See You Now Podcast

Pioneer, MacArthur Fellow and Nurse Midwife Ruth Watson Lubic, EdD, RN, CNM, FAAN, FACNM, opened the first freestanding birth center for low-income families in New York City at a time where it was common for women to have very little say in their maternitycare and labor and delivery experience. In this episode, Lubic talks with Shawna Butler about her six decades of experience in nurse-midwifery, how far care delivery in childbirth has come and what the next 60 years of health innovation in this space could be.

In a digitally-driven world where information and misinformation are both readily available, it can be hard to know what sources to trust--particularly when it comes to health decisions about communicable and vaccine-preventable diseases. In this episode, Melody Butler, BSN, RN, CIC, founder of Nurses Who Vaccinate, discusses how and why she's built a global advocacy network, coalition, and movement of nurses to meet people where they are, and ensure they are well-informed with science-based facts to inform their health decisions.

Every day nurses face difficult decisions and ethical dilemmas. They know how to deal with suffering, are accustomed to participating in life and death decisions, and advocating for human rights. COVID-19 presented circumstances that no one was prepared for including weighing personal risk against an obligation to render care. In this episode, Liz Stokes, JD, MA, RN, Director of the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights provides insight into the ethical and moral dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this episode, we hear from Nicole Lincoln MSN, RN, FNP-BC, CCNS about her work on NICI, a radical reimagining of the infant incubator. What started as an idea to create a low-cost, portable, and single-use incubator for our smallest and most fragile citizens, morphed into new concepts about how the incubator could be used in new ways, new places, and solve new problems.

Around the globe, nurses are actively innovating to improve the health, safety, and wellbeing of citizens, environments, and entire communities in settings that some might not have considered—our state legislatures. The link between nursing, politics, and innovation might not seem obvious, but for the nurses who have ushered in meaningful legislation—the relationship is a natural one. In this wide-ranging conversation with Delaware Lt.Gov, Bethany Hall-Long, we discover how nurses involved with legislation at the local, state, and federal level is innovation.

The CDC reports that Black mothers die at three to four times the rate of White mothers and that the mortality rate of Black infants is higher than that of any other ethnic group in the U.S. Regardless of income and education level, childbirth for Black women is more dangerous than it is for White women. In this episode, we hear from three healthcare innovators who personally and professionally—as Black women and advisors to the Black Mamas Matter Alliance—work tirelessly to advance policy grounded in human rights and reproductive justice to improve Black maternal health and lives.

Flattening the curve. Testing and contact tracing. Social distancing. Not only have these practices become part of our daily routines, but they are also the primary tools of the public health emergency response to COVID-19. In this episode, we meet Kathleen Blaney, MPH, RN, Director of Disease Control Emergency Preparedness at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Kathleen recounts the story of building the NYC Test & Trace Corps, a public health initiative to fight the threat of COVID-19 and one of the largest contact tracing endeavors in modern history, which in a matter of weeks trained and onboarded over 3,000 new contact tracers—remotely. She shares how the highly personal nature of contact tracing can strengthen science literacy and vaccine confidence, reduce health disparities, and even help build trust in both public institutions and each other amid the pandemic and beyond.

Cancer care is one area where the use of data is rapidly transforming every facet of care, and one rapidly evolving development is the use of real world data to provide important insights that often have not been answered using data from the highly prized clinical trials data. One very specific area that data—particularly real world data—is helping us to understand is how race and ethnicity play a role in disparities in care and outcomes. In this episode, we go deep into the data weeds with clinician, innovator, and data specialist Kathleen Maignan, AGPCNP-BC, MSN, OCN, to reveal what stories the data really has to tell.

In this episode, we dive deep into the science of vaccines with Christine Grady, MSN, PhD; Ernest Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN; Jaquelin P Dudley, PhD; and Lori Boyle, MSN, AGPCNP. Together we discuss the ethics and details of clinical trials and vaccine distribution, and the role that nurses specifically play in developing vaccine confidence and innovating to rapidly and safely achieve mass COVID-19 vaccination.

This Mother’s Day, as we celebrate and honor the moms/mums/aunts/aunties/grandmothers and maternal figures in our lives, we must also acknowledge the ongoing maternal health crisis in the United States. It is a crisis that Representative and Nurse Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14) understands well, especially its severe impact on Black mothers. Marrying her nursing background with a genuine enthusiasm for the power of policy to improve and save lives, she co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus and introduced The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021.