Walé Elegbede, M.B.A., PMP President, Rochester NAACP and Director, Mayo Clinic RISE for Youth
Faizza Omar RISE Up Youth Scholar
Safa Sheikhibraihim RISE Up Youth Scholar

We are all born with potential, but not all of us are given the opportunity to realize it. This is particularly true of young people of color. The RISE for Youth program seeks to bridge the gap, with a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Mayo Clinic and the NAACP (Rochester), designed to help underrepresented students find power against those odds. Featuring RISE for Youth program leader Walé Elegbede, and two rising star students, Host Lee Hawkins leads this candid conversation on the impact of representation on our youth’s success.

“The beauty about this is, we're not going to decide; they’re going to decide what they want to do. So, if they want to work in the healthcare field, that's perfectly fine. We are going to support them. But if you want to, for example, become a restaurant owner or a small business, we're going to support you along that journey.”

— Walé Elegbede

"When you think about social determinants of health, education plays a critical role."

— Walé Elegbede

"I would say my biggest highlight is when I first started to put it on my institution, I noticed I could count all the black students on one hand. So in contrast to this program, the seeing, the diversity and people of color and having the same shared lived experiences with them, I feel seen and heard and empowered to grow as an individual just because there's a sense of...there's a sense of belonging."

— Faizza Omar

“Now I feel like I can truly be myself and thrive.”

—Safa Sheikhibraihim

Fadi Adel, M.D. Clinician-Investigator Fellow, Mayo Clinic  
Jennifer Koehler Research Technologist, Mayo Clinic  
Patrick Decker-Tonnesen Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Advisor, Mayo Clinic

Uncertainty over which pronouns to use with gender-diverse patients can spark anxiety for medical professionals and new acquaintances alike. But that anxiety is no match for the trauma felt by transgender, intersex, and other gender-diverse patients who deal with being misgendered every day. Host Lee Hawkins is joined by a panel of Mayo Clinic experts to unpack the medical importance of pronouns and why best practices in equity, inclusion, and diversity cannot be honored without using them properly.

“To be honest, if I didn't have chronic health conditions where I do have to go to the doctor's office very often, I would probably avoid it, because no one likes to be misgendered. No one likes to feel that anxiety. I really don't like feeling that anxiety, especially since now that I'm farther along in doing things that do affect my gender, like wearing clothing that I feel affirms my gender, like surgery, my haircut in ways that affirm my gender. And then still being misgendered in a doctor's office really negates all that validation that I do have, even in my queer community, even within myself.”

--Jennifer Koehler

“My medical chart has my pronouns.  I have only been correctly gendered twice, where my pronouns are actually used in the medical setting. And this includes my doctor’s notes because as a patient, I do read my doctor's notes, and it usually feels like I'm not generally being seen.”

--Jennifer Koehler

“And when I was growing up, I was very much pushed towards being my assigned gender at birth. And so, for me, it was just feeling this deep incongruence with that and also with my body and how I was being perceived by other people.”

--Jennifer Koehler

Maia Hightower, M.D., M.B.A., MPH Chief Digital Technology officer of the University of Chicago Medicine

Ivor Horn, M.D. MPH Director, Health Equity & Social Determinants of Health, Google 

Artificial Intelligence is full of technological and economic promise, but just like its creators, AI isn’t free from subconscious discrimination. As AI becomes more commonplace in the medical field, questions of whether racial bias will be mitigated or expanded in the future are omnipresent. The solution will depend on how much effort is put into making AI more equitable. Join Lee Hawkins, Drs. Maia Hightower and Ivor Horne as they delve into this new frontier.

“Algorithmic bias is part of our history. It is part of the history of medicine, part of the history of the United States, and part of the history of our world, for many reasons.”

--Dr. Maia Hightower

“The real-world bias is in the real-world data.”

--Dr. Maia Hightower

“I literally went into medicine to transform the way people behave in, the way physicians behave in health care.”

— Ivor Horn, M.D. MPH

“And when I think about technology, it's all about, ‘how am I giving people more information, more access,’ so that when they walk through the doors of a health care system, like, they have the tools to say, ‘I know this, I understand this, this is my question for you, and this is what I expect of this health care system for me and for my family.’”

— Ivor Horn, M.D. MPH

“We know that data shows that more diverse teams have better outcomes. They're more, businesses are more profitable when they have more diverse teams sitting around the table. And it's really important not just to have the team but also give the team space to speak and confidence to have their voice and bring and be their full selves when they come to the room.”

— Ivor Horn, M.D. MPH

Eddie Greene, M.D. Associate Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic 
Lewis Roberts, M.B., Ch.B., Ph.D. Peter and Frances Georgeson Professor in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Mayo Clinic
Corey Shy, M.D. Instructor in Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis 

Only about three percent of the nation’s doctors are Black men, which lives in stark contrast to the overall Black population. In this episode, Lee Hawkins gathers a panel of Black men to examine this disparity and the unquestionable ripple effect of representation—or lack thereof. Listen as three accomplished Black men in white coats dissect the hurdles to medical school and representation in healthcare—from opportunity and mentorship to the power of seeing a doctor in Jordans.

“What we really need to do is expand that pool. And how we expand that pool is starting much earlier. So, getting to kids in elementary school, middle school."

— Corey Shy, M.D.

"The big challenge is that (medical school) costs so much money. It’s an investment that's going to take a lot of time to see results from.”

—Corey Shy, M.D.

Felicity Enders, Ph.D.  Professor of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic 

As a biostatistician, Dr. Felicity Enders spends much of her time analyzing medical research and crunching the numbers we read about in newspapers and medical journals. In this interview, Dr. Enders reveals how this behind-the-scenes work is actually the frontline in addressing racism in healthcare. Join Lee Hawkins as he learns about the new data-collection approaches being used to track patient health over time and how they reveal the devastating “accelerated aging” effects of racism and chronic stress.

“We're getting better and better data all the time. We're really seeing improved measurement. We have amazing imaging. But while we have more clarity of the problem, we're not seeing that in terms of solutions for health equity. And we are seeing really tremendous differences in health, primarily by race, but also by other factors.”

—Felicity Enders, Ph.D.

“We have a lot of data in the now, but we're not looking back over someone's lifetime to see what may be impacting what's happening in their health today. And that's really important because we see in research that people who have a lot of stress over their lifetime can have accelerated biological aging, meaning that their bodies at the cellular level are aging faster. And that leads to chronic health diseases that really can impact lives and experiences and bring about premature death. And it's very problematic.”

—Felicity Enders, Ph.D.

“If you have a physician who has the time, they're trying to get a medical history, but that may not include the history of things that have happened outside of the person's medical experiences that could impact their stress over their lifetime.”

--Felicity Enders, Ph.D.

Sharonne Hayes, M.D., Cardiologist and Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Mayo Clinic 

Michele Halyard, M.D., Vice Dean Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic Facebook @cbbaz 

As the healthcare industry works to address disparities in clinical trial participation, some Mayo Clinic doctors are trying new approaches. In this episode, Drs. Sharonne Hayes and Michele Halyard detail the deliberate exclusion of women from these studies and the dramatic effects on health outcomes for women, from decades of misdiagnosis of heart attacks and heart disease to delayed detection of breast cancer. Encouraging more researchers to diversify their patient pool is not enough; the most successful efforts around gender equity in research and treatment have relied upon community partnerships with groups like Coalition of Blacks Against Breast Cancer. 

“The number one reason that women do not participate in clinical trials is they were never asked.” 

—Sharonne Hayes, M.D.

Anjali Bhagra, M.D. Professor of Medicine and Medical Director, Office of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, Mayo Clinic 
Barbara Jordan Administrator, Office of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, Mayo Clinic

Reflect. Inspire. Strengthen. Empower. RISE cofounders Dr. Anjali Bhagra and Barbara Jordan share how these four simple words can evolve equity and inclusion in every industry, starting with healthcare. “My constant challenge to myself,” said Bhagra, “was that I did not want to develop a program that was more like a checkbox of complete this training and complete that training.” Rather than creating seminars, she crafted a concept that stresses human development and could be scaled for long-term, wide-reaching results.

“What excites me is the energy that we're going to rally, the enthusiasm that we are going to build, and a whole very momentous activation that we're going to build with RISE.”

--Anjali Bhagra, M.D.

“Equity, Diversity and Inclusion has become such an important part of the work we do. We believe that to provide the best care to every patient, every day -- which is our mission -- we must have it embedded across everything we do.”

--Barbara Jordan, M.S.

“It’s our mission to provide the best patient care to every patient, not just white patients, not just men, not just folks from Minnesota, but every patient every day.”

--Barbara Jordan, M.S.

"Education has been at the forefront of the movement.”

--Barbara Jordan, M.S.

Folakemi Odedina, Ph.D.  Professor & Deputy Director, Center for Health Equity & Community Engagement, Mayo Clinic

Alyx Porter, M.D.  Consultant, Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Fiscal Support for URM Medical Students and Anatomy of a Successful Pathway Program  Twitter @PorterAlyx and @ElevateMedInc

In a health care industry where Black people are statistically more likely to develop and die from many forms of cancers compared to whites, Drs. Folakemi Odedina and Alyx Porter are working daily on initiatives to close the gaps. In this wide-ranging discussion about Black representation in cancer care, the two talk to RISE for Equity Host Lee Hawkins about strategies for mobilizing communities and fostering workforce diversity to improve outcomes.

“I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. It wasn't as diverse then as it is now. The Cosby Show, and then later, A Different World, was what I looked forward to, to see a family that sort of resembled mine. That was my first visualization of the fact that a Black person could be a doctor. Seeing that fictional character of Dr. Heath Cliff Huxtable, I started to imagine what a life could be like if I had the starring role as a physician.”

--Alyx Porter, M.D.

“We all should seek an ideal where the workforce reflects the population cared for. There are times when I've walked into a patient room and have been met with tears because the person has waited to see me or wanted to see me, someone who looks like them, who understands their disease and how impactful that was for them.”

--Alyx Porter, M.D.

“We know about how people are perceived when they go into a health care system, how they are treated. I owe it to them as an educator, a Black woman. I've faced it and I've experienced it right in the healthcare system. And it's just unfortunate that sometimes I have to throw my doctor title around to be able to get what I need.”

— Folakemi Odedina, Ph.D.

“Prostate cancer is one of those few chronic conditions that being a Black man is actually listed as a risk factor regardless of where you are.”

— Folakemi Odedina, Ph.D.

“'You can't be what you can't see’ is a quote that I've used time and time again from Marian Wright Edelman. And I believe that it's true. While there are many of us that are firsts in all kinds of ways, and we've had to plot our own paths.”

--Alyx Porter, M.D.

"60% of medical students now are coming from families in the top 20th percentile of the wealth index. 3% of medical students now are coming from families from the lowest 20th percentile. So what does that mean? If you're wealthy, you can go to medical school and then you can continue to you can treat people from the environment that you're accustomed to because of the culture that you were brought up in. That's not to say that people who come from wealthy backgrounds aren't willing to serve in underserved areas, but we deserve to provide a workforce that looks like the population."

--Alyx Porter, M.D.

"To be successful, you have to be comfortable with being a little uncomfortable."

--Alyx Porter, M.D.

"What's really powerful that I'm just realizing, I thought it in the past, but Black history is being made every day, every single day in different sectors. We see people, men and women, who are making a difference based on their contribution and deciding that they're going to pursue all of the work that needs to be done inside of organizations and making a difference."

—Lee Hawkins