SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All Center for Health Equity Transformation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Join us in this special episode featuring the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (CHEC) Fellows Program 2023 cohort. This program brings undergrad and postbac students together in preparation for careers in social, behavioral, and biomedical research and in health care.

They share with us their experiences with the CHEC Fellows program including highlights and “aha” moments and how it has enriched their career paths.

Interested in joining ChicagoCHEC program in 2024?
- Applications open in November apply here:
https://chicagochec.org/fellows/

Contact us at:
skinnytreespodcast@gmail.com
skinnytreespodcast.com
@SkinnyTrees312 on Twitter

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity.

In this episode we spoke with CHET Director/Founder -- Dr. Melissa Simon. Melissa A. Simon, MD, MPH is the George H. Gardner Professor of Clinical Gynecology, Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is also the Founder and Director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation and the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative. She serves as the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement. She is an expert in implementation science, women’s health across the lifespan, minority health, community engagement and health equity.

She has been recognized with numerous awards for her substantial contribution to excellence in health equity scholarship, women’s health and mentorship, including her recent election to the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians. She has received the Presidential Award in Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentorship and is a Presidential Leadership Scholar. She is a former member of the US Preventive Services Task Force and serves on the NIH Office of Research in Women’s Health Advisory Committee.

For more information on maternal health projects, please visit:
- https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/chet/
- https://well-mama.org/

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity.

In this episode we spoke with Kelly Davis, MPA who is co-founder and Chief Equity Officer at KINSHIFT. KINSHIFT supports healthcare and public health transformation through evidence-based practices rooted in actionable principles of trauma-and-resilience-informed care and anti-racism. She's also the former Chief of Birth Equity Innovation at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), which creates solutions to optimize Black maternal and infant health.

Prior to NBEC, Ms. Davis led a series of innovative initiatives for the NYC Health Department (DOHMH). During her tenure at DOHMH, Ms. Davis led healthy eating and active living initiatives and served as one of the founding members of the Center for Health Equity, where she conceptualized the Family Wellness Suites, community respite and healing spaces for parents and children. Ms. Davis also spearheaded planning, implementation and oversight of several special initiatives, including the City’s first HIV public awareness campaign totally focused on women and a maternal morbidity and mortality initiative supporting 14 maternity hospitals in a long-term institutional transformation process that addresses structural racism, bias, resilience, and trauma-informed care.

RESOURCES:
- Physician-patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns. (2020)
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/35/21194.full.pdf

- Black Maternal Health Research Re-Envisioned: Best Practices for the Conduct of Research With, For, and By Black Mamas. https://harvardlpr.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/BMMA-Research-Working-Group.pdf

- The Cycle to Respectful Care: A Qualitative Approach to the Creation of an Actionable Framework to Address Maternal Outcome Disparities. (2021)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4933/htm

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity.

In this episode we spoke with Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Schubert who is President and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), where she leads the organization’s efforts to promote research on sex as a biological variable and improve women’s health through science, policy and education.

RESOURCES:
- https://www.familyequality.org/resources/preparing-for-pregnancy-as-a-non-binary-person/
- https://www.acog.org/education-and-events/creog/curriculum-resources/additional-curricular-resources/transgender-health-care
- https://swhr.org/

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity.

In this episode we spoke with Dr. Carolyn Sufrin who is a medical anthropologist and obstetrician/gynecologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She worked as a physician at the San Francisco jail from 2007-2013, where she started an onsite women's health specialty clinic. Her work is dedicated to research, advocacy, and care for incarcerated women, especially at the intersection of health care and criminal justice system reform.

Dr. Sufrin currently leads Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People (ARRWIP). ARRWIP is a group of researchers examining the intersections of reproductive justice and the criminal legal system out of Johns Hopkins University. ARRWIP started with the Pregnancy in Prison Statistics (PIPS) Project: the first-ever systematic study of pregnancy outcomes from carceral institutions in the U.S.

She is also author of the book JailCare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars – published in 2017 that focuses on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them. Her book describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care.

RESOURCES:
•https://www.jailcare.org/

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity.

In this episode we spoke with Janel Hughes-Jones, a bilingual breastfeeding Peer Counselor (PC), with more than 18 years of experience working with many organizations to facilitate breastfeeding communities in public health, hospital, educational, business and faith based settings in the State of Illinois.

She was the co-chair of JABA (Joliet Alliance of Breastfeeding Advocates)from 2004 - 2019. She is the President and Founder of Milk of the Heart Inc. a 501-c3 breastfeeding education, support and advocacy non-profit, where she raises funds for equity projects like hiring a translator to translate the “Illinois Breastfeeding Law Card” into Spanish and receiving donations to build incentive bags for women to take an infant feeding class.

She is a proud member of BELA, Birth Equity Leadership Academy, (Health Connect One) and has been a long time speaker at the Illinois’ Baby Expo, Northwestern University, and APHA’s Annual Meeting/Expo.

She was a co-author to scientist, Lauren Keenan-Devlin’s and Dr. Ann Borders’ recently published work in the Journal of Perinatology, April of 2021 entitled, “Clinically integrated breastfeeding peer counseling and breastfeeding outcomes.”

RESOURCES:
• Firstdroplets.com
• Womenhealth.gov
• Wicbreastfeeding.fns.usda.gov
• Magicalhour.org (9 stages of attachment)
• Breastfeedingresourcesontario.ca (positioning and latching-scroll
down to how to engage the chin first before latching)
• svucko@vuckolaw.com a women’s workplace rights firm