0:00 Welcome to Advance the Dream, our weekly 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 fashion in hopes that his legacy of hope and equality continue to live on. This weekly series, powered by the Force for Health Network, is aired live on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn at eight a.m. Pacific Time, eleven a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
0:30 Then shared afterwards at AdvanceTheDream.com. Now, let's meet our hosts, Force for Health Network co-founders, Dr. Robert Giglio and Lucy Howell, alongside our National Director, Joshua Williams Jr., as we dive into this week's topic. Good morning, everybody, or maybe early afternoon, depending on where you are in the United States. It is Saturday, June first. Welcome to Advance the Dream, our weekly community chat. where we highlight heroes, issues, and challenges that have to do with health and wealth disparities across our land in the spirit of the late and honorable Dr.
1:17 Martin Luther King. My name is Lucy Howell. I'm here in Tucson, Arizona. I'm one of the co-founders of the Force for Health Network, joined by my other co-founder, Dr. Robert Gillio. in State College, Pennsylvania. He serves as our chief medical officer for our company and our partner right here, Joshua Williams, who is based out of Florida, sometimes, sometimes New Orleans. And he is our national coach for our Advance the Dream initiative. So welcome, you guys. I mean, it's been a couple weeks since we've been on.
1:54 We had, you know... Things happen, but that's okay. We start a new month, June first. And so I've got a couple of things on the top of my head, but I always kick it off. And I want to reverse the order a little bit. So let's go around the room, and we're going to go opposite this time. So Josh, we spend the first ten, fifteen minutes talking about current events, things that are important of the time, and then we will focus a little bit more on men's health, since June is Men's Health Month, and talking about exciting things that are happening this summer, actually, which there are a lot of, and then we will...
2:38 We are live on YouTube. We are live on Facebook at the Force for Health Facebook page. And we are also live on LinkedIn. So if you'd like, come on and join us. And if we see some comments that are worthy, we will pull them in and we will create some interactive discussion here. But welcome back to the show, you guys. I feel like I miss you. I feel like we haven't talked here for a couple of weeks. So, Josh, what do you come to the table with today on June first? Ah, Lucy, glad to be here, number one.
3:10 Glad to be anywhere to tell you the truth in today's society. But however, when we start off the conversation talking about men, of course, that's one of our biggest obstacles in this day and age as it relates to getting, of course, men to understand and appreciate their health. We have a couple of programs that we're trying to this summer We're trying to at least elude ourselves to begin the process of maybe a program that's called Technology and Me that we'll try to implement during the summer that we have online that's accessible that would actually help people to better understand the medical existence of their body.
3:58 Versus that of the computer. We are very excited to bring Alpha Phi Alpha to the table, which is the oldest Black African-American fraternity, fraternal organization in the history. And being able to bring them on, of course, different judges, lawyers, doctors, medical professionals, all kind of professionals that you can think of that are part of the organization that could actually lend a hand to helping I guess you would say, other individuals to understand and appreciate their own health and how important it is.
4:35 You know, African-Americans are leading the charge for everything that's going the opposite direction. When you talk about heart attack, when you talk about stroke, when you talk about cancer, when you talk about diabetes, of course, we're leading the race on all of it. So how can we help change that is the question of the day. And what can we do to get people to better understand the importance of taking care of their own self first and then moving on to help others. So we look forward to kicking off a variety of different programs that will actually help to assist with getting, of course, our people, African-Americans, the understanding and the knowledge of what it takes to better themselves.
5:20 And we have to start out that within before we can have the ability to help someone else. And I'm so glad that you set the stage for that because the big part of what I want to talk to you about today is really the reasons why. Some of the reasons why. Is it internal? Is it external? Is it a combination of both? So, you know, and we've got the doctor in the house, right? I think it'll be interesting to have that conversation and Rob, what do you come to the table with on June first? Well, you know, Josh and I go back.
5:57 We met because of Hurricane Katrina, which happened on a Memorial Day weekend. It is the start of hurricane season. And just piggybacking off of what Josh said is, you know, there's health issues and then there's safety issues. And there's with hurricane season, it's predicted to be one of the worst. Um, seasons on record now is predicting twenty five, uh, uh, named storm with seven or eight becoming major hurricanes. The point I'm getting at with that is the hurricanes don't care if you're black or white, rich or poor.
6:35 Um, and if an area is overcome with damage isolation, and when you can't call nine one one and no one picks up the phone, which happened with Katrina. or when you don't have any connection, you have to be able to take care of yourself. What's the best way to take care of yourself? One, be in its best shape possible before it even starts. So in ordinary times, what can one do, whether they're black or white, to advance the dream of self-health? What things can we decide to do as men, as women, minority, white, whatever, to in ordinary times, be ready for extraordinary times.
7:20 So the day in, day out decisions about health and safety, but then in an emergency, what are some of the street smarts to get through a catastrophe? And so I talk about, well, lessons learned. Josh has a chapter here I've written and edited this book with Evangeline Franklin, but all sorts of good stuff of lessons learned after, after Katrina, uh, is, is one of the things here that, uh, is inside of the force for health curriculum. Thanks for bringing that up. But the other side of it is, um, there's materials there, just the basic, basic understandings of how your body works, how it can be, uh, get ill or get injured, how to take care of it, how to seek help all comes around to those men's health issues, uh, dealing with disparity issues as well.
8:16 You're so right. I mean, it's crazy whether you're a climate change believer or not, not trying to get into all of that political stuff. I'm a science girl by nature, but you're absolutely right. The frequency and the prediction of this upcoming season is crazy in terms of all of that heat coming up and then being able to put the lower southeast region, going all the way up as far north as Maine, I've seen. We've had more tornadoes in Wisconsin this spring than ever. We've had about a thousand tornadoes across the United States.
9:00 I think it's the second highest on record during that time period. So it's not just hurricanes. It's not just tornadoes, fires. It could also be Trauma could also be a shooting. It's not just climate. It could also be car wrecks. It could also be a bomb, a terrorist type of thing. So being as healthy as possible to start, just to have a normal life is a great thing. But the ordinary to the extraordinary is what being a force for health is. And part of being that force for health is taking what you know, learn it, live it, and then share it.
9:38 Something happens and you're okay, help your neighbor. team up and solve the problem together if it's more than you can just handle. That's kind of what we're all about here is building that movement for neighbors looking out for neighbors, I hope. You talk about street smarts and how resilient and how prepared we actually can be as As citizens, we never, ever know, you know, one of our Boy Scout troops that, you know, you had an actual personal tie to found themselves in a train derailment as they came back one summer from, you know, their Boy Scout camp and they went right into action.
10:20 Or you just don't know when things are going to happen. So, you know, I'm just bringing up the street smarts because I think it's the years of you being in the emergency room as a physician that You know, and then just seeing all the things that come through the door, much of which was preventable, which I believe I know you enough to know that that's why you're so passionate a partner on this subject is, you know, why set yourself up for high cost, you know, preventable chronic conditions when you can actually do some things to keep that down.
10:56 But, you know, I'm just bringing up the street smarts. I'm bringing these things up as you speak. to let the audience know that there's some deeper dives that can be taken. Street smarts, lessons learned. These are content learn it pieces over at the Forest for Health Academy, you know, as part of our network that are free and you can go through them and actually earn badges. And so I always like to think summer, you know, One of my passion clubs that we'll be activating this summer is called My Girl Power.
11:30 And interestingly enough, it has the same four wings as the Force for Health. So that's how Rob and I kind of knew that we were destined to work together. But the four wings on My Girl Power is own your voice, know your health, flex your wings, and leave your mark. Those are kind of our four. And I always think that summertime is the time to flex your wings, you know, so that you can try and learn and assess and really enrich yourself over the summertime so that you can come back in September, you know, just a slightly modified, enriched person.
12:10 So that's what I'm encouraging everybody to do. I come to the table, Rob and Josh, with, I saw something on TV last night. So anytime that I am out and about and I see something right there in our face that identifies a disparity, then I'm going to take a picture and we're going to talk about it, right? So last night when I was watching TV, NBC Nightly News was reporting on this new caps on inhaler costs. And as I've aged, I've never had asthma or at all, but But there is something going on with my lungs.
12:47 And so I do kind of carry, you know, a primatine mist, like an over-the-counter type of thing. But I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't even imagine being fully dependent on albuterol or, you know, an inhaler. Some of the costs that I've heard were outrageous. And so I saw this. I'm like, wow, that's nice that they're finally moving towards putting some type of cap on. on the inhaler. And then they put this graphic up that the Black Americans are thirty percent more likely to have asthma. And I said, wow, I got to grab that.
13:24 And we're going to talk about it tomorrow with the team. So let's talk about this. Rob, you are a Mayo-trained, retired pulmonologist. So you know the lungs. What's your take on this and how would you like to kind of further explore this category. I saw the same exact news article and I cringed when I saw this because the reporter was talking about the disparity issue. They just kind of dropped a factoid in with no explanation that's totally irrelevant to the other story. So there's two issues here.
14:07 Okay. The The inhaler cost issue affects everyone. It affects people with less money or less insurance more than others. It has nothing to do with black or white. It has to do with rich or poor or how much cash flow you have. It has to do with corporate profit tearing in America versus other countries for the same exact product. So that's one whole issue. The other side of it is the amount of people who have asthma is more likely to occur in people that live in certain situations. And it's usually in situations where the housing is less desirable or less of a lesser quality.
14:57 Why would thirty percent of black Americans be more likely than white Americans to have asthma? That's a very complex issue. And to give it literally a slide and less than Ten seconds. It was just part of a sentence. Right. In this three-minute story, NBC, you dropped the ball. You should do a whole sixty-minute show on it, and I'll talk to you about it in more detail if you wish. But some simple things that cause asthma is living in conditions where you don't have as clean an air from your heating system, where you don't have a filter that's changed as often on your heating or air conditioning.
15:39 If you have cockroaches, cockroach droppings literally are more likely to give someone asthma. If you are living near a coal-burning power plant, if you're downwind from that power plant, if you're downwind in a dusty environment, if you're in a situation where you don't have air conditioning, any things that are particulates in the air or that are organic in the air can cause inflammation, inflammation can cause asthma. And just because of the economics of it, I really don't think we have any sort of genetics that says if you have an African American or this darker skin from your genes, does not make it more risk for asthma.
16:25 It's an environmental issue and to a large extent an economic issue as far as my understanding of it is. Now let's talk about, I mean, we can reflect on that a second. I'm not saying, I'm saying the facts are on many situations that the housing situations of folks with asthma, rich, I think if you were to do a similar graph, people with less economic income, a lesser housing situation are more likely to have asthma than those that have any better housing situation, cleaner air to breathe and jobs.
17:05 That are not dirty and dusty, as opposed to jobs in a nice, clean environment with filtered air. Well, can I ask a question? And I'm always representing, you know, Main Street, right? Just the mom, the non-medical profession that's always going to ask these questions. So when you look at diabetes, heart disease, asthma, is asthma genetic at all? Or is it really an environmental issue? Whereas diabetes and heart disease, there might be some type of genetic play in there? You know, to the best of my knowledge, I've not ever seen good genetic studies that have shown a racial difference.
17:59 I truly believe it's more environmental. And I think part of it is it's undertreated. then. So there might be in my, my hypothesis is that there's a lot of mild chronic irritation, inflammation, asthma, but if you're undertreated and you don't have access to an expensive inhaler, so to speak, you don't have access to other medicines. And then you're more likely to progress to the point where you go to a doctor or an emergency room and you're diagnosed with it. And so there's this thing where you go untreated for a long time, and then it flares to the point where you might have more people getting to diagnose asthma.
18:42 You need to do a pulmonary function test that shows something called obstructive disease of a certain amount. And to get to the point where someone's even doing that, you got to show up with some symptoms that are pretty bad. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, Josh, do you agree with the statement? Do you have asthma prevalent in your family? What's how do you react when you see it? I'm glad you asked that question. You know, my dad is dependent on an inhaler and he has to have that pump. If he doesn't, he would just give completely out of breath.
19:19 You know, when I was listening to Doc talk about the different environmental procedures, you know, my dad, when he was a kid, he worked on a farm, tobacco farm. So basically they work from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, Monday through Friday. They work for five dollars a day. Five dollars a day, all day long. And when they took out tax, I think they walked away with like eighteen dollars in some sense a week. Now, a lot of, I think, his problem has come from the fact of plowing the tobacco field with all the dust flying and stuff of that nature because it's not a genetic type thing.
20:05 It's the fact that his whole family grew up working in the sand or in the country or in the fields. And that dust, I think that played a big problem with his ability of asthma. Now, of course, my siblings, have the same challenge. Not as worse as I do, because I don't have the asthma problem per se, thank God. But they do. So that part, I think, is more of an environmental piece than anything else other than any type of genetic problem. It comes from, like Doc said, from the standpoint, I think, of a lot of how you live and how you are able to live.
20:48 And begin to breathe in certain elements from your surroundings. I think that has a lot to do with it. Josh, I'll tell you, just to summarize in a word, if someone's watching this saying, I've got mild, moderate asthma, what can I do? If you can see it or smell it in the air, avoid it. Your dad also worked in a barbershop, a salon. Hairspray, hairspray. It used to be full of aerosolized lacquer. It stays in the air. Fifteen, twenty minutes after it's sprayed. If anything, if you're using a hairspray, you spray it, you get into it and then you leave the room.
21:26 You do that in a barbershop. And so if you can see it or smell it in the air, you're breathing it in and it irritates things. That gets kind of to the inhaler side of this bit, Lucy. And I want to first comment on something that bothers me of something you said. That scares the living daylights out of me, Coach Mom. The product you mentioned, the over-the-counter product you mentioned, it's a cheap type of an epinephrine that has some great effects, great effects to reduce the amount of bronchospasm that helps you breathe easier, but it also simultaneously stimulates your heart.
22:09 And it is something that works well and it wears off quickly. So people get in the habit on a bad day of using that so-called mist again and again and again. If you are prone for a heart attack or heart disease, as you get into your fifties or sixties or whatever age you might be, as you age, women are as much at risk as heart disease as men. Sudden cardiac arrest and arrhythmia, I've seen it again and again after use of that product indiscriminately by people that aren't managing their healthcare appropriately.
22:45 And so there's, I'll throw out there to the world, there's a disparities issue, really big disparities issue about use of the right inhalers at the right time because of cost. I'm a physician. I'm an entrepreneur. And in my own family, I've watched my spouse ration the use of the inhaler that we finally bought for four hundred dollars and get to the point where I have to say, use the damn inhaler. But it costs three hundred dollars. It's ten dollars a damn puff for a day's use. I said, we're spending ten dollars.
23:21 It doesn't matter. But you get to the point where the economics affects everybody. It's that expensive. Doesn't need to be that expensive. How does it work? And why is it important? I want people to understand there's really two types of inhalers that are commonly used. One type is called rescue. That means when things are getting bad, you use it. And it's like, oh, I just rescued myself. The other is maintenance. And Lucy, if you don't mind, I think there's two illustrations I'd like to show for a couple minutes.
23:52 If I can share my screen, would I have permission to do that, please? I'm going to click on present, share screen. Hopefully you picked the right screen. And I'm going to share it now. And I'm sharing a screen from something, our Force for Health Network. I'm inside of the course called the Three Sixty Human System. And there's a slide in here on bronchoconstriction in the anaphylaxis course. But if I look at this full screen and just study this a bit, I'm just showing when you breathe, these are your lungs.
24:26 This is the air going in and out. This is the air going in and out of your lungs here as you breathe. And one of the things this is showing is not the lungs breathing, but it's showing a normal set of width of the lungs getting narrower, spasming down, getting tighter. And when they get tighter, a couple things happen. One of the things, when you have asthma, there's a few things that happen. One is that the airway itself, this wall, gets more inflamed. If it gets inflamed, it's like a donut with a thicker wall.
25:01 The hole in the middle gets smaller. Two, there's muscles that go around it that tighten. And three, your body, in order to catch those particulates, the little pieces, anything irritating, the fumes, it coats itself with mucus. So with an asthma situation, there's inflammation of the airways. There's constriction, constriction meaning it narrows. Look at that narrowing. It narrows and there's mucus. And I'm going to just back out a second. Let's just look down the windpipe a little bit. And if you look here as we're looking down this windpipe, by the way, this manipulation I'm doing is something any fifth grader can do if they're in our program, so to speak.
25:46 It's not that it's nice to illustrate. As it narrows, you're breathing through a tighter tube. There's a, one of our other models is called Asthma Attack, and it illustrates these things slightly differently. I'm clicking on that now, I believe. And let's see. I'm gonna stop sharing a second. Can you guys, are we, back here. Thank you. I want to bring up that other one if I just can take a second here and get to the other course, then I'll bring that one up. So as Rob's looking for that model, you know, for those who are new here, the Force for Health is really a full engagement platform.
26:49 It's a physician-led private social network. So think Facebook, right? So you've got your online hosted communities. But we've integrated a full virtual health academy. And that virtual health academy includes over twelve hundred Three sixty human explorer models that are interactive that you can go explore and truly understand what your body is made of. You can actually even get credit for visiting all of the models if you explore for at least a minute. That's actually one of our reality health games.
27:25 Competition here is a three sixty human explorer. But yeah, go ahead, Rob. Love these. All right. So we are showing a great big piece of the lungs. Now I'm showing a piece of the lung here. that is about as thick as a human hair. How cool is that? All right, as thick as human hair. It's the very end where the air wants to get to the alveoli. This is where oxygen comes out of your blood, goes into your blood out of the air, and carbon dioxide comes out of the blood and you exhale it. And it's made up of the wall of the bronchial tube and the muscles.
28:07 And if you look down that, it's kind of like looking down a soda straw, a tiny little soda straw. And as one goes from a normal airway to one with extra mucus, and I look at this, I am seeing an interesting phenomenon that the mucus gets in the way of the air as I try and traverse things. But notice that the way these muscles are built, I kind of deconstructed this to show you that. These muscles go around and around like candy stripes on a candy cane. If you pull down this string really tight, you're going to narrow the bronchial tubes.
28:53 See how they're narrowed and constricted now? Now you have to get the air past those constrictions and you have to really suck hard to breathe, to open those airways up a little bit, and then you throw some mucus in it like this, then you're really having another issue. So the issue I'm trying to explain is the rescue inhaler relaxes those muscles. That's an asthma attack. Those muscles say, oh my God, we're being attacked. Damn it, all this cigarette smoke's coming in at us. Or that spray, or the fumes that just came off of that diesel truck in front of me, or that whiff of dust on the cotton field.
29:37 And it's like the lungs are trying to protect themselves. Those muscles are trying to narrow the airways so that you're not suffocating, breathing in more of that crap. So you have to get out of the dirty area, use the rescue inhaler. The other inhaler works on the inflammation or infection. It has your body make less of that mucus that gets in the way, and has the walls of the airways not be swollen and inflamed like when you hit your thumb with a hammer, it's all swollen and inflamed. It has to be a little bit less thick, which makes the opening in the middle wider, which has less resistance to airflow.
30:15 So use the maintenance inhaler, which most people don't bother doing because they don't feel better with it. And it's three, four, five hundred dollars a month going up double, triple time in the last five years. The drug companies do not need to charge that much. They charge what they can get in whatever market they can get. And they know in America, they have a nice pricing capability with contracts with Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies. The rest of us paying the eighty percent or out of pocket, et cetera.
30:48 This cap is a massive public health measure. It still is not reducing the cost to society. it's capping what people pay out of pocket. We're still paying a lot for our insurance because our insurance company is still paying a fortune for that nailer. I challenge anyone on the drug companies, be a force for health, find a way of not profiteering from people's shortness of breath as much as helping us get the word out for people to use more of your product appropriately. profits will be there at much lower costs if people are using it correctly.
31:31 Society is spending a fortune, Lucy. When you end up in the ER at a thousand to three thousand dollars an average visit or an ICU day, a thousand to three thousand dollars almost per hour to be there sometimes if you end up on a ventilator. There's a lot of money to go around for asthma management that's being wasted when we get to the point where you're overusing that mist over the counter and you end up in a life-threatening situation where you don't use anything at all. I think that that's a good segue to really kind of hone in on what we really wanted to talk about, which was some of the reasons why.
32:13 And when I say men, I'll call it forty-five to eighty, forty five to ninety. I'm not I'm talking about, you know, the heads of households, the men who typically will not put their own health first because they're so busy taking care of everybody else. They don't want to spend any money on them. Or maybe it's a pride thing or maybe it's a stigma thing. Maybe it's a distrust thing. I don't know. But, you know, Josh, you mentioned it earlier. I mean, when I hear People now say, what are you talking about?
32:52 It's been four hundred years. Get over it. We're all equal. There's no disparities. Get over it. Like that makes my skin crawl. Right. Because when we really look at, OK, sixteen, nineteen, first time slave ships actually landed here. I mean, for two hundred and seventy five years, you know, that was a. A major, major difference on how white people lived and black people lived, right? I mean, we could just go ahead and identify that right there. And if you're really in your seventies and eighties, you were probably working in the fifties, in the sixties, maybe even in the forties in environments that just were not clean and clean and, you know, right and tight environments.
33:39 With all of the regulations that we have now. And we're really still only within a generation of families that have come out of this huge, huge, huge disparity, right? I mean, the sixties doesn't seem that long ago. When you talk about a family, And Josh, you've brought so many special guests to this show who are seventy and eighty years old. And they're talking about marching. They're talking about living in the time that it was not equal. And it's their kids that are our ages now. Right. Forty and fifty years old.
34:21 And it's just that not that much time from like this huge disparity. So I know when you, Josh, as a black man. Right. My husband is black man. My son is a black man. So I care about these things. And it's men's health. So straight up. Do you get upset or how do you feel if someone like Dr. Rob says, hey, African-Americans are more likely to die because of this, this and this. And let's just bring this up really fast, you know, and let's just look really at what I was talking about. You know, there are very, very real health disparities to be aware of.
35:05 High blood pressure, diabetes, stroke. We're talking asthma also. That's what started this conversation. Does that make you mad? Do you feel like, I don't want to listen to you because you're a white man? How does that make you feel when non-African Americans talk about this health disparity? Be real. Be bold. Be real. We want to talk about it. I'm going to tell you the truth because I'm a realist. I believe in what is being presented and what could be shown. Now, the first question you ask, is it true?
35:47 Yes, it is true. So then what do you do about it if it's true? I can't do anything about slavery or what happened back then. All I can do about it is what we can do now to make a difference. Of course, there has been disparities. There will probably always be some disparities. Because you got to look at it from the standpoint, I was talking to my dad about this a week ago, from the standpoint of how the mentality of African-Americans are, especially the ones that work back then in the cotton fields, working for five dollars a day and working all day long and still being able to take care of their families.
36:27 Well, it's a different segment now. You got young people that are not going to do that. Lucy, my kids, your kids, Dr. Rob kids, they're not going to do that. And they can actually liberally, without a doubt, tell you that, oh, I'm not working all day for five dollars. So what we have to do is understand that, hey, OK, that is where we are today. So how do we translate that from the standpoint of hearing somebody else, a different race saying, OK, yeah, African-Americans, yeah, you all are going to die if you don't get on this track.
37:00 Or, you know, even from the standpoint of listening to Dr. Rob at times talk about it, you know, it's true. Some of the things that are actually being said is not the most favorable in our community, but it's true. And how do we fix that is the question. Do we have our mindsets been changed and entangled? from the standpoint that we don't understand how important that is. We know that we grew up one way. We were trained this way, Lucy. When we worked in the cotton fields, when they worked in the pea field or the corn field, they were trained to do this.
37:36 So, you know, after a person has done this so often, so much, how do we change that culture or that mentality? That is the question of the day. You know, from the standpoint, they didn't have to learn technology. They didn't have to learn a computer because they never used it. So how do we get them to change that whole perception of that being an important piece of their life now? How do we change them working in the cotton fields and growing their own foods to live off of versus being able to understand, hey, now you're going to buy this processed stuff that is not that good for you?
38:14 There's the realism. You know, Lucy initially said something about forty, fifty, sixty year old men. Men start much earlier. The aging process starts earlier. When I was in medical school, there was a study on Vietnam War soldiers who came back dead and autopsies on them looking at cardiac disease. They looked at these are eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two year old men. who already some of them had fifty percent obstructions of their coronary arteries. The aging process, the disease processes and atherosclerosis, the narrowing of a blood vessel, the hardening of the blood vessel is part of hypertension, is part of stroke, is part of heart attacks.
39:04 It starts when you're teenagers. All right. It's the studies, the studies show it. And so what can we do now is you just mentioned it with the foods. Your father's a rarity, by the way, to live that age with the level of health he has, even though he's got his issues. Most of his peers have died in a much higher proportion than most of the peers of, say, my mother of a similar age who grew up in a different culture, different other things. The dietary issues is a massive area for improvement with, and it affects, it sounds, some of the things that people have eaten culturally have helped them live longer.
39:55 There's some project called the Blue Zones that looks at certain dietary guidelines with fruits, vegetables, legumes, lesser proteins. When you have the proteins, it's usually a leaner protein. Even a glass of white wine or red wine is part of these diets of these places around the world. of different cultures, different races, where people live in their hundreds. Too much fat, too much salt in that diet over the years probably has been part of the problem. And that's something that can change right now.
40:29 One of the things that you mentioned the hint about technology, that's why Lucia and I worked so hard to get that app in there that's our virtual gym that has a nutrition tool in it that helps someone say, here's five, ten, twenty, fifty diets that are culturally the sort of thing my grandmother would cook, but have the ingredients that might be better for the way we're doing it with a little less lard or a little less this or a little more olive oil instead of that lard, those kinds of things.
40:58 But the ability to track what you're able to eat and the diet and exercise, I know it sounds Too simple to be true, but there's a part of it. Part of your dad's longevity was he's probably working hard, didn't get that cardiac disease from excess fat in the system because he was working his butt off for years in that cotton field compared to my father who was sitting at a desk. He got the cardiac disease earlier on. and was too fat earlier on exercise. And Rob, you mentioned, um, you're right.
41:33 Obviously health starts from coming out of womb and into the family health picture. Right. And the, um, And an overweight sixth grader is twenty five times more likely to be an overweight adult. Right. So we've got to kind of curve those as early as possible. I was thinking more of Glenn's father passed away at age fifty eight, which is so young. Right. But he just didn't go to the doctor. He just didn't. like it, didn't want to, you know, stubborn in that way. And I know a lot of men that are like that.
42:13 But let's just even challenge the statement that you said earlier, Rob, about like it starts earlier than that in teens. I mean, we worked on the Ohio Medicaid project, right? Because Cuyahoga County, Cleveland had the highest percentage of infant mortality rates in the whole country. And that's something that they didn't want to be known for. And by the way, if you don't know what infant mortality rates, is it's really measured by a baby's ability to reach the first birthday. That's something that I learned in the project.
42:43 There's maternal mortality, but this infant mortality is really what is happening and why more babies are dying before their first birthday. But this project introduced to me the concept of this toxic stress syndrome. this embedded and kind of genetic disposition to stress and hypertension because of these centuries of living conditions and responsiveness in a flight or fight type of situation. So I bring this up just because it's not always fully external. Of course, that's a big part of it, right?
43:27 But sometimes even just coming to the table and And our researcher on this project was able to share with us that this toxic stress syndrome situation was not really a socioeconomic driven deal, that people of similar ages, regardless of socioeconomic, still had the presence of this, some type of propensity towards that. So I just bring that up just because even from womb, there's sometimes a disparity You know, I think I'll keep this up because this makes a, I'll make a slightly different point on it.
44:01 You know, the epigenetics and the toxic stress being passed down with is still a theoretical, it's a, many people believe, believe it exists in it, but it's still a theoretical thing that I think needs more genetics work to be proven out. But what does not need to be proven out is what Josh says is what show me the facts. And the very strong facts are that whether you're rich or poor, we're talking the, Black women that are doctors, lawyers, CEOs, compared to their white ones, it was a two to three times higher infant and maternal mortality on that first year than their white counterparts.
44:42 It wasn't economic. It wasn't like the whites are rich or the blacks are poor or something crazy. It was totally across all the economics, suggesting a bias, and how the healthcare system was dealing with people that looked different. All right. An implicit bias and unrecognizing bias or flagrant racism, depending on who that person was. Do I get the ultrasound or not? For Lucy, do I prescribe a primatine or an albuterol inhaler? Am I affected by whether she does or doesn't have an insurance or which insurance policy or whether she's someone I assume won't even use it because that type of person doesn't follow through and care about things.
45:33 Whatever bias is, I'm just hypothetically trying to make some crude examples, but bias is a big deal. And I think one of the things that can happen that I would encourage is any practitioner out there, especially ones that look like me, really look in the mirror And really think about, do I make any decisions based on certain assumptions? Have I assumed that this particular ethnic group comes to appointments late or misses appointments more often because they don't give a hoot about their health or the health of their kids?
46:07 Have I considered that that particular person maybe is having to take a bus and the bus was late or they couldn't rely on their ride because they're third versus the other one who has the second or third car in the family and has insurance and has gas in the damn tank? Am I making those kind of assumptions? So I'm encouraging people who are practitioners to consider their own bias, but I'm encouraging those that feel like they're experiencing bias. It's going to be hard to change the system, but get into a system where you're not experiencing that.
46:38 Find a different clinic. Medicine has become a damn business, unfortunately. And you are a customer. Demand what you feel is right. Demand. And go find a practitioner or a team practice, a hospital that treats you the way you'd like to have your own family treated. Vote with your health where you're spending your health care money. I think that as we transition into kind of our last segment here in the last nine minutes, You know, I bring this slide back up, Josh, and let's talk June, right? And the Force for Health has all different types of tools.
47:20 For example, you can just go to the app store right now. You can search three sixty Force for Health Academy and download the app for free and have access online and on an app and perhaps, you know, this whole project is actually hosted over at the Forrester House. So if you wanted to learn a little bit more about implicit bias, if you wanted to get involved, like I said, advancedthedream.com, come join, connect and have access. There are, if you want, you could upgrade to an ambassador, which is all of a dollar per week or per month, right?
48:02 A year, not forty nine dollars a month, forty nine dollars a year. And you'd have access as a three sixty ambassador to all the three sixty models. You get a personalized health risk assessment. We're really encouraging everybody to take June, July and August to stop, assess, make some goals. and work towards those goals. And we've got all the tools that you would need to learn it, live it, and share it. So I just bring up some of those. Josh, last comment on men's health. What is your advice to your peers?
48:42 In order to have a more, I guess you could say, successful life, you have to be healthy. And you have to actually take care of your own health before you could actually go and help someone else. My standpoint, and not only for this month, but for the entire year, is to make sure that we can continue to educate our people the importance of staying healthy. I have to do it myself. It's not an easy task. So, you know, just by sitting up talking or having Dr. Rob to talk or Lucy just to talk and say that it's important that we do this.
49:18 Oh, yeah, that's all well and good. It's nice to hear. But the question of day is, is that going to make a person move, learn or earn or serve? It's where it boils down to it. We have to do these smaller things to get our people to understand and appreciate how important their health is. And that's what we're continuing to do, not only this month, but for the rest of the entire year. And if everybody, I mean, like I said, this is our sixteenth show, and we typically will have a featured speaker, and you've brought so many incredible folks, and they all, since they kind of sort of have that alpha blood, that's just your first circle of, you know, incredible men that you've brought to the table.
50:04 You know, there's this concept of just you know, sacrificial service, the service, service, service. But the reminder is, is that you can't serve if you're not healthy, right? So it's got to be that, like, you know, own your health first. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to loosely try my very best to get my dad to come on and sit down and let you all hear from someone who was actually, now he has both of those inhalers. Of course, one, I call it a little emergency one. If you get to a point where you can't breathe at all, you have to take that one.
50:37 But every day, twice a day, he has to take that pump in order to keep his breath. So just to hear from someone live who's dealing with that on a daily basis and also has the experience to know that, hey, it costs. And how do you deal with that cost if you're not able to afford it? You know, what I wanted to do is actually share some incredible insight that we got from our guests last show about what Juneteenth is because I learned so much about it. But rather than kind of squeeze it in right here at the end, I think that we'll go ahead and push that to next week so that we can kind of take a deeper dive.
51:24 We've got Sickle Self. World Sequel Sale Day coming up on June. We've got Juneteenth happening here in Tucson. There's a fabulous Juneteenth festival that's out at our big Keno Sports Park. Again, we are kicking off the Summer Reality Health Games. And so you can join for free and And ambassadors will have the opportunity to also participate in what we call a fifty four mile reflection. Right. A fifty four mile virtual virtual march. Remembering Selma and here in June. Right. We'll have a health here.
52:08 This is Tucson health and wealth at the Dunbar region. Sickle cell advancing together Juneteenth. And so there's lots of things happening and I'm just challenging everybody to just take a breath. You know, everyone thinks the year is January through December. If you're a family with kids, you know, the year is really September through June. If you think about it, then you got kind of July and August. Now, Tucson, we start school actually August first, second, third, which is crazy to me. But we are on the other side of Memorial Day, which means from Memorial Day to Labor Day is summertime.
52:50 That's fun, but that's also some flexibility to be selfish with your time and really reflect, stop and assess. Our basic free members has a free health assessment. When you join, there's a little getting started deal. So kind of no excuses. I know that... I have been saying this, but I haven't been living it. I've been learning, but I haven't been living it. And I'm going to admit that, but this summer we're going to do it. So I challenge anybody to join our network and to join our health challenges.
53:30 And we are excited, Rob, to kick off our Fit Fridays once again for our summer learning series, where we'll be talking about, um, Different teams. Josh is, of course, leading all of the Advance the Dream chapters. I love, and I'll mention this, I love that one of your You Do Matter STEAM team graduates is going into her second year at Villanova. And she will be starting an actual student club at Villanova, Force for Health Student Club. Now, whether or not that converts into an advance the dream power team or whether it kind of stays more broad at Force for Health.
54:11 But we are looking for collegiate ambassadors who want to start Force for Health teams, advance the dream teams at the university. So go to the force for health dot com. sign up for a free membership and then reach out to Rob and I if you're interested in getting started. Let's go around the room and final thoughts, Rob. Well, my most important thing that I'm thinking about with this is listening to Josh and remembering how well he does with his programs, You Do Matter and Advance the Dream to train teenagers to be a force for health with their technology literacy now complemented by the Force for Health and whatever other literacy they have about healthcare, that they can be a force for themselves, but also for their senior parents, grandparents, or neighbors.
55:06 Using technology to teach, technology to make appointments, technology to help someone access their patient portal, technology to facilitate a telemedicine call. And Josh, Kara Robinson, your student, which now I am working with as an intern at Villanova, is helping us build digital health literacy courses for these kids. So I want, my dream would be any teenager, young adult, older adult, to look into this program with Josh and what he's doing at Advance the Dream this summer and really make a difference that way.
55:43 Josh, how did you think today's conversation went? Do you have any lingering thoughts and final words? I think that it was good. I have a conversation today as it relates to, of course, men's health. I look forward to prolonging this discussion because it is really a concern in the African-American population as it relates to the health and the well-being of members of these families. A lot of situations where a person has gone way too soon could be avoided. And I thank you and Dr. Rob for having the vision to put forth and lead a charge to actually help to educate individuals on how important it is for them to remain healthy and become healthy and stay healthy.
56:34 Because it's truly a, as I would call it, obstacle in our community as it relates to the information needed and necessary to prolong our lives. And I guess my final thoughts are I'm excited to lean into the summer. I'm excited to kind of have this refreshed, you know, um, vigor to actually start living what I'm saying, um, and to be an example for my family. And, um, I just encourage everybody out there to lean in and know your resources. I mean, if it's not the force for health, go find it in your community because, um, Rob, you and I were talking about a, uh, you know, readiness, a transition to health type of deal.
57:21 And it was like a set of twenty questions that you either knew you didn't know but wanted to learn or you knew. And they were simple things like know your family history. Do you know your medications? Do you know how to access your doctor's office? It was just like these general things that were turning into a little badge because we figured this is something that everybody should be able to score an eighty percent or more on. Right. So it's really let's stop and assess. If you want, use our tools over at the Forest for Health and get a nice picture on what you'd like to work on this summer.
58:03 And then pick a goal. Daily walking, five fruits. My five fruits and vegetable challenge has been very interesting. You know, can I get five cups of something throughout the rest of the day? I've been very, very short on that. And I've been using my app. So, you know, those are my things is really leaning into family. Making sure that your family is buddy up with a family member. That's my deal. Buddy up with a family member. And when you hear something, say something. That's what I'm always going to continue to remind people.
58:37 My advance the dream pledge is when I hear something, I'm going to say something. Like when I saw that thirty percent more graphic. on African-Americans with asthma. I'm going to take a picture. We're going to talk about it, right? And that's interesting, Rob, that you were critical of NBC News and how they just threw that up there. I'm going to take something further from what you said. When you see something, not just say something, if you see a problem, do something about it. So I would challenge you all, as this law goes into effect at the end of the month, if someone's not able to afford their inhaler Help them go to their pharmacist, go to their doctor, call their one eight hundred on their insurance or Medicaid or whatever card they have and be able to get that damn inhaler.
59:26 Help someone with your skills, just even phone call and logistical skills, take advantage of that. The disparity issues of someone not knowing that and not realizing that doesn't apply to me. I'm too rich for that. My husband's a doctor, whatever. Help someone take advantage of that. That's a wonderful bipartisan initiative that pushed that through. So thank our lawmakers and the subcommittees and all those that worked on those types of things to help us. Now let's work on the price of insulin next and let's work on some other things too.
1:00:01 If you see something, do something. Awesome. So on that note, thank you for joining us. We will be here next week talking about Juneteenth. We'll be talking about sickle cell and we're going to continue to challenge you to lean in and be a force for health for yourself and to advance the dream. So from Tucson, Arizona, I bid you adieu. Thanks so much, Rob and Josh, for joining us. And we will see you next week. Thank you.
Transcript is auto-generated from the broadcast captions and lightly cleaned; timestamps jump to the moment on YouTube.
Advance the Dream · Episode Recap ·