Tim: We have some themes running throughout Season 4 - we’ve had pods with mentors, colleagues, and pods with public health leaders, including Dr. Robert Strang and public health leaders in Minnesota. On today’s pod, we wanted to do some reflection about what is coming out of the conversations with public health leaders. What’s standing out?

Tues: I’m so glad that we’ve done something during this time of COVID about public health. Our podcast could feel out of touch if we did not acknowledge it. I’m pleased that we found these leaders who are willing to talk to us about COVID and their experience of leading through it. It’s one of the major systemic issues of our time. We talked with leaders in Canada and the US, and we will have an International person on in Season 5, but one of the things that … struck me in the interviews is how different, country-to-country, health care is conceived. For example, I have had no interaction with the public health system since my children were born. In the US, you have to have private insurance here to get health care. Public health is not in any way health care. Huge amounts of Americans have no access to health care in a way that is significantly different than its happening in other countries. Even when we talk about public health, the countries have such different experiences of access to health care around what is happening with COVID.

Tim: I think of health care as a basic right. The other thing that really struck me was how suddenly these public health leaders were political. How they moved from evidence-based to the political narrative… and how that changes the game entirely.

Tues: Many, many public health folks have been thrust into the political limelight in a way that they haven’t before. Folks are moving into leadership in ways that they haven’t had too. It is another skill level and it may not be what people want to do. Here in the US, it is such a stressful job that people are just leaving. It’s hard to keep the folks who are doing good work in the work because it has become so political. I think we will be seeing reverberations through the medical community for years and years and years. The leaders that we talked with also had different levels of facility with respect to social determinants of health, health disparities, equity, race. For me, this is a sea change. It’s such a difference than if we did this three years ago. There was not hesitation in talking about them. I felt excited after both this interviews. We can’t turn away - these are the issues on the table.

Tim: The interesting thing that you’ve taken in your approach to equity and which we’ve begun developing and growing in together is that it says “we” but it also says that there has to be something solid in the middle to make the work worthwhile. It sounds to me like COVID has done that within some of these public health systems. It has put that stake in the ground in the middle that has forced collaboration across difference that otherwise would not have taken place. It’s almost as if holes have been punched in the silos.

Tues: People in public health have been forced to up their level of effectiveness. There is so much more that they have to get done in a day to impact change. Why aren’t we shouting these stories from the rooftops? They did it in 2 years!!! People are living the future now.

Tim: With that in mind, what have we learned over the last 2 years? Technology, designing for online spaces… entertainment has had to become part of what we do - the way we intro music, how attentive we’ve become to the images we use, when people arrive they arrive into an entertaining space. I feel like I’ve proved to myself that intimacy can be achieved through online communication.

Tues: During COVID, many of us got a backing off of work - a space to look at our own patterns. I was able to look at my pattern of overwork in a different way. And now we’re looking at the way to structure this into The Outside. There is also something about how much we need to be with people - the need to co-regulate, via attachment theory. I feel like we are now moving toward interdependence and co-regulation in a really important way.

People we would love to have on Season 5 - folks, if you have connections - help us out!!
- Tim: Richard Olivier and Richard Beard, author of “Sad Little Men.”
- Tues: Adebayo (Bayo) Akomalofe & Martha Beck

Poem: “Lines for Winter” by Mark Strand

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself