Transforming a Nation | Pharmacy Podcast Network

CDC Proclaims Racism Public Health Crisis, Calls for Health Equity

A new mandate out of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has asserted systemic racism as a public health crisis, a step the agency says will build the foundation to improve health equity.

The statement from CDC’s director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, acknowledged the racial health disparities seen in traditionally marginalized communities, including the Black, Latinx, and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Walensky said in the written statement. “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

Guests: 

Yele Aluko, MD, MBA

Chief Medical Officer

EY Americas

Dr. Yele Aluko is the chief medical officer in EY Americas Business Consulting Health Sector. He is a proven physician executive and leader, with 25 years of clinical and administrative health system experience prior to joining Ernst & Young LLP in 2016. He advises health system clients on strategy, business and clinical operations providing C-Suite executives insight on health industry megatrends and enterprise growth opportunities. He is a member of the EY COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team where he advises EY leadership on return-to-workplace strategies that prioritize the health and safety of its employees. As a member of the EY COVID-19 Enterprise Resiliency Team, he provides client insight on return-to-work strategies and solutions designed to preserve workforce well-being and safety during and in the aftermath of COVID-19. He is a leader in the development of the EY Point of View on Health Equity and has designed solutions for clients seeking competencies relevant to elimination of health disparities and achieving health equity.

As chief medical officer, he is a leader within EY physician enterprise operations and clinical integration practice where he assists health care system clients in physician engagement and alignment, provider accountability for value delivery, and defining and maximizing physician enterprise value for health care systems. He has supported organizations as they transition to integrated service line models of care delivery and recognizes the medical group’s impact on driving clinical quality initiatives.

He is a former structural heart cardiologist and senior vice president of heart and vascular services at a 15-hospital integrated regional health care system in the southeast USA. His responsibilities included governance of an enterprise-wide clinical strategy overseeing cardiovascular service line vision, growth, clinical integration, physician alignment and standardization of clinical, operational and business processes.

He obtained his doctor of medicine from the University College Hospital, Nigeria. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and in invasive and interventional cardiology at Cornell University and University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He is board certified by the Canadian Board of Internal Medicine and is triple-board certified in internal medicine, cardiology and interventional cardiology by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Gil Bashe

Managing Partner, Global Health

Finn Partners

Gil Bashe’s healthcare career spans the patient, physician, provider, payer and policy sectors. At the center of Gil’s life and work is the belief that communication is part of the care. As managing partner of Finn Partners Global Health, he champions the talent and ideas of the nation’s “Healthcare Agency of the Year” (Holmes Report).

Prior to joining Finn Partners, Gil was Executive Vice President and Health Practice Head at Makovsky and Hill & Knowlton. During his tenure, he took on some of the health sector’s most vexing reimbursement and access challenges. As a result, he was named by PRNews as one of the nation’s “Top Crisis Communicators” and inducted into its Hall of Fame.

Gil is passionate about public health in everything he does. He serves on the NHLBI GENTAC Working Group examining how genetics impacts cardiovascular disease and the health/tech advisory committee for mHealth Israel. He is immediate past chair of the American Heart Association Northeast Founder’s Affiliate.

Gil is also an advisory board member of the Prix Galien Foundation, referred to as the Nobel Prize for health innovation. Gil is a past national board member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and American Academy of Pain Medicine Foundation. Always ready to share knowledge, Gil is a columnist for PM360 magazine, speaker on patient advocacy and health communications and co-editor of the book Branding Health Services: Defining Yourself in the Marketplace.

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Translational Health Disparities Research in a Data-Rich World

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356140/

People experiencing health disparities, researchers, program and policy staff, and leaders addressing health policies present a spectrum of opinion about the value of big data approaches. These differing opinions range from lack of trust, to acceptance, to enthusiastic endorsement. Researchers must be cognizant and respectful of these differences because building trust is a key aspect of building a broad coalition, which is needed for successful generalizability. Moreover, researchers have the responsibility to ensure their research does not cause harm to either individuals or communities.

How Can Big Data Help to Address Health Disparities?

https://datascience.cancer.gov/news-events/blog/how-can-big-data-help-address-health-disparities

Our country is in the midst of two crises. One is the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. The other has more historic underpinnings but is now finally receiving greater recognition—the issue of racial inequality.

Today’s Guest:

Dr. Claire Exaus earned a B. S. Pharmacy degree in 1997 from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. Got licensed in MA and worked at Cambridge Hospital for two months then moved to FL in June of that year and took a position of staff pharmacist at a very busy CVS pharmacy then called Eckerd Drugs. Dr. Claire Exaus quickly attracted the attention of the district manager as customers called and wrote the district office of her outstanding customer service. Dr. Claire got promoted to pharmacist trainer in May 1998 and spent a month in Richmond, Virginia assisting with Rite Aid conversion to Eckerd Drugs after acquisition.

In January 2001, Dr. Claire enrolled back in school into an MBA program but quickly realized that it wasn’t for her. Her goal was to be a clinical pharmacist and instead obtained her PharmD.

Four years later in January 2005, Dr. Claire was accepted into the PharmD program at Nova Southeastern University with a concentration in Managed Care and found her footing. In May 2010, Dr. Claire graduated with Honors with her PharmD while maintaining a full-time job and caring for her new baby.

In 2007, Claire left retail pharmacy and took a position at a federally-funded HIV clinic where she provided care and education to newly diagnosed HIV patients and assisted them in getting HIV medications through patient-assisted medication programs funded by drug manufacturers. Two years later, the clinic closed due to lack of funding.

In March 2009, Claire entered the world of hospital pharmacy at Baptist Hospital in Miami, FL. It was there at that institution that her clinical formation took shape and there Dr. Claire got to fulfill her goals of honing in her clinical acumen. Always ready to learn, she was assigned to different floors and was mentored by the more experienced pharmacists. She rotated through med-surg, pediatric, pediatric oncology, surgery, emergency medicine, critical care and oncology.

She was recognized for improving SCIP score rate after 3 months on the surgery floor. She demonstrated her leadership by leading various projects to improve medication safety and employee wellness with organizing fundraising for the annual heart walk. In 2011, Dr. Claire was introduced to pharmacy informatics by participating in a project to roll out new dispensing cabinets to a new surgery wing.

The rollout was an eye opener to a new world of potentials. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Claire took a position at Palmetto Hospital as a Clinical Informatics Pharmacist as the hospital was preparing to transition from Meditech system to Cerner.

Dr. Claire volunteered to train as a super user to train others to use the system. Dr. Claire trained physicians, nurses and pharmacy staff. Learning this new skill opened the door to go back to school and obtain a degree in Healthcare Informatics.

In August 2015, Dr. Claire left Florida and moved to Massachusetts and took the position of Lead Clinical Pharmacist at Healthcare Associates. She developed a pharmacist-led prior authorization program.

In June 2019, Dr. Claire transferred to the Cancer Center where she held the title of Clinical Coordinator Oncology System Management. Currently, Dr. Claire is pursuing a Masters in Regulatory Affairs with a concentration in Health Economic Outcomes Research.

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Our guests today are Michelle Sherman, RPh, who is a member of the Pharmacy Podcast Network & has a podcast called the "Conscious Pharmacist Podcast" & Jay Holloway PharmD, returning for a second time to the Pharmacy Podcat to discuss: 

References, from Pharmacy Today:

https://www.pharmacytoday.org/article/S1042-0991(20)30876-8/fulltext

Pharmacists Focused on LGBTQ Communities, the latest chapter of the "Transforming a Nation" podcast series. 

Pharmacists need to acquire foundational knowledge about key concepts and terminologies relevant to the LGBTQ population.

To provide care consistent with cultural competence and humility, pharmacists must also be aware of the diversity between and within different segments of the LGBTQ community, and the intersectionality of multiple identities that shape a person’s life experiences. Furthermore, it is important to note that while various identities such as gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity intersect, one is not predictive of the other. For example, a person’s gender identity does not determine their sexual orientation and the biological sex designated at birth does not define their gender identity.11Sexual orientation is a person’s emotional, romantic, sexual attraction, or non-attraction to other people and is composed of three separate dimensions: behavior, identity, and desire. Some people may engage in same-sex sexual behavior but not identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Similarly, a person may be sexually, romantically, or emotionally attracted to members of the same sex and choose not to be sexually active with same-sex partners. For research purposes, the terms “men who have sex with men” (MSM) and “women who have sex with women” (WSW) are often used to describe a person’s sexual behavior regardless of their identity.

Sex refers to a set of biological attributes primarily related to physical and physiological features. The phrase “sex assigned at birth” (SAAB) or “designated sex at birth” (DSAB) is used to describe a person’s biological sex, most often, but not exclusively, based on the external appearance of genitalia at birth. Gender is a socially constructed concept used to characterize the behaviors, actions, and qualities of women and men or girls and boys. The critical flaw of an exclusive binary paradigm is that it does not account for the inherent diversity of human gender. A more expansive conceptualization of gender recognizes that each person possesses a wide range of characteristics that may or may not be consistent with the gender binary, represent a combination of male and female, or fall somewhere in between the two.

Gender identity is a person’s inner sense of their gender. For some people, their gender identity may not be congruent with the one typically expected based on their SAAB/DSAB. They may describe themselves in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, transgender, male, female, gender fluid/genderqueer, nonbinary, agender, or as another gender. Decisions to change gender expression and/or physical appearance to be more consistent with their gender identity through medical (e.g., hormone replacement therapy), nonmedical (e.g., voice therapy, choosing an affirming name, etc.), and/or surgical options (e.g. gender affirmation/confirmation surgery) is wholly determined by the individual. 

The National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center  

https://www.lgbtqiahealtheducation.org/ 

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Today’s ‘Transforming a Nation’ Podcast episode 5 in the series, focuses on ending the inexcusable Sexual Harassment in the Profession of Pharmacy. Our host of this episode is Dr. Rebecca Smith @RebeccaESmith on Twitter, who started bringing massive awareness to this reoccurring issue. 

See tweet here: 

https://twitter.com/rebeccaraesmith/status/1308161152988270592?s=20

Rebecca's guests are always testifying about their experiences with Sexual Harassment in pharmacy, including Brooke Barlow, PharmD who's a PGY2 Critical Care Pharmacy Resident at University of Kentucky, Ashley Barlow PharmD PGY2 Oncology Pharmacy Resident at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Jackie Johnston, PharmD a Surgical Trauma Neuro ICU PharmD & Clinical Assistant Professor PGY-1 RPD. 

References:

Addressing Sexual and Gender Harassment in Pharmacy Education to Improve Provider Wellness and Patient Care

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7223926/

Frequency and severity of sexual harassment in pharmacy practice in Ohio

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10533349/

This episode is sponsored by: UltiGuard Safe Pack is the only pen needle product that comes with an all-in-one sharps container. Learn more about why UltiGuard Safe Pack is the best choice for your patients and your pharmacy.

Learn more UltiGuard Safe Pack https://www.ulticare.com/ultiguard-safe-pack/podcast 

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Today’s ‘Transforming a Nation’ Podcast episode 4 in the series, focuses on inexcusable Sexual Harassment in the Profession of Pharmacy with Brittany Bissell, PharmD is a Medical ICU Clinical Pharmacist and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky & Mojdeh Heavner PharmD is Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice & Science at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.

The tweet from Dr. Rebecca Smith @RebeccaESmith on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/rebeccaraesmith/status/1308161152988270592?s=20

References:

Addressing Sexual and Gender Harassment in Pharmacy Education to Improve Provider Wellness and Patient Care

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7223926/

Frequency and severity of sexual harassment in pharmacy practice in Ohio

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10533349/

Sponsored by UltiGuard Safe Pack

The UltiGuard Safe Pack is the only pen needle product that comes with an all-in-one sharps container. Learn more about why UltiGuard Safe Pack is the best choice for your patients and your pharmacy.

Learn more UltiGuard Safe Pack

https://www.ulticare.com/ultiguard-safe-pack/podcast 

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Dr. Richard Harris M.D., Pharm.D, MBA joins the 'Transforming the Nation' series to discuss the controversial topic of sharing your faith, being spiritual, and understanding the balance between science, medicine, and God. Dr. Harris is the founder of "Great Health & Wellness" and has his own podcast, here: https://www.theghwellness.com/ 

The technological advances of the past century tended to change the focus of medicine from a caring, service oriented model to a technological, cure-oriented model. Technology has led to phenomenal advances in medicine and has given us the ability to prolong life. However, in the past few decades physicians have attempted to balance their care by reclaiming medicine's more spiritual roots, recognizing that until modern times spirituality was often linked with health care. Spiritual or compassionate care involves serving the whole person—the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. Such service is inherently a spiritual activity. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, who has developed Commonweal retreats for people with cancer, described it well:

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.

Serving patients may involve spending time with them, holding their hands, and talking about what is important to them. Patients value these experiences with their physicians. In this article, I discuss elements of compassionate care, review some research on the role of spirituality in health care, highlight advantages of understanding patients' spirituality, explain ways to practice spiritual care, and summarize some national efforts to incorporate spirituality into medicine.

References: 

The role of spirituality in health care

Christina M. Puchalski, MD, MS

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1305900/#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20spirituality%20can%20be,of%20delivery%20of%20compassionate%20care 

Sponsored by UltiGuard Safe Pack

The UltiGuard Safe Pack is the only pen needle product that comes with an all-in-one sharps container. Learn more about why UltiGuard Safe Pack is the best choice for your patients and your pharmacy.

Learn more UltiGuard Safe Pack

https://www.ulticare.com/ultiguard-safe-pack/podcast 

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Part 2: Transforming a Nation 

A “health disparity” refers to a higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality experienced by one group relative to another. A “health care disparity” typically refers to differences between groups in health insurance coverage, access to and use of care, and quality of care.

Healthcare disparities continue to exist despite increased awareness of and attention to their existence. The causes of healthcare disparities are, for many patients and patient populations, multifaceted and highly complex. The program will focus on the healthcare disparities that exist for patients with diabetes and address how pharmacists and other pharmacy personnel can address healthcare disparities.

Have you experienced Bias (race, gender or age) in the workplace  

How to increase representation of people of color in healthcare (pharmacist- 66%white, 22% Asian, 5.2% Black)

How does this help decrease disparities?

The pharmacist's role in reducing health disparities

Heath and racial disparities and how they relate to the pharmacy world?

What can we do about systemic racism in healthcare?

Social determinants of health and how they contribute to disparities

How do we eliminate barriers to improve equity in healthcare?

Pharmacy Desserts and how this affects health disparities  

Action that we can take from the obvious racial disparities that have been highlighted through COVID-19?

Guests:

Dr. Jamie Hardy, PharmD.

Board Certified Pharmacist

Dr. Frank North, PharmD.

Consultant Pharmacist at The Rowe Network

Dr. Stephanie Young Moss, PharmD, MS

Director, Health Economics and Outcomes Research Partnerships

References:

Understanding Health Disparities in Pharmacy

Kristen Coppock, MA, Managing Editor

https://www.pharmacytimes.com/conferences/aacp-2020/understanding-health-disparities-in-pharmacy

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The Pharmacy Podcast Network is committed to playing a small part in 'Transforming a Nation' through our commitment to the advocacy for pharmacist & the critical role they lead in healthcare. This new podcast series will dive deep into racism, racial disparities in healthcare, and what we can do together to change this nation.

We invite all pharmacists & healthcare professionals to participate in this series published through the PPN reaching 80,000+ listeners per month & ranked in the top 20 podcasts in business along with Becker's Healthcare Podcast, Wall Street Journal's Podcast, & the Marketplace Podcast

CHAPTER ONE: FACING RACISM - 07/27/2020

Sponsored by: 100X2030https://jhaymeetynan.com/100x2030/

Special Guests Jhaymee Tynan & William Amarquaye, PharmD

Ms Tynan: https://jhaymeetynan.com/about/

GhanaBoy PharmD: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChO5d7BqAkAyawKN6eVtr1w

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GhanaboyPharmd  

 

References: 

Racism and discrimination in health care: Providers and patients

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/racism-discrimination-health-care-providers-patients-2017011611015 

Racism in care leads to health disparities, doctors and other experts say as they push for change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/racism-in-care-leads-to-health-disparities-doctors-and-other-experts-say-as-they-push-for-change/2020/07/10/a1a1e40a-bb9e-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html

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