parents and families that are scared, and are kind of looking for sources that matter. How should we navigate this time?
6:46 I'm trying to figure that out myself. I have a couple rules I tend to follow. I've been scanning TikTok and other sources because almost everyone I talk to is doing that. Then I get phone calls like, what about that beet juice for hypertension? And I'll tell you, my number one warning to people, if there's an ad or the ability to buy something at the bottom of the screen, it's biased. Just a little bit. Ninety percent of the time it's biased. They have a shocking headline to get you to watch the video and they have the solution and they happen to sell the solution.
7:29 One thing we're doing at Force for Health is making it available for free. If you want to step up and get involved and win some things, you can pay a little bit to be part of the pool to have better access, but there should be no barriers. At least that's our philosophy to information. So one thing is alternative sources sometimes are biased, very biased. I'm having trouble trusting our CDC and NIH as various studies have disappeared from the websites, as various senior advisors for the FDA and others that are making rules have been fired and different other people have been put in place without the same credentials.
8:13 An example might be the edict on Tylenol and autism. It's sad because the way the research is being done, you can cherry pick your studies For ones that may have had an outcome that you want to see as the outcome, and then you ignore the rest of the studies. Or maybe two studies out of twenty have some sort of an effect with it, and the others don't. An example, there's a difference between, this is a key thing, correlation and causation. Two big words, but let's understand them. Causation means you did something and it caused an outcome.
9:01 I hit my thumb with a hammer and now it's red and swollen. The hammer was my cause. With Tylenol, let me give you an example of correlation. Right now, there's been in the last ten years an increase on the graph of autism diagnosis, in part because the diagnosis criteria was changed, and in part because there's been a lot of education of doctors to make this diagnosis. So, fifteen years ago, it was different criteria, and there wasn't as much awareness. So, there's an increase in diagnosis, in part at least, with a change in the criteria.
9:40 It's kind of like saying diabetes used to have the blood sugar of one hundred and twenty. Now, if it's a fasting sugar over one hundred and five, it's a different criteria. But correlation is the one I get excited about because it's so funny. There are a number of SUVs. We have one. We used to have a minivan and a sedan. Now we have an SUV and the number of SUVs has gone up the same graph, the same amount of incidents as the number of relative cases to autism. So does driving an SUV cause autism?
10:14 No, there's a correlation. In Iowa, it has one of the highest per capita graduation rates from college. It also has the highest per capita a number of pigs because there's huge pig farms, hog farms. So could the conclusion from a surgeon general or other be, if you want to graduate college, buy a pig. It's a correlation in Iowa. It's not a causation. So I'm talking too much, Lucy, but I think it's important to understand that. And look at a study, read them yourself. And if there's not a good causation paragraph or two, One other term, Lucy, I got to put in there, confounding variables.
11:04 So C-O-N-F-O-U-N-D-I-N-G, confounding variables are things like my genetics. There's eighty-three people, let's say, in my family that have autism. There's something in my genes. It's not necessarily some of the other thing. Another thing, so it's the genetics. It could be nutrition. It could be twenty other diseases and seventeen other medicines that they might be taking. So when you do a study, you eliminate the people with confounding variables to try and find a cause and effect. Almost all the studies being cited right now are by people that don't understand and if not control for confounding variables, they don't understand causation and they take correlation as fact.
11:49 Those are the three things I really look for when I read a study. I trust the World Health Organization more and more and trust the CDC and NIH websites less and less. You know, I kind of ran through this in the beginning. So let me just go ahead and share with some folks. It is Health Literacy Month, and that's why we're going to be focusing on that. We're going to talk about a real story right here with our co-host, Josh, here in a moment. And then hopefully later on, around the eight thirty, We will be joined by our second guest, Kelly Elsberry, if she has any technical issues.
12:28 And so I will watch for her in the backstage. But it sets the it sets the stage, you guys, for what I wanted to. challenge folks with, which is really just taking a health science-based approach to health literacy, right? And that's what I love about our VIVA videos. And since it's also Healthy Lung Month, right? And since we do have our resident retired Mayo trained respiratory pulmonologist in the house here, I wanted to go ahead and bring up one of our VIVAs, which is our smoking one and let's just play it to kind of set the stage because yes there are barriers there's knowledge that you need to know but there's also behaviors right and the behaviors can drive a lot of the health outcomes as well in fact um correct me if i'm wrong rob but i believe there's about eighty percent of the health care costs are caused by preventable um long-term chronic care conditions.
13:33 And preventable, we mean by behavioral. Go ahead. Behavioral and environmental. For instance, lack of transportation can dramatically alter your healthcare trajectory. But eighty percent of the things are these things that are sometimes called social determinants or social influencers. And one of the biggest influencers, as Lucy just said, is behavior, healthy behaviors. I gotta add to something right before you show the Viva videos. As you look at all three of us, our skin color and shape of our faces or the way we talk is all a little different.
14:12 But once you take the skin off, everyone on earth, it's the same anatomy. It's the same anatomy with minor exceptions with birth defects or other such things, or if I'm a weightlifter and Josh isn't, but it's the same blueprint. It's the same. We're all the same. Get unified as a world. There's not a black body and a white body with folks able to jump and do basketball better. And some other folks able to do mathematics better. That's all crap. It's the same bodies. It's more of the, it's more of the, and so show the video, Lucy, but the whole point here is whatever skin color is on the model.
14:53 It doesn't matter inside the same anatomy and physiologic effects. The other thing that I'm just going to set up this video with is it's something that we have shown eight, ten, twelve-year-olds alongside forty, fifty, sixty-year-olds alongside eighty-year-olds and they are still grabbing and taking away really cool pieces of health information. So let's go ahead and watch this and then we'll come back and talk about it and get into Josh's story. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to survive.
15:38 Here, you can see red blood cells giving oxygen to a cell to keep it healthy. Red blood cells get more oxygen from your lungs, and so it is very important to keep your lungs healthy. When you breathe in, oxygen travels down tubes called bronchi and then into small sacs called alveoli. These sacs have thin walls so that the oxygen can easily pass into the red blood cells. It is important to have clear bronchi and alveoli to maintain a good supply of oxygen to your cells. With each drag of a cigarette, smoke enters the lungs through the bronchi air tubes.
16:16 There are many poisonous chemicals in smoke, and these attack the lining of the air tubes, making them swollen and red. The body reacts by producing more mucus to try to protect the lungs from the harmful smoke, making the air tubes even narrower. The smoke continues further into the lungs and causes damage to the tiny air sacs called alveoli. The walls of the air sacs break down and their structure changes, a condition known as emphysema. This is serious because your cells are getting less oxygen.
16:50 When this happens, you have to breathe harder and faster to take in more oxygen. You may be short of breath and may have to gasp for air. The chemicals in smoke damage your blood vessels, and this damage can cause blockages called clots that stop oxygen and nutrients getting to some of your cells. If a clot occurs in your brain, you may have a stroke where part of your brain dies. Clots in your heart can cause a heart attack. The chemicals can also increase pressure in your arteries, which can damage your kidneys.
17:25 Smoking can cause circulation problems in the arms and legs, leading to amputation. Damage to the blood vessels in the eyes can cause serious problems with your vision. Your skin gets more wrinkles and your bones get weaker, making them break more easily. Smoking can also cause holes in your teeth and gum disease, and may give you stomach ulcers. Smoking can even affect your sex life. Men who smoke often have trouble getting and keeping an erection. It can also reduce the sperm count. For women, smoking can reduce ability to get pregnant and to stay pregnant.
18:03 If you are pregnant and smoking, your baby is more likely to be born early, to be born sick, or even to die. Smoking increases your risk of developing many types of cancer. It's the number one cause of lung cancer, but can also cause cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix. The good news is that if you stop smoking, your body can get healthier again. I have watched that video so many times, and every time I watch it, it's a reminder, right, that the body is a scientific system, and there is a cause and effect on everything.
19:03 That video is really set to challenge you guys out there, the viewers. Just check yourself. And if you happen to be smoking and you wanted to watch that video or rewatch it, go to the Force for Health and you can just search Viva. That is part of our free library. And actually, if you were a Force for Health member, meaning you just joined for free and and you watch that video you'd actually earn healthy coins um as we go ahead and uh lean in towards what we call reality health games because when you learn it you live it you share it that is hopefully what will lean into lower costs for everybody think about it if if papa stops smoking and he gets better then um hopefully he can work longer and not have to cause financial distress for family, right?
19:57 There's all these other effects. I remember, Rob, one of the ten-year-olds, Josh, and I think this was from one of the Saturday You Do Matter teams, where after we showed that, he raised his hand and he said, is there any way that we can share that? And I said, of course, of course. And he said, I've got six of my uncles and aunties And I really want them to see that. I had no idea that smoking would do all of that to your body. I thought it was just, you know, your lungs and your breath. Right.
20:34 And so anyways, final thoughts on that before we kind of transition into. That's a good. That's right. That was a young man. Mark asked that question. You know, my mom was a heavy smoker. And I remember as a teenager, always telling her, my cigarette's gonna kill you. And eventually it pretty much did. So, you know, we talked about health literacy and you know, her thing was, I know, I know. So she knew that that wasn't the healthiest thing to do. But once again, it's the environment and the situation that you're in.
21:20 That actually impels you to do these things. Of course, it was seventeen of them, and all of them have passed now except four. So the barrier and the hurdle to this thing is not on the standpoint of not knowing. Sometimes you got people who know, but they just can't get to that point where they can stop. And it is a victim. Right. Because I was going to say in that in that instance and in that example, you know, I don't want to pass it off as that's environment. Right. Lack of discipline for ourselves.
22:05 Right. can often be as dangerous as the environment that has a lot of dust right um and so and we all have our vices right um uh all of us do but uh i i don't want to say i don't know i'm just i guess i'm challenging the point of like uh the environment made her feel like she had to keep smoking it wasn't the environment it was that's to me kind of individual and let me tell you both my grandparents died of emphysema and let me tell you my dad who's eighty five years old today has never touched a drop of alcohol and has never smoked in his life Grew up the first.
22:48 Fourteen years of his life. In a double wide. In Pennsylvania. And in cars where his parents were smoking. Non-stop. And to this day, he still has to wake up and do his antihistamines and his nasal sprays because he wakes up with the effects of secondhand smoke from the mucus lining. And that's what he attributes it to. I don't know if it's maybe environmental over his house, but he's had this issue all of his life. and i think it's from the secondhand smoking but you know uh rob final thoughts on that and let's go keep looking for kelly um i don't see her yet so we might be able to kind of bleed into her section um uh josh i'm going to go ahead and set the stage here you know the last time we were on live um like this was back in february in fact i remember uh we were talking about um I won't even go there.
23:43 It was MLK Day on January and then a couple other things in February. And then you kind of got a health scare in there and you had to push back and take care of yourself. So, you know, and you're willing to share the story. So I'd like you to tell us, how has your twenty twenty five been? what's your reflections and you came out of it and now you're kind of passionate about something else. So I'm setting the stage for you and Rob and you, I want you to have this dialogue. In fact, I'm even gonna step off the stage here and I want you guys to have a real kind of a friend to friend, doctor perspective, you know, patient lessons learned session.
24:30 Gotcha, gotcha. Well, in June of, This year, actually, I had a health emergency. And before we get into that, Doc, I really want to state from the standpoint of how important the literacy part of health is. Because some things you can't control and some things you can. I found that out. Before this, I was walking two to three miles a day. getting good exercise, but still confined with the problems of diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and kidney disease. But it was being controlled. I actually went for a diagnosis of a blood clot in my leg.
25:27 And actually, one of the nurses, young nurses, right out of college, said that she had saw a small cut underneath the bottom of my toe. And this is because she decided to do a real thorough look at my foot. Now, I look at my foot every morning, make sure I don't have no cuts on it because I'm dealing with neuropathy as well in my feet. So the tingling there doesn't stop. She looked at that, gave that to the doctor. In other words, the doctor looked at it, wanted to do a x-ray on it to actually look at it and so forth and see, was it anything to be concerned about?
26:14 And it was. And fortunately, I'm blessed to be surrounded by i would call them consultants dr rob dr chapital a numerous amount of fraternity brothers of mine who are mds and specialists in these areas to actually you know confront me and give me a little advice um to be concerned about or to ask about this um so i did so end up in a nutshell it was uh moving pretty vastly in the feet um ended up having to get an amputation um got that done um because uh when they start cutting on you you want you know you don't want to leave certain components where it can continue to grow and you have to go back and get additional surgeries so rather than getting the toe cut or two toes cut or three toes cut uh went ahead and had the feet the foot removed So dealing with rehab now, getting ready for prosthesis, which is a blessing.
27:23 Through all of that, I had to endure, of course, loneliness, had to endure anxiety, had to endure the feeling of not being able to take care of self. or having to lean on someone in a time of need and not wanting to actually press that person to actually do some things he or she cannot do. So that's the piece that we're confronted with being challenged in certain areas of health literacy. And Doc, I had that conversation with you about that because I feel comfortable enough with you now from the twenty year relationship that we have had to to appreciate the value of the information in which you gave me during this whole process.
28:20 Because I know we talk sometimes every other day during this process of trying to get me to understand and appreciate what was going on. And like I said, I could really understand now the mental component. what people go through in those situations it's really a hard piece to kind of send yourself around it's scary josh it's it's scary um you know i won't get into my issues but one of which is um i had some major surgeries and it isolates you you can no longer drive and you realize that you know even a trip to the grocery store was a social event you were you were trapped in the bed almost like a coffin When you can't manipulate, you can't move, you have pain.
29:07 And when you're in the moment of pain, you are scared and you feel like it's never going to end. From a health literacy standpoint, I'm going to make two points here. One is from the smoking video, your body can do three things to protect itself. And this is kind of where Lucy's father is suffering, perhaps, is you can cough. to get something out. If your body senses particulate matter, if it senses a strong odor, like too much perfume, if there's hairspray, if you can see it or smell it in the air, you're going to cough.
29:43 If it gets down in your windpipes, they're trying to protect themselves, and they make mucus, kind of like oil in a crankcase, so the engine doesn't burn out. And it can also constrict the air tubes to make the air move faster, more likely to get caught in the mucus so you can cough it out. Failing that mechanism, it starts destroying stuff in your lungs and your blood vessels. So I'm coming to blood vessels now. Smoking makes you at more risk for your blood, lung cancer and emphysema is a whole other topic.
30:18 But I want to make the point about blood vessels because anywhere in the body, everyone in the body have blood vessels. And so smoking can affect the circulation on all of those by making them more narrow, more likely for a clot or an obstruction. Diabetes does the same thing. Diabetes affects mostly the smaller blood vessels on your heart, on your kidneys, in your legs or in your feet, making it hard to do a bypass, making it down there, making it hard for a wound to heal. And I am very well trained.
30:53 I've had the privilege of college and medical school and Uh, residency at Mayo clinic and I'm stuck with neuropathy after my back surgery, I had to learn how to walk again. Um, very scary, but my feet have this horrible neuropathic pain. So I went to another and went to a neurologist, went to a podiatrist, uh, cause I, I can't see the bottom of my feet. I can't reach my toenails. I can't bend anymore to reach them. So it's very embarrassing, almost humiliating to go somewhere. And you know what I have to do every time?
31:27 I have to ask them to please inspect the bottom of my feet. Because in and out of my office, the damn neurologist, I'm there for neuropathic pain in my feet, and he doesn't take my socks off. So the health literacy part of me has me be an advocate for myself and say, would someone look at my feet? My friend just lost his. Someone look, is there any little cuts? Because I can't feel the bottom of my feet the same way. Same with diabetes. So being an advocate with your physician, with your care provider is one very important thing from a health literacy standpoint.
32:03 Get access to care earlier. I'll tell you what I do, it's crazy, but I have on the floor in my bathroom, in a little corner, I have a mirror. And I look at my feet after I get out of the shower in the mirror, just to make sure that I don't have something brewing down there. And once it gets in the bone, And it gets this germ called gangrene. It's a condition that causes gangrene. Certain germs do that. We don't have antibiotics for it. It's like the freaking Civil War, where the only thing we could do would be to cut off the injured limb, because we'd get horribly infected, whether it was an arm or a leg.
32:42 And they'd do it as fast as they could, because there was no anesthetic. And then they'd cordurize it with heat, like branding. It was crude, but it saved lives. I guess personal responsibility becomes part of it. Is it your fault, Josh? I don't know. It's your son's fault. I was about to ask you that same question. How do you actually, because some people, like you said, you are a medical perfectionist. So we already know that you know this already. So how do you get new activities? I'll tell you something.
33:19 One is if you don't have a good faith in your physicians, but you trust someone else, let's say your barber, every month he's seeing you, you're sitting in that chair for anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on what kind of a mess your hair is or how social you're going to have. But they can see things at the barbershop, at the nail salon when they're doing a pedicure. Ask them to look at the bottom of your feet. But if they Looking at your skin for skin cancer or feeling a lump when someone's doing it, if they're a massage person, these are ways of diagnosing things earlier without you going to the doctor.
33:56 It helps with the health literacy. But I'm going to come back to, is it your fault? Sometimes you make, it increases the risk if you don't treat a condition, but oftentimes it's not necessarily the only cause. So if you say, like with me, I was overweight and I had a horrible back problem. Did carrying that extra weight for four years make my back problem worse, or was it just something that happened? So, and one last thing, Josh, is that I've encountered something that I can't stand, and that is, it makes me very sad.
34:32 A patient come into my office, they've been smoking for thirty-five years, a pack a day, I diagnose lung cancer, the dad leaves the room, and the teenager or the ten-year-old will say to me, It's my fault, isn't it? I went and I bought him cigarettes three weeks ago. He gave me the money and I went and picked up the cigarettes at the store. You know, the amount of guilt that a child or a family member has as well of one feeling like they caused it. And two, they're not taking care of you well enough because you're feeling sad.
35:03 You're feeling lonely. You fell out of bed, whatever it is, the amount of suffering that happens to a family member and the amount of guilt in the patient and the family members is very, very high and needs to be overcome. It's not your fault. It's perhaps a little bit your fault, but you've got a genetic makeup perhaps, and you've had an illness that maybe has been undertreated for a number of years, making those blood vessels smaller and smaller so that a little cut causes infection. Yeah, the point of the matter is that actually it's kind of hard to say exactly whose fault it is because I go back to our earlier conversation with environmental.
35:45 If you grow up around in an area that has no nutritionist meals available and you're eating cookies and cakes and sweet potato pies and everything else growing up, right you are able to actually manage that because you're outside well from the surf from a certain community you're outside running around every day playing you ain't sitting on the couch now this is you know my generation doc yeah um from the standpoint that you get you're working off all of those sugar additive pieces that you were taking in nowadays it's not like that People are still eating those things because it was from their environment.
36:26 But now they're sitting down, they're playing video games, et cetera, et cetera. And they're not working that off like it used to be. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I think what Lucy alluded to about personal responsibility is the main thing. And that's where health literacy has you be a force for your own health. Then once you got your stuff together, you've got it solved like you do, Josh. You've got it solved. Now, how can you be a force for health for others? How can you promote others to get screened or to understand things?
37:00 And I think if you've inspired me, you know, I've been involved with health fairs after nine, eleven after Katrina, big, big things after disasters. But you know what, Josh? We're in a slow motion disaster of premature death, disability and suffering. And you've got an idea. Why don't you tell folks about your. your thoughts of that health screening day. Behind this effort, it came to my realization and my point that how I ended up getting to the hospital was a light heart attack. And during that moment of not being able to gasp and catch my breath for about ten, eleven seconds, I really thought I was seeing myself leave here um but after that eleventh second or twelfth second um august for air came back in and as i was telling doc this right here i just believe that was god telling me then that my work was not complete i still had stuff to do and he wanted me to go back and ensure to continue to enhance the knowledge of our people on how important
38:18 It is to know your own health situation So actually on my journey to do that, I can now gladly say that a lot of those ailments, stage four kidney disease, I'm at the point right now where I'm about to hopefully roll off of dialysis. my blood sugar level has been stable for the last four months. My blood pressure has been stable for the last four months. I haven't taken any additional medicine. I was on twelve different pills when I first started. And now I'm actually not taking but one currently, and that's the blood pressure piece.
39:06 But I am, like I said, I am This campaign has led to standpoint to start a day, a You Matter Health Prevention Day that we wanted to try to do eventually nationally to actually get people to understand the importance of going to see your doctor, the importance of your own health, the importance of looking and trying to manage your own stability of health. Some people that we know and we run into and we encounter, they haven't really went to a doctor in years. I know this because my dad is one of those candidates that hadn't been regularly.
39:47 And the standpoint, you know, I understand and I'm appreciating, but I'm trying to get the message over to the standpoint that it's still important. And you have to trust people to know what they know. What you've done, Josh, you're kind of, you're a perfect example of learn it, live it, share it. You learn about your issues. You've adapted and took personal responsibility, even had this revelation, what I call it is changing from attitude to gratitude. I drive Lucy crazy as we work on Force for Health because they have this urgency like we have to get it done today.
40:26 Fifteen years ago, I nearly died with a widowmaker's lesion. And every day after that is a gift. You don't know if it's your last day. So I commend you for putting together the UMatter Health, I like to say Health Promotion Day versus Health Prevention Day, but where people can have access to care screening events that students are running at college campuses and other places this spring. So watch this space for more information on that. We're going to help promote the UMatter Day. Speaking of mattering, you have another guest to bring in, don't you, Lucy?
41:07 I know you guys set the stage for me so beautifully you talked about community fairs right um community health fairs and just being proactive and then also screening and one thing that i really kind of laxed in is um i need to be better about getting to the doctor and here i am you know trying to promote know your blood move your blood give your blood And yeah, I know my blood type. But I don't really know my triglycerides. I don't know my glucose sugar levels. And it's just kind of busy. Yeah, you could go into CVS or Walgreens.
41:40 And yeah, you can get it from your doctor if you're seeing your doctor regularly. But it's just something that I just hadn't done yet. And so every year, we've got the National Pan-Hellenic Council out here in Tucson, which is the Divine Nine group out of the University of Arizona holds, they held their second annual health fair at the Dunbar Station. And so I went down, of course, representing Force for Health and meeting folks. And one of the people that I met was this fabulous person. I love her.
42:14 And she is now a new Force for Health partner. And her name is Kelly Elsberry. and I'm gonna bring her to the stage for a second, but she is based out of the Dunbar Pavilion. For those of you that aren't in Tucson, the Dunbar Pavilion is in a, it's really where, it was the first school for African-Americans in Tucson, Arizona. So there's this historic component to it. It has since been refurbished and some of the classrooms are rented out to folks like the Berry Best Clevotomy Training Academy.
42:48 And so I walked on over to her from the cafeteria And they were doing actual free blood screenings. And I said, wow, with students. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and bring Kelly to the stage. And I think it's, I'm going to take this down really quickly and bringing Kelly front and center here. Miss Kelly Ellsbury. Oops. Who did that? Somebody put up my controls there. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. Yeah, well, you look beautiful. Good morning, guys. It's been storming over here. And congratulations.
43:29 No, no worries. Good morning, everybody. It's been storming over here. I know. And you can hear us. Yeah, I know how two granddaughters, one is four and one was just one. Yeah, but we're overlapping. Are you noticing that, too? We're kind of overlapping. That's okay. So good morning, guys. Yeah, I'm Kelly. I'm moving to Dunbar. I own Berry Best Lobotomy Training, LLC. I'm also the owner and CEO, Executive Lab Director of Berry Best Mobile Lab Services, which is an independent clinical lab that I...
44:06 Operates in mainly a mobile capacity. We've been in business for eight years. We're licensed with the Center for Medicare Services, as well as COLA accredited. And yeah, we service all of Arizona, particularly southern Arizona, but we do service the entire state, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Nogales, Mexico, and certain areas. I've had the school now for six years, and I have a fast track lab technician training program That trains students not only to be phlebotomists and draw blood, but also to work in an assessment department of a lab, do biometric screening events and fairs, blood drives, that type of thing.
44:45 So, yeah, I met Lucy. She's right on September twenty at the health fair. We just thought it was a good idea. I thought it was a good idea to kind of have it as an internship opportunity to kind of like a clinical rotation for my students. Also to give them the skill of using the cardio check machine, because that's not something that's usually taught in phlebotomy training schools. And it was nice. You get an entire reading of your lipid panel. So you get readings of both your good and your bad cholesterol levels, as well as a glucose with just a finger stick.
45:17 You know, so I thought that was great to be able to bring people in, you know, Black people particularly and other non-white people. We tend to have higher, we suffer from higher levels of cholesterol. So I thought that was a good idea to kind of have a way for people to be able to come in and see where their levels are at, even if they can't make it to a doctor. So it was great. I was able to run into Lucy. That's my girl right there. I love her. Her energy is just so cool. We just like hit it off right off the bat.
45:45 And she said, sure, let's go do it. We were all in the pavilion where everyone was set up. And I was in my space. So she came on over and she got everything checked out. And we had an opportunity to kind of chat and talk about some of the things that we're both doing. And I mentioned to her that my school is a new WEX partner with Goodwill of Southern Arizona. And, you know, basically that means that their education reentry participants, young people mainly, they'll be coming in to do an internship.
46:15 And if it works out for them, then Goodwill will be paying their tuition to attend my course. The issue with that, of course, is making sure that I'm not giving away intellectual property from the training without, you know, the school being compensated to do so. Because unfortunately, I can't pay operational expenses without being paid. Right. But it is an unpaid internship for us. And then also making sure that they're getting prerequisites done to make sure that they have the soft skills and things that are needed to actually be successful in the program.
46:44 So once Lucy showed me about three sixty fours for health, I think it's an amazing platform. Where have you been all my life? It's just wonderful. And it's just able to be integrated in so many ways. different ways that I can help, you know, six people do not have, I've had students where they don't have those or they weren't taught certain things in school, programs that, you know, Gen X and millennials, you know, kind of took for granted, even computer skills. A lot of them aren't getting because it's being taken for granted that, oh, they were raised and brought up in this era.
47:23 They must know how to do these things. They don't. They come up not knowing resumes. They come out not knowing a lot of things. So even with the training, they may have difficulty getting jobs later. So I think this is a wonderful opportunity. I'm enjoying the fact that we were able to make a partnership happen. I've been pushing you guys everywhere. As a matter of fact, I just had a virtual meeting yesterday with the vice president of the Southern Arizona District of Vitalant. which is the blood bank that keeps local blood here local.
47:55 We're going to be doing some collaborations with them involving clinical rotations for those WEC students that we're getting in. And I think they would be someone also that we should bring the program to. I think they could get a lot of use out of it. So I'm just happy to be here, happy to meet all of you guys. You know, of course, we were talking before, Lucy, about how important it is to know about your blood. Another good point about that, because we are starting to do a number of different sickle cell blood drives.
48:25 We have one coming up at the Dunbar. I think it's at the DA's office actually in December. And then we have one at the Dunbar happening either December or January. And then we have a follow up one coming in May. One in three African-Americans have the sickle cell trait. Most people don't know they have it. So things like that, we need to be aware of what our blood type is, but also what's going on with the blood. What is the blood doing? So yeah, I'm thinking that this is a collaborative way to be able to continue to get those kind of things out.
48:56 I know it's going to help my program, help the community even more so. And I'm just excited about the opportunity. And I'm going to speak, and I'm going to speak slowly so that hopefully this lag doesn't bother. You're hearing us right now, okay? Kelly? Okay, good, good, good. So talk about the Phlebotomy Training Academy. I mean, the fact that I had two students there, and they were being trained and monitored and supervised, you know, practicing their blood pick. One of the kids was a recent high school graduate, right?
49:39 That was just looking at going directly into being a plebotomist. And I had another girl, the one that student that actually did my blood break, which was the fourth year going into medical school, right? Like two ends of the spectrum. of kids that you were trying we're all about a health care workforce acceleration path we are desperate to get in the state of arizona about thirty thousand more healthcare workers right and and i just loved that you were playing that role and i love that you have this partnership with goodwill so talk to us a little bit more about why do you do this and how did you even start Kel, did I freeze or did she freeze?
50:34 Absolutely, sorry about that. I lost you guys for a sec. We may have to have her back when there's not a storm in Tucson. There you are. Can you guys hear me? You were saying earlier there's a storm in Tucson and you keep freezing on us. We'll see, Robert. Yeah. Yeah, I lost you guys for quite a while and I'm still losing you. The only one I'm seeing consistently is Joshua. Can you guys see him? Well, hey. Kelly, I think it's important that I state that what you are doing is critical to the path of, A, supplying a healthcare resource, a skilled phlebotomist in a certified laboratory to people that don't have it.
51:43 That is tremendous. The fact that you made a business out of it is great, but you are training people into a job that pays better than what they had, but it's still not a huge salary. But what it is, though, is the ability to be exposed and stimulated to maybe at some point stay in that very important field if they can or if they wish to, but also to move on to higher paying and more challenging in some regards things in a pathway to build healthcare professionals as CNAs, physical therapists, occupational therapists, x-ray technicians, LPNs, RNs, doctors, specialists, physician's assistants, LPNs.
52:35 You are the pathway opening the doors and letting people make money while they're expanding their education and while you're doing a tremendous service for your community. So it's an honor to be on with you. I appreciate that. Yeah, Kelly, coming from the same pretty much category you are at right now, I was the Dean of Students for School of Commerce in New Orleans, where we train phlebotomists, RNs, LPNs, CNAs, et cetera, through Goodwill, our biggest funding agency. I didn't know that. Yeah, our biggest funding agency was Goodwill.
53:18 Dr. Rob was our first commencement speaker for our LPN class. I'm sorry, Joshua, I missed that entire statement. I missed that entire statement. You guys just keep buffering for me. I got you. What were you saying, Joshua? I was complimenting you. What were you saying? I was complimenting you on your role as director over there of your phlebotomy program. I was saying that I, too, served in the capacity of dean of students for a school of commerce in New Orleans. at the YMCA, which we have for botany, CNA, LPN, RN, et cetera.
54:03 So I understand how important that is because we had a major contract with Goodwill as well to provide those services. So kudos to you. Thank you. Hats off. You know, that's two examples for Josh's program. Thank you. Josh's program was on the, in the facility that was the James Singleton elementary school, the YMCA and his college. All right. Much like Kelly is in the Dunbar center, which has a variety of resources. So a lesson learned here with health literacy and health access, you got an empty building, fill it with resources.
54:49 In Jackson, Mississippi, Now the malls are all closing because people are buying online and things. In Jackson, Mississippi, the mall closed. Now every social service agency in the town has an office. I go to Catholic charities or Lutheran charities or get my eyes checked or get my phlebotomy or go to the doctor or drop my mother off for adult daycare or drop my child off for baby daycare, all at the same mall. And with Dunbar, what you're doing at Dunbar and what Josh did at Singleton, at the YMCA.
55:21 It was great. Goodwill, thank you for stepping up in multiple communities. People think of you as inexpensive clothing or pays to donate or maybe a sheltered workshop for certain individuals, but you are finding a pathway to professionals in your communities in your own way. So kudos to Goodwill. Yes. Very true. I appreciate that, gentlemen. I knew that this. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. That's all right. No worries. I want to remind everybody that we can continue the conversation. You can have access to the type of content that we showed earlier.
56:04 You could go to advance the dream dot com or the force for health dot com. It takes you to our site. Right. Advance the dream dot com. And we actually have an interactive community. So we invite you. You can get started for free. Right. There are ways to perhaps And again, watch these videos and earn points and be eligible for prizes and giveaways once we start moving in that direction. There are different memberships at the Force for Health, so you can join for free. That's called our Basics. If you'd like premium features, what I call our Force for Health Virtual Gym, and full access to our three sixty interactive human anatomy library and a customized personalized health risk assessment.
56:59 That's what we call an ambassador membership, which is this middle one in there. And also, if you're a group leaders like someone like Kelly, if you're leading a nonprofit or if you're leading a classroom, or group of seniors and you feel like you'd love to be able to use our resources and almost have your own virtual academy, you can do that as a group leader. For all of ninety nine dollars a year, you would have access to custom features into our academy. OK, so I wanted to just remind folks out there that we're doing this for a reason.
57:35 We are trying to get the word out that there are wonderful sites out there, but that there is also a force for health. option for you to go to. And we're inviting you to come play, right? This is a reality health game. Population health is a team sport, people, right? It really is. And everybody plays a role. So what position do you play? What role do you play? And we invite you to come join the Force for Health and actually play the reality health games. I love that today's session was a true, true learn it live it and share it i truly believe that the biggest impacts come out when people like yourself josh become vulnerable and share their real life stories you know with everybody because so many people are going through the same thing and they're in silos I've been told that, Lucy.
58:38 Thank you for sharing as well. From this right here, there will be a book coming called I Almost Let Go. It's coming in the spring. And I look at my partner right there. He had three major surgeries in the course of eighteen months. And your wife is a trained nutritionist. You've got daughters who are PAs and surgeons. And you can't really think of a more medically prepared family than someone like yourself. And yet you found yourself in this anxious state. going into surgery at a world-class facility like Mayo, and you took it upon yourself to take notes and share it.
59:31 So we have a pre- and post-op physician as a patient series, right? And I've shared that with folks. And what I love about what you did, Rob, is the ability for that video to be shared with family members. you know so the family knows how to prepare post-surgery so the papa doesn't fall or that papa doesn't rip a stitch because he's reaching for the remote on the wrong side why don't you put the tv tray on this side so that he can just you know those little tips were so um um beneficial too so it's nine oh five let's go around the room real fast October Health Literacy Month.
1:00:19 October is Healthy Lung Month. October is Down Syndrome Month. There's so many things to learn on a regular basis. Again, I encourage you to go to forceforhealth.com and check it out. Final thoughts. Let's go to Rob. To me, it's personal responsibility to take the responsibility to make every decision the healthiest decision possible and to You're born into a situation with genetics, with an environment, with cultural norms that may affect your health. It's not your fault. You tried as best as you can.
1:00:57 But you got to take personal responsibility to understand your body, how it works, how to protect it, how to recognize when something's wrong and how to get help. And I'm going to bring up Kelly one last time. Hopefully she's not as glitchy. We're definitely going to have her back on so that we can kind of have more of an in-depth conversation without the challenges of glitchiness. But I'm going to bring Kelly back on for final thoughts. Hopefully you can hear us and you can go ahead and share what you're keeping away from today.
1:01:30 My final thoughts for this is kind of in line of what Robert and Joshua are saying. I mean, the blood is the first step to knowing what's going on with your health. Okay, so making sure that you're getting the blood work done, making sure that you have a lab that you're going to. Mobile labs obviously are out here. If you're not a person who can get out and about in your community, look up your local mobile labs to make sure that you're getting that blood work done so that you can have an early diagnosis of need be.
1:01:55 So that would be my big point, making sure you know your blood and what your blood is saying. I love it, love it. And Josh, Oh, very quickly, from the standpoint of health literacy, know your own health through it all. Know your own health situation. If I can't say anything or push anything more heavily than that, it is being able to know your own health. That is wonderful. And on that, I've got a new dishwasher coming in and dogs are barking, so I'm going to go get that. My whole takeaway from this is, yes, know your blood.
1:02:33 And if there is a health fair that can help, go to your health fair. It is incredibly rich with resources and possible connections like I was able to now offer. birth and now continue to develop with kelly so thanks for watching everybody um we are on uh the first and third saturdays of the month this is the second saturday because we missed so we'll actually be on next saturday so stay tuned for that and um have a great weekend everybody and uh take care see you later bye
Transcript is auto-generated from the broadcast captions and lightly cleaned; timestamps jump to the moment on YouTube.
Advance the Dream · Episode Recap ·