Health Dame Explained – HealthCetera Podcast

speaker-0 (00:00.698)
This is HealthCetera in the Catskills, and I'm Diana Mason, the host of this program. At a time when some are calling for women to take a back seat in the public sphere and stay in the kitchen and birthing room, Robin Strongin is continuing to say, no way! An accomplished health policy and public affairs experts with

expert with over 40 years of experience working in Washington DC. She ran her own agency and created the award-winning Disruptive Women in Healthcare blog, and I was honored to be one of her disruptive women bloggers. Robin served as the director of the health policy for the National Consumers League. She's worked in various federal agencies.

and she served as a senior policy analyst at George Washington University's National Health Policy Forum. She also has served on the boards of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function that was founded by Dr. Oliver Sacks and Academy Health Translation and Dissemination Institute Advisory Committee, as well as Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Health Policy.

And she's now started a new initiative called Health Dame. Welcome, Robin, to Health Center and the Catskills.

It's just so exciting to be with you. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

speaker-0 (01:35.064)
Well, it's really nice to talk to you again. Robin and I have not been in touch by voice for several years. long. Yeah, too long. So it's really great to be back. Well, let's start with what Health Dame is. What is Health Dame and why did you start this?

Sure. So HealthDame is essentially a podcast, though I interview guests over Zoom and then upload those recordings to the HealthDame website. In many ways, HealthDame is really the evolution of what you mentioned before, which is Disruptive Women in Healthcare, the blog that I started. It's crazy to think it was 17 years ago, but it was started in 2008. So it's really the next

iteration of disruptive women in healthcare.

say a little bit more about disruptive women and health care and how that started and why you did it.

Sure, so that was when I started my public affairs firm and I did work in the health space. And at the time blogging had just become a thing, only not in healthcare because blog was a four-letter word when it came to the legal folks in life sciences. Everybody was afraid somebody would say something and they, you liability.

speaker-1 (02:52.994)
but I was not a live science company. So I could play and do blogging on behalf of, you know, the folks I was working with. And it was also a time when there weren't as many women as we'd like to see in major positions of power in the different spaces in healthcare. And so I reached out to about a dozen women and you were one of my early district and said, would you

try this new thing with me and they all said yes. And so it took off. It started out as a blog. We, you know, posted important works online and it just, the momentum was there. It was definitely filling a need and suddenly we were being invited to do conferences and the women were invited to speak. And then I wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving anyone out.

So I started a man of the month. It's only fair. And we did a calendar and we had t-shirts. And it was why we get calls all the time. People wanted to be men of the month. And before, yeah, it was really at one point Joe Biden held up his t-shirt. Surgeon General held up a t-shirt. Everyone was, you know, it was exciting.

Then I was invited to launch a chapter of destructive women in the UK and we launched in Parliament. It got written up in the Guardian and it really, it really did fill a need. We were invited to the White House one time to be part of the health conference, but here's how things haven't changed. Guess what the topic was? It was a conference on men's health.

my. my. my. So why did you stop disruptive women in healthcare?

speaker-1 (04:42.776)
Here we

speaker-1 (04:48.802)
So two reasons as a matter of fact. Number one, big reason was right around 10 years ago, I started noticing that my husband, Brian, something was not right. And because I had been working in this space for all these many years, I did recognize early signs of dementia. He was in his late 50s at the time.

It became very clear shortly after that that I was going to need to spend much more time being with Brian and at the same time it had been ten years or so since I started disruptive women and I was starting to feel like the name itself was not it needed a refresh it just had lost the excitement and the freshness when it first started and

Right around that time, somebody asked if they could buy the rights of an organization that was doing similar work wanted to buy the rights to the name. And so I said, timing is everything. knew I was wanted to refresh it. They thought it was worth what they needed. It was the right fit. So was a win-win. And then I took time to spend with Brian while he became more ill. And so he passed.

last year, November will be a full year, which is really incredible to think about. But it was time for me to get back in and dive into the issues and take everything I learned with Brian's illness and share these learnings, albeit in a different way. And that's what led me to get back into it. And this time,

with health pain. just, was my refresh. You know, I'm older now and I'm a whole lot, you know, I'm, really motivated. Let me just say that.

speaker-0 (06:52.162)
Yeah, and I'm so sorry for your loss. I, you know, we're friends on Facebook and I would see your post and they were so moving and yeah, and, and it's, it's a very challenging experience.

That's no question. Yeah.

So I've watched some of the interviews on Health Dame, and you have a lot of fun with them. I mean, you're talking about important serious issues, but you also make it so engaging and have fun. Tell us a little bit about some of the interviews you've done and the ones that sort of you feel like, wow, I just love that interview.

Thank you, because I just love talking. know, the people are incredible. And the other thing I love about Health Day more than disruptive women is, as you can see, I love to talk. And I love people, and I love to laugh. And that was something that I think I shared that Brian had his disease with Lewy body dementia. And it's a very tough one, particularly when you're still quite young and so on and so forth.

humor was a really big part of how we coped. We still found ways to laugh. And I think that when you're interviewing people who are likewise going through health challenges, know, people are scared. People, it's so much uncertainty, so much frustration. And at the end of the day, you know, the one, some of the things I learned going through what I did and our family did was

speaker-1 (08:34.562)
with Brian was we're all human and we all, doesn't matter what the disease is, we're all sharing these experiences. So when I do these interviews, try, I really do try to make it so we're all just sitting down and having a conversation. We do, we don't have talking points and we really try to navigate some of the challenges together and laugh at quite honestly, some of the stupidity in the system that we're all trying to just, you know,

breakdown. A couple of examples. One I just posted today and let me say that all of the people with whom I have these conversations, are fully consented, they use their names, they're out there, they're public, they're brave, they're sharing. Today a couple, I've known them for long time, Chris shared what it was like when he out of the blue gets a brain tumor diagnosis.

And he and his wife now have to figure out, know, the doctor tells him, you must find a surgeon, drop everything, you need to go now. You don't have much time if you don't get this up. Like, so they look at each other and you're like, well, okay, we need to find a brain surgeon. Like, they've never done this before. And you know, they're smart people, but go find a brain surgeon. It's not the easiest thing to do. Then you go through all that rigmarole and now,

The whole post-surgical trip is quite a special treat that needs a lot of work. And so we spent a lot of time talking about ways that they share. And one of the main areas is how to ask for help, right? Whenever somebody is not feeling well, gets a bad diagnosis, something happens in a family, everybody wants to help. And what do they do? They call and say, how can we help?

Well, never having had a brain tumor before, they don't know. And so, you know, we offer practical ways. Another example, Noora Super and her husband Len. Noora has published about her experience of living with recurrent, very severe depression, multiple suicide attempts. The last one.

speaker-1 (10:55.438)
rendered her paralyzed from the waist down in a wheelchair and so she shares what it's like because she wants people to know they're not alone. She wants people to understand that it's not right for everyone but for her. ECT, electric shock therapy, has been a lifeline. There's a lot of stigma. She wants people to know that if it's right, know, talk to your health.

professional. Her husband, who's been at her side the whole time, is a prominent health economist, a policy whiz, and he shares the frustration of when someone is discharged from psychiatric inpatient hospital stay, there's virtually no discharge planning at all. And there are reasons for that because of liability and other reasons. But basically he was told to keep an extra set of eyes

on her because of course statistically once discharged your chances of trying suicide again go up in the aftermath. Well and then Len compares when she came out of rehab it was such a detailed helpful discharge plan. So you know trying to figure out the policy ways that this matters is critical and having people brave enough to share their story and get it out there is

is a way to move policy forward even in this environment, I would argue.

You know, let me just interject here that we have on.

speaker-0 (12:27.886)
regularly a local person who's involved with NAMI, the National Alliance for the mentally ill, that is really about friends and family members of people with mental illness. And NAMI has really been pushing for that discharge plan. so I don't know where things are at, it's a good thing. I should have them back on and see where they've made any progress. The other comment I wanted to make is that these are really tough topics, and you are fearless.

in having the conversations, which I think is so important. People tend to be really hesitant to talk about some of these tough issues, and we need to have more honest conversations about it. So kudos to you, Robin, for tackling some of these tough topics, and in a way that really enables people to share their own lived stories of these experiences. That, I think, is very powerful. So kudos to you.

really appreciate that and I tell you, think having gone through what I went through, you suddenly realize how vitally important it is for people to feel like it's okay to let people in. Because, you know, at this point in my life, I will be very honest, there isn't a

body fluid my hands haven't been in and I am not afraid to talk about any one of them if it helps somebody else. know, at the end of the day, we just have to be there to support one another because there's just too much stuff that we shouldn't have to face alone.

So let's talk a little bit about that, about what concerns you most about health care right now. You've been in the health care arena for several decades now, and you've had your own lived experience. So what concerns you about health care right now?

speaker-1 (14:24.404)
think it goes without saying that we are finding ourselves in some very unchartered territory at the moment. I believe to my core that there are a couple of things going on right now that don't get as much attention as what we all hear on the news day in and day out, but I think we should be paying more attention to them. Number one.

The over corporatization of healthcare terrifies me. Private equity firms are coming in, they gobble up medical practices, hospitals, dialysis centers, they strip off the, know, the profitable real estate holdings and so on and so forth. They make money, they gut staff, they leave town and patients are just left holding the bag. They die, they get sicker, they get more infections. It's a mess. It's starting to get attention. Number two,

The myths and disinformation machines out there, obviously very troubling. know, TikTok influencers who think that, you know, using sunscreen is bad and standing in the sun to get vitamin D is good. These are not your friends. This is not good information. However, what's equally distressing to me is that there are those in academia

in some of the more traditional public health organizations. I'm not calling anyone in particular out. I'm just saying there is a level of judgment, dismissiveness, patronizing. When I brought my husband into his regular general practitioner, mean, the guy practically patted me on my head and told me not to worry, dear. I'm overly worried. And this kind of nonsense is un-

unacceptable. So we have to find a way to really listen. We may not like what the other side has to say. It is complicated. Science is forever evolving. But even in the best of worlds, you know, for a very long time, as you well know, the gold standard was to have healthy middle aged white men in clinical trials. And that was like prime science feeling and whatever.

speaker-1 (16:41.88)
sacrosanct. Well, now we've fought to have it be more diverse than women and pregnant people and so on and so on. But we have to keep listening and doing a better job of breaking outside what we think is always the only way forward because it isn't. and then I will say the other two things. Number one, there's just a woeful lack of adequate workforce and beds.

in as we've mentioned already mental health and also long-term care. mean, you know, just a nightmare. And the very last thing, does it concern me? More than anything, I get furious when I hear the words either patient-centered or value-based, because I think it's all a marketing schtick and it's disingenuous. And I have yet to see where really, really truly those words mean what they are supposed to mean.

I think it's window dressing and it makes me crazy.

Boom, Robin, you should write something about that. You should write something about that. You know, the other thing I want to start with your first point about private equity and the over-corporatization of healthcare. Don Berwick, who was the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid under Obama, services under Obama, he wrote a piece, I want to say it was in the New England Journal of Medicine, about essentially the greed in healthcare and called out this corporatization and private equity, noting that all the mergers and acquisitions were supposed to be

happening to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and improve outcomes. And the evidence showed that none of that was happening. And so I've been actually encouraged just within the last few weeks that there have been a number of major health system mergers and acquisitions that were in the works that they're now calling off. And I'm sure some of that has to do with some of the changes in terms of cutbacks in Medicaid and potentially the Affordable Care Act.

speaker-0 (18:39.266)
But I think the public doesn't realize how this over-corporatization and the investment of private equity in healthcare is really undermining the foundation of healthcare in this country. So thank you for calling that out. So you at HealthDame, we only have a couple minutes left, but you provide this forum to give voice to concerns like you've just articulated. And you have a tagline on your website that says, more wisdom,

tremendously, yeah.

speaker-0 (19:08.788)
less patients. I love that patients not patients in a clinical setting, but patients P A T I E N C E. So how do we move beyond talking about it to action?

So the way I look at it is there are

Change happens at different levels. So one could make change at the individual, you know family level at the health profession facility level and at the broader policy level be it state and or federal levels I'll give one really fast example. I talked about music and the brain Well, you know what when Brian even up until the day he died as he was dying every single day I made a playlist because he loved music when he couldn't speak when he

couldn't move, we could still sit together and he could still hear the music and you can tell when someone's enjoying something, even if they can't speak. the health facility level, I got together with families and we advocated for more music on the floor. So music therapists, it's something we could do at that level to help the quality of life for these residents. And at the policy level,

We are advocating for more reimbursement for music therapists, for better certification. So I believe that at the different levels, you can make a difference and it does make a difference for people in really important ways.

speaker-0 (20:36.686)
That's a fabulous example. And we have in our community a music therapist, Peter Jampol, who's been on this program, who has been trying to get health systems to understand that having that music therapist involved in your care can improve outcomes, doesn't have to cost that much.

And we've now he's gotten it integrated into the behavioral health program over at the hospital. Yeah.

It's in so many ways, the literature is there. Dr. Tamino at IMNF, Institute for Music Neurologic Function, is literally the global leader on this issue. And there's just so much going on that's exciting in this space. And it's it's across all ages, all conditions, health, wellness. It could be its own show, that's for sure.

Now, this is the Institute for Music and Neurological Function that you're on the board of.

I was, I'm not now because I rotated off and now I'm on like 17 others. it's still, and there are so many, Dr. with the Foundation of Art and Healing with another interview. Both of them are based in New York. Jeremy is also in Boston, but there's just, I mean, I'm happy to connect to whomever offline, online, however it would be helpful.

speaker-0 (22:07.406)
Great, great. Well, Robin, tell us for people who want to check out Health Dame, how do they do that?

Sure, so it's really easy. It's healthdame.com. It's a website, doesn't cost anything. Excuse me. And we're also on YouTube and LinkedIn under Health Dame. And that's it. It's just right there. We just launched last month. So, you know, we only have about a dozen interviews up right now, but I'm doing a ton more.

We have one coming up on death and dying at death doula. Have you ever thought about writing your own obituary? It's very reflective. Lots of interesting people doing really important work and that is the whole purpose of Health Game is, you know, despite everything going on in the world, there are good people that are doing this great work and that's who I want to talk to and spread the word. So I really appreciate the opportunity to do that. And of course, to reconnect.

And that's Robin Strongin, and she is the founder of Health Dame and just an all-around expert in health policy, public affairs, et cetera. I'm so glad to reconnect with you, Robin, and thank you so much for coming on to Health Center and the CAT Skills. And anytime you want to come on, you're welcome back.

Thank you. appreciate that. Thanks a lot. was great to speak with you. All right. You as well. Bye bye.

speaker-0 (23:32.514)
Robin, have a day. She's really good and it was always fun to work with her and yeah, doing good work. At one point, I have actually a very heavy bust of a woman. It's a Thea who is the goddess of health. Actually, the first healer was a woman. People don't realize that.

And I think it's the head of that healer from Greek times, I believe. I believe she was Greek, not Roman. And so anyway, she gave us all this very heavy bust with the head of a theia on it. yeah, it's still featured prominently in my office. She's really quite an innovator and engaging. I listen to

several of the programs she has posted and I was totally engaged in the discussion and she does have fun with it. So I encourage you to visit Health Dame. Look it up, Health Dame, D-A-M-E with Robin Strongin and S-T-R-O-N-G-I-N.