Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to conversations with all of us, the show that explores the evolving world of health research and the role we can have in creating a healthier future for generations to come. I'm your host, Cheryl McLeod, community engagement and communications manager for all of us New England at Boston Medical center. Today, we're taking you on a journey into the heart of health research. We're discussing the importance of meaningful community engagement, where communities are empowered to share their voices. Joining me are Dr. Kareem Watson and Destiny Harden.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Welcome.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: At all of us. We believe that participants are partners. Building a participant community that reflects the diversity of the country requires meaningful engagement. Meaningful community engagement isn't just a buzword. When we include community members in research and other health programs, it helps build a strong connection and trust amongst us. Engaging with the community helps ensure that the progress we make will benefit everyone. But how do we do this? Here to discuss how researchers can collaborate with community organizations and advocates to build more equitable health outcomes are Dr. Kareem Watson and Destiny Harden. Dr. Kareem Watson is the chief engagement officer of the National Institutes of Health's all of us research program. Kareem leads the all of us research program's efforts to foster relationships with participants, communities, researchers and providers across the United States to help build one of the largest, most diverse health databases of its kind to study health and illness. Destiny Harden is a clinical research coordinator and a pre doctoral fellow in the clinical, Translational and Epidemiology unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is also a member of Zeta Vi Beta sorority, incorporated in her chapter Delta Omicron Zeta of Boston. She utilizes her talents to provide necessary programming for her chapter to serve the community in her role as Zhope coordinator. So let's dive in.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Kareem and Bethany, thank you so much for doing this today. The first question is for you, Kareem. How would you define meaningful community engagement, and how has community engagement changed over, let's say, the past 50 years?
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Thank you so much for that question, Cheryl. When I think about how to define meaningful community engagement, I think first that we have to think about how we include the community in everything we do in terms of the research process. When we think about community engagement, it must be a way that the community's voice informs, and not just informs it in a way that is checking off a box or we often use this term, having a seat at the table. It's more than having a seat at table because you can be at the table and be quiet. We want you to have a voice at the table. We want you to determine the menu, even of the conversation station that will take place at that table. And we also think we have a benchmark for community engagement as well that says that true and meaningful community engagement. There will be a demonstrable example that things are different because the community is there. You won't see business as usual when you do. True community engagement when I think about the way community engagement has changed over the years, many of us that are in the community engagement space now talk about the science of community engagement. There are some evidence based practices, some tried and true measures, and ways that we know how we can engage the community in a meaningful way, to guide research, to guide advances in science. And when I think about how it's changed over the years, I really think about that we're now using innovative frameworks. I think about the fact that community leaders are now shoulder to shoulder with academic partners in driving research forward. I think about the way that I've engaged with african american men in my own research, engaging them as citizen scientists. On the south side of Chicago, where I had barbers actually talking to their clients about colorectal cancer screening, I had barbers talking to their clients about mental health. That was community engagement. And even thinking about the American Public Health association now just elected their first community member as the president of APHA, driving public health agenda forward. So I'm really excited about the direction that community engagement is going.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: That's wonderful. Thank you so much. Destiny, how would you define meaningful community engagement?
[00:04:22] Speaker D: I think meaningful community engagement can be defined as you getting out in the community and just interacting at the basis level, meeting people where they are. A lot of times when we are trying to do community outreach and work, we sometimes expect people to come to us when they're not able to. People don't have those resources that we sometimes think they have. They can't get there through transportation, through work obligations, just family and life problems. So sometimes when you just want to do community work and just get people and meet them where they're at, you have to go into those communities, pull up where they are, bring the resources to them just so they can have those opportunities to still be a part of things that they want to improve in their lives.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: That's very true. So I'll start with you, Kuiman. And if you could answer to destiny, how could you tell if community engagement is successful and this is a two parter, actually, do community see community benefits?
[00:05:16] Speaker C: As scientists, I think we can bring some of the same measurements that we do in other areas of science. We can bring those measurements to community engagement evaluation, whether it's process evaluation or outcome evaluation, that's important to community engagement, too. For example, we recently, in February of 2023, we actually went to Macon County, Alabama, which is the home of Tuskegee University. Many of us have heard about the United States public health Service study of untreated syphilis in the african american man. Now, some people unknowingly call that the Tuskegee experiment. When we went to Tuskegee, they actually don't want you to call it Tuskegee experiment, because that puts the onus on Tuskegee. And Tuskegee did not ask for that study. Tuskegee was a part of that, in many ways, unwillingly. Right? And so by calling that study the United States Public Health Service study of untreated syphilis in the african american male, that tells you who funded the study and who was included in the study and what the purpose of the study was. So when we went to Macon county to host a community listening session on the importance of being trustworthy in research, not just building trust, but on the importance of the government, the NIH being trustworthy, a trustworthy partner in research, we wanted to know, what was the impact of that engagement opportunity? How did people. We actually. One of the things you can do, you can actually ask the community, was this impactful? Did our discussion make a difference in how you think about research, the value of research, the importance of research access and awareness to it? And overwhelmingly, about 10% of the 300 plus attendees actually completed our response. And the majority of them said that, yes, that discussion mattered. Yes, that discussion had impact. And even they said they want to see more discussions like that. And another thing that happened is that we made sure that the conversation continued. So we left resources in that community for community based organizations that are still today having conversations about what it means to truly conduct community engaged research in places, and for research partners to become more trustworthy. So there's ways you can measure that. And a lot of that happens through old school listening, asking simple questions. Did this matter? Is what we're saying important to you? What we describe as value, do you see as valuable? And those can be immediate income. Now, there's some long term things that have to happen because we do tribal engagement in our office here as well. And one of the things we say in a tribal engagement world is that research must move at the speed of trust. It doesn't always have to move at the speed that the researcher wants that research to move. And engagement can take a long time, because it may take a long time to build a relationship.
[00:07:59] Speaker D: Yes, I agree with a lot of that. Cream has said when you think about community engagement, making sure it's successful, making sure that you include people in the project all throughout, not only just at the beginning, but also in the results that come at the end. Because most of the time they can give you feedback that you didn't even think about or you wasn't sure. Like, this is their point of view. It's a different perspective that allows for them to see that you're actually aware of what you're bringing to their community and also to engage them in it further along. Because when you do that and you volume in the process, you're building that relationship where they can feel like they trust you to make sure that anything they need, they can continue to reach out and do that work with you together. I feel like sometimes we don't allow people to help in the process. We build everything for them, thinking like we know what's best. But if you build them into the process, you can see where there's flaws in the perspectives that we have versus the perspectives that they have and how we engage with them. So by doing that, we can offer a better way of engaging in a collaborative way instead of one partnership way where we're just telling people things instead of not involving them in the process together.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Tell me what strategies that you use when you're collaborating with community members, especially those who've been underrepresented in health research, to ensure that their input and feedback are being integrated into your work. Kareem, could we start with you?
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Sure. One of the strategies we use is inclusion, and as destiny said, throughout all aspects of it. So there's models that you can use in community engaged research. One of the models is community based participatory research, CBPR. When you think about CBPR, there's actually 13 principles within CBPR that can guide how you are doing authentic, bi directional engagement with community. Because there's a difference between the word outreach and engagement. Outreach. Sometimes we might be sitting in our ivory towers, our academic offices, and we reach out. That's one way. And sometimes outreach is needed. Right? But engagement is bi directional. There must be a way that you can do this. And so when you think about CBPR, for example, it even says that the research question that you're asking must be prioritized and developed or co developed with the community. I was doing some work in an african american church on the south side of Chicago. Came to this church, they knew I was a cancer disparities researcher. It actually was my church, and I was the co director of the health ministry at the time. And they brought me in. They knew we're going to talk about some cancer ideas, but I did a survey about what the church wanted me to talk about in cancer. Again, they know that I do cancer disparities research, but what that church wanted me to talk about was nutrition. They said, kareem, what the survey showed is nutrition. I came back to them, I said, well, thank you all. I'm going to go find someone else to do this, because I'm not a nutritionist. They said, no, you're smart. You know how to do this work. We want you. And I said, no, y'all, no, I got to go get someone else. And they said, no, you can get someone to work alongside you. But we don't know them. We know you. We trust you. You're a member here. You've been here with us. And so I did that. The community reminded me that I had way more skills than I give myself credit for. And we went out and we adapted a curriculum that we used in a signing school that was used in a signing school environment called the largest losing team competition, where the church took walks together, had a team competition on who lost the most weight. We did healthy cooking demonstrations, very similar to what Zetas have done in their food demonstration, to talk about how to cook healthy foods within a faith based setting. We brought in fitness instructors to gospel music, and it worked. And the program is still going on today. So what I wanted to do as a researcher was totally different than what the community wanted to do, and I had to align destiny.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: What strategies do you use?
[00:11:48] Speaker D: So, in my role as the Zhelp coordinator, which is Zeta's, helping other people excel in my chapter, it's all about planning programs that fit women, youth, men, and seniors in our community. So, first of all, in order to collaborate and also make sure we're doing stuff that the community needs, we like to say, you need to do a needs assessment. If you're wanting to interact with certain organizations, community groups, or a senior citizens home, you ask those individuals what they would like to do, what they want to see. So then you can also provide those types of events and community engagement that they would like, depending on research. So we have had groups currently. Now they want to do, like in our senior citizen home that we support. They want to do stuff more with yoga because they want to do stuff that's more active for them because they don't get those type of things. Usually when people come to them, they do certain events that, yes, it's what they wanted, but it doesn't give them a wide range of doing things that goes back to their health. So now they want to see programs that fit with, like walking and fitness or yoga initiatives or eating healthy. So when you reach out and also just ask for what they want to see, you get those opinions, and then you take that back and you try to develop something that will relate more back to what they want to do in their community groups. So I think a lot of it goes back to just being collaborative and open to have that feedback, regardless of the initiatives that you might have to technically put on for your organization that fits the model of what your national organization is doing, but also making sure to go past that and do something of another version that still fits the needs of the community but still relates back to what your national organization is about.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: So true. It's so true. Kareem, would you please give us a little bit of information about the types of organizations that all of us is working with nationally?
[00:13:38] Speaker C: It's such an honor to be the chief engagement officer for the all of us research program because it gives me an opportunity to engage with organizations nationally. And if you look at our list, we call it our engagement ecosystem. Within our engagement ecosystem, we have what's called national community engagement partners that are actually awardees, funded partners funded by the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, to assist us in engaging populations who've been historically underrepresented in biomedical research. And when you look at our list of our 17 national community engagement partners, even from those 17 partners, they have other partnerships within those 17, which gives us a network of actually over 115 community partners nationally. So, for example, one of our national partners is Pixis organization. Pixis as an organization have been amazing partners, and they developed a network called CPGI Partners, Community Partner, and Gateway Initiative Partners. And from one of those partners is the Amazing Black Greek Letter Consortium. So when you think about the history of trust and representation to what the black greek letter organizations have been to the african american community, we're scientists, we're doctors, we're lawyers, you name it, across fields of representation, and you have those fields represented within the Black Greek Letter consortium. So it was such an honor for us to be able to have Pixis do a partnership with the Black Greek Letter consortium, because that allows us to directly engage with Zeta Phi Beta, for example, as one of our partners, Asian Health Coalition is another one of our partners, our national partners, Stanford University's pride net allows us to engage sexual and gender minorities. The American association of Health and Disability when you think about the fact that about one in four Americans are probably living with a disability, how yet they are so underengaged in research. Having American association health and disability at the table with us to ensure equity and inclusion of populations, living with disability has been a game changer for us. And I could go on and on that list, even thinking about Baylor College of Medicine and helping us to engage an RTI, helping us engage historically black colleges and universities and other minority serving institutions. And so if you think about who we have as partners, you will see that these partnerships represent groups that have been historically underengaged. We love our New England consortium and what you all do as a site that allows people to come and enroll at that New England consortium at the sites, whether it be in Boston or other areas. But we also have opportunities, as Destiny said, to think about how do we take the all of us research program to the community? We do that through a mobile engagement asset, which is actually a mobile home, a journey van that goes in community that may not have access to enrollment. When that enrollment is done in collaboration with National alliance for Hispanic Health, a trusted organization, we have tripled our participation of people who get access and awareness and engagement through that mobile engagement asset. So that's just some example of some of our national partners that we have. Even University of Utah is one of our partners. Engaging high school teachers I wish I knew about precision medicine when I was in high know. I wish I knew about know because I grew up in a community where I didn't see a lot of scientists that looked like me, even though the fact that I had a mother who died when I was at an early age from breast cancer, and then my father had diabetes and then ultimately ended up dying from complications of diabetes and colon cancer while I'm in undergrad at the University of Michigan. All these things informed my career and what I wanted to do in service. So it's so important to have groups, community based organizations represent those communities and populations who have been historically underrepresented. Research.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Absolutely fabulous. Wow. And there will be a list of all the engagement partners on the podcast website. But the diversity of the groups that you're engaging with, the tribal councils and things like that, how do you ensure cultural, community and sensitivity when working with diverse communities? Because you're not an expert in all of these things.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: That's the beauty of having a team show. You're right. I'm not an expert in all things, but I am an expert in community engagement and community engagement as a science. There's a concept of called cultural congruence. Cultural congruence is making sure that the messenger matters right. So when we're doing tribal engagement, our tribal engagement team reflects the diversity of the tribal community, of indigenous communities. When you think about when we're doing outreach and awareness with communities, it's so important for our engagement team to be reflective of the populations that we're engaging. And it's so important for us to build on the expertise and the capacity of people who know tribal engagement, who've been doing that work, who even bring that lived experience to the table. So we have one of our tribal engagement members. She brings her lived experience of being a public health nurse, being in the military in service, but also growing up in the reservation, on tribal land and bringing that experience to what that means and really holding us accountable about tribal sovereignty and what tribal sovereignty really means. And working with organizations, that's another thing, is that you have to be willing to partner. You can't do this work in a bubble and in a silo. You have to be willing to reach out and partner with people and provide resources to those partners to do that work with you in an equitable way.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Destiny, please feel free to add on to Kareem's comments, but I also have a question for you. In your work as a clinical research coordinator, you've helped conduct focus groups to understand how to better engage with diverse populations. When you're recruiting participants in a health research program, what have you learned and what advice do you have for all of us?
[00:19:21] Speaker D: And Kareem, going off of what Kareema just said, I think it's important when we are engaging with people, they do have those shared aspects of either identity, race, nationalities, because sometimes it is more comfortable when people can share their shared experience or life experiences, and it lets them feel like, oh, these people understand my background, these people understand where I'm coming from or what they might have had similar situations in their healthcare experience. So having those opportunities to give people testimonials about your life or them giving you testimonials, it gives them a way to feel more relaxed and able to feel like they're a part of something, that we have the same life experiences. And when I've seen that also in focus groups that I worked in, a lot of people feel like they are more comfortable when they see that a doctor or people in research look like them or like they are catering to them, because sometimes they feel left out of research when there's not opportunities for African Americans or Hispanics and Latinos individuals to be a part of research because they don't see people coming to them or also they just don't feel like they're being engaged well enough. They also don't see that there's people that look like them heading these focus groups or situation like that. So I've been on focus groups recently when people be surprised because they've only talked to me on the phone or messaged me through email, they're like, oh, I didn't know. That's like how you're going to look when you're on the Zoom call. So it makes them feel more comfortable because now they're like, oh, I feel like you understand where I was coming from when we had those pre work conversations about what this focus group was going to be about how you should be able to share your experiences of how you were treated in research and treated in the healthcare system. So it gives them that opportunity to feel heard and feel listened to and feel seen a lot than what they don't usually see when they're engaging in healthcare research in institutions around Massachusetts.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: I'll address this to you both. How hard is it to engage diverse researchers? I mean, destiny. Do you feel like a rare breed out there?
[00:21:22] Speaker D: So I feel like sometimes I am just also knowing my background and where I came up. I came up from a rural town in North Carolina. I really didn't know much even about the current role I have. It wasn't something I heard about when I was growing up. It wasn't a path I initially went to, but then moving to Boston, I gained contacts, people that got me more informed into research, that made me aware of this type of opportunity. Since I've been in my roles, I've only worked under women, but now I work under a black, african american physician, PI. And also just seeing her in that space and how she leads her, how she leads her team has a team that's all women and of different races, that it makes me feel like I'm seeing people like me doing the type of work that I hope that other people can see that they can be involved in. They can be in these roles, but also they have people that are advocating for them behind the scenes to make sure they're a part of this research and being listened to and heard. So when I think about it, now that I'm in this space, I'm given the opportunity to use my voice, use also just my shared experiences of where I've came from to where I am now. To show that you can be where you want to be, where you want to be in research, be a part of research, and just make sure that people feel like they are comfortable to give their thoughts about anything they're in. Because back then, even my family, now, they're not people that were big on health care, but now me being in my role, they're more comfortable sometimes wanting to participate and do things in research and health care, because I'm like, oh, you should do this. It's not bad. Making sure they understand that you can be a part of it, too. It's not something that is excluding you. You can be included even if you don't feel like it's near you. If you reach out or have somebody that can advocate for you to find those resources near you, you can be a part of that change that you want to see in these healthcare institutions and systems.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Fabulous. Kareem, you were nodding your head yes.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: I'm not in my head. First of all, I so appreciate hearing that Destiny's journey started as a clinical research coordinator. And similar story. Destiny. I didn't know about clinical research. I started off as a clinical research coordinator. I actually started off as a community organizer and turned my work from a community because my dad was a community know. He was a community organizer working on civil housing rights, not even the healthcare. But we're from the rural south and Arkansas. And so it was community organizing is what I grew up doing. And so I brought that skill. When I found out about clinical research, one of the first things I found out, I had a similar question, destiny. I was like, why did I not know that this field existed? And when I found out it existed, I was intentional about mentoring. As I rose, I bring someone up with me. I believe that it's all of our responsibility to bring people alongside us as we travel this journey. And the key word is intentionality. Sure. You asked me, is it hard to identify diverse talent in the sciences? I would say, I don't think it's hard. I don't think we're unicorns. We exist. You just have to be intentional about going where we exist. So when we wanted to make sure that we are engaging new scientists that reflect the diversity of the populations whose data we collecting, we have over 46% of our participants in the all of us research program are diverse in terms of racial and ethnic background. That's unprecedented in genomic science. So it's also, we want to make it unprecedented as well in finding diverse researchers to do this work. So where did we go? We went to historically black college and universities to engage with those HBCUs. HBCUs still train the majority of our African American physicians. When you think about undergraduate institutions, Xavier University is still in the top ten in producing premed and pre pharmacy graduates. So what better place to go than an HBCU to engage those partners? What better place to go than tribal colleges and tribal universities to make sure that there's indigenous researchers leading the research questions on indigenous people? What better place to have than the Dutch Sigma Theta sorority draft 22 and having researchers from that community and other sororities that can say, we want to engage women in science and engineering and the steam and stem careers? So is it difficult? I say it's not. I think you just have to be intentional and put the resources behind it. And it's all of our responsibility to. Like Destiny said, she's fortunate enough to be with a mentor and a PI principal investigator that has a lab with other women representing. Even as a man, it's my responsibility to make sure that there is diversity, equity, inclusion in women, in leadership. And I want my peers to do the same thing. If they see a project out there and it's being led by nondiverse researchers, I want to ask them, where is the african american scholar? Where is the hispanic and latino scholar? Where is the asian american voice on this? Where is the person living with a disability on this? Where's the sexual gender minority? Where's the lived experience of the rural community? You have to be intentional with diversity, equity and inclusion. I think we should add diversity, equity, inclusion and intentionality to that eye breach.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Love it. Love it. So what role does health research play in the pursuit of a healthier, more equitable community? We all start with you.
[00:26:40] Speaker C: When I think about where in the 80s, when my mother passed transition from her journey for breast cancer, what we knew about breast cancer treatment, when I think about that versus where we are today with precision medicine and breast cancer, that all happened through health research advances. A woman that I can now send my sisters to get genetic counseling to then have genetic testing to see if, as a family, are we at risk for certain genes like BRCA and other mutations. And that's all through research. When I think about advances in cervical cancer screening, we now are able to connect. Cervical cancer is one of the few cancers that we can connect to a virus, hpv. And knowing that more than 90% of cervical cancers are due to the hpv virus, we can then talk about the research that needs to happen around promoting the hpv vaccine. But even bigger than that, making sure that the hpv vaccine targets the variants within hpv that are more likely to not be cleared by people that can go on into lead to cancer. These are all advances that have happened. And even when I think about lung cancer, precision medicine, long gone are the days of a one size fits all approach to chemotherapy. You can now do molecular testing of tumors, where you take the cells of that tumor and find out what chemotherapy will this tumor respond best to, and then give that patient that chemotherapy that we know will work best for them based on research that didn't exist when my mother was going through her breast cancer treatment. And that gives me hope. But now we need to make sure that those advances are happening, but that those advances. You can get those advances when you get your care at an academic, medical ivy league or when you get your care at a community, fairly qualified health center.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I always say, when I talk to people, I say, you know what? With precision medicine, maybe they will find a cure for cancer one day, maybe not. But as a breast cancer survivor, I would like to go through treatment and not lose my hair, because it'll be tailored to me. I mean, a little, tiny little goal, which is why representation really matters in research destiny. Could you tell us what role you as a community advocate plays in the pursuit of a healthier, more equitable community?
[00:28:53] Speaker D: If I'm speaking from my role as being Zeta and part of the Zeta five beta sorority Incorporated organization, this year, our new initiatives and focus are focused on the extraordinary power of SHE, which is the acronym for Social, Health and Economic justice, and just bringing opportunity for Zetas worldwide. And to be intentional about how we promote social action, health justice, and economic justice to women at home and abroad through our collaborations and national partnerships. And one of our main national partnerships is through March of Dimes, march of babies. And that is dealing with how we fight for the health of all moms and babies. Specifically, we're also looking at how the black maternity crisis is in the United States and how women are being affected, and how we can also help improve those health crisis by making sure people are aware of what is going on. Access to resources based in their state and all across the United States, making sure we have those existing fundraising stakeholder collaborations, and then also initiating new associations of how we connect with people at our chapter levels, our national levels, throughout the entire United States. So giving people access to different organizations, agencies, new programs and initiatives that we can do together throughout our sorority and throughout the march of Dimes, that makes people aware of things that we are trying to do to help be an advocate in this national maternity health crisis. So when we do that, in my role in my chapter, I'm making sure that we're promoting anything that has to do with our national partnerships with marcherdimes, but also making sure that we're doing direct programming in our state, utilizing our chapter members that are working in these career fields and research in healthcare, as university professors that are working in these spaces dealing with black maternal health, to make sure that we have those voices and have those advocates that are also being a face to things that you might not normally see. Like when they're in their roles day to day, people in the community might not know them, but when we're utilizing them and showcasing them through our social media, through our websites, it gives local community members access to see like, hey, this person is in this organization, but also is in this research role, and they're doing this in our community, in Boston and throughout the state of Massachusetts to advocate for these issues that we see that's happening in our smaller local communities that we might not think is being addressed properly or heard about. So it's really important that we utilize those community members, chapter members, that we have people that are all connected in a way that can help to advocate for the services that we want to help and improve in our local communities.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: What do you hope people take away from this conversation today?
[00:31:47] Speaker D: I hope that people take away that one. You can be an advocate, I feel like, in any type of way or shape or form, it doesn't always have to be through in person advocacy and being right there on the ground. You could be a social media advocate. By sharing and relating flyers and posters and information that informs and educates people based on what's already being out there, you have the opportunity to help in your community no matter what. Even if you're just sharing your lived experiences in health care or in what has happened to you, because it makes you seem more relatable. It makes people understand that these situations are only happening to them, but it's happening to a lot of people. But when you share your voice, share your experiences, it makes people more comfortable to understand, like, hey, I can do this as well. I've been through this. Maybe I can go and enact some change on some type of level that makes it better for the next person that comes along. So just making sure that people understand that you can be in these spaces, be a voice, collaborate and advocate for your community. No matter what your career is, your level of education is, no matter your age, whatever you have to give to someone or give to a community. Just utilize your voice, because at the end of the day, that will be something that makes people remember you and stand out forever.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Brava. Brava Green what do you want people to take away from this conversation today? This has been great, by the way. What would you like people to I.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: Hope that people take away from this conversation that the message and the messenger matter. A lot of what destiny and I talked about today is that the message has to align with the community's priorities. And I hope people hear that through listening, through partnerships, through authentic relationship building, you can better understand the priorities of the community and meshes that appropriately. And I also hope they take away that the messenger matters. We've talked about the importance of making sure the research team looks like the people that you're engaging, that we're engaging populations who've been historically underengaged in research and also the importance of research. We make research this big r word sometime that can be scary, that doesn't always acknowledge the historical, justified medical mistrust that our communities have. Mistrust is not always unjustified. In most cases, that mistrust comes from historical trauma and historical harms that have happened to us. So I hope people take away the fact that we must message the importance of being included in research differently and that we must really message the value that comes out of research and how the scientific advances that come out of research and how they have moved the needle in addressing health disparities in underserved communities.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to conversations with all of us. I'm your host, Cheryl McLeod, and thank you to our guests, Dr. Kareem Watson and Destiny Hardin. If you like this episode and you want to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, hit the subscribe button, or leave a rating and review. That's all for this episode, folks. See you next time.
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[00:36:39] Speaker D: You, our channel.
