Public Health Me

This episode focuses on the plight that black physicians' face in America, from lack of diversity and inclusion to microagressions. This episode features special guest, Dr. Fenwa Famakinwa Milhouse, a female African American, fellowship-trained and board certified urologist. Dr. Milhouse practices at Dupage Medical Group (the largest private practice group in the Illinois) as the female pelvic floor surgeon. Originally born in Nigeria, her family immigrated to the US when she was a young child. She grew up in Texas and ended up at the University of Texas at Houston for medical school. She is passionate about introducing young people to urology and mentoring underrepresented minorities pursuing medicine. Dr. Milhouse provides her own personal experiences as a black female urologist in a male dominated specialty and her crusade to break barriers in medicine for future black physicians. 

This episode dives into women's health and public health initiatives from a community mobilizing standpoint. This episode features special guest, Natrina Kennedy, who is a Community Mobilizer and Social Entrepreneur from the Southside of Chicago with a love for the community and a passion for breaking systemic barriers. She founded the Women’s Health Initiative, Inc. (WHI) in 2017, a 501(c)3 non profit organization dedicated to building a society where all women and young girls are empowered and live healthy lives free of racial, social, or economic barriers. She is an outcome-driven individual aspiring to advance public health.  She has spent nearly 10 years in community work and utilizes her voice to challenge inequities that will empower individuals by improving individual health, creating healthier families, and ultimately a more unified society. Natrina shares her point of view from a community mobilizing standpoint, having dwelled and spent the entirety of her career in an urban city, which provides her with a unique point of view as to how to effect change in urban and disproportionately affected communities of color. 

This episode is the first episode in the series of Women's Empowerment episodes during the month of March, in which we celebrate Women's History Month. This episode focuses on tools for empowering women from a mental, physical, and spiritual perspective. Featuring special guest, Dr. Eva Beaulieu, MD an internal medicine hospitalist in the Atlanta, GA area who immigrated from Haiti at age of 15 equipped with a thirst and undeterred passion, which led her to pursue medicine. Dr. Eva is businesswoman, mother, author, physician, and leader who believes that if she can she can achieve her dreams, every woman can. In this episode she shares a snapshot of her personal journey to success and how she is able to empower herself and others, while balancing a dynamic life. 

This episode explores health equity in disadvantaged communities of color from the lens of budding and experienced public health professionals.   Special guests include: Ruth Thomas, a Government Operations Consultant and Candace Sibley, a Behavior Scientist and Evaluator with combined years of experience in the field of public health these ladies provide their take on health equity from a systems thinking and systems change perspective. 

This episode focuses on tools for empowering teens and young adults to develop self esteem, bettering their own mental health, and most of all loving themselves first. This episode features special guest, Rakinya Henson, MPH whose passion lies in assisting individuals in discovering their best self and inspiring them to live it out. Rankinya was concerned by the lack of programs dedicated to the empowerment of young ladies and thus founded P.R.E.T.T.Y Ladies (Preparing Responsible, Educated, Talented, Tenacious Young Ladies). The vision for this girls’ mentoring program is to create an environment that will assist and educate participants in making sound decisions that will lead them into becoming responsible adults. This program is designed with concepts to specifically support young ladies during their formative years with the desire that as a result of this voyage, the participants will become better equipped to make sound decisions. 

This episode focuses on health disparities in minority communities as well as potential tools to ameliorate these issues in low-income and minority communities. This episode features LaKia Thomas, MPH, an environmental Health Specialist who works with Jefferson county as a COVID-19 Outbreak Investigator assisting facilities regulated by Jefferson County Public Health, with implementing mitigation and prevention strategies. LaKia possesses over 15 years of experience working to empower and provide communities with resources to build self-sufficiency. This episode also features Sandra Najuna, MPH who works as a Senior Project Manager-Quality Contracts for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Ryan White contracts for all 25 locations across the United States. Sandra works alongside health centers on several quality improvement projects to improve rates of viral load suppression and cervical cancer screening. Sandra is also concurrently working towards obtaining her DrPH from Johns Hopkins University. 

This episode episode explores COVID-19 and debunking myths associated with the pandemic. This episode features Dr. Stacy De-Lin, MD a gynecology and family planning specialist who worked through the height of the COVID pandemic in the spring of 2020 in New York City, and one of her roles as Associate Medical Director at her clinic during that time was to follow all of the emerging evidence on COVID-19 in order to keep staff and patients safe. Since then, she has continued to stay up-to-date on the evidence and works to combat online misinformation on both COVID and the vaccine through her Instagram account, @stacydelin_md

This episode dives into maternal health and mortality in communities of color alongside special guest Chinemenma Amonu, MPH, CHES the founder of Mama's Maternity Home, LLC. The conversation focuses on potential solutions to quell high maternal mortality rates in the United States as it relates to communities of color. 

This episode explores implicit biases in healthcare and steps that can taken to eliminate biases, while creating better outcomes in communities of color. This episode features Dr. Jennifer Chung, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician who also specializes in spine and musculoskeletal medicine in the Greater Cincinnati area.  Dr. Chung discusses how her own awareness of implicit bias has altered the way she sees medicine and the world around her. 

This episode focuses on the introduction to Amber Johnson, MPH, founder of the Public Health Me podcast on January 12, 2021. This episode tells her story from her perspective to help her audience see that success has many avenues and often alternate paths can reveal the greatest blessings.