Conversations on Health Care Federal News Network | Hubbard Radio

Join us for a unique conversation with an innovative nonprofit leader and the grantmaker who’s helping support her efforts. Morgan Dixon is the co-founder and CEO of GirlTREK, which she calls a “life-saving sisterhood.” Their campaign seeks to heal intergenerational trauma, fight systemic racism, and transform Black lives by organizing women walking teams. While participants walk, they also mobilize community members to support advocacy efforts and lead a Civil Rights-inspired health movement.

Black children ages 5 to 12 are twice as likely to die by suicide as their white counterparts, and the rate of suicides among Black teens is rising faster than any other racial/ethnic group.
Those statistics are alarming to most people, but they’re not surprising to Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) Chief Resident and Child Psychiatry Fellow Dr. Amanda J. Calhoun.
“Experiences of anti-Black racism affect kids before they are even born,” says Dr. Calhoun.
The stress of anti-Black racism on Black mothers, including experiencing inferior care by health care providers, has been linked to low birthweight babies, putting Black infants at greater risk for developing depression and other mental health disorders.
In addition, racist beliefs start to become ingrained in children as young as four years old, which means that Black children start to experience racism from their peers and teachers as early as preschool.
“It’s not the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s the preschool-to-prison pipeline,” says Calhoun. Black children are more likely to be suspended from or arrested in school than their peers.
When they seek help, Black children are the most likely to be physically restrained in emergency departments. And they are more likely to be diagnosed with disruptive mood disorders than white children with comparable symptomatology.
“You have people who are traumatized, who are being traumatized, by people who are supposed to help them,” says Dr. Tichianaa Armah, Chief Psychiatry Officer and Vice President of Behavioral Health at Community Health Center, Inc.
“Of course, they are going to have poor mental health outcomes,” says Dr. Calhoun.
Dr. Armah and Dr. Calhoun tell “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that they have seen the effects of this early trauma up close in their work and are exploring what measures can be taken to protect young Black lives.
Dr. Calhoun is leading a Black Youth Mental Health Clinical Case Conference Series at Yale University where experts will weigh in on complex clinical cases involving Black youth presented by YCSC trainees, please learn more here: https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/black-youth-mental-health-series-yale/
But she is doing things a bit differently. “In a typical case conference, we talk about the problematic behavior of patients,” says Dr. Calhoun. None that she has seen have asked “What if one of the primary causes that has led to the lapses in care of this Black child is the medical racism of the team?” 

In the wake of recent bipartisan policy wins in Washington, can health care policy follow suit?
Dr. Anand Parekh, chief medical advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), spoke with hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter about how the best solutions emerge from a solid understanding of the issues and the eventual give-and-take of political opponents.
For example, The Milbank Memorial Fund’s 2024 Scorecard Report of The Health of U.S. Primary Care declared that the state of “primary care is in crisis.” The report made clear the systemic lack of support for primary care is harming people’s health and weakening the U.S. health system.
Dr. Parekh agrees the issue is dire. “As a primary care physician…this is the most important health care issue in America,” he says. “A strong primary care system needs to be the foundation of our health care system. So much of what is ailing us is because we haven’t put in the resources into our primary care system infrastructure.”
How can a bipartisan approach help?
Dr. Parekh points to the recent effort by the BPC to relaunch the Congressional House Primary Care Caucus, which had been dormant for years. They began by identifying bipartisan co-chairs to lead the caucus (two Democrats and two Republicans) who will be educating members about the importance of primary care before they begin to discuss policy solutions.
Dr. Parekh’s interview this week on “Conversations on Health Care” highlights how ensuring that both parties are working together from the beginning on an issue lays the foundation for mutual understanding and agreement down the line.

As we mark Earth Day, we have just experienced the hottest March on record. But climate change’s impact isn’t stopping with the weather; it’s also affecting our mental health, says Dr. Gary Belkin, director of the Billion Minds Project at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Climate anxiety, which refers to having distressing feelings related to climate change impacts, is increasingly prevalent in communities where the impact is the most severe.
And the problem is only getting worse.
Dr. Belkin says it is important to ask, “What happens when there is mass hopelessness?” From individuals to politicians to society as a whole, feelings of hopelessness can hamper people’s ability to problem solve and result in people giving up and retreating from the issue.
A solution? Start small in communities, Dr. Belkin says.
He’s putting this idea into practice through his work as chair of COP², an organization that curates coalitions of experts, advocates, care providers, decision-makers and funders to support projects that are co-created with local communities living on the front lines of the climate crisis.
“What I think is really exciting,” he tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter, “is that the climate pressures have generated some powerful forms of local organizing and intersecting actions.”

What happens when music therapists and neuroscientists team up? Patients win, says Dr. Francis Collins. From adults with Parkinson’s disease to children with autism, music has the power to help people walk, talk, ease pain and so much more.
Dr. Collins recently stepped down from his role as the longest-serving director of National Institutes of Health. As he faces a personal battle against prostate cancer, he’s exploring the promising impact that music and art therapy could hold for patients with health challenges.
Dr. Collins is hoping to develop a deeper understanding of music’s influence on brain circuitry. The goal? To help patients ease the symptoms of conditions like chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder and dementia.
His interview with hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter is a follow-up to a conversation with opera singer Renée Fleming about her new book “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness,” for which Dr. Collins wrote the foreword.

She’s received worldwide praise for singing at the Super Bowl, during a presidential inauguration and regularly for The Metropolitan Opera, but Renée Fleming is stretching her voice in new ways. She’s the editor of “Music and Mind,” a curated collection of essays from leading scientists, artists, creative arts therapists, educators and health care providers about the powerful impacts of music and the arts on health and the human experience.
Renée shares how she discovered her own music and mind connection early in her career when she had back pain and how a dinner with three Supreme Court justices led her to become an unexpected advocate for neuroscience.
Renée, a five-time Grammy award winner, also explains to hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter what happened when she saw the results of a functional MRI experiment she took and what it means for all of us.
This special edition of “Conversations on Health Care” will continue on April 18 with guest Dr. Francis Collins, the former National Institutes of Health director, who’s written the foreword to Renée’s book.