See You Now Podcast

In this special edition of SEE YOU NOW, we’re honoring our very first national Juneteenth holiday. As a podcast focused on how nurse-led innovation is strengthening our healthcare systems and transforming lives, we’re marking this historic moment with a health equity playlist to amplify and elevate the scholarship, innovation, leadership, and contributions of Black nurses toward building healthier communities, families, and experiences.

A common stereotype of aging is an era of decline and shrinking horizons. The reality is far more nuanced. The process of aging isn’t uniform and many will find their health and functional trajectories widening as they get older. In fact some, like President Joe Biden or pioneering nurse-midwife Ruth Lubic, won’t make their greatest contributions until their later years. A key to healthy aging is maintaining or improving your health, which for our oldest adults, largely falls outside of healthcare facilities. For many, health allows us to feel safe wherever we are.

How do you build, staff, and stand up an online psychiatry and therapy office over the course of 45 days? And in a pandemic, no less? For Lavender founders and seasoned entrepreneurs Pritma Dhillon Chattha, DNP MHA RN and Brighid Gannon, DNP, PMHNP-BC it was experiencing first-hand how the pandemic was moving every aspect of our lives online at lightning speed; hearing from colleagues seeking mental health support the countless difficulties they encountered navigating and accessing services; and having the business skills and entrepreneurial experience to seize the moment to design and deliver much needed innovation in the psychiatric care.

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.

There is a growing body of evidence and experience supporting our understanding of and investing in the social determinants and drivers of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. We’re seeing that manifest with a wide range of innovations in every corner of our healthcare delivery system, including innovations in health plans, health insurance, and payment and delivery models. In this episode, meet nurse and health plan innovator Karen Dale, MSN, RN, Market President and CEO for AmeriHealth Caritas, and dive deep into the details of how innovations in health plans and health insurance can and should focus on getting you care, helping you stay well and build healthy communities.

There has been a long-standing relationship between faith, clergy, health, and healthcare. Faith-based partnerships have forged and furthered public health goals historically and more importantly, at present. Clergy and faith-based organizations are pivotal and trusted players in their communities providing service, leadership, connection, communication, distribution of services, and increasingly, innovation. In this episode we explore with UK HealthCare’s Chief Diversity Officer Tukea Talbert DNP, RN, CDP how partnerships with our communities’ faith leaders and congregations can build trust, break systemic barriers to access, and move toward health equity.

In this episode, we meet indigenous nurse researcher John Lowe, RN, PhD, FAAN, and discover how he is addressing the long-standing structural impediments that have kept American Indian, Alaska Native and indigenous youth from connecting to their cultural heritage, native identity, and to a history that he describes as a source of great strength. John established the first Center for Indigenous Nurse Research For Health Equity where he is innovating on ancestral wisdom and tradition—through practices like the Virtual Talking Circle—to enable indigenous youth to move away from harmful behaviors and move toward lives and coping mechanisms that are both positive and strength-based.

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.

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.

Gender equality. Economic development. Greater health outcomes. According to nurse, researcher and policy expert Barbara Stilwell, PhD, RN, FRCN and Executive Director of Nursing Now, a global campaign seeking to elevate the nursing profession, more nurses in leadership and policy roles can result in all those things and more. In this episode, Stilwell speaks with Shawna Butler about the need to raise awareness of the impact nurses have in transforming health systems, the groundbreaking work they have accomplished in devising solutions to patient care and health outcomes and the exciting potential of nurse leadership and innovation.