Podcasts about Accountability Act

It's Friday, April 11th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 125 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus 60 Christians slain in Nigerian genocide On April 2nd and 3rd, Fulani Muslim terrorists killed more than 60 Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria in what the governor called a “genocide,” reports The Christian Post. Maren Aradong, a community leader, said the attacks were carried out against seven Christian communities in Bokkos County, including Hurti village, where more than 40 Christians were slain. He told Morning Star News, “More than 1,000 Christians were displaced [in Hurti] during the attacks, and 383 houses were destroyed by these bandits.” Pastor Ayuba Matawal, who ministers in the Bokkos area, added, “Many of these attacks result in mass burials. The sight of numerous corpses and the frequent need to conduct mass burials is something no minister wishes to experience, yet it has become our reality.” Matthew 25:41 describes the final punishment of these evil murderers. Jesus will say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” According to Open Doors, Nigeria is the seventh most dangerous country worldwide for Christians. Supreme Court rules Trump must bring El Salvadoran back to U.S. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a judge's order requiring the Trump administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man whom the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador, reports NewsNation. On April 4th, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, issued an order that the White House “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man's family challenging the legality of his deportation. What Trump thought during Butler assassination attempt On July 13, 2024, we all know that candidate Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania at a campaign rally. We know the shooter was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks who fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from the rooftop of a nearby building. If Trump had not turned at the moment he did to reference a power point slide on the screen, he would have been killed instantly. Instead, in God's providence, one of the bullets only nicked his upper right ear. Salena Zito, a Washington Examiner reporter, wrote a forthcoming book, entitled Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland. She said, “I was just feet away the day history was nearly changed. My book dives into what happened, my conversations with Trump and how deeply it changed him.” Appearing on The Glenn Beck Program, Zito shared some information that was previously unknown. ZITO: “Before he said, ‘Fight, fight, fight,' I could see him. He says, ‘USA!' twice. He's still on the ground. And then I see him turn and get up and say, ‘Fight, fight, fight.'” BECK: “Wow!” ZITO: “And so we talked about that, and I said, ‘Why?' And he said, ‘Well, Salena, at that moment, I wasn't Donald Trump, even though I wasn't president yet again, I had once been President. “I had an obligation to show that the country is strong, that we will not be defeated, and that we are resolute. I did not want to be the symbol of America being weak." BECK: “Geez! That is in you. That is either in you or not in you. And it's in very few people!” White House cancels Social Security numbers of illegals The Trump administration is using a new tool to motivate illegals to “self-deport.” Their Social Security numbers have been effectively cancelled, reports The New York Times. The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits. In essence, the Trump administration is repurposing Social Security's “death master file.” For years, Social Security tracked dead people. Now, they want to include the names of living people whom the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. Being blacklisted in this manner would make it difficult to make money, and thus prompt the illegals to self deport. The initial names are limited to people the administration says are illegals who are convicted criminals and “suspected terrorists.” But officials said the effort could broaden to include other illegals as well. New York City tourist helicopter crashes into Hudson River A tourist helicopter, carrying family members from Spain, plunged into the Hudson River in New York City at 3:17pm Thursday, killing six, including three children, reports ABC News. WITNESS 1: “It sounded like a sonic boom on my right. So, I look up and literally, I see a helicopter splitting in two, with the rotor flying off in the sky. It was going so fast it just went straight into the water.” Agustin Escobar, an executive, his wife, Merce, and their children -- aged 4, 5, and 11 years old -- were killed in the crash along with the pilot, aged 36. The helicopter crashed just over 15 minutes after it departed from the Wall Street Heliport. The helicopter reached the George Washington Bridge before turning south and crashing. The 21-year-old helicopter, which simply broke apart over the Hudson, was on its sixth flight carrying tourists for the day. Please pray that God would comfort the grieving families of the pilot and the Spanish family on holiday. Texas whistleblower testifies about horrors of ‘transitioning' children And finally, Dr. Eithan Haim, who exposed pro-transgender malpractice at Texas Children's Hospital, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday on what exactly he witnessed.  He shared harrowing detail about the mutilation of these gender-confused children, reports LifeSiteNews.com. Listen. HAIM: “I understand and have seen the effects of what these blockers do, what these hormones do, and what these surgeries do. They are destroying the lives of these children. “They are putting them down a road where they become a chronic medical patient that they can never come back from, especially the surgical complications. I see these things all the time. So, could I call myself a doctor if I didn't speak up against it?” Proverbs 21:3 states, "To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” In 2023, Manhattan Institute journalist Christopher Rufo interviewed a then-anonymous former Texas Children's Hospital employee who said the hospital's pro-transgender activist, Dr. Richard Roberts, did not hesitate to prescribe cross-sex hormones and mastectomies to gender-confused children whose medical records indicated “serious mental health issues” including autism. That whistleblower, later revealed to be  Dr. Eithan Haim, who just testified Wednesday, was indicted by the Biden Department of Justice, ostensibly for sharing confidential patient records in violation of HIPPA or the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. However, Dr. Haim had taken great pains to preserve patients' anonymity. Under Biden, Dr. Haim faced up to 10 years in prison! Thankfully, the case was dismissed soon after President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Close And that's The Worldview on this Friday, April 11th, in the year of our Lord 2025. Subscribe for free by Amazon Music or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

*Content warning: Pregnancy loss, miscarriage, death of a child, infant loss, death, birth trauma, medical trauma, medical neglect, racism, mature and stressful themes. *Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Moms Advocating For MomsS23 survivors Markeda, Kristen and Amanda have created a nonprofit, Moms Advocating for Moms, in hopes to create a future where maternal well-being is prioritized, disparities are addressed, and every mother has the resources and support she needs to thrive: https://www.momsadvocatingformoms.org/take-actionhttps://linktr.ee/momsadvocatingformoms Please sign the survivors petitions below to improve midwifery education and regulation in Texashttps://www.change.org/p/improve-midwifery-education-and-regulation-in-texas?recruiter=1336781649&recruited_by_id=74bf3b50-fd98-11ee-9e3f-a55a14340b5a&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_for_starters_page&utm_medium=copylink *Sources:American College of Nurse Midwiveshttps://midwife.org/ American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)https://www.acog.org/ A Midwife's Approach to Getting Labor Startedhttps://avivaromm.com/labor-induction-low-natural-approaches-midwife-md/ Bathing Your Babyhttps://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/bathing-skin-care/Pages/Bathing-Your-Newborn.aspx Fetal presentation before birthhttps://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/fetal-positions/art-20546850 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/resources/health-insurance-portability-and-accountability-act-of-1996-hipaa.html#:~:text=The%20Health%20Insurance%20Portability%20and,from%20disclosure%20without%20patient's%20consent. March of Dimeshttps://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/about-us National Midwifery Institutehttps://www.nationalmidwiferyinstitute.com/midwifery North American Registry of Midwives (NARM)https://narm.org/ Office for Civil Rightshttps://www.hhs.gov/ocr/index.html State investigating Dallas birth center and midwives, following multiple complaints from patientshttps://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/investigates/state-investigating-dallas-birth-center-midwives-following-multiple-complaints-from-patients/287-ea77eb18-c637-44d4-aaa2-fe8fd7a2fcef Texas Administrative Code Title 26, Chapter 503 - Birthing Centershttps://regulations.justia.com/states/texas/title-26/part-1/chapter-503/subchapter-d/section-503-34/ Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR)https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/ Texas Health and Human Services Birthing Centershttps://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/health-care-facilities-regulation/birthing-centersWhat Happens at Appointments Once My Baby is Born?https://www.communitycaremidwives.com/faq.html#:~:text=Midwives%20provide%20care%20for%20both,six%20weeks%20after%20the%20birth.&text=breastfeeding%20support.,their%20family%20doctor%20for%20care. Zucker School of Medicine, Amos Grunebaum, MDhttps://faculty.medicine.hofstra.edu/13732-amos-grunebaum/publications *SWW S23 Theme Song & Artwork: Thank you so much to Emily Wolfe for covering Glad Rag's original song, U Think U for us this season!Hear more from Emily Wolfe:On SpotifyOn Apple Musichttps://www.emilywolfemusic.com/instagram.com/emilywolfemusicGlad Rags: https://www.gladragsmusic.com/ The S23 cover art is by the Amazing Sara StewartFollow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookiebooSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rabbi Gabe Kretzmer Seed serves as a Jewish chaplain in the New York City Department of Correction where he provides religious services and spiritual support primarily for Jewish inmates. He also teaches and tutors for children and adults in the community, and provides research support for a number of Jewish Studies scholars, including as a research assistant to Rabbi Irving Greenberg for his acclaimed book "The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism."  Rabbi Kretzmer Seed has Rabbinic Ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and also received BA and MA degrees from The Jewish Theological Seminary – JTS—where he focused on Talmud and Midrash. Following ordination, Rabbi Kretzmer Seed completed a CPE residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, where he worked in the hospital's palliative care, oncology and psychiatric units.Rabbi Mia Simring was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, in her native New York City. She also holds a certificate in Pastoral Care and Counseling and has focused her rabbinic work on chaplaincy in hospitals, long term care facilities, and now, correctional facilities. She is currently serving as a Jewish Chaplain for the New York City Department of Correction, working with both pre- and post-trial detainees. Prior to her rabbinical studies, she received an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Brown University, worked in Japan, and then in the Japanese Art Department at Christie's NY. Read more about her here. In the discussion, Rabbi Gabe mentions "To Walk in God's Ways," by Rabbi Joe Ozarowski, who appears on NeshamaCast, Episode 1. Rabbi Gabe also mentions his mentor, Rabbi Jo Hirschmann, BCC, who is the co-author, with Rabbi Nancy Wiener, of "Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care." This book was discussed with Rabbi Nancy Wiener on NeshamaCast, Episode 8.The story Rabbi Gabe shares in this interview of being physically assaulted appears in the book "Rikers: An Oral History," by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau. Talmudic text discussed in interview: Ein havush matir atzmo mibeit ha'asurim--"A person in prison cannot free himself," From Tractate Berakhot 5b. Hebrew and Technical Terms: Ashrei, literally, "Happy are those," from Psalms 84:5; this verse recurs frequently in Jewish liturgy as a prelude to Psalm 145. Eliyahu HaNavi—Elijah the Prophet, regarded in Jewish tradition as the one who will herald the coming of the MessiahGet--Jewish writ of divorce, traditionally given from the husband to the wife to end the marriage. An ongoing struggle in traditional Jewish communities is the plight of Agunot (literally, "chained"), women whose marriages have ended for all practical reasons but have not received a Get from the husband to formally end the marriage, the receipt of which is necessary in order to marry someone else. Reference is made in the interview to: ORA--Organization for the Resolution of Agunot. Ha Lachma Anya--From the Passover Haggadah: "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in Egypt..."Had Gadya—literally, “One Little Goat,” the final hymn in the traditional Seder.Halakhah--Jewish law, as derived from Rabbinic Jewish tradition in the Talmud and later Jewish codes. Halakhically--a Hebrew-English adverb referring to actions done according to Halakhah, or Jewish law. Hashgacha-Kosher supervisionHIPAA--the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects patient privacy in the American heath care system. It generally does not apply to the prison and jail systems.Humash--A volume comprising the five books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and DeuteronomyKehillah--Community, usually referring to a synagogue community. Midrash (plural: Midrashim)--a homiletical interpretation of Biblical scripture, usually referring to the Rabbinic body of literature known as THE Midrash, compiled by Rabbis over the first millennium of the common era, often reflecting ancient oral interpretations of Biblical text.Moshiach-the MessiahMotzi—The blessing over bread, traditionally said whenever eating bread but most commonly said over full loaf of bread or matzah at a Sabbath or holiday meal. Parashah--The weekly portion of the Torah/Pentateuch that is read aloud in synagogue. Sh'ma--The Jewish declaration of faith from Deuteronomy 6:4, recited morning and evening in daily liturgy. Shul--A common term for synagogueSiddur--Jewish prayer bookTeshuvah--Repentance.Tfillot--plural for T'fillah, Jewish prayer Jewish Chaplains: Register for the NAJC 2025 Conference in Skokie, IL, May 11-14, 2025.  Watch this video to learn more.  About our host:Rabbi Edward Bernstein, BCC, is the producer and host of NeshamaCast. He serves as Chaplain at Boca Raton Regional Hospital of Baptist Health South Florida. He is a member of the Board of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. Prior to his chaplain career, he served as a pulpit rabbi in congregations in New Rochelle, NY; Beachwood, OH; and Boynton Beach, FL. He is also the host and producer of My Teacher Podcast: A Celebration of the People Who Shape Our Lives. NeshamaCast contributor Rabbi Katja Vehlow was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and is Director of Jewish Life at Fordham University. She trained as a chaplain at Moses Maimonides Medical Center in New York. Previously, she served as Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of South Carolina. A native German speaker, she is planning a forthcoming German-language podcast on the weekly Torah portion with a focus on pastoral care. NeshamaCast contributor Chaplain David Balto is a volunteer chaplain at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. and Western Correctional Insitution, Maryland's maximum security prison. He coordinated the annual National Bikur Cholim Conference. Support NeshamaCast and NAJC with a tax deductible donation to NAJC. Transcripts for this episode and other episodes of NeshamaCast are available at NeshamaCast.simplecast.com and are typically posted one week after an episode first airs. Theme Music is “A Niggun For Ki Anu Amecha,” written and performed by Reb-Cantor Lisa Levine. Please help others find the show by rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or other podcast providers. We welcome comments and suggestions for future programming at NeshamaCast@gmail.com. And be sure to follow NAJC on Facebook to learn more about Jewish spiritual care happening in our communities.

Nadia Milleron is an independent mother, farmer, attorney, and successful advocate who will fight for you. In 2019, Nadia's daughter was a passenger on a Boeing 737 MAX that crashed in Ethiopia killing all on board. After 2 deadly crashes, instead of taking Boeing's and the FAA's word that nothing was wrong and a crash would not happen again, Nadia got involved to hold all involved groups accountable. Nadia went to Washington and helped lead the unanimous passage of the national bi-partisan Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act in 2020 which directed US aircraft and aerospace industry manufacturers to adopt, enforce, and regulate compliance procedures to ensure planes met the proper criteria and specifications before they are commissioned for use. She didn't stop there. Nadia then went to Boeing's home in Illinois and spearheaded the overthrow of a state law thatprotected big corporations over victims. Nadia met with legislators and stakeholders to fix a flawed law that allowed negligent and reckless corporations to get away with murder and not be held responsible. Nadia has never shied away from standing up for everyday people. She began her career practicing law helping children who were facing neglect and abuse. For 5 years, she took cases from the bench and advocated on the child's behalf in cases of contested divorces, lack of child support, or crime. She also represented people in the state mental hospital inprobate court proceedings. As a pro bono volunteer attorney, she worked with patients who had been subjected to dehumanizing conditions and a legal system that was violating their rights. When Nadia's son got sick with cancer, their family moved to a farm in Sheffield that would improve his quality of life. That farm turned into a way her family could give back to the community and even teach life lessons to other children and residents. Over the last 25 years, they have raised pigs, chicken, turkey, and lambs, and produced organic grain and dairy. Nadia invites classes, after school programs, and localresidents to come to the farm and learn about growing sustainable food and raising animals. Their farm continues to be a place for families in Western Massachusetts to receive locally grown food and produce.www.5calls.org  NadiaForCongress website Thanks to New England Grazing Network for sponsoring this episode under a USDA-Grazing Lands Conservation Initiation grant! More educational and transformational offerings from Jenn Colby Whole Human web site Choosing to Farm Patreon link Leave us a review at Choosing to Farm!The Choosing to Farm podcast is all about telling origin stories, learning from the journeys, and creating connection among first-and returning-generation livestock farmers and ranchers across the US and the world.  After nearly 30 years working professionally in agriculture as well as being a returning-generation farmer myself, I'm here to share stories, tips and resources to help livestock farmers and ranchers heal our relationship with success.  Want to help? Like, share or review this episode!  Want to help even more? Join our Patreon to support the show…tiers start at just $1!

The Climate Accountability Act proposes cutting greenhouse gases in half in Wisconsin. A new book for young readers on how government works in Wisconsin. Daylight saving controversy.

Guest host Cortney Downs is joined by state Representative Nick Wilson, Amanda Hall of Dream.org, and Sarah Durand of KYFREE for a discussion on House Bill 291, known as the Family Preservation and Accountability Act. They dive into the impact of parental incarceration on children, communities, and the state economy. HB 291 is a Blueprint for Kentucky's Children priority bill that would require the courts to consider alternative sentencing options -- such as vocational training, mental health services, or outpatient substance use treatment -- for those who have committed a non-violent offense and are the primary caregiver to a dependent child; it is currently awaiting action by the Kentucky Senate. Find more information on HB 291 and how to take action on our bill tracker at https://kyyouth.org/bill-tracker/. Thank you to Aetna Better Health of Kentucky for supporting the Making Kids Count Podcast. Visit AetnaMedicaidKY.com/choose to learn more about their health care benefits and programs designed with your family's wellbeing in mind.

Based on AHLA's annual Health Law Connections article, this special series brings together thought leaders from across the health law field to discuss the top ten issues of 2025. In the sixth episode, Elizabeth Trende, Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel, United Network for Organ Sharing, speaks with Michelle Garvey Brennfleck, Shareholder, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, about the current cyber threat environment for the health care industry and what health care entities can do to better protect themselves from cyberattacks. They discuss the proposed Health Infrastructure Security and Accountability Act, the importance of cyber risk assessments, and how the new administration may impact policies on protected health information. From AHLA's Academic Medical Centers and Teaching Hospitals Practice Group.Watch the conversation here.AHLA's Health Law Daily Podcast Is Here! AHLA's popular Health Law Daily email newsletter is now a daily podcast, exclusively for AHLA Premium members. Get all your health law news from the major media outlets on this new podcast! To subscribe and add this private podcast feed to your podcast app, go to americanhealthlaw.org/dailypodcast.

Kentucky Free is a right-center nonprofit working to advance legislation. Today's conversation centers of a bill to reduce the number of nonviolent parents in area prisons. Sarah Durand says Kentucky's economy would bounce forward if the state legislature would pass alternatives to imprisoning parents whose convictions did not involve violence or child abuse.Kentucky lawmakers in both the house and senate are getting a look at The Family Preservation and Accountability Act.Sarah described its contents on 840WHAS, saying she is receiving support from both liberals and conservatives.

In Episode 85, we're joined by Professor David Yamada. We chat about his drafted legislation, the Workplace Bullying Accountability Act and why we need laws to protect workers from abusive workplace environments. You can find Professor Yamada here as well as his Minding the Workplace Blog here.You can find the Workplace Bullying Accountability Act national campaign page hereYou can find the Workplace Bullying Institute herehttps://www.suffolk.edu/academics/faculty/d/y/dyamada https://workplacebullying.org/wbaa/https://workplacebullying.orghttps://newworkplace.wordpress.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthywork.substack.com

What can a mother say to the cold-blooded executioner of her son? In American Mother, the heartrending story of the murdered American journalist Jim Foley, the writer Colum McCann and Diane Foley, Foley's mother and founder of the Foley Foundation, explore this terrible dilemma. This memorable conversation with Foley and McCann explores forgiveness, faith, and the moral complexities of justice. Most of all, though, it's the conversation about a mother's remarkable love for her dead son which she maintains and even redirects to his ISIS killer.Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with McCann and Foley:* The Power of Forgiveness: Diane Foley's ability to forgive Alexander Kotey, one of her son Jim's killers, demonstrates extraordinary grace. Her Christian faith played a crucial role in this process, though forgiveness wasn't easy or natural - it was a conscious choice that led to meaningful human connection even in the most difficult circumstances.* Policy Impact Through Tragedy: Jim Foley's death led to significant changes in U.S. hostage policy. The Foley Foundation's work has helped bring home nearly 150 Americans since 2015, and led to the creation of a formal government structure for handling hostage situations - a direct result of the Obama administration's initial failures and subsequent reforms.* The Complexity of Justice: The case highlights nuanced views on justice and the death penalty. The Foleys advocated against the death penalty for their son's killers, arguing that life imprisonment offers a chance for reflection and potential redemption, while execution would simply perpetuate cycles of violence.* Grief's Individual Journey: Diane's experience shows how grief manifests differently for each person. While her other children needed distance from the situation to heal, she channeled her grief into activism and forgiveness. Her willingness to meet her son's killer was not shared by other family members.* The Value of Journalism: Jim Foley's story underscores the importance and dangers of conflict journalism. His commitment to telling stories of people yearning for freedom in the Middle East, even after being kidnapped once in Libya, reflects the crucial role journalists play in helping the world understand complex situations and human struggles.Diane M. Foley is President and Founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which she created in September 2014 less than a month after the public beheading by ISIS in Syria of her son James W. Foley, an American freelance conflict journalist. In 2015, she led JWFLF efforts to fund the start of Hostage US and the International Alliance for a Culture of Safety, ACOS. She actively participated in the National Counterterrorism Center hostage review which culminated in the Presidential Policy Directive-30. This directive created the current US hostage enterprise consisting of an interagency Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, and a White House Hostage Response Group to free innocent Americans taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. JWFLF was instrumental in the passage of the Robert Levinson Hostage Taking and Accountability Act. She has been a tireless hostage, wrongful detainee and family advocate within the US hostage enterprise, Congress, and every presidential administration since 2014. She has raised awareness of international hostage-taking and wrongful detention using the award-winning documentary, “Jim, the James Foley story”, opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and media interviews. Diane has spoken on the power of forgiveness in various faith communities and was included in 200 Women, edited by Geoff Blackwell. She co-authored the book “American Mother” which was published in 2024 with writer Colum McCann. Diane is also the author of a chapter called, “Life For A Voice: the Work of Journalist James W. Foley through the Eyes of his Family” in Living with Precariousness, edited by Christina Lee and Susan Leong, which was published in 2023.Previously, Diane worked as a community health nurse and as a family nurse practitioner for 18 years. She received both her undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of New Hampshire. She is active in her Roman Catholic parish of St Katherine Drexel in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, Dr. John W. Foley. She is the mother of five children.Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic. His newest novel, Apeirogon, will appear in 2020. It has already been acclaimed as a "transformative novel" (Raja Shehadeh). He is also the author of Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as three critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in more than forty languages. As well as a National Book Award winner, Colum has been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was the inaugural winner of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire's "Best and Brightest," and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Rod and Greg Show Daily Rundown – Monday, January 27, 20254:20 pm: David Harsanyi, Senior Writer for the Washington Examiner joins the program to discuss the excessive use of executive orders by recent Presidents.:38 pm: Senator Todd Weiler and child advocate Melissa McKay join the show to discuss the App Store Accountability Act which would require app stores to verify a user's age before they can download an app.6:05 pm: Robyn Bagley, Executive Director of Utah Education Fits All joins the show for a conversation about School Choice Week.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published its final rule to implement the Medicaid Services Investment and Accountability Act of 2019 (MSIAA). The final rule significantly deviates from the agency's 2023 proposal, with CMS backing off from “follow the pill” best price stacking, subjecting certain vaccines to Medicaid rebates, and creating a “shame list” of high-cost Medicaid drugs, among other proposals. But the final rule still imposes new burdens on manufacturers, such as by expanding which type of utilization triggers a Medicaid rebate, and imposing aggressive compliance deadlines in connection with misclassifications. In this episode of Connected With Latham, Washington, D.C. partner Chris Schott and associate Danny Machado break down what CMS included — and omitted — from its final rule. They also speculate about the impact the Supreme Court's overturning of the Chevron doctrine might have had on CMS' regulatory decision-making, as well as why the final rule's effective date is 60 days before the next presidential inauguration.   This podcast is provided as a service of Latham & Watkins LLP. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney client relationship between you and Latham & Watkins LLP, and you should not send confidential information to Latham & Watkins LLP. While we make every effort to assure that the content of this podcast is accurate, comprehensive, and current, we do not warrant or guarantee any of those things and you may not rely on this podcast as a substitute for legal research and/or consulting a qualified attorney. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for engaging a lawyer to advise on your individual needs. Should you require legal advice on the issues covered in this podcast, please consult a qualified attorney. Under New York's Code of Professional Responsibility, portions of this communication contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each representation. Please direct all inquiries regarding the conduct of Latham and Watkins attorneys under New York's Disciplinary Rules to Latham & Watkins LLP, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, Phone: 1.212.906.1200

Nadia Milleron is a powerful independent voice who has earned hard fought wins in Washington and elsewhere holding Boeing accountable after her daughter Samya was killed in one of the tragic crashes of the Boeing 737. She is now running as an underdog to the powerful Richard Neal, the epitome of the political establishment in western Massachusetts and DC. Recently bolstered by a ⁠powerful piece in the New York Times⁠, Nadia's campaign has been inspiring people across the district, and hell, maybe she has a puncher's chance in this David vs. Goliath contest. Nadia challenges Neal on his lack of accessibility to the district, his campaign finance practices and how he spends his campaign money, not following through on securing social security reform, not holding pharmaceutical companies accountable for price gouging and more. Nadia is focused on making change that will bring more badly needed physicians to Western Massachusetts communities, addressing runaway grocery and gas prices from greed-flation and spending more tax dollars in our nation, rather than on international excursions. It is an epic tale of a mother fighting for change so no other family has to face the tragedies brought upon by defective Boeing planes. Featured recently in an brilliant piece in the New York Times, Nadia is an inspiration and has shown unending tenacity to hold Boeing accountable in seeking justice. In 2019, Nadia's daughter was a passenger on a Boeing 737 MAX that crashed in Ethiopia killing all on board. After 2 deadly crashes, instead of taking Boeing's and the FAA's word that nothing was wrong and a crash would not happen again, Nadia got involved to hold all involved groups accountable. Nadia went to Washington and helped lead the unanimous passage of the national bi-partisan Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act in 2020 which directed US aircraft and aerospace industry manufacturers to adopt, enforce, and regulate compliance procedures to ensure planes met the proper criteria and specifications before they are commissioned for use. She didn't stop there. Nadia then went to Boeing's home in Illinois and spearheaded the overthrow of a state law that protected big corporations over victims. Nadia met with legislators and stakeholders to fix a flawed law that allowed negligent and reckless corporations to get away with murder and not be held responsible. Nadia has never shied away from standing up for everyday people. She began her career practicing law helping children who were facing neglect and abuse. For 5 years, she took cases from the bench and advocated on the child's behalf in cases of contested divorces, lack of child support, or crime. She also represented people in the state mental hospital in probate court proceedings. As a pro bono volunteer attorney, she worked with patients who had been subjected to dehumanizing conditions and a legal system that was violating their rights. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-krol/support

For time immemorial, various groups have been taking hostages, political prisoners, and illegally detaining people with impunity. This tried-and-true method of gaining leverage over a rival state or group continues today, despite the fact that is runs contrary to established international law. As of this posting 42 Americans are being illegally detained by foreign governments and the United States, after a long practice of not negotiating, is finally getting serious about bringing its citizens home. As this delicate dance continues to play out on the international stage, the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation continues to lead the way on responses to these illegal and immoral actions taken by foreign governments, rebel groups, and terrorist organizations. In this month's episode, we speak with Diane Foley, mother of slain journalist James Foley, about the work of their family's foundation to help ensure no other family has to endure the pain they did back in 2012 when ISIS killed their son. We dive into what the research tells us about different responses, what is effective, what needs to change, and how we all can work to keep ourselves safe while traveling abroad. This important conversation provides audiences with key information and hope for the future. The more international attention we can bring to this practice, the more we can pressure governments to sign on to the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, a global initiative started by Canada in 2021, the less likely it is that people will continue to be used as political pawns, simply because of their nationality. 2024 Foley Foundation Hostage Report10th Annual James W. Foley Freedom RunDiane M. Foley is President and Founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which she created in September 2014 less than a month after the public beheading by ISIS in Syria of her son James W. Foley, an American freelance conflict journalist.In 2015, she led JWFLF efforts to fund the start of Hostage US and the International Alliance for a Culture of Safety, ACOS. She actively participated in the National Counterterrorism Center hostage review which culminated in the Presidential Policy Directive-30, which created the current US hostage enterprise to free innocent Americans taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. JWFLF was instrumental in the passage of the Robert Levinson Hostage Taking and Accountability Act.She has been a tireless hostage, wrongful detainee and family advocate within the US hostage enterprise, Congress, and every presidential administration since 2014. She has raised awareness of international hostage-taking and wrongful detention using the award-winning documentary, “Jim, the James Foley story”, opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and media interviews.She co-authored the book “American Mother” which was published in 2024 with writer Colum McCann. Diane is also the author of a chapter called, “Life For A Voice: the Work of Journalist James W. Foley through the Eyes of his Family” in Living with Precariousness, edited by Christina Lee and Susan Leong, which was published in 2023.

rWotD Episode 2642: Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange Welcome to Random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia’s vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Sunday, 28 July 2024 is Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange.WEDI, pronounced "wee dee", is a not-for-profit user group in the United States for users of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in public and private healthcare. It is sometimes referred to by other names including some or all of the words Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange. By: HipaasuiteIt was established to provide leadership and guidance to the healthcare industry on how to use and leverage its collective knowledge, expertise and information resources to improve the quality, affordability and availability of healthcare, via forums, conferences and online resources, especially in matters of conformance to EDI standards required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA which was enacted by the U. S. Congress in 1996.WEDI has regional affiliates in 27 US States and the Virgin Islands.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:12 UTC on Sunday, 28 July 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Geraint.

Summer rewind: What role do communicators play in motivating change? Specifically, how can they move their audiences to take action against climate change? In thinkenergy episode 122, we delve into the world of climate communication with Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re.Climate. Explore the driving forces, opportunities, and challenges of inspiring climate action—from bridging research to practise to empowering change. Listen in for an insightful conversation on shaping a sustainable future. Related links Amber Bennet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abennettyyc/  Re.Climate: https://reclimate.ca/  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: https://www.ipcc.ch/  Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-8b612114/ To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript Trevor Freemon Everyone, well, it's officially summer. And it's been about four months since I took over the mic as the host of the think energy podcast, which is kind of hard to believe. It's been really fun having great conversations with great people in the energy sector. I now mostly know my way around the recording equipments and the software, and really feel like we're kind of just getting started and looking forward to where we go from here. That said, the think energy team is taking a break to recharge over the next few months, but also to plan our content for the fall. So stay tuned for some great episodes in the fall. Not to worry though, we still have our summer rewind to keep you engaged. This is where we pick out some of the great past episodes that we've done and repost them. So whether you're lucky enough to be sitting on a dock or going on a road trip, or if you're just keeping up with your commute through the summer, it's a great time to revisit our past content. You will hear past episodes from my predecessor and the host chair Dan second, as well as a couple of mine from the past few months. And you're welcome to check out your own favorite past episodes as well, wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you have an amazing summer and we'll be back with new content in September. And until then, happy listening.   Dan Seguin  00:06 This is ThinkEnergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Did you scroll through the news this morning? How many of those articles that you skim covered a topic related to climate change? I guess it was probably a few. It seems. Every couple of weeks there's a new story dominating the headlines about forest fires, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and more, both here in Canada and abroad. We are seeing firsthand the effects of climate change and As consumers, we are receiving information about it. Everywhere we look. Have you ever thought about how you are being communicated to? How is climate change presented? What wording was used? And why? And are their calls to action? How does it make you feel? think not only about news articles you read, but also about documentaries, podcasts, Hollywood movies, right down to your everyday life. Think about the newsletter you receive from your municipality. The assembly instruction on the last piece of furniture you purchase, or this section on your favorite clothing brand, website about their sustainable practice, communications surrounding climate change are pretty much everywhere and the need to be. In June of 2021, the Canadian government introduced the Canadian net zero emission Accountability Act, which puts into legislation Canada's commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Different companies across the country are making their commitment, much like we did in 2022, when we committed to leading the way to a Smart Energy Future by becoming net zero by 2030. The push on to stop the damaging pollution emitted into the environment on a daily basis, namely caused by burning fossil fuels. Scientists are urging that this is crunch time. So if you haven't already, now is the time to hone in on how and what you are communicating to your customers. So here is today's big question. What role do communicators play in motivating change within their audiences to take action against climate change? Our guest today is Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re Climate, Canada's first climate communications and Engagement Center. This new organization launched in 2022 brings together Canada's leading climate communication academics and practitioners, and aims to help communicators create strategies that inspire the public to support climate action. Amber is one of Canada's top climate communication strategists and capacity builder who works with groups across the country bridging gaps between research and practice. She led the groundbreaking Alberta narrative project and supported much of the foundational work to pilot and build reclaim it. Amber, thank you for joining us today. Amber Bennett  03:54 Thank you for having me. Dan Seguin  03:56 Amber, maybe you can start by telling us a bit about yourself and Re Climate How did you get into climate communications? How did Re Climate come to be and what does it aim to achieve? Amber Bennett  04:09 Okay, I'll try to hold all of those questions at once. Well, I am based in Calgary, Alberta, which may seem like an unlikely place for some for the executive director of a Canadian organization or Canadian center focused on climate communications and engagement at Carleton University. But that's where I live with my family. And what to say? Yeah, I mean, I think I've been circling around climate communications for a very, very long time. You know, the the mind has a funny way of making sense of things in retrospect, but I started with a Bachelor of Science and then I moved on to a public relations degree and then I worked with the mayor of Calgary on the one of the I forget which numbered cop, but it was a Copenhagen. And I think that was really the first time I began to think about what, what is climate change and had a certain kind of exposure to the, to the, you know what the challenge was and what not. And when I saw I kind of went on, and I did a master's degree. And it was when I had needed to choose a topic for my master's degree when there was the catastrophic flooding here in Calgary. And there is this, like, amazing paradox where the, you know, Calgary Stampede, which is the epitome, I would say, of the, you know, kind of old boys club. And when that happened, when the floods happened, their motto was come hell or high water come hell or high water, they were going to, you know, produce the show. And at the same time, one of the readings I was doing as a part of my master's program was also titled come hell or high water. And it was really about the science of climate change, and why it is making it so difficult. Why is it so difficult for humans to kind of wrap our heads around it. So fast forward, I completed a master's, and then did a series of really interesting projects. I did some work with a group out of the UK called Climate outreach, which is focused on climate communications and engagement as well. And then started working with a group of people here in Canada to set up a similar center or similar organization that would focus on supporting climate communicators, helping to kind of bring together the research that was happening, as well as the practice. And so that's really why Re Climate it is set up to do, we're really dedicated towards advancing the practice of climate communications and engagement through research, training, offering resources, pulling resources together, strategy, and developing strategy with other types of practitioners, as well as convening networks of both scholars, as well as those people who are kind of out there in the real world doing campaigning and advocacy work and trying to, you know, communicate with citizens and whatnot. So, that's kind of where we're at. Dan Seguin  07:34 Now, Amber, it sounds like Re Climate, is a very diversified organization that brings together experts in social science, Public Affairs, and science. What kind of professionals work together in this environment? And what does it each bring to the table? Amber Bennett  07:55 Love this question. So Re Climate brings together I think I've said it research and practice. And so you have those practitioners who may be doing public engagement campaigns, they may be working for utilities, they may be working in local governments or other kinds of government, they might also be working in advocacy organizations. And so they often don't have the time, or I would argue the luxury of going into, you know, latest academic journals, or even, you know, kind of other thought leaders who are publishing in the field. Why? Because they're busy, they're doing the work. And so, you know, that kind of takes a lot of time to kind of go in and look at the research, track it down, make sense of it? They're also, I would argue, very few who have the time to do an evaluation, like after they've done something, what did we learn from it? You know, What, did we make a difference? You know, what kind of impact are we having, and similarly, just getting together with other folks, right, and talking about it and sharing what they're learning. So that's kind of on the practitioner's side. And so, you know, when we say we bring or convene networks of people together, we're really trying to do that, you know, we're trying to provide resources, synthesize, you know, research, both, perhaps, you know, it's public polling, or maybe it's social science, you know, what's happening in in, that's relevant, but also bringing people together to share with each other and learn with each other. So that's kind of that practitioner side. And, you know, there's also, I would say, sometimes a culture where people feel like they're competing with each other, you know, certainly within the charitable sector. So kind of, I think, for those folks who are coming in, who are kind of in the field, having that support and someone who's doing In the work on their behalf to kind of make sense of synthesize, pull it in together like yours, your five tips here, the things you need to do. That's extremely helpful. And then on the flip side, I think for researchers, you know, they're, they're kind of passionate, there's a reason why they're there thinking or trying to understand, you know, how to better engage people, or what's the right framing, or what are the values or whatever it is, because they're passionate about it. So by being able to kind of bridge from the practitioner world into a more academic or into a research field, we're able to just give people real world challenges. It's like, here's why practitioners are actually struggling with, you're an expert in this, please talk to us about it, or please, you know, this is the kind of information that they need. So, you know, kind of the practitioners, I would say, Bring the complexity of the real world, right, that we're dealing with real people, resource constraints, you know, various kinds of issues and whatnot, whereas researchers bring the kind of precision of being able to look at something with a whole body of understanding behind them to be able to kind of see, well, here's what may be operating within this situation, here's what we know about it. And here are some other kinds of interventions or approaches that we might be able to take. I don't know if that exactly answers your question. Maybe the scientists part, I would say they bring the public trust. Right. So whenever we're polling, you know, consistently, scientists come up on top as having high levels of public trust on climate and energy transition. And so I think that they bring that kind of authenticity. And, you know, they're not there, they're often unpolitical, right? They're not seem to be benefiting, you know, personally from talking about it. So they're really effective messengers. Dan Seguin  11:57 Wondering if you can share some insight into what the average Canadian's knowledge on climate change is? How much do they know about the main causes and the path forward? Amber Bennett  12:14 Well, I would say that Canadians probably know a lot about climate change. But what we measure, it's a little bit different. So when, and I would encourage folks to take a look at some of the reports that we have published on ReClimate.ca The one that I'm, you know, I kind of go back to was published this year, or maybe it was last year. But within these reports, we basically look across 65, or more, either private or publicly available surveys, or public polls or whatnot, and we kind of do it a roll up of okay, so it's not just one survey that has said, this is multiple surveys that are showing kind of trends and themes in in where the Canadian beliefs or attitudes or or mindsets are. So when you do that, and when we looked across, you know, 65, or so what you can see is, is that, even though you have the majority of Canadians that would say yes, climate change is real, and it is happening, almost half of them attribute both natural and manmade causes, you know, attribute the cause of climate change due to natural causes as well as as manmade. And so why is that important, is because when we get into the conversations around solutions, then without the kind of foundational understanding that burning fossil fuels creates pollution, which creates a heat trapping blanket, which is heating our planet, and causing all of these extreme weather events and natural disasters that we're seeing. Without that kind of clear understanding that burning fossil fuels is the cause of climate change. And when you get into the solutions, and what people actually have to do about it, the conversations a bit more, there's a lot of confusion, or there's a lot of room for confusion, which is kind of what we're seeing and I can talk a little bit more about that. So you know, I spend a lot of time in focus groups, and this kind of conversation comes up. So when we talk about solutions in the path forward, you talk about climate change, and you start to have discussions around what you are doing, you know, recycling will often come up, plastics will often come up. There's a whole kind of suite of things that people are doing, but very few people are able to name a particular policy or real intervention that you know, that will address some of the root causes. And we people on this podcast may not be like, Hey, why really. But you know, there are a lot of different people and for many climate change, even though they may be living within the impacts are the, you know, experiencing in their daily lives, they have many other kinds of concerns and priorities that are happening at the same time. So what I would say is that Canadians believe that climate change is happening, there is at least half that are uncertain, or would attribute it to both natural causes, and manmade causes. This kind of understanding of burning fossil fuels, the trapping blanket, you know, that's not well understood by many. And so they're kind of subsequently stopping burning fossil fuels, as a path forward isn't clear, as it could be, or, or should be at this point in time. And maybe the other thing I if you, if you'll let me, the other thing I would say is, is that, you know, Canadians consistently report, when you ask them very high levels of concern about climate change, right? Most people can see forest fires, you know, that's how we are making sense of what climate changes. It is through these kinds of experiences, either directly, or our experiences of seeing, you know, extreme weather and natural disasters. So people are expressing very high levels of concern. But if you ask, unprompted, what are you know, what are the issues that you're most concerned about? It often will address climate change as mentioned Much, much farther down on the list. Right. So, affordability and access to health care, cost of living, housing, there are many other issues that people are faced with and dealing with in their day to day lives. Dan Seguin  17:18 Okay, see the term movable middle mentioned in reports and on the reclaimed site, what is the movable middle? And why is it so important? Amber Bennett  17:34 Great question. And I feel compelled to say that I think that term movable metal is used differently by different people. I think within the context of, you know, the work that we do, it kind of comes out of, you know, some of the themes that I was talking about in the last in in the last question or last answer. It's this idea that, you know, people are kind of undecided. Or they're conflicted about an issue. So they could move either one way or the other, but they're not at the moment. oppositional? Right. So if you think about, you know, a broader population, there is a segment, you know, of Canadians, whose identities are really built around the idea that they don't believe in climate change. They're not going to support, you know, climate action and whatnot. There's also on the other side, a whole group of Canadians whose identity is built around me. I'm a climate activist, and I'm a climate advocate. And you know, and I'm an environmentalist, and so they're on the other side, but most of us just kind of live in the middle. Some are more well informed than others. But for the most part, people are concerned, right in the middle. They have they, you know, when they ask, yes, we want the government to act, we are highly supportive of it. But when it comes down to it, it's this tension around the fact that because they may not be well informed, or not thinking about this, they have many competing priorities. You're kind of undecided, or sometimes they're just conflicted about an issue. Right? Because on the one hand, as an example, yeah, I think we absolutely need renewable energy. We need lots of, you know, solar panels, I just don't want them in my house, or we need lots of, you know, solar, renewable solar farms. I just don't want them all over the landscape that I cherish from my childhood. So there are many things that you know are underneath that are operating underneath for people that kind of create some conflict for them. So people, when we talk About the movable metal, really, I think what's important is to acknowledge that most people are concerned. They want when they support action, but they're undecided, potentially about one particular aspect or issue of it. Or there's some other kind of thing that's happening for them that's creating a conflict. Or they're kind of uninformed. So, you know, I think that you know, why an example? Or rather, I'll back up that uninformed piece is particularly important right now, as we see more and more kinds of organized misinformation and disinformation. Right. So as an example, when I'm in focus groups, I can predict with very, you know, a lot of certainty, what are some of the kinds of key narratives that are coming to the surface where people are kind of undecided? One of them might be, well, EV batteries are actually worse, you know, for the environment than, you know, driving a car, or there's no way that we're going to be able to electrify everything the grids can't support. Or it may be that solar panels actually create more emissions when you produce them than they save in their lifetime. So these kinds of things that are very dominant are kind of recurring pieces of information. And when people who are not thinking about this a lot or deeply, as much as maybe you were, I are people who are listening to this. So when people encounter these, this kind of information or confusion about what are the actual solutions? They really don't know what to think. Right? So like a third of us sit within that category, right? If I actually don't know how to make sense of the information that I'm hearing, right, and I don't trust so much of it. Because I know that, you know, I know about misinformation, I know that I shouldn't be, you know, you know, trusting everything that I hear, etc. So that's kind of the deal with the movable middle, right? So they believe climate change is real and not climate deniers. They just may be conflicted or undecided, or just not, you know, as informed because they're not thinking about it on a daily basis. Dan Seguin  22:32 Now Amber, why is it important for the average communicator, like those in the energy sector, for example, to better understand the strategy behind climate change communications? Amber Bennett  22:45 Yeah, um, I think because climate change is a super wicked problem, and is really complicated. And maybe me rambling on for the past 20 minutes might give folks a sense of the things that, you know, we were trying to think about and grapple with all at the same time. And so I would say that, in other cases, although arguably, I would argue that information, probably doesn't work it in on any issue. But what we do know, is just giving people information, they're not, you know, people can't reason their way into kind of behavior change. So, you know, we live within systems. You know, we live within communities where, you know, we're surrounded by friends and family, we see ourselves as kind of certain types of people. There are all of these kinds of social needs and emotional needs that humans bring to the table, that climate change communications, and I would argue, probably any good communications needs to attend to. So this sense of belonging, right, so I belong to a community. Other people like me think and act this way, or I expect other people like me to think and act this way. Being able to understand even what the problem is can kind of create shared understanding so that people who are making decisions aren't making decisions that don't consider you that kind of shared understanding peace. People need a sense of efficacy, control in their lives, they need some agency, they just don't need someone making all these decisions on their behalf without any involvement. You know, people want to be good people. And to be able to ask questions and to challenge things that are going to impact their lives without being dismissed as a climate denier or shamed or whatnot. And people trust others for different reasons, right. So scientists are highly tuned lasts. politicians aren't big corporations aren't, right. But the ones who are often leading this conversation in public are big corporations and politicians. So all of those are the things that we need to attend to when we think about, you know, climate communications, and because it's such a complicated problem, and extends to so many aspects of our life. And to be fair, there's a lot of organized opposition and strategies to create polarization to create misinformation. There's a lot happening all at the same time. Dan Seguin  25:43 Okay, let me ask you this, what effect does it have to all be on the same page? Amber Bennett  25:51 I often give the analogy of an orchestra, right, where we all have the same song sheet, but we're all playing different instruments. And part of that is, you know, there is a role for the government in setting regulation. And there's a role for activists and advocates to be, you know, opening up new possibilities, holding governments and corporations to account. But actually, we also need businesses to be building out the products and the services and the and the things that we'll be using in our lives. And you need all of these different actors operating all at the same time. And, you know, to live, I guess, within an ecosystem, so I'm very skeptical of how one message is the efficacy of one message, I think that really what is helpful is if people are exposed to and have the ability to make meaning out of climate change, and out of energy transition through many different parts of their lives, and they actually have many different avenues to talk about it and to create, you know, a shared understanding of what they want for their future, or where we're going. Dan Seguin  27:23 Let's move to electrification, and renewable energy. Cool? These are important pieces of the world's response to climate change. For those in the energy sector who have a direct relationship with electricity consumers, is there a certain messaging that we should be sharing with our audiences? Amber Bennett  27:47 Such a great question. I might change, I might have a different thought while I'm making a cup of tea, you know, in a couple of hours from now. But I think that there is a very, goes back to the question that we talked about with literacy. And also goes back to some of the things I mentioned around people needing to have a sense of control in their lives. Right. So what we know from the research is that people's motivation to do something as a whole has a lot less to do with their perception of risk than it does there because their perception of their ability to act, and that that action will make a difference. What people really, I would say, based on all the things that I look at and read and whatnot, want is a place to act that makes sense. And that is relevant to their lives. So I think for folks who work in electrification, work in renewable energy, a part of what we need right now is both to fill in all of the pixels around, like, where are we going? What is this going to look like in my daily life? What are the things that make sense for me to do right now? And how are the things that I'm doing making a difference within, you know, the broader community that I know and love and want to make sure it's safe and prosperous? And all of those things? So I think what we're, what we need, in part, are those people who are responsible for infrastructure, for services, for that kind of daily life to start filling in the pixels of what is this going to mean? Because people get a little stuck on, like, blind faith. We're just going to hand it over and other people make decisions. People want to have a conversation. They want to have a space where they can kind of create a shared understanding, right, like a public imagination of like, where are we going? And what's it going to be like when we get there? And what is it going to need in my daily life? And so I think that there's that part, like, what is this going to look like? And then I think the other part is, what are you asking me to do? And how is it gonna make a difference? For me and for my community, Canadians are very generous, right? They're willing to do stuff, even if it doesn't benefit them, if they really believe that it'll, you know, benefit the broader community or collective good, they'll step up. But I would argue that we haven't done a really good job of giving people tangible, practical, relevant things that do make a difference. Neither have we done a great job of filling out the vision of what this is gonna look like, right? It's kind of a little bit like a cliff at the moment, right? We're all going to transition to renewables. And we haven't filled in, what is that actually going to look like? Right? Am I going to have a gas station at the end of my street? I don't know. What is it going to look like? That's what I would say is storytelling, right? What's the story of what this is? How is this going to happen? And what it will look like when we get there. Dan Seguin  31:27 Okay, Amber. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Hydro Ottawa has committed to being net zero by 2030. Does this kind of messaging resonate with the general public? Are there best practices in how to communicate this type of message in order to influence and maybe even promote change in our community? Amber Bennett  31:51 Well, I would say if we kind of got back to, you know, when we think about Canadians, right, so I think that you've got a little section of folks who sit on one end, who net zero by 2030 makes a lot of sense. They understand what Net Zero is, they understand why you've chosen 2030. They understand what getting to net zero, you know, even means, however, it's likely that a section of those people are kind of skeptical. Why? Because they've been hearing a lot of targets, and not a lot of action, you know, for many, many decades. And then, so that's, you know, that one group, right, we start to see kind of dropping, you know, belief that, you know, it's possible, or that's going to happen. And then you have that whole other group in the middle that I was talking about, where net zero means absolutely nothing. The word the language, net zero means, you know, I'm being a little bit brutal, but it's true, right, where net zero doesn't really mean a whole lot. And, and neither does 2030, or the importance of it. And I think, you know, I sitting in a boardroom or a meeting room the other day, and we're talking about targets, and it really struck me when the person on the other side said, we know that this is ambitious, and we know that it's impossible, but we have to say it, because it's actually what science requires of us. These are not a political target, it's actually a scientific target, that we need to reduce emissions by this amount by this period in time, even if we'll never get there. That's what science requires of us. So I think all that to say, targets, I think are very helpful for administrators, for policy makers, for business leaders, etc. To help, you know, turn the ship, and to help start getting the kind of resourcing and planning and whatnot in place. But for the general public, what they actually want is what we were just talking about, tell me where we're going and tell me what I have to do. And tell me why it makes a difference. Dan Seguin  34:17 Cool, Amber. You were a co-author on an incredibly helpful document entitled, climate messaging that works, talking about energy transition and climate change in Canada, which outlines the concept of message triangle. For me, it was a simple takeaway that could be immediately implemented into any communications surrounding climate change. Could you share the coles note of the message triangle with our listeners? Amber Bennett  34:50 I can, and I would love to. And I suspect that, you know, there'll be parts of what I'm about to say that begin to resonate with some of the past things that I've said or are connected to. So really in a triangle, the underlying principle is that we're trying to create a whole story or a whole narrative for people. And that has a lot to do with how human beings and how we have evolved and how we make sense of the world, we make sense of the world through narrative and through stories. And so when we just give people one piece of something, it doesn't satisfy the way that we have been trained. Since, you know, the, since the beginning to kind of make sense of the world. So what we want to do is we want to give people a challenge that has to either be overcome, or that we're at risk of losing something. So there's a challenge, there's a choice that we have right now that we need to make. And then there's an opportunity. And if we can hit each piece of that triangle, what we're doing is we're creating a whole story for people, which allows them to make sense of why are you taking my time? And why should I listen to you? So you know, as an example, when we talk about the challenge, you know, part of this is really, I think, being more clear about the cause of climate change. But also, what are some of the challenges that we're seeing, that are related to climate change within our communities? You know, I was listening to a CBC program the other day, and there's an entire community in Newfoundland, that's actually moving back from the water. And this is, you know, after the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona and whatnot. So, you know, some of the challenges that we're seeing, what's the challenge that we're trying to overcome? And ideally, I would, right size that at a community scale, right? So people feel overwhelmed when it's my personal individual problem. But if we can begin to talk about this as a community challenge, then people are much more likely to engage because they don't feel like doing it all on their own. Similarly, a choice, right, as communicators, if we're talking specifically to communicators, we often leave out the choice at the moment, what is the call to action? What are you actually trying? What are you asking someone to do? Is it voted a certain way? Is it a conversation? If it takes a particular action, we need something, there's some sort of choice, and there's some sort of action that has to create tension within this story, right? All good stories have a choice that has to be made by the main, you know, character, and then the opportunity. And I think, you know, part of what I've been talking about around, where are we going? What's it going to look like when we get there is that opportunity. So if we're talking about the challenge, is, you know, we're seeing increasing extreme weather, that's because of burning fossil fuels and pollution, the trapping blanket, our choice right now is we need to electrify and that means building infrastructure, the opportunity that we have is at a community scale, both for you know, ourselves and and for others. This kind of, you know, whatever might be the relevance of it right, we'll have a more dependable electricity supply. You know, if we're all in EVs, and we have backup, you know, batteries in our cars, when the power goes out, you know, you've got a little mini generator that you can draw on that gives you electricity, you know, through the storm or something, whatever it might look like. But that's the point is that we're trying to create a full picture for people. We want to talk about, what's the challenge? What's the choice? And what's the opportunity on the other side? Dan Seguin  39:22 Now, climate change has been a hot topic for oh, God, at least 20 years now. Are there any challenges with keeping an audience engaged and interested for so long? Amber Bennett  39:36 Yeah, there's actually a woman out of the States who wrote an article. Her name is Suzanne Moser. And it's something I'm going to botch the title but it's something like, you know, Climate Communications 20 Years Later: What Have We Really Learned? And I think that in fairness, I think we've learned a lot, right? I think most people understand that it's more complicated than just giving people a brochure at this point. And I think that in 20 years, we've done a much better job of crystallizing, what is it that we need to do? However, there's also been 20 years of misinformation, 20 years of broken plans and not, you know, unachieved targets etc. And I was chatting with a woman the other day and, and she's like, because I kind of feel like forest fires and floods and hurricanes are doing the job that we used to do, you know, which is creating alarm and concern and demonstrating like, this is real. And it's a big problem. So I think in 20 years, we've had 20 years more of all of that. But we haven't, you know, but, but rather, I would say the job now in this moment, is the pathway, right? And giving people that kind of those choices, that control, and that sense of agency, that they can do something about it. And we need to get on with the action part, right. So we can't leave people in just concern. Because our minds can only hold so much anxiety and concern at one time, amongst all of the other things that we're concerned and anxious about, you know, climate change is just, you know, even more dreadful, particularly, I think, for younger people. So we can't, you know, people can only stay there for so long before they start to kind of check out because, as I go back, you know, I kind of mentioned it in the beginning. It's like our sense of whether or not we or our sense of motivation, or motivation to act has a lot more to do with our sense of being able to do something about it, rather than the risk that it that it proposes or that it is, so yeah. So, I would say the challenges of keeping people interested or if you can't give them something to do, then, you know, at a certain point, you kind of have to just check out of the conversation until, you know, you get clear about what are you asking me, and I think that this kind of anxiety is a real problem. And so the road for them, this moment really requires us to get much more clear about where we're going in the pathway forward. Dan Seguin  42:52 Okay, Amber, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions, and we've got a few for you. Are you ready? Amber Bennett  43:00 Ready to go? Okay, Dan Seguin  43:03 What are you reading right now? Amber Bennett  43:05 Wine Witch on Fire by Natalie Maclean, I think. Dan Seguin  43:09 Okay, now, what would you name your boat? If you had one, maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Amber Bennett  43:17 I don't have one. And it would be a miracle if I ever have one. So I'm going to name it a Miracle. Dan Seguin  43:24 Who is someone that you truly admire? Amber Bennett  43:28 This is kind of really out of left field, but I'm gonna go with it. So during COVID, there was a woman named Trinny Woodall who used to do What Not To Wear on the BBC. It was like one of the original kinds of reality programs, like one of those. And, you know, I'd love to be more philosophical than this. But I admire her because her whole... a) she works so hard, but also she just wants to make women of a certain age or any woman just feel good. And I really just admire someone whose life and business and purpose is really just trying to make other people see the goodness in themselves or to feel better about themselves. So she's, and she's also for any one who's interested. I mean, a social media magician, like she's, she's magic in terms of what she did. She started during COVID and kind of as a comms person, like, Yeah, amazing. Kind of how she has set herself up as an influencer. Dan Seguin  44:42 Okay, Amber, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed? Amber Bennett  44:51 Magic? Yeah, this is hard. Okay, so just bear with me. Great start! This is not as rapid as you probably want. I'm moving houses. I bought a house. And there were two moments in like, one was do I put an offer in? Or do we put an offer in? And then there was another moment, kind of later on. And in both cases, I was about to say, I was going to pull back and say no, you know, I'm not going to go forward with it. And I kid you not, in that moment, the wind picked up. So in one case, I was outside and the wind picked up and got very, very strong where I was standing. So the first time you know, you can kind of blow it off. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. That was weird. But it happened twice. It happened a second time. And then the second time where I was, you know, kind of stuck. And, you know, wanting to retreat and I got a little, you know, scared about, you know, kind of taking the leap. And in that second time, the same thing happened, where the winds picked up, and they got a little bit stronger around me. And then they calmed down afterwards. And not in a like, oh, I kind of feel like no, it's kind of little, you know, it was very dramatic. And so anyways, I move houses tomorrow, so I'm gonna just put that out to magic. Not quite sure. It doesn't make a lot of logical sense. Why? Why did we do it? But we're there now. Dan Seguin  46:26 Now, what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began? Amber Bennett  46:32 Yeah, I'm, like so many parents. And I would argue women in particular, the double bind of having to take care of kids as though I don't work. And work even though I don't have kids. And I think for a lot of parents that was the impossible situation and I don't feel that that's really gone away. Dan Seguin  47:02 This next one I always enjoy. What have you been watching a lot more of on Netflix or TV lately? What's your favorite? In other words, you know, what's your favorite movie or TV show? Amber Bennett  47:17 I love the Peaky Blinders. And I've gone back and I've watched certain episodes again, just because they're so delicious with the costumes and the characters and the whole thing. I'm, yeah, totally enthralled. Yeah, love it.  Okay.Now, lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now. Um, I think that if anyone were to see my email inbox, they'd be very surprised at, you know, I think communion policy was the king for so long. And I think finally, we're at the point where we're beginning to understand that the public has to be on board, the public actually needs to have informed consent about so many of these choices. And we need a social mandate to ensure that climate action is the third rail, right? You know, if you're going to be a leader in this country, or business operating in this country, then you need to be a climate leader, and you need to be a climate business, it has to be fundamental to all of the decisions that you make, and how you and how you operate. Because science doesn't give us any other choice at this moment. So that's, so I think, the kind of realization that we can have all the technology and all the policy that we want, but if people aren't on board, then it's never going to happen. And so I get to work with very interesting people, unexpected from all walks of life, and you know, different sectors who are beginning to understand that, really, this is something we're going to work on until all of us and those beyond. For many generations, yeah. Dan Seguin  49:12 Now, if our listeners want to learn more about you, Amber, or your organization, how can they connect? Amber Bennett  49:18 Yeah, well, easiest is to go to our website, so Re.Climate, so that's reclimate.ca. And folks can sign up there if they want to, you know, make sure that they get more information on events, and we do lots of, you know, webinars and talks and we release reports and, and whatnot. So that's a great thing to do. And I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn. So Amber Bennett, and I also share lots of things there. that I find interesting. Dan Seguin  49:59 Well, Amber. This is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Amber Bennett  50:08 Yeah. Great questions. Great chat. And thank you. Dan Seguin  50:14 Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.

Co-host Ryan Piansky, a graduate student and patient advocate living with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and eosinophilic asthma, and co-host Holly Knotowicz, a speech-language pathologist living with EoE who serves on APFED's Health Sciences Advisory Council, have a conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) and patient education, with guest Dr. Corey Ketchem, a third-year Gastroenterology Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.   In this episode, Ryan, Holly, and Dr. Ketchem discuss Dr. Ketchem's interests, and his research into using an AI chatbot to provide patient education on eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases. He shares, in broad terms, the methodology and conclusion of the research and what current and future research he is pursuing about using artificial intelligence to improve patient education and care.   Listen to this episode to learn about the current limitations and potential future benefits of using AI to help patients. Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is designed to support, not replace the relationship that exists between listeners and their healthcare providers. Opinions, information, and recommendations shared in this podcast are not a substitute for medical advice. Decisions related to medical care should be made with your healthcare provider. Opinions and views of guests and co-hosts are their own.   Key Takeaways: [1:17] Ryan Piansky and co-host Holly Knotowicz introduce the topic, artificial intelligence and patient education, and their guest, Dr. Corey Ketchem, a third-year Gastroenterology Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.   [1:30] Dr. Corey Ketchem has an interest in allergic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases (EGIDs), as well as artificial intelligence and epidemiologic studies.   [2:01] Dr. Ketchem did his residency at the University of Pennsylvania following medical school. There he met Dr. Evan Dellon, a world expert in EoE. Dr. Dellon became a mentor to Dr. Ketchem.   [2:24] As Dr. Ketchem learned more about EoE, he was fascinated by the many unknowns and opportunities for discovery within the eosinophilic GI field. He wanted to make an impact on patient care.   [2:51] Under Dr. Dellon's mentorship, he did epidemiologic studies. Seeking specialized training, he ended up at the University of Pennsylvania where he is getting rigorous training in epidemiology to study EGIDs.   [3:18] As ChatGPT was gaining its buzz, Dr. Ketchem saw a lot of clinical applicability. He views AI as an asset in epidemiology and hopes to use it to accelerate his research.   [4:30] AI usually references using computers to mimic human abilities, estimate decisions, or predict outcomes. An example is Natural Language Processing (NLP), to analyze and understand human language. Large Language Models (LLM) use NLP.   [5:08] ChatGPT is based on a LLM. LLMs use NLP techniques to understand vast amounts of text that they are trained on and generate responses in a chat format.   [5:25] Machine learning is another subset of AI that uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to learn with the data and predict outcomes.   [5:50] The hope is to use these AI techniques to speed up discovery and also minimize human expense or labor.   [6:28] Dr. Ketchem co-authored a paper in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology about an AI chatbot and EoE. He had been inspired by a cardiology paper on whether ChatGPT would create accurate, appropriate answers about cardiology disease health.   [7:19] Dr. Ketchem wondered if ChatGPT could be applied to EoE education. He discussed it with Dr. Dellon and Dr. Krystle Lynch, Dr. Ketchem's mentor at the University of Pennsylvania, and with Dr. Joy Chang, at the University of Michigan. They came up with a study design.   [8:06] The study asked ChatGPT questions about EoE, focusing on patient education and the therapeutics, and seeing if it gave accurate responses or not.   [8:45] The four doctors developed 40 questions that they gave ChatGPT as prompts and evaluated the responses. They proposed the questions in two ways: each question in an individual chat and 40 questions in a single chat.   [9:41] Analyzing the responses, the study demonstrated that ChatGPT responded with multiple inaccuracies to questions about EoE on general topics, complications, and management. Over half of the responses mixed correct and incorrect information.   [10:09] To evaluate the readability of the responses, the doctors used the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease tool. To understand the output from ChatGPT one would need high school and two years of college. That poses a potential health literacy barrier.   [11:40] The questions ranged from general: “What is eosinophilic esophagitis?”, to complications: “What is a food impaction?”, “What is a stricture?”, to therapeutics: “What are steroids for eosinophilic esophagitis?”, “Can I use a proton pump inhibitor for EoE?”   [12:15] It was not clear where ChatGPT pulled data from to respond to the questions. The data it was trained on was known to be in texts over a year old. Newer data may not have been accessible to ChatGPT.   [13:29] The doctors asked about things that were common knowledge in the eosinophilic GI realm, like dupilumab, and ChatGPT didn't know much about it because it was a newer treatment option for EoE at the time of the study. [13:42] The doctors scored the answers on their scientific accuracy and patient educational value. Simple questions got good responses. For questions about therapies and complications, “it wasn't doing well.” They identified limitations to the study. [14:14] The doctors asked ChatGPT if EoE is associated with cancer. From their best epidemiologic knowledge, the doctors don't think that it is. ChatGPT falsely associated EoE with esophageal adenocarcinoma.   [14:34] ChatGPT also associated EoE with Barrett's esophagus. To the doctors' best epidemiologic data, they are not sure that there's a connection.   [15:02] When the doctors asked the questions in individual chats, they asked ChatGPT for medical literature references for the information. It didn't provide accurate references. Titles and authors were often incorrect and links often didn't work.   [15:36] The incorrect references were a signal that ChatGPT wasn't ready to answer complex medical questions. In the more updated versions of ChatGPT, instead of giving references, it says you should consult your doctor, which is the right thing to do.   [15:56] The researchers concluded that implementing this technology requires clinical oversight; it's a tool that should be used with caution for patients in educating themselves and also from the perspective of a physician who is not an expert in EoE.   [16:29] Dr. Ketchem had been surprised by how long the responses were. He was expecting paragraphs but got pages and pages. He was also surprised by how quickly people were starting to use ChatGPT in other aspects of gastroenterology.   [16:57] While Dr. Ketchem and his team were writing the paper, another study came out about gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) that was somewhat similar to what Dr. Ketchem proposed for EoE. There is rapidly much being published about ChatGPT.   [17:14] Although the results were imperfect, there is potential applicability in patient-facing chats in the future for patient education but not yet there “for prime time.”   [18:33] These chats need to be transparent about where they're getting data, especially in the medical field.   [18:41] There will always be a role for people in medicine. You can't replace a face-to-face connection with a nurse or a physician with a chat bot.   [19:11] Dr. Ketchem says everyone needs to be careful about using AI tools. He advises patients to always discuss any medical questions with their physician. AI tools are not yet able to provide accurate medical information all the time.   [19:50] Ryan reminds listeners that this podcast is for educational purposes. Always consult your physician before making any changes to your healthcare. If you ask ChatGPT, also consult with your doctor before making any changes to your healthcare.   [20:31] One of the problems with large language models is the potential for inaccuracy. Dr. Ketchem's gold standard is the medical literature and you don't know where the large language models are getting their information.   [21:04] Future benefits may include helping patients get answers quicker and becoming more educated. Dr. Ketchem hopes we will get to a point where we can trust these technologies and implement them safely.   [21:37] Government organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) are bringing together experts to think about large language models and create regulatory frameworks for their use in healthcare. Dr. Ketchem tells how HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules are followed to protect patients.   [23:29] Dr. Ketchem sees potential in machine learning to predict which therapies an EoE patient will respond to. AI is also used in colonoscopies to identify hard-to-see polyps. It might be useful in endoscopies to see changes in the esophagus from EoE.   [24:35] AI image recognition could also be applied in pathology. Dr. Ketchem is interested in trying to apply it to work he wants to do in the long term. People are working with pathology specimens to automate the counting of eosinophils. Dr. Ketchem discusses the potential use of AI for epidemiology in pathology.   [25:43] Dr. Ketchem and Holly discuss the potential for using AI chatbots in medical screening questionnaires. There will always need to be a human element.   [27:57] Dr Ketchem speaks to the potential future development of educational videos prepared by AI. It is a complex scenario that would require a lot of training. If a camera is added, AI could analyze where patients are having problems in taking medications.   [29:55] Dr. Ketchem says there are many moving parts in healthcare and many stakeholders, making it difficult to implement AI. It could be used in many aspects, but its use must be safe. Dr. Ketchem thinks it will soon be useful in medical imaging.   [30:57] In the next decade, AI may be used in drug discovery, clinical decision-making, and healthcare administrative operations. The goal is to improve the care for the patient. Personalized care would be an aspirational goal of using artificial intelligence.   [31:29] Dr. Ketchem heard of a computer scientist at a government meeting suggesting a far-future scenario of doctors having digital versions of patients to test the patient's reaction to a specific medication, based on comorbidities and other medications in use.   [32:30] Holly thanks Dr. Ketchem for sharing his research findings to help others.   [32:40] Dr. Ketchem's last words: “The future is bright. There are many open avenues to apply these technologies to eosinophilic GI diseases – in diagnostic support, personalizing treatment, and predictive modeling – to make patient care better.”   [33:10] Dr Ketchem is building a research program to use epidemiologic training with artificial intelligence. He hopes to find how to take text from histology or pathology and apply epidemiologic methods, to build a cohort of patients to study diseases faster.   [34:03] Dr. Ketchem hopes to use AI to help predict patient outcomes, regarding who will respond to what therapy and who will have more complications from their disease; those are things he is interested in. There are so many unanswered questions.   [34:30] After Dr. Ketchem finishes his fellowship, he hopes to be an independent investigator, being curious and answering these questions somewhere. If you know of such a job, please let Dr. Ketchem know!   [34:53] To learn more about Dr. Ketchem's research, please check out the links in the show notes. To learn more about eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders, visit apfed.org/egids. If you're looking for a specialist who treats eosinophilic disorders, use APFED's Specialist Finder at apfed.org/specialist. [35:17] To connect with others impacted by eosinophilic diseases, please join APFED's online community on the Inspire Network at apfed.org/connections.   [35:26] Ryan thanks Dr. Corey Ketchem for joining us today. Holly thanks APFED's Education Partners, GSK, Sanofi, and Regeneron, linked below, for supporting this episode.   Mentioned in This Episode: Corey Ketchem, M.D., M.S. Penn Medicine Abstract of paper in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology: “Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Shows Multiple Inaccuracies When Responding to Questions About Eosinophilic Esophagitis”Medscape article about the paper in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology: “ChatGPT Gives Incorrect Answers About Eosinophilic Esophagitis”, by Carolyn Crist American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders (APFED) APFED on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram Real Talk: Eosinophilic Diseases Podcast apfed.org/egids apfed.org/specialist apfed.org/connections   Education Partners: This episode of APFED's podcast is brought to you thanks to the support of GSK, Sanofi, and Regeneron.   Tweetables:   “We ultimately came to the conclusion that implementing this technology requires clinical oversight and it's a tool that should be used with caution.” — Corey Ketchem, M.D., M.S.   “There will always be a role for people in medicine. You can't replace a face-to-face connection with a chat. That's just not going to work.” — Corey Ketchem, M.D., M.S.   “There will always need to be a human element to it. The goal is to make [AI for healthcare] as good as it can be. We're certainly not there yet, but it's probably closer to being here than we think.” — Corey Ketchem, M.D., M.S.   Bio: Dr. Corey J. Ketchem, MD is a rising third-year gastroenterology fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, driven by a profound interest in allergic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases (EGIDs). He has acquired a unique skillset in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics that equip him with the necessary tools to conduct rigorous research studies, culminating in a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) upon fellowship completion. Dr. Ketchem's passion for EGIDs has spurred a series of epidemiologic investigations focusing on both eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and non-esophageal EGIDs, yielding numerous publications in high-quality gastroenterology journals and earning him recognition through various research awards. Moreover, his academic path has included the incorporation of artificial intelligence into his research endeavors, aiming to enhance patient care and facilitate epidemiologic studies. Dr. Ketchem's trajectory is set toward becoming an independent researcher, dedicated to employing high-quality epidemiologic approaches to uncover pivotal insights into EGIDs, advance clinical knowledge, and optimize therapeutic strategies for patients.   Bio: Penn Medicine Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellows  

BALLOT INITIATIVE: Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act  The initiative would amend the California Constitution to define all state and local levies, charges, and fees as taxes. The initiative would also require new or increased taxes to be passed by a two-thirds legislative vote in each chamber and approved by a simple majority of voters.  Guest Co-Host: Diane Pearce See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's episode is an enlightening one! I start with New York and Democrat's very obvious target against Donald Trump under the guise of “saving” New York business, and it is a total corruption of our system. Next, I discuss how my organization Golden Together has found that Latinos are heavily intertwined into California's “carbon economy” jobs, such as agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and construction, which are jobs that California Democrats are trying to cut in the name of “climate justice”. California Democrats attack trucking every single day, yet 50% of Latinos are in the trucking industry. Latinos come to California for the “American Dream”, and California Democrats want to destroy that dream. I also discuss how California Democrats are attacking the Tax Payer Protection and Accountability Act, which would make tax hikes in the state go on the ballot. This is not an episode you want to miss!

Some heavy hitter topics are covered this week with KFBK's non-partisan political analyst Gary Dietrich. Gary will go over the expected budget revisions by California's Governor Newsom, the latest in all of Trump's trials, and an update to the legal battle surrounding the Taxpayer Protection and Accountability Act.

Joseph W. Fischer  v. United States, argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on April 16, 2024 From the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari: Petitioner Joseph W. Fischer . . . attended the Stop the Steal rally on January 6. Unlike many of the other attendees, Mr. Fischer did not subsequently march with the crowd to the Capitol. . . . But after learning of the swelling demonstration, Mr. Fischer and his companion drove back to Washington, D.C. . . . Mr. Fischer was not part of the mob that forced the electoral certification to stop; he arrived at the Capitol grounds well after Congress recessed.***[T]he government also charged [Mr. Fischer with] a violation of Section 1512(c) (Count 3), which prohibits evidence-impairment in connection with, among other things, “a proceeding before the Congress.”***The D.C. Circuit's interpretation of the anti-shredding provisions of the Corporate Fraud and Accountability Act of 2002, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), presents an important question of federal law affecting hundreds of prosecutions arising from January 6, including the prosecution of former President Donald Trump. . . . The D.C. Circuit's opinion conflicts with this Court's precedent, diverges from the construction of Section 1512(c) by other courts of appeal, and results—as Judge Katsas observed—in an “implausibly broad” provision that is unconstitutional in many applications. Question Presented: Did the D.C. Circuit err in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) (“Witness, Victim, or Informant Tampering"), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence? Resources: Fischer v. U.S. docket U.S. v. Fischer opinion (Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) Time Stamps: (00:00:00) Argument by Jeffrey T. Green, counsel of record for Petitioner(00:34:44) Argument by Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Solicitor General of the United States (00:48:40) Justice Alito line of questioning about "mostly peaceful" protest hypotheticals and the outer reaches of this statute, which leads to a discussion touching on free speech issues. (01:36:35) Rebuttal by Jeffrey T. Green The Institute for Free Speech promotes and defends the political speech rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government guaranteed by the First Amendment. Learn more on our website: www.ifs.org

Welcome to the Happy Nurse Educator podcast by nursing.com. Since 2018, nursing.com has been at the forefront of nursing education, guiding over 400,000 nursing students to academic success while helping the average student raise their lowest grade by 11.6% with an impressive 99.25% NCLEX® pass rate. Download free Lesson Plans at HappyNurseEducator.com HIPAA Lesson Plan Objective In this lesson, nursing students will delve into the core aspects of HIPAA, unraveling the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's significance in safeguarding patient health information. The focus extends to understanding the nuances of patient privacy, emphasizing the "Need to Know" principle. Nursing points will guide students through PHI pitfalls, instructing them on practical measures like turning off computer screens and avoiding public discussions. Furthermore, the lesson delves into the profound impact of HIPAA violations on various healthcare roles, emphasizing the far-reaching consequences for individuals and institutions. The objective also highlights the integration of nursing concepts such as health policy, ethical and legal practice, professionalism, and patient education. By the end, students will be adept at educating patients on their right to privacy, fostering a foundation for ethical and lawful nursing practice. Download free Lesson Plans at HappyNurseEducator.com

Hosts: Leah Murray and Greg Skordas Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested transgender youths’ medical records from QueerMed, a Georgia telehealth clinic. The clinic’s founder says that they have no plans on turning over patient information that is protected by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Why is he trying to get his hands on these records? And where is he getting the authority to do this?

Hosts: Leah Murray and Greg Skordas Eye on the Hill: Polygraphs, sexual offense, indigent defense, and mandatory prison time To continue KSL @ Night’s Eye on the Hill coverage, Leah and Greg discuss HB327 Limitations on the Use of Polygraphs and HB162 Sexual Offense Amendments with Rep. Angela Romero, SB160 Indigent Defense Amendments with Sen. Todd Weiler, and HB273 Sentencing Modifications for Certain DUI Offenses with Rep. Andrew Stoddard. New Utah charter school to be set entirely in virtual reality There’s a new public charter school that’s set to open in Utah in August 2025. It’s called Virtual Horizons Charter School, and it’s going to be set entirely in virtual reality. Kristin Elinkowski, Board Chair of Virtual Horizons Charter School, joins Greg and Leah to discuss how virtual reality can enhance student education. Feel free to reach out to Kristin at kcelinkowski@gmail.com for more information. The latest news in the 2024 presidential election 2024 will see an exciting presidential election… or a 2020 redux, depending on your point of view. The Illinois State Board of Elections unanimously voted to keep Donald Trump on the ballot. And in Utah it looks like Nikki Haley is trailing him for the nomination. Leah and Greg discuss the latest election news. Texas AG requests transgender youths’ medical records from a Georgia clinic Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested transgender youths’ medical records from QueerMed, a Georgia telehealth clinic. The clinic’s founder says that they have no plans on turning over patient information that is protected by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Why is he trying to get his hands on these records? And where is he getting the authority to do this? Will we get to see an NHL team in Utah? If you’re a hockey fan, you’ll be glad to hear that Utah lawmakers have unanimously passed a resolution to bring an NHL franchise here. That same day, Gov. Cox, Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, and several other leaders met with the NHL Commissioner to further discuss bringing a team to Utah. Will we get to see this play out? Utah’s national monument fight Utah is getting some help on its national monument fight. Or at least, it’s getting some pushback. The state is suing to have national monuments in Southern Utah declared unconstitutional. It’s challenging the 1906 law, the Antiquities Act, which authorizes the president to protect land by designating national monuments. Greg and Leah discuss everything you need to know about this case.

HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is 27 years old. For better or worse, it was designed to protect patients. But in reality, it has also hampered attorneys in their quest for medical records critical to ensuring fair compensation for injured workers. Guest Jared Vishney is the founder and CEO of the medical record retrieval technology company Arctrieval. He says most firms wait more than three months for medical records, some as much as four months or more. HIPAA regulations (and penalties) have turned medical record holders so risk averse that it's hard for patients to get their own records.  The rules around HIPAA and medical records are murky. How much time do institutions have to turn over requested records? How can attorneys and clients push providers to turn over records faster? Workers' Comp attorneys may find themselves caught in a disconnect between medical record technology and a web of legislation that is supposed to oversee electronic health record systems and rates for copies of those records. It's hard for clients and attorneys to know they're getting the full picture, and costs can run into the thousands of dollars.  Hear about tips and tricks for getting the records you need. If you've been frustrated by a tangled medical records system, this episode of Workers' Comp Matters is for you. Mentioned in this Episode: “Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Section 164.524 - Access of individuals to protected health information,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell University “Medical Records: Fees and Challenges Associated With Patient Access,” GAO report to Congress

HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is 27 years old. For better or worse, it was designed to protect patients. But in reality, it has also hampered attorneys in their quest for medical records critical to ensuring fair compensation for injured workers. Guest Jared Vishney is the founder and CEO of the medical record retrieval technology company Arctrieval. He says most firms wait more than three months for medical records, some as much as four months or more. HIPAA regulations (and penalties) have turned medical record holders so risk averse that it's hard for patients to get their own records.  The rules around HIPAA and medical records are murky. How much time do institutions have to turn over requested records? How can attorneys and clients push providers to turn over records faster? Workers' Comp attorneys may find themselves caught in a disconnect between medical record technology and a web of legislation that is supposed to oversee electronic health record systems and rates for copies of those records. It's hard for clients and attorneys to know they're getting the full picture, and costs can run into the thousands of dollars.  Hear about tips and tricks for getting the records you need. If you've been frustrated by a tangled medical records system, this episode of Workers' Comp Matters is for you. Mentioned in this Episode: “Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Section 164.524 - Access of individuals to protected health information,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell University “Medical Records: Fees and Challenges Associated With Patient Access,” GAO report to Congress

‍‍In this episode of Monday Morning Marketing, we're stepping into a compelling discussion with Dr. Len Tau as he delves into the under-appreciated powers of reputation marketing. Exploring the crucial shift from reputation management to reputation marketing, Dr. Tau shares invaluable insights and techniques to help you grow your dental practice. Learn how to unleash the full value of five-star reviews, the importance of a solid reputation culture, and how to automate the review process for maximum impact. Discover the best response strategies to both cheers and jeers from patients, so you're prepared for anything. This episode is packed with actionable strategies you can immediately implement to transform your reputation game and see a noticeable increase in patient satisfaction!‍What you'll learn in this episode:The distinct differences between reputation management and reputation marketing and why you should transition to the latter.The importance of creating a reputation culture in your dental practice to spur five-star reviews.The best time and methods to encourage patients to leave feedback on review platforms, specifically Google.The role of automation in streamlining the review process, making it easy and convenient for patients to leave feedback.A guide to responding to reviews, both positive and negative, to maintain a strong online reputation.Dive into today's episode and upgrade the way you handle your reputation strategy forever!‍You can reach out to Len Tau here:Website: https://www.drlentau.com/Email: len@drlentau.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLenTau‍Mentions and Links:Tools/Software:YelpBirdeyeSwellPodiumSolutionreachGoogle My BusinessTerms:NAP - Name, Address and Phone NumberHIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Lynn. So talk to us about reputation management. How can we utilize this or what advice suggestions or methods can you give us that will actually help attract new patients through this form Len: of management? So first off, thanks for having me. Number one, uh, number two, I will start off by saying, I am not a fan of the term reputation management.Reputation management is in my opinion, an old marketing term. Where you are really worrying about negative reviews and hoping to find a way to get them off the first page of Google. I prefer a term called reputation marketing. So it's a way to generate five star reviews.Whichever way you want to do it. Okay. And then market it to attract more new patients. So if you look at it that way, it's a much more current term. So if you're, if you're out there and you're looking for a company to use for, you know, website design, Google AdWords, and they say, we also do reputation management to me, they're not up in the, current.You want to market your reputation. It's so important. And what does marketing your reputation allow you to do? It allows you to then do other types of marketing and the marketing is going to be so much more successful than it would have been if you didn't have the reviews behind you as kind of the foundational part of your, your Google by business page and stuff.Michael: Okay. So then what can we be doing? What can we utilize or how can we utilize this to, to better effect? our marketing and attract new patients through that process. Len: So in my opinion, the most important thing you have to do is find a way to get your patients to write reviews. And there's a very big difference between a company who says they generate reviews and a company who just sends a link to write a review.Okay, there are many companies out there that you can use, and there's a lot of communication companies that fall into this, this sector that literally, they say they do reputation, but literally, literally, they're just sending a link to the patient to do a review. In that case, the patient has to do all the work.Okay, all the work, they have to log in. They have to remember their password. They have to write everything down. They have to hit post and everything else. It's multiple steps. And that's why those products are not successful. In order to be super successful out there to get these reviews, put where you want them.And you only really want them in two or three places, depending on your geography. Google always. Facebook and then Yelp, depending on where you are. So if you're in California, New York, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Dallas, any large city like that, Yelp is going to have more clout than if you're in, you know, a town with 12 dentists.I mean, Yelp is not going to be as important there. So you're really looking to get reviews on Google and Facebook. And why? Because everybody uses Google to find a local business. They're going to do dentists near me, dentists in my town, dentists in my zip code. And when someone's searching for a dentist or you, in fact, your Facebook page shows up on the first page of Google.So you want to put these reviews where actually your current patients are looking for you, which is on a Google search. That's how you, you take reputation marketing to the nth degree by just finding a system out there. That automatically will get the reviews, allow the patient to auto log into their, account, and within a couple of seconds, they've got a text message and they can put the review directly on your Google My Business page.That's how to take it to the nth degree, as I like to say. Michael: Gotcha. So then it's kind of like a little bit of a battle when it comes to like the metropolitan areas, when it, like Houston, LA, stuff like that. Would you recommend, hey guys, Yelp, Google, and that like that, or just focus only on Google? Len: No, in those specific cities like LA, San Francisco, you said Houston, Miami, you know, Chicago, it's, it's Google number one by far.You always have to dominate Google. There's, there's no choice out there. Your focus should be on Google. Okay. And then in those specific cities that we just mentioned, Yelp is important. Okay. Now remember someone doesn't go to Yelp and I've interviewed many, uh, local people in these towns you mentioned, and I asked them, how do they find their dentists?They don't go to Yelp to look for a dentist. They go to Google to look for a dentist. They find information about their dentist, and then they look them up on Yelp to see how their reviews are. So in those bigger cities, Yelp is more important for that reason, but people go to Yelp to look for restaurants.They don't go to Yelp to look for a dentist. There's a big difference there in the way people search. If people in California say Yelp is really important, it is. But if you don't dominate Google, people can't even find out who you are. So it's always Google first, then Yelp in those specific cities, and then much below that is Facebook.the only reason you really want to get Facebook reviews is because it shows up on a Google search. When you type a practice name in, you'll see the website's number one, and then usually Facebook is number two or three. It's visibility there. That's why you want to get Facebook reviews. Michael: Gotcha. Okay.So then that's the key. We get on Google, right? Number one, right? Especially if we're in metropolitan areas, we would Google then Yelp, right? And then Facebook. Now what? What's the next step to be like, all right, man, I want to start getting these a couple a day, a couple, maybe 15, 20 a week. You know what I mean?Like, cause we see that in some of these groups. And how, how easy is that Len: really? Reviews are basically a numbers game. So the bigger the practice, the more reviews you're going to get. I mean, that's just, it's just a numbers game. The more review requests you sent out, there's a certain percentage we expect to come back.The more you send out, the more you're going to get. So bigger practices should expect more reviews. Okay. But you have to use an automated service. And don't love self promoting myself. So bird eyes, one of them, you know, swell is a very common one. Podium is another one. Those are the three in the dental industry specifically that are designed to make the process easy for your patients.If it isn't easy, your patients will not take the time to do the review. And a lot of the services out there, they actually have their Own sites they go to. So just as an example, uh, solution reaches the popular communication software. I just had a dentist reach out to me who had 750 reviews on solution reaches page buried where you couldn't find it.And only 18 on Google. that's a shame that they didn't, they got all these great reviews, but nobody sees them. You have to make sure they're actually putting it on Google. That is such a big deal nowadays. If it's not going to Google, it doesn't help you. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. I remember when we used to have solution reach, that was a.That was a big thing. It just populated there. And then we were like, okay, what happened? Right? And then it's weird asking the patient. Hey, can you write it again on Google? Right? And then that diminishes it big time, big time. Patients are Len: not going to do it twice. It's it's a, it has to be a one step clean process, but I know, and I know you're talking about, we're talking about reputation, but I want to make one other thing clear, especially to the startup groups.One of the missing factors is just generating reviews is not enough. Okay, just having the most reviews is not enough, especially as a newer business, you have to, you have to make sure that Google recognizes and understands your listings and make sure the listing it's called listing management, citation claiming, it's a vital part of local search, because if you only have a ton of reviews and you're listing.These are not consistent or invisible because you're a new startup. Google is, you're not going to be at the maps. And that's why people say, well, I have a thousand reviews. Why can't people find me? And it's usually because your listings are messed up. So that's a very big part for, especially for startup companies, to know that you have to make sure the name, the address, and phone number is called the NAP is consistent.It's an online huge part of local search. Okay, so Michael: that has to be consistent. Google finds you then the reviews come in Len: Yeah, so the purpose the the kind of way it works is when you make your listings consistent Which should be done before you even open your doors technically So if you once you fix the listings and you have a consistent flow of reviews coming in Consistent flow for google is one to two every single week so if you're getting less than 8 to 10 or 8 to 12 a month, you're not getting enough of them, but that factor 12, plus a consistent listing, you will rank higher on the maps than someone who's not doing it that same way we see it all the time.Michael: Okay, so then give us the game plan. Now it's we got the automation down, right? Okay, let's just say we signed up with BirdEye. We're starting to send out the links and that's it. Or do we specifically write something and then, or how does this go? Len: So, so the ideal way to use a product like BirdEye is automate the process.So we integrate into practice management software. You automate the review requests sending out. Okay. Now. It's really important. People say to me, well, I don't want to automate it because patients may write bad reviews. So if there's a filter built into the system, that's really good. It's not gating.Gating is illegal and you can't do it, which would be like thumbs up or thumbs down. So, you can't do that. You can't preempt the question like that. But if you give them a feedback button, that's even better. Where they can provide direct feedback to the practice. But you definitely want to integrate and you want to automate.And then mention to the patients when they leave the office. That they may be getting a communication asking for what I refer to as feedback, not a review, asking for feedback about their experience, and then the patients know they're going to get something. There's a higher conversion when you say something, and then we take it from there and allow the patients to write the review when it goes directly to Google from their phone.So that's the secret sauce is really, you know, having a discussion and being aware. Of what I call rep, you know, making a reputation culture in the office. If the office revolves around reputation, which basically means that you're being. examined or being, you have, you're being, having a report card written about their experiences and just making sure everybody's on their best a game.That's how you work the system and get really great reviews written by the patients other than just asking them. You can ask your patients till the cows come home to write a review on Google. You're lucky if two to three do it of every hundred. Because it's just, there's too many steps involved. So you want to make sure you make it easy for the patients to do it using a system that allows an auto login feature.And it's a simple process. It isn't simple, they won't do it. Like I mentioned that before. Yeah, Michael: that's true. That's true. I love that though, how you mentioned, uh, give us your feedback. Right, it's different. Len: Asking for feedback. Very different. Instead of a review. And it's much more comfortable. You know, it's much more comfortable for someone in the office to discuss it with a patient rather than saying, Can you write us a Google review?That to me sounds like you're begging for it almost versus can you provide some feedback about your experience? We really appreciate it. It's just an easier conversation to have in his work. I've been doing this for, you know, since 2010 now, and it's just an easy way to have a conversation with the patient.That's why we put it in those those words. Michael: Yeah. And then you let them know, like you're going to get a text message or something like in about an hour or like right now or when you leave the office or. Len: So you can certainly do it an hour after their appointment. Okay. The problem, what we found and look, I've been in this space since 2013 in the review space specifically, and I've worked with over 10, 000 dental practices.And the data shows that when you send the review request an hour after the appointment, it opens up more negative reviews coming in versus waiting until the end of the day. Okay. They all go out at once. Patients who do have a problem won't have a problem usually five, six, seven hours later, so they vent back to the practice.They don't go online directly to Google. So, I prefer them going out at the end of the day rather than right after the appointment because it also gives the practice some time to say, well, so and so didn't have a good experience, and they can turn the patient off if they have any concern that the patient may go and write a bad review.Most patients go directly to Google on their own. They don't go to use a service to do that. They will leave the office, they'll be pissed off, and they'll go to Google to write their bad review almost immediately after the appointment. If you wait till the end of the day, it 100 percent changes the results, and that's through years of doing this with, with thousands of offices, like I said.Michael: Okay. So I didn't know that. Would it also help at the end of the day? Like people are at home, relax. Oh yeah. I got to make a review kind of thing Len: versus being during the day they're running around there. If they're working, they're going from your office to back to their job. Then they have to deal with their kids.The kid throws up, you know, they, they don't have time at the end of the day, between usually six or eight o'clock, we see the best results during that timeframe by far and away, not even close to other times during the day. Gotcha. Michael: Okay. So let's just say they left the review. Awesome. Beautiful. We leave it at that or what happens after that?Len: When you say when the patient has written the review? Michael: Yeah. Like they, they're like, okay, yeah. Provide us some feedback. Boom. End of the day, link gets sent. The next morning you wake up, you're like, Oh, they left a review. Cool. Awesome. You know what I mean? And then after that, do we write back on that review?Like, thanks or nothing. Len: So I am a big fan of responding to positive reviews. I'm not a big fan of responding to negative reviews. Negative reviews, I like to take it offline and contact the patient to some extent, you know, whether it's on the phone, whether it's via email, not, you don't want to respond to that review right away.Okay, the reason that you would respond to a negative review online is because you're really responding to the people that are reading it, not to the person who wrote the review. I like to take the conversation offline and have a direct conversation with them. Okay, for positives, you have no, you don't risk anything, you can respond, look technically when you respond to a review, whether it's positive or negative, you really can acknowledge that there are patients, it's a technical HIPAA violation if you do that.Now, if you do it to someone who wrote a positive review, I don't think they're going to make a big deal about it. Okay, if you do it to a person who wrote a negative review, they may find that as a HIPAA concern, and they may report you to what's called the Office of Civil Rights. So I, I don't recommend, I recommend responding to, to positives.I would be very careful about negatives for that reason. Michael: Gotcha, okay. So the positives, we can just say like, Oh, we love you, thank you so much, or something like that, right? Len: Yeah, thanks for your, thanks for your feedback. We're so glad you, you know, love, love being our patient. Technically, that's a HIPAA violation.Okay, because you said we love being our patient by the letter of the law you're violating HIPAA by acknowledgements. Okay, but I do not believe you'll ever see a patient that reports you because they just wrote a positive review about you. If you do the same thing to a negative review.Okay. The patient may say to that, well, they just violated my HIPAA rights and they may decide to report you. It's rare. I've seen it just trying to be very frank with you here. That conversation or that review, the positive one is violation of HIPAA, but I don't think you'll ever see a problem with it. Michael: No.Yeah. That saves your butts, man. I appreciate that. So awesome. Any final words or advice or suggestions that you want to give to our listeners Len: about this? Just reputation has to be something you focus on. It's a foundational part of running your practice. When you open your doors as a startup, you want to make sure you have a consistent presence.You want to want to also want to make sure you have more than just a couple of reviews because then it looks like you're new. Okay. So, but don't be afraid to ask. Use a service that makes it easy on your patients. Don't expect to be able to do it naturally on your own because your focus is doing more as different things in the practice when you're, when you're a new practice.So the main thing is just find a way to get your patients the right reviews. It will pay off in the long run, especially because it will then allow you to spend money on marketing and get results in the marketing because of that, without the reviews, you're going to struggle with your marketing in most cases, in most areas.Michael: Awesome, man. I appreciate you, Len, and I appreciate your time, and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to Len: you directly? So lots of ways. I'm always on social, so my social media is very easy, Facebook, Instagram.You can, um, I'll give you my email address and you can email me, um, but it's Len, L E N at DrLentow. com, D R L E N TAU. com. And, um, I also have my own Facebook group, so they can join the Facebook group and contact me through that. I'm very easily got ahold of. So just find, you'll find a way if you want me, you'll get ahold of me.Michael: Nice. Awesome. So guys, that's all going to be in the show notes below. So Lynn, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing Len: episode. Thanks very much for having Michael. Appreciate it.‍

Aaron Burnett is the CEO and founder of Wheelhouse Digital Marketing Group, a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO, digital strategy, digital advertising, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and analytics. Aaron has cultivated and built a thriving company based on an unwavering focus on helpfulness, generosity, and joy.00:00 - 00:21 “Google has announced that in 2024 they're going to eliminate third-party cookies as well. And so again, this shift is going to occur for everyone. And so the ability to aggregate and use first-party data is going to be critical. The ability to differently target and differently measure campaign effectiveness is going to be critical as well." — Aaron Burnett 00:22 - 00:40 Welcome to Peppershock Media's Marketing Expedition Podcast 00:41 - 01:45 Aaron's Background 01:46 - 06:22 Marketing Essentials Moment: Google's Anti-Scam Ad Policy06:23 - 08:50 Welcome to the show, Aaron! 08:51 - 12:28 Values-driven culture 12:29 - 14:20 Delivering joy in the workplace 14:21 - 15:21 Hello Audio is the best format for creating a connection between you and your audience and allows them to access your zone of genius at the click of a button. 15:22 - 17:13 HIPAA regulations – (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) 17:14 - 20:30 New digital tracking guidelines 20:31 - 24:13 Custom tracking implementation 24:14 - 27:10 Boosting performance with first-party data 27:11 - 31:37 Performance marketing in privacy-first world 31:38 - 35:14 Evolving digital marketing trends 35:15 - 36:31 Visit: Wheelhouse Digital Marketing Group – https://www.wheelhousedmg.com/ 36:32 - 36:56 Thank you so much, Aaron! Share this podcast, give us a review, and enjoy your marketing journey! (hello@themarketingexpedition.com)36:57 - 37:43 Join themarketingexpedition.com today#HealthcareMarketing #GoogleAdsPolicy #DigitalMarketingTrends #ValuesdrivenCulture #GoogleAnalytics #DataPrivacy #DigitalAdvertising #DigitalStrategy #WebsiteCookies #DigitalTrackingGuidelines #MarketingAgency

Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Darkhorse Tech, your go-to Dental-driven IT solutions company!‍‍‍Picture this: You're running a dental practice, and your patients' trust and data are your top priority. Enter Darkhorse Tech, the guardians of your patients' information, the solution to your IT headaches, and the force behind your seamless tech integrations.Your practice deserves the best, and Darkhorse Tech delivers.Click this link for an exclusive offer: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkhorse-deal/AND if you're listening before November 27th, 2023, take advantage of their Black Friday deal! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkorse-black-friday-deal/‍Guest: Reuben KampBusiness Name: Darkhorse TechCheck out Reuben's Media:Website: https://www.darkhorsetech.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DarkhorseTechInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/darkhorsetech/Email: admin@darkhorsetech.com‍Other Mentions and Links:‍Companies/Software: Benco Open Dental Microsoft Azure Flex Mango Dentrix Ascend Eaglesoft CareStack Oryx Archy DEXIS Carestream‍Useful Terms: DHCP - service that hands out IP addressesDNS - how devices resolve internet addressesGateway - how you get to the internetHIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‍People/Communities: Howard Farran (podcaster + blogger)‍Dentistry Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran (podcast)‍Dental Town (blog/website/community)‍Host: Michael Arias‍Website: The Dental Marketer Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/‍Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society‍‍My Key Takeaways:I'm moving to cloud based software. Do I still need IT support?How to spot out IT companies that may be dishonest.How does your IT company help with HIPAA compliance?The basics on IT with firewalls, antivirus, and internet connectivity. Why do we need reliable options for these?Why the D.I.Y. mentality is often not the right call with your IT solutions.‍Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]‍p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guests. Beloved person. Everybody adores him. Ruben Camp. How's Reuben: it going, man? You know how hard it is to be beloved and an IT guy at the same time. So, I'm doing great. Thanks, Michael. I've been doing this 11 years and just happy to be talking to you today.Michael: No, man. We appreciate it. We appreciate everything you're doing. I know you guys have, um, done a lot for the dental community, also startup community as well. Just practices in general. Um, at the same time, this is not your first episode with us. You've been with us, you've guided us through some processes.And at the same time, we're going to answer some of the most major questions today. But before we do that, if you can kind of give us a gist or a rundown, been doing this for Reuben: 11 years. That's right. Well, this is in Dark Horse. Um, Dark Horse is something that I started. It was, it was just me, you know, back in 2012.And, uh, we we've grown throughout the years. We got about 65 employees, about 1000 clients, uh, that are in the dental space. That's pretty much all we focus on is dental. So, uh, how I got into that is I used to be a Benco technician. So I used to do corporate it for, you know, the bad guys and, uh, you know, they really love selling birds and bibs and all that stuff.But it was kind of an afterthought. So I really wanted to. Um, you know, start a company where service was the, uh, the main forward, not selling consumables. So, Mm-Hmm. Uh, other Interesting. My dad was a dentist. That's how I got into this industry. I think everyone has a really interesting path about how you found dental.I know you do Michael as well. Right? We all kind of get dragged in somehow. Yeah. Um, you know, went to school, uh, at Chapel Hill to, to be a dentist and decided I didn't wanna do that. So, uh, yeah. Benco dark horse. Here we are. So you Michael: left Benco mainly because you were not seeing what you wanted to see, or what was the reason?Reuben: Yeah. So, I mean, there are a sales. Company first, right? So they're, you know, all the meetings and all the messaging and everything like that. It was, it was about how do we sell more product? How do we sell more CBCTs? How do we, you know, get more accounts and sell them consumables? You know, I call it burrs, bibs and everything else.and they had I. T. Because you know what? They didn't want shine or Patterson to be in that office. they almost like they had I. T. As a defensive mechanism, but not as like a core, something that they were putting a lot of resources in to develop. So, you know, I'm very passionate about what I do, uh, customer service and dental.That's kind of like, that's my niche. So, you know, let's say if Benco was 80, 20 sales to service, right? We have three people in sales out of 65 people. So you can see just by the demographics of our, you know, how we're made up. Most of our people are in places to support our clients, not to sell, you know, to shove something down their throat.So that was very important to me just as a service technician that started a company versus You know, we have a lot of competitors out there that have just either, you know, either bought an IT company and they're just trying to squeeze it for profits or, you know, someone who does not understand customer service, but hey, they're really good at a P& L statement.Yeah, yeah. Michael: Did you specialize that in Chapel Hill IT? Reuben: No, I had biochemistry because I was, uh, that's pre dental based. Anything that's in the sciences basically is pre dental. So that's, uh, computers. that's just been kind of my thing for, you know, for as long as I can remember, you know, nine, 10, 12, got into building computers and fixing them and started a company in high school called it's good computer solutions with and we run around and.Anybody that knows Ithaca, it's Cornell. So we fix it in Cornell professors at all hours of the day. And anyway, so it's just kind of been a passion self taught passion Michael: of mine. Yeah. Cause I was going to ask you out of all the. Things you were doing in Benco. Why did you pick to hone in on IT? Reuben: Uh, for that solution?You know, they wanted me to be a dual trained tech, right? They wanted me not only to go into an office install a computer system, sensors mount a CVCT, calibrate it, do all that stuff. But they were like, you know it would be really great if while you're there someone's, you know Cuspidor doesn't work if you could also be crushing on the mechanicals, you know, suction, all that stuff, you know, amalgam separators.And I was, uh, I was just so, I was so talented at the I. T. side of things that I never really got that opportunity to learn on it. And that's fine because that's not really a passion of mine. Um, You know, those, those systems are kind of gross. What goes down the drain when they get clogged up. Uh, so, uh, there's some very talented, we call them core service technicians, right?The core equipment in the office. and we'll leave it up to the professionals, but, Michael: Gotcha. Okay, man. Interesting. So then fast forward, you started Dark Horse Tech and this is where you're at now. Now, I know we're going to kind of talk about, and let's kind of jump into that if we can. A lot of people do have.Open dental, right? and so break it down to me. What are the confusions when it comes to having that and then I. Reuben: T. Absolutely. So kind of how we got here is, you know, dark horse version 1. 0 was we were a small regional upstate New York company. I mean, it's good. New York, small town, 30, 000 people, 30, 000 college students.And, you know, that was the old way of doing things. And then, you know, we got a break and Howard for and hired me. And Howard was in Phoenix, so that was our first, I can't drive to your office, right? And we nailed it. he was running Open Dental, in his office. And that really gave us the confidence, uh, and exposure, right?Went on his podcast, got a, got a forum to, introduce myself to the dental community, which at that time was still. Dental town now about a year after that interview, it's like everyone fled to Facebook groups and then I followed, them over there. so dark horse version 2. 0 is not just, you know, we're five minutes from your office.It's. Hey, we're dental specific. That's our edge. If you're in Hawaii, if you're in Alaska, if you're in rural Nebraska, we'll support you. No problem. You know, we'll make it work. And Dark Horse version 3. 0 has been cloud. Right? So, and that's kind of where we're segwaying in here today. Is open dentals, you know, great company.They're well known for their customer service. That's what I care about. Right? So when you hear me singing companies phrases, that means when you pick up the phone and call them, they treat you well, and they solve your problem. so we've always loved open dental. and so the confusion has come up just recently.So cloud. Open that up. There's two versions. There's the one you just that everyone pretty much has right now, which is you call them up. You buy a license key and you put it on your server. And right. It's a local system. And then there is. Open Dental's internal cloud offering, like literally they hosted at their HQ in Oregon, and that is a separate version.So there are only 2 versions of Open Dental. However, this is where the confusion comes in, like professionals like us, right? We use Microsoft and Azure as their cloud platform. We take the first version, the normal version, the one that works with, you know, Flex and Mango and Medento and Swell, all your third party integrations.We take the one that you've been running on your local server, and we put it in the cloud. So same version, integrations all work. that's still version 1. Version 2 is the one that OpenNL offers, and they have a pricing sheet online that you can look at, but it does not have integrations with third party.Which is tough for me because that's when I hear feedback about OpenDental, the products, right, the support's great, but people really love using all the third party integrations and they love the ability to switch, right? If something's not working for them, uh, there's nine other paperless companies you can go to, right?Um, you know, or like, you know, Flex is a great example, right? Flex is only written for OpenDental. And they do a really good job of what they do, right? Does not exist in any other practice management software. Cannot, cannot replicate it. But let's say the owner general manager flex pissed you off. You can switch software.So you can't do that with any other platform out there. So to break it down really simply. There's the off the shelf open dental, and that's the one that, you know, that we're in large part supporting putting in the cloud, um, creating awesome solutions for single practices, multi site practices and D.S. O. S. And then there's the internal open dental cloud offering. We honestly across our, you know, we have right now 1050 clients. We have zero people on that second version. So Mhm. that is where most of the confusion has come in the space when you try to have a conversation like over Facebook, over text. It's really hard to parse that out, and then when people call Open Dental, it gets even more confusing. Really? Michael: Okay. let me ask you, when it comes to cloud, do you still need IT for that? You still need Reuben: IT. So, HIPAA compliance are just, they're linked together, right? It's just like, alright, you read the, you know, what you need to do to, you know, to protect your patient's health information.Need to have a firewall? That doesn't go away. Uh, you need to have the antivirus software that does not go away. you need to have a backup system that does go away as long as you don't have 3D images, right? Those don't go to the cloud yet. Those stay local, right? this is something that a conversation needs to happen.It's really hard for me to like text somebody back and forth and explain all this. I'm glad this podcast exists because I can now cite it. Like, hey, before you even talk to me, listen to our conversation here. IT is absolutely reduced by going to Open Dental Cloud. Again, the first one, the off the shelf one I'm talking about, it is not erased, right?Michael: Open Dental will help you with Open Dental. Anything else in your practice, printers, security cameras, internal cameras, sensors, CVCTs, PCI compliance, all that is, is traditionally still on the company. Gotcha. Okay. So then what are the frustrations when trying to explain this then I guess, do people still understand it or they're more like.What, Reuben: you know, it's I. T. there's like, I can't give my full explanation because it crosses the border into I. T. jargon and the three letter, you know, acronyms start coming out and everyone's lost. So what we typically do we share our screen, right? We say, Hey, this is exactly how it's going to work on your office.Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, take the example of somebody that is on a server based open dental solution. Right now. We say, hey, you know what? It's the same version. We're going to put it in the cloud. Your staff is going to walk in the morning. They're going to see an open dental icon. They're double click on it and they're not even going to know what's in the cloud.Execution is actually very simple, right? from the customer's point of view, right? There's some expertise that goes into, migrating to the clouds, you know, getting the cloud server where it needs to be security. All that stuff takes technical expertise, but the staff walking in the morning, double clicking on open dental that does not change.So, um, that's why it's been such a successful implementation is because it's like it's still open dental that people know and love. Uh, it's just not on a local server in your office. And, you know, historically, the cloud has been slower, right? But with Microsoft's, you know, recent introduction of a couple of different protocols that are again, here comes the three letter acronyms.RDP is now AVD, which as a virtual desktop, we're seeing now that the cloud is faster than a local server. So it's not only that it's it's 2023. Of course, this should be in the cloud, is actually, just as fast or even faster than a local server. So it's, uh, you know, a really great time to talk about.This is when you're looking to replace your server. It's like, hey, do you want to, you know, do you want to write a check every 5 years? Right? And maintain that hardware. And when you replace it, there's downtime to transfer it, or you go to the cloud. You know, it's a really great time to, to talk to your IT company about, um, options.So you don't have to buy one time, part of our cost. Michael: Gotcha. So then it's easy. I guess, how often should you replace the server then? And then what really does cloud based I guess servers or softwares kind of cover, right? If you were to give us like bullet points of this is what it covers easily. Boom. And then how often should we replace the server?You're like, Nope, I'm still sticking with what I know. Trying to Reuben: servers five to seven years is a pretty safe, um, window of time, right? It is. If your server goes down, that means your patients are waiting. So, that is not worth something cheaping out on, right? It's kind of the brains of the operation.Now, if you go to the cloud now, you don't have to work at hardware anymore, right? And you look at Microsoft's data the industry. This is this is true for voiceover I. P. As it is for any cloud service. They talk about nines, right? They talk about what is your uptime? How many nines are there past the 99 percent point, right?And Microsoft has four nines. So that means you have about a minute and a half downtime a year. I've never seen it go down, but technically I guess it's gone down for a minute and a half on average every year. 99. 9999 percent uptime, which cannot be replicated at all by a local because all these services, you have Amazon, you have Google, you have Microsoft, just to name three.There's competition part, you know, the cost of storage is going down. The cost of servers is going down. It used to be, it didn't make a lot of sense for a single practice to go cloud, uh, only for multi site and now it's just, everyone should go cloud because it's, more cost effective. Hmm. Michael: So that's the key most cost effective then, right?Especially if people are trying to. Gotcha. Okay. So then going with that to you, Ruben, because you've, you've worked with hundreds of practices or you are working with hundreds of practices. Reuben: Hundreds of practices that use Open Dental and more, you know, more practices that use Dentrix and Eaglesoft and CareStack and Oryx and all those software.So, you know, I, I see the entire industry. We're kind of focusing here on Open Dental, but, um, I mean, Open Dental, it's no secret is, My favorite software, I don't know if I've still ever seen a negative comment about open dental. Michael: So then to you, what would be, if you're trying to be super cost.Effective, but efficient to start off, what would it be the best kind of like formula or stack to use for this? Reuben: So it all goes to fit, right? What makes, if we're, we're saying everything is equal, it's an easy answer. Right. but the problem is certain softwares are better suited for dentists. Right.There's, of course, the feature set standpoint, and you can only find this out by talking to these companies and doing demos. Is this going to work for my practice and how I manage and bill and all that stuff? Um, you know, and the other side of this is you want? Do you want something that's all inclusive, right?Let's let's take dentrics ascend. Uh, for example, you pay a higher bill, right? Then you would pay to open down, but you get every single service that you could want. The problem is you have to use all those services, right? There is no alternative. if you're a dentist that wants to use the best software, that's why open dental still exists, right?It may look, it's from like, it's from the 1990s and they haven't updated it, but you know, what makes it so powerful is. honestly, it's like the app store on, on Apple, right? It's a, it's a great phone, but you know, what's great about it? The app store, you can download whatever you want.It's got the best ecosystem out there. So you go into open now and you're like, you know, flex is a really great example. that program alone It's just so incredibly powerful, right? You don't have those options with an all inclusive software, but maybe you're a dentist and you're just like, you know, I don't want to worry about having to sign up for Open Dental and then Flex and then, you know, Practice by Numbers and then Mango Voice.I don't want to have to do all that. Right. Which is, you know, why companies like Archie exists because they'll, they'll say, Hey, we'll give you practice management. We'll give you phones through mango. It's included in your bill. We'll give you patient communication. We'll give you all this stuff. So you kind of have to ask the question of what kind of person are you?Are you justlet me sign up for 1 thing and I'll just use whatever they have. Or do you want to be able to be like. I want to work with the best, patient communication company. I want to work with the best clearinghouse. I want to work with the best, patient portal company, credit card company.That's who I am. That's what a lot of dentists are out there. I mean, Open Dental is still the number one software for startups. Um, when we see people have all the choice in the world, Open Dental is still being... over 50 percent of start up practices are still going open nettle. and that's why, it's more of an ease, uh, question, right? Single pane of glass, it's all here. Freedom of choice is on the other Michael: side. Gotcha. So one is more like all one subscription type. Yeah, like for example, like Oryx, right? If you were to just go with Oryx, all in one, exclusive, you know what I mean?Inclusive everything, Reuben: I'm going to get Oryx, uh, and I'm going to get phones. I'm done. Yeah. Michael: It's easy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But if you want the, like the other side, right? The freedom to choose. Reuben: So we have opened 400 startups. I've talked to most of these people and then, even, even more people, right.Because the ones that didn't go with us. Right. I, and I hear their story. And like, I think the reason Open Dental is appealing. Is because, let's go back to the 2012, you know, I'm leaving Benco, I'm risking, that's, that's a health insurance for our family that's half the income for our family and I'm leaving with nothing and I'm saying, like, you know, I have a dream to create a great it company and I'm, I'm going for it.Right. and that's who the startup people are, plus a million and a half dollars in debt, which I do not have. that's a whole nother layer. So, you know, when you talk to these people, they're like, this is my dream practice. I want it to be freaking awesome, right? And I'm not sure those companies can, can meet that standard, right?They're, they're trying to be the jack of all trades. because when you peel back the layer. You know, let's again, just let's go back to Ascend. That's like 10 different companies, right? They've stitched the software all together to make it all look and feel like a cohesive interface.But the practice management module is different than the image, right? That's a separate software, right? So you're talking about one company who's trying to develop and, you know, and push forward 10 different platforms. It's really hard to do, right? And it's one reason why we're like, Hey, mango, do your thing.Just frickin nail the phones, right? And a lot of I. T. companies do do phones. We just feel like it distracts from our core purpose, which is like. All right, we're going to be awesome at support. We're gonna be awesome at startups, which is basically support as well, you know, and we're gonna be great at the cloud, right?let's just focus on these three things. That is our competitive advantage. When you try to broaden in any segment, I mean, Dennis probably know this from trying to bring in, let's bring in ortho, let's bring in oral surgery in house, and you try to be A plus at all these different things, it's really hard.It's the same thing with software companies. Everything in the startup, it's a conversation. I listen to what people want and, you know, anytime they're just like, this has to work. I want this practice to be the, you know, the best patient experience. It can be it usually inevitably points to, to a single software company.Michael: Yeah. Okay, cool, man. That's awesome. And then, so with that kind of being said, I know cost kind of comes in the mind. That's the question that a lot of people really ask is how can they start cutting down on their I. T. or how can they minimize that I. T. bill or have you seen this? Where people are like, Hey, I just got like new fees on my it bill or something like that.What, what is up with that? Reuben: The new fees thing? Uh, well, I mean, if you add computers, it just depends how your IT is set up, right? there's. Uh, on the back end, I can tell you, as somebody who runs an I. T. company, we get charged per device, right? So it's natural for your I. T. company to then bill you. It's the fairest way to do it.We get charged for ten, you know, antivirus agents. You have nine servers, nine workstations and a server. That's ten. Lines up. So usually when you see I. T. bills go up office ads, a computer office ads, email services. It's, it's stuff like that. I mean, unless you're just working with, you know, shady folks that just move numbers, you don't notice, um, you know, we do price increases, uh, annually because we give our staff raises.Guess where the price increase comes from. what we hear from our clients, we want to work with the same people again and again. That's retention. And that means you got to give people a reason to stay here. Besides like, Hey. You like ribbon, you should stay here, but usually that means promotions and raises and all that good stuff.let's pivot to how do you cut down on IT costs, right? not someone who is, let's say, there's a lot of IT companies out there that prevent their clients from going to the cloud because they so fear, like, oh no, it's not ready yet, it can't do what you want to do. But they're really protecting their butts, right?They're like, oh, my client goes to the cloud. I'm going to lose revenue. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how to lose IT companies revenue. so think about, any software out there. Dentrix. Uh, Eaglesoft open, right? We have a server uh, we have to back up that server and the office says, you know what?If that server goes down, I don't wanna be downed at all. Alright? So then we need a backup and disaster recovery system. So when we go cloud, let's just make it very, very simple. Let's leave three D out of it. Let's, let's treat it like it's a pediatric office and everything is two d imaging. I'll pick on Oryx for now, right? I know it's a good partner of ours. I know Rania. I love the products. When you go, or let's say you're on Open Dental and DEXIS imaging locally, you go Oryx, what goes away on the IT side? Well, I don't have to manage your server anymore. That is one of the highest costs on there.That goes away. I don't have to back up that server that I'm not managing anymore. So that goes away. So what does that leave? That leaves how much support you want, right? And so that's either you pay as needed or you want unlimited support for your practice. A firewall that is still a HIPAA requirement in antivirus software.I'm just trying to keep it as simple as possible, like there's patch management and all this stuff you have to keep your computers up to date that should, go along with the antivirus and all that stuff. But, some big stuff comes off, but you still have a lot of requirements, and things to protect on the network.Gotcha. Michael: Okay. So the requirements still stay, but now when you say the biggest expense, which is the servers, right? That kind of comes off, how much are we looking to shave off when that happens? Reuben: Yeah, so I mean, I can only talk about myself. Right. And our company. so again, the two biggest costs are support.Let's say you're paying for unlimited support. We call that our gold plan, right? Unlimited phone support and server management. So let's say an office is on a 600 a month plan with us unlimited support, and they go to a cloud based agreement. You could be looking at 150 a month in savings. Okay, Michael: but server management, right?Or the Reuben: server? Server, yeah, the server in the backup system going away, you could go down to 450. Michael: Okay, but everything else, the bare bones requirement. Reuben: Percent savings. Michael: So when it comes to like the, let's just say they did that and they went with the works, they did all that and they're like, Ruben, help me out here, man.Like I need, give me the bare bones that what we can do. How does that look? And, and is that feasible for the long run? And they're like, I want to grow, Reuben: but give me the bare bones. Well, depends on how much your staff calls in, right? If your staff doesn't call in. You should be on a bare bones plan, right?You shouldn't be on just like, Hey, cover me for HIPAA compliance, cybersecurity, make sure I don't get hacked. Let's go. the thing is most of our clients call in, they use the service they pay for. So it's, it's completely up to the client. I think it's a really. Smart decision as, uh, as a business owner, not to put a barrier between your staff needing help and like, Oh, you know, Dr.Clark's going to get a bill. If I pick up the phone, right? Things are broken. Your staff doesn't hesitate. It gets fixed done, right? That's the stuff that, you know, the dentist doesn't see while they're in the treatment room is like, you know, the scanner doesn't work. So your staff is so much less efficient because they had to, you know, create a workaround.Right. Because they know if they call, you know, Dr. Clarkson and get you know, bill in the mail 10 days from now, he's going to be like, Hey, Nancy, what the heck? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, it's uh, you know, And Michael: I feel like that kind of creates like more, uh, you're scared. You won't even tell the doctor, you know what I mean?You're like, oops, I pray, tell her you'll lie about it or something, right? In order to not feel, you're creating some type of weird environment in your office when you do that. Right, Reuben: right. I can't imagine how much stuff. Wouldn't get done if I was the bottleneck at my company, it's like, Oh, no, we can't reach out to that company until Ruben approves it.It's like, Oh, my God, I wouldn't get anything done. Um, but to answer your question, like, if you, let's say it's a, it's a medium or sized or smaller office. You stripped out the unlimited service and you're just like, Hey, I'm going to Oryx and I want no frills, right? Just give me, compliant and protected.You could easily be in the 200 to 300 range. Yeah. Yeah. Michael: But the unlimited, like give me an example, like why, or from your experience, if you can give me like the top three, why does staff call in a lot? Let me Reuben: just pull up our service board right now and just list off what people calling about your PCS compliance scan a PCI compliance scan, it's a test for I. T. Professionals. It's like, you know, what settings do you have on on your firewall? Do you have antivirus software? When were the last? So it's basically a test for I. T. People. That's a really great thing to offload to us because that thing takes like 30 minutes to complete.Right? questionnaire and then you have to schedule the scan. You have to know your internal IP address that spectrum gave you to run. Anyway, uh, that's one example. let's see. Questions about switching a panoramic PC to server PC. So this office, they have a imaging database on their pan PC and they want to.They want to talk to us about what it would take to move that to the server PC to consolidate that, um, create remote access, right? That's something that's included with all of our plans. Great remote access for, my new remote employee, uh, so that they can log into a lab computer, let's see, install remixes on computers that were just installed, uh, by the office.uh, workstation two cannot print, create new windows user on consultation computer. and then, oh, this one's great. Uh, shout out to Becky Scott from Lincoln Children's Dentistry. Help my son get fortnight to work on our office Wi Fi. So, you guys, you guys cover all kinds of help my son get fortnight to work.Yeah, I mean, there's... You cover everything. IT companies, uh, you know, we're, again, we're dental specific. We coach our people to call us on anything. There's, there's really two setups. There is the like IT company that say, Hey, that's a vendor problem. You need to call them directly. And then there's us, right.And, and some other really good companies in the space who have vendor management built in, and that's the expectation that like your staff. Is taking care of patients. They're not like waiting on hold with Carestream or, you know, gen X or Dexus, you know, they're, they gotta take care of patients. Like, yeah, wait on hold while, you know, while we're, you know, working at home or, or at hq.So, but Michael: that, I, I think that's really good to have though, because I feel like, uh, a lot of the times you waste time looking for it, right? When we can just go to you and then you give us the solution. Hey, it's a vendor, Hey, it's this. And so I'm sure you've heard of this a lot, and this is a question when I asked and the Dental Market Society Facebook group, like in other places, they send us this one a lot, uh, when VoIP, right?So they're saying kind of like we're having an issue with our phones and then VoIP says there is no issue or it can be any other vendor, right? That says there is no issue on our end. So then it falls back on you or what, what happens there? Reuben: Yeah. So, you know, in the example of the bad it company that says call your vendor, you're stuck in the middle as the client, that's the worst, you know, you feel helpless, kind of feel a little pissed off and you're like, what, and so our clients never have to feel like that anymore because we're just, we are them.In that scenario, we're hunting down the solution the ticket will not get closed until the issue is resolved. So let's talk about voiceover IP, right? A lot of, you know, a lot of people that is the standard. Now, of course, you should have it. It's really great if you have a hybrid, you want to offer jobs that are hybrid or even full remote, right?Voiceover IP is like the only way to pull that off. So you install your new phone system and you're having call quality issues. the number one most likely culprit is going to be your firewall. Okay, so if the phone company says, Hey, our servers are great. Everything looks really good until it hits your office.And so let's assume they're right. Yeah, you know, let's assume AWS is not having an issue. Firewall is gonna be number one. Internet quality is going to be number two. And number three is going to be the device that controls your network. Sometimes that's the server. Sometimes that's the firewall. But basically, you know, my, when you, when you go to Starbucks and you join the wifi, you're getting an IP address from something, right?You're not just, just magically connecting to the internet. Something is handing you an address. Okay, so those are the three things that again, if you have an I. T. Company, they're going to be able to diagnose that stuff pretty quickly. They're going to be able to run, let's say, in the Internet stability.They're going to be able to run a ping test. Let's say you spectrum. They can see is your Internet like a D. C. Current. Is it just flat? Or is it like, is it just Jerry? And it's all over the place. You know, voice needs a very, consistent connection to work well, not a lot of traffic, but just needs a stable connection.Firewall. Well, if you just leave the firewall stock unconfigured, it's just going to be constantly scanning that phone traffic, and then you're going to call quality issues. So, what we do is after the office let's say they get mango, they plug their, uh, yelling phones in, they show up on the network.we do a couple different things, but just to keep it simple, we whitelist them, right? we tell the firewall. These devices are safe. Don't hammer them. Right? Don't constantly bombard them with internal threat protection stuff. there's a couple other tips and tricks you could do, but it's more kind of for your, your I.T than like a D. I. Y. Stuff. So we won't talk about that. Yeah. And then there's the device that hands out I. P. Addresses. Right? So you could be out of I. P. Addresses, right? You have such a large office. You've maxed out. You plug that phone in. It doesn't even connect to the Internet. you could have I. P.Address conflicts, right? So, uh, you let's say, the phone's working great. You connect your laptop, That router gives, uh, your laptop the same address as the phone. One of those devices is going to win. Okay, uh huh. Right, so there could be an IP address conflict. Um, and I'll just throw out some, some other words if people are taking notes here and they're going to send it to their IT company.DHCP, that's what, that's the service that hands out IP addresses. DNS, that's how devices resolve internet addresses, right? Google. com is actually 8. 8. 8. 8. Okay, right. So when you type in google. com, it's touching a DNS server and it's saying, what is this? And it goes, Oh yeah, that's 8. Of course. Well, here you go.You don't know that's happening, but DHCP, DNS, and lastly, gateway. Gateway is just how you get to the internet. So I know that's, that's a lot of technical jargon, but you know, for the, for those of you who are DIY er, like furiously writing your, your IT company to email right now, just put all those words in there.Michael: Wait, quick question, leaving firewall stock? What does that mean? Like you said, if you just leave your firewall stock. Reuben: Okay. So let's say you get a firewall. Plug it in out of the box. You don't do anything. All right. What you're going, you're going to have phone issues. You're going to have issues with anything that is internal that needs to broadcast external.Okay. So think, think about. Open dental e services thing about, credit card, right? You have a credit card reader that thing needs to authenticate their credit card and come back if you leave it stock. It's going to turn off access to all of these devices that you rely on your practice to work on. Now, it's not going to not work 100 percent of the time.but these are the things that your I. T. commission should be doing. They should be whitelisting these known good devices. Um, so there are no issues and you don't have to worry about this stuff at all. Gotcha. Michael: Okay. Interesting. So this is basically why we hear all the time where they might be like, hey, it's not us.Call your IT company. Reuben: It's not us. It's you. Um, yeah. Uh, It's usually, it's also usually the firewall and, and not to get into a soapbox here. IT is, it's really hard because there's not like a set of standards. So again, anybody, including me, I should say, You know, self taught, just have a lot of experience, can be an IT person, right?So, you know, you come along and someone's like, Oh yeah, I can do all of that for half the price. Right. And it's just like, okay, but what are you getting? And it's like, uh, none of this stuff is HIPAA compliant. It's like, no wonder it's half price because it's not actually protecting your office. You know, you, do want to work honestly with folks that care about their patient's data.Right. Because that's what I care about doing a good job. but I tease one of those tough industries, right? There's not a lot of regulation in terms of, who can, um, be an I. T. person, if you're an I. T. person that's working with a dentist, you have their trust and you breach that trust by selling them something that is not HIPAA compliant.There are no ramifications for you. So it's, somewhat of a wild, like I'm in this, this position where, you know, I've been around long enough and I have the respects, uh, of a lot of people out there and there are other companies like medics dental, that, that do a really good job in this space. And, you know, we like to say we're the good guys, right?We don't cut corners. We do the right thing. We take care of our clients. But then there's the rest of the market and it's, really hard to have, conversations because the dentist is always stuck in the middle, right? They're hearing one thing like from a colleague. Oh, this endodontist who has five offices in Illinois uses this guy and pays him, pays him 40 bucks a month and that's everything you do.I'm like, yeah, okay. You know, it's half of these, like, okay. I want to fight to keep the client. The other half is like, this person has been fed a load of, you know, BS. And I'm not going to be the one that's going to be able to convince them that they were given wrong information by their endodontist friend.So it's like, yeah, it's just, mistake. In that scenario. Michael: No, that's good. Because in that scenario, what would be like the, I guess in your terms, like the BS, like the stuff where you're like, Ruben, I see that all the time, man, where I'm like, Oh, look, your fellow it person here just wants to let you know.And then they give you like a list of everything or whatever. And you're like. What? You know what I mean? it looks like they pretty much are saying like, we can do the same thing, but like, 40 bucks a month Reuben: I'll the name, but I'll give you a real example.So we had, we had a dentist that recently left us, right? Um, and they, they were under a, a one year startup deal. Right. So we give folks lower pricing, on the startup price. they just have to sign a one, just a one year term, uh, initial term. Then it's month to month after that. So it was like month six in this, dentist, uh, was struggling, right?Her practice wasn't growing as fast as she wanted to. So she was making calls to vendors to be like, Hey, what can you do for me? and this is was kind of alluding to the endodontist. This is, that's kind of the story, right? She talked to a colleague who used a guy, um, for his practices and was like, Hey, I'm really struggling, but I'm not going to hold somebody to a contract if I'm affecting their business. Yeah, yeah, that's not why I got into this industry, right? Is to make every single dollar I could from a dentist, and it's like, tell you what, let's make a deal here. Send me what they sent you if they are truly matching what we are providing.Like, just let's, let's part ways, right? Go there, save some money and, you know, let's part as friends. so got an email a week later and they're like, the plan is we're going to take your HIPAA compliant firewall and we're going to replace it with a home router for Best Buy. It's like, okay.And then we're going to take your HIPAA compliant backup system and we're going to install a free Dropbox. I'm like, okay, so I didn't even read the rest of the email. I just stopped there and I was like, all right, so let's let's figure out how to work together. They're not giving you a HIPAA compliant solution.You know, like, if I can help you in any way, take some pressure off your business, let's do it. And that email came back with basically, I was the bad guy for pointing out that they had been given bad advice. So I have two choices in this moment. I can keep continuing to try to work with this person or I can just let them go.And I chose to let them go. I don't want to have to be bad guy. I don't do high pressure sales. I don't do scare tactics. or if you trust another person. More than me if by all means, please go work with them, but you know, peace of mind sleep at night I told the doctor everything that they were not getting you know They were literally compromising their patients health information.can't work with that person, you know Michael: yeah, so they were more upset that you didn't agree with the other IT companies like Janky solutions, you know what I mean? Like, Oh, like, Hey, we're Reuben: just like a perfect they're doing what we're doing for less money, show me, cause I would love to know how to be more efficient.Just, I'm curious, like, how did, how is this possible? And it turns out the solution was, we're just going to pull stuff off a Best Buy that belongs in someone's home. And so you're good.Michael: That, that story really gets into the essence of the complexity of being an IT professional in healthcare.Yeah. Yeah. And we got to go one of these days, we got to do an episode about how important it is to be HIPAA compliant. Cause I know we kind of touched that. Well, we touched that in this episode, but we kind of touched that in previous ones of, it's mega important, you know.Um, in order to do that. So Reuben: it should be like car insurance, right? It should not be opt in, opt out. it's like, yeah, I kind of want to be a little compliant, but then I want to ignore all this stuff, you know, that actually costs a little compliant and like, who's safe. Henry Schein got hacked twice, Aspen Dental.And this is just this year, Aspen Dental had over a thousand practices get hacked. I don't know what it's going to take, and I try not to, you know, worry about all the dentists that didn't take my advice went down a different pathway, but. This is what I talk about. I want to work with people that care about protecting their patient.is a passion of mine. I want you to care about protecting your patient's health information. Yeah, Michael: and I like that about you, man. It's because, like, your transition... Every time I think Dark Horse has been running, you guys have been... Moving the needle closer and closer to quality, right? Over like, we got to get more sales, more people, more things.and every time you guys have ever sponsored, right? You're never like, how many leads are we getting or anything like that? It's more like, Hey man, like let's, let's. Let them know about this. Let's let the people know about that, right? important Reuben: stuff. My marketing strategy can be distilled down into two words.Good vibes. I just want, like, good vibes that kind of, you know, reverberate throughout the anals of the internet, right? Just like, uh, you know, someone has a question on, uh, you know, dental marketer group about imaging software. Whatever. We'll jump in. I'm not gonna solicit you. Here's an answer. Great.If you look me up and you want to reach out, that's awesome. But that has been for 11 years all organic growth. And why? Like, we love partnering with with you. Michael's just like, here's a podcast that is just about let's get as much information. Let's clear up confusion in the industry.I'm not asking you to work with me. Take all this information back to your IT company and protect yourself. And if you love your IT guy, keep working with him. I'm here if you want an option, but like, I really hope you care about compliance before you call. Michael: Yeah. And if you guys want to know how to get Fortnite to start working in your office.Reuben: That's the Michael: firewall. Yeah. I remember, uh,Ashley one time caught you, right? Like about a fridge or something Reuben: like that? so actually once called me when her power went out.Hey, my, uh, you know, my, uh, computers aren't turning on, I was like, can you call your electric company and that goes back to just like we, again, when we train our clients calls for anything, sometimes they do. Yeah. And no, no, no. Yeah. Call NYSEG or, you know, call your local power company.Uh, happy to help out and pick up the phone and all that. But yeah, no. Michael: That's awesome. Ruben, we appreciate your time, but before we say goodbye, can you tell our listeners where they can find you? Reuben: Oh, yeah. Um, I'm all over the internet. So you'll see me just popping around in and out of Facebook groups. Uh, my direct email is admin at dark horse tech.com and go right on our website and hit contact us. And that will, uh, generate a little, link to schedule a call with us. DM me on Facebook, you can DM me on Instagram. You'll see. Instagram, if you want to follow us at dark horse tech, that's where I post, you know, anytime we're doing a startup. I post all the pictures out there.Right? So if you're interested in working with us, or just interested in like, what are the newest latest startups looking like? we're, we're pretty much doing one or two startups a week, right? So we did about 87 just last year. and so yeah, follow along. that makes me feel good.Cause I'm the one doing all that posting. So please like, like my photos. Michael: Please like my photos. Awesome guys. So that's all going to be in the show notes below. So definitely go check it out. Follow Dark Horse Tech on their social media. And at the same time. Click on the first link in the show notes below to check out the exclusive deal that dark horse tech is giving you go ahead and do that.And Ruben, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Appreciate it, Michael.‍

We posted just last week about the Blackbaud multistate settlement, and as we have discussed, health privacy remains a hot topic and is already back in the news. On October 17th, 33 AGs led by Indiana, announced a multistate settlement in the form of a judgment with a Puerto Rico-based health care clearinghouse, Inmediata, for what the AGs alleged was a failure to appropriately safeguard data and a delayed and flawed notification to consumers of a coding issue. As a result, the states said protected health information (PHI) of approximately 1.5 million consumers was exposed to public online searches for almost three years. The AGs alleged, among other things, violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's (HIPAA) Security Rule and its Breach Notification Rule. https://www.kelleydrye.com/viewpoints/blogs/ad-law-access/health-data-coding-error-costs-inmediata-1-4-million-with-ags Paul Singer psinger@kelleydrye.com (202) 342-8672 www.kelleydrye.com/Our-People/Paul-L-Singer Abigail Stempson astempson@kelleydrye.com (202) 342-8678 www.kelleydrye.com/Our-People/Abigail-Stempson Beth Chun bchun@kelleydrye.com (202) 342-8671 www.kelleydrye.com/Our-People/Beth-Bolen-Chun Caroline Schmitz cshmitz@kelleydrye.com (202) 342-8459 https://www.kelleydrye.com/people/caroline-t-schmitz Subscribe to the Ad Law Access blog - www.kelleydrye.com/subscribe Subscribe to the Ad Law News Newsletter - www.kelleydrye.com/subscribe View the Advertising and Privacy Law Resource Center - www.kelleydrye.com/advertising-and-privacy-law Find all of our links here linktr.ee/KelleyDryeAdLaw Hosted by Simone Roach

‘Mineta Transportation Institute' - Silicon Valley's Outreach for Assistance: The Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jose State University is a renowned hub for independent surface transportation research, education, workforce development, and technology transfer on a global scale. Dr. Philbrick spearheads four prestigious, competitively selected consortia, including the Mineta Consortium for Transportation Mobility and the Mineta Consortium for Equitable, Efficient, and Sustainable Transportation, generously funded by the US Department of Transportation. MTI also manages the California State University Transportation Consortium, made possible by the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (CA Senate Bill 1), and the Climate Change and Extreme Events Training and Research Program, supported by the Federal Railroad Administration. Their mission is to enhance nationwide mobility by elevating the safety, efficiency, accessibility, and convenience of the United States' transportation system. America's Transportation Problem: Traffic Congestion: The 2019 Urban Mobility Report found that commuters spend an extra 54 hours in traffic annually, totaling 8.8 billion hours overall  Inefficient Public Transportation: The ASCE 2021 graded U.S. transit "D-," with over 40% of buses and 25% of rail assets in poor condition  Road Safety Concerns: In 2019, 36,096 people died in car crashes, with pedestrian fatalities at their highest since 1990, accounting for 6,205 deaths Mineta Transportation Institute's Mission:  Their mission is to increase mobility by improving the safety, efficiency, accessibility, and convenience of our nation's transportation system. Through research, education, workforce development, and technology transfer, they help create a connected world. About the Guest: Karen Philbrick has served as the Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University since 2014. MTI oversees three distinguished multi-university consortia: the California State University Transportation Consortium (CSUTC), which consolidates surface transportation research and workforce development across the extensive California State University system; the Mineta Consortium for Transportation Mobility (MCTM), comprising four exceptional institutions that champion the diversity enriching our nation's fabric, including Howard University, Navajo Technical University, San José State University, and the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Additionally, MTI administers the Climate Change and Extreme Events Training and Research Program, generously funded by the Federal Railroad Administration. In this Episode: In this episode, get ready to explore the fascinating history and impactful work of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI). Founded in 1991 as a university transportation center, MTI is dedicated to improving the mobility of people and goods. This episode delves into the organization's origins, its mission to honor the legacy of Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, and its remarkable journey from a local initiative to a globally recognized institution. Join us as Karen Philbrick, the President of MTI, shares her passion for improving mobility and the life-changing impact of transportation. Don't miss this episode that celebrates the power of transportation in transforming lives, fostering community, and making a global impact. Stay tuned for an enriching conversation with Karen Philbrick, and be prepared to embark on a journey of change and empowerment through transportation. Show Notes: Learn about the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) and its mission to improve mobility Discover the origins of MTI, founded in 1991 as a university transportation center, and its ties to Secretary Norman Y. Mineta How MTI was established to address the need for research and workforce development in transportation How mobility is a lifeline to opportunities, touching on its impact on social engagement and physical health Learn about MTI's numerous success stories, focusing on workforce development and its impact on young students pursuing careers in transportation Discover the challenges in transportation, including the need for policy alignment with innovation and user acceptance of autonomous vehicles Explore the various programs offered by MTI, including K-12 initiatives and an affordable Master's in Transportation Management program Rotary Club of San Jose: Learn about Karen's role as president of the Rotary Club of San Jose and her passion for community service Impact of Rotary: Karen shares a heartwarming story about the Rotary Play Garden, a project that made parks more accessible to children with disabilities  

What role do communicators play in motivating change? Specifically, how can they move their audiences to take action against climate change? In thinkenergy episode 122, we delve into the world of climate communication with Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re.Climate. Explore the driving forces, opportunities, and challenges of inspiring climate action—from bridging research to practise to empowering change. Listen in for an insightful conversation on shaping a sustainable future.   Related links   Amber Bennet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abennettyyc/  Re.Climate: https://reclimate.ca/  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: https://www.ipcc.ch/ To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets on X (formerly Twitter) https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --------------- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is ThinkEnergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Did you scroll through the news this morning? How many of those articles that you skim covered a topic related to climate change? I guess it was probably a few. It seems. Every couple of weeks there's a new story dominating the headlines about forest fires, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and more, both here in Canada and abroad. We are seeing firsthand the effects of climate change and As consumers, we are receiving information about it. Everywhere we look. Have you ever thought about how you are being communicated to? How is climate change presented? What wording was used? And why? And are their calls to action? How does it make you feel? think not only about news articles you read, but also about documentaries, podcasts, Hollywood movies, right down to your everyday life. Think about the newsletter you receive from your municipality. The assembly instruction on the last piece of furniture you purchase, or this section on your favorite clothing brand, website about their sustainable practice, communications surrounding climate change are pretty much everywhere and the need to be. In June of 2021, the Canadian government introduced the Canadian net zero emission Accountability Act, which puts into legislation Canada's commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Different companies across the country are making their commitment, much like we did in 2022, when we committed to leading the way to a Smart Energy Future by becoming net zero by 2030. The push on to stop the damaging pollution emitted into the environment on a daily basis, namely caused by burning fossil fuels. Scientists are urging that this is crunch time. So if you haven't already, now is the time to hone in on how and what you are communicating to your customers. So here is today's big question. What role do communicators play in motivating change within their audiences to take action against climate change? Our guest today is Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re Climate, Canada's first climate communications and Engagement Center. This new organization launched in 2022 brings together Canada's leading climate communication academics and practitioners, and aims to help communicators create strategies that inspire the public to support climate action. Amber is one of Canada's top climate communication strategists and capacity builder who works with groups across the country bridging gaps between research and practice. She led the groundbreaking Alberta narrative project and supported much of the foundational work to pilot and build reclaim it. Amber, thank you for joining us today.   Amber Bennett  03:54 Thank you for having me.   Dan Seguin  03:56 Amber, maybe you can start by telling us a bit about yourself and Re Climate How did you get into climate communications? How did Re Climate come to be and what does it aim to achieve?   Amber Bennett  04:09 Okay, I'll try to hold all of those questions at once. Well, I am based in Calgary, Alberta, which may seem like an unlikely place for some for the executive director of a Canadian organization or Canadian center focused on climate communications and engagement at Carleton University. But that's where I live with my family. And what to say? Yeah, I mean, I think I've been circling around climate communications for a very, very long time. You know, the the mind has a funny way of making sense of things in retrospect, but I started with a Bachelor of Science and then I moved on to a public relations degree and then I worked with the mayor of Calgary on the one of the I forget which numbered cop, but it was a Copenhagen. And I think that was really the first time I began to think about what, what is climate change and had a certain kind of exposure to the, to the, you know what the challenge was and what not. And when I saw I kind of went on, and I did a master's degree. And it was when I had needed to choose a topic for my master's degree when there was the catastrophic flooding here in Calgary. And there is this, like, amazing paradox where the, you know, Calgary Stampede, which is the epitome, I would say, of the, you know, kind of old boys club. And when that happened, when the floods happened, their motto was come hell or high water come hell or high water, they were going to, you know, produce the show. And at the same time, one of the readings I was doing as a part of my master's program was also titled come hell or high water. And it was really about the science of climate change, and why it is making it so difficult. Why is it so difficult for humans to kind of wrap our heads around it. So fast forward, I completed a master's, and then did a series of really interesting projects. I did some work with a group out of the UK called Climate outreach, which is focused on climate communications and engagement as well. And then started working with a group of people here in Canada to set up a similar center or similar organization that would focus on supporting climate communicators, helping to kind of bring together the research that was happening, as well as the practice. And so that's really why Re Climate it is set up to do, we're really dedicated towards advancing the practice of climate communications and engagement through research, training, offering resources, pulling resources together, strategy, and developing strategy with other types of practitioners, as well as convening networks of both scholars, as well as those people who are kind of out there in the real world doing campaigning and advocacy work and trying to, you know, communicate with citizens and whatnot. So, that's kind of where we're at.   Dan Seguin  07:34 Now, Amber, it sounds like Re Climate, is a very diversified organization that brings together experts in social science, Public Affairs, and science. What kind of professionals work together in this environment? And what does it each bring to the table?   Amber Bennett  07:55 Love this question. So Re Climate brings together I think I've said it research and practice. And so you have those practitioners who may be doing public engagement campaigns, they may be working for utilities, they may be working in local governments or other kinds of government, they might also be working in advocacy organizations. And so they often don't have the time, or I would argue the luxury of going into, you know, latest academic journals, or even, you know, kind of other thought leaders who are publishing in the field. Why? Because they're busy, they're doing the work. And so, you know, that kind of takes a lot of time to kind of go in and look at the research, track it down, make sense of it? They're also, I would argue, very few who have the time to do an evaluation, like after they've done something, what did we learn from it? You know, What, did we make a difference? You know, what kind of impact are we having, and similarly, just getting together with other folks, right, and talking about it and sharing what they're learning. So that's kind of on the practitioner's side. And so, you know, when we say we bring or convene networks of people together, we're really trying to do that, you know, we're trying to provide resources, synthesize, you know, research, both, perhaps, you know, it's public polling, or maybe it's social science, you know, what's happening in in, that's relevant, but also bringing people together to share with each other and learn with each other. So that's kind of that practitioner side. And, you know, there's also, I would say, sometimes a culture where people feel like they're competing with each other, you know, certainly within the charitable sector. So kind of, I think, for those folks who are coming in, who are kind of in the field, having that support and someone who's doing In the work on their behalf to kind of make sense of synthesize, pull it in together like yours, your five tips here, the things you need to do. That's extremely helpful. And then on the flip side, I think for researchers, you know, they're, they're kind of passionate, there's a reason why they're there thinking or trying to understand, you know, how to better engage people, or what's the right framing, or what are the values or whatever it is, because they're passionate about it. So by being able to kind of bridge from the practitioner world into a more academic or into a research field, we're able to just give people real world challenges. It's like, here's why practitioners are actually struggling with, you're an expert in this, please talk to us about it, or please, you know, this is the kind of information that they need. So, you know, kind of the practitioners, I would say, Bring the complexity of the real world, right, that we're dealing with real people, resource constraints, you know, various kinds of issues and whatnot, whereas researchers bring the kind of precision of being able to look at something with a whole body of understanding behind them to be able to kind of see, well, here's what may be operating within this situation, here's what we know about it. And here are some other kinds of interventions or approaches that we might be able to take. I don't know if that exactly answers your question. Maybe the scientists part, I would say they bring the public trust. Right. So whenever we're polling, you know, consistently, scientists come up on top as having high levels of public trust on climate and energy transition. And so I think that they bring that kind of authenticity. And, you know, they're not there, they're often unpolitical, right? They're not seem to be benefiting, you know, personally from talking about it. So they're really effective messengers.   Dan Seguin  11:57 Wondering if you can share some insight into what the average Canadian's knowledge on climate change is? How much do they know about the main causes and the path forward?   Amber Bennett  12:14 Well, I would say that Canadians probably know a lot about climate change. But what we measure, it's a little bit different. So when, and I would encourage folks to take a look at some of the reports that we have published on ReClimate.ca The one that I'm, you know, I kind of go back to was published this year, or maybe it was last year. But within these reports, we basically look across 65, or more, either private or publicly available surveys, or public polls or whatnot, and we kind of do it a roll up of okay, so it's not just one survey that has said, this is multiple surveys that are showing kind of trends and themes in in where the Canadian beliefs or attitudes or or mindsets are. So when you do that, and when we looked across, you know, 65, or so what you can see is, is that, even though you have the majority of Canadians that would say yes, climate change is real, and it is happening, almost half of them attribute both natural and manmade causes, you know, attribute the cause of climate change due to natural causes as well as as manmade. And so why is that important, is because when we get into the conversations around solutions, then without the kind of foundational understanding that burning fossil fuels creates pollution, which creates a heat trapping blanket, which is heating our planet, and causing all of these extreme weather events and natural disasters that we're seeing. Without that kind of clear understanding that burning fossil fuels is the cause of climate change. And when you get into the solutions, and what people actually have to do about it, the conversations a bit more, there's a lot of confusion, or there's a lot of room for confusion, which is kind of what we're seeing and I can talk a little bit more about that. So you know, I spend a lot of time in focus groups, and this kind of conversation comes up. So when we talk about solutions in the path forward, you talk about climate change, and you start to have discussions around what you are doing, you know, recycling will often come up, plastics will often come up. There's a whole kind of suite of things that people are doing, but very few people are able to name a particular policy or real intervention that you know, that will address some of the root causes. And we people on this podcast may not be like, Hey, why really. But you know, there are a lot of different people and for many climate change, even though they may be living within the impacts are the, you know, experiencing in their daily lives, they have many other kinds of concerns and priorities that are happening at the same time. So what I would say is that Canadians believe that climate change is happening, there is at least half that are uncertain, or would attribute it to both natural causes, and manmade causes. This kind of understanding of burning fossil fuels, the trapping blanket, you know, that's not well understood by many. And so they're kind of subsequently stopping burning fossil fuels, as a path forward isn't clear, as it could be, or, or should be at this point in time. And maybe the other thing I if you, if you'll let me, the other thing I would say is, is that, you know, Canadians consistently report, when you ask them very high levels of concern about climate change, right? Most people can see forest fires, you know, that's how we are making sense of what climate changes. It is through these kinds of experiences, either directly, or our experiences of seeing, you know, extreme weather and natural disasters. So people are expressing very high levels of concern. But if you ask, unprompted, what are you know, what are the issues that you're most concerned about? It often will address climate change as mentioned Much, much farther down on the list. Right. So, affordability and access to health care, cost of living, housing, there are many other issues that people are faced with and dealing with in their day to day lives.   Dan Seguin  17:18 Okay, see the term movable middle mentioned in reports and on the reclaimed site, what is the movable middle? And why is it so important?   Amber Bennett  17:34 Great question. And I feel compelled to say that I think that term movable metal is used differently by different people. I think within the context of, you know, the work that we do, it kind of comes out of, you know, some of the themes that I was talking about in the last in in the last question or last answer. It's this idea that, you know, people are kind of undecided. Or they're conflicted about an issue. So they could move either one way or the other, but they're not at the moment. oppositional? Right. So if you think about, you know, a broader population, there is a segment, you know, of Canadians, whose identities are really built around the idea that they don't believe in climate change. They're not going to support, you know, climate action and whatnot. There's also on the other side, a whole group of Canadians whose identity is built around me. I'm a climate activist, and I'm a climate advocate. And you know, and I'm an environmentalist, and so they're on the other side, but most of us just kind of live in the middle. Some are more well informed than others. But for the most part, people are concerned, right in the middle. They have they, you know, when they ask, yes, we want the government to act, we are highly supportive of it. But when it comes down to it, it's this tension around the fact that because they may not be well informed, or not thinking about this, they have many competing priorities. You're kind of undecided, or sometimes they're just conflicted about an issue. Right? Because on the one hand, as an example, yeah, I think we absolutely need renewable energy. We need lots of, you know, solar panels, I just don't want them in my house, or we need lots of, you know, solar, renewable solar farms. I just don't want them all over the landscape that I cherish from my childhood. So there are many things that you know are underneath that are operating underneath for people that kind of create some conflict for them. So people, when we talk About the movable metal, really, I think what's important is to acknowledge that most people are concerned. They want when they support action, but they're undecided, potentially about one particular aspect or issue of it. Or there's some other kind of thing that's happening for them that's creating a conflict. Or they're kind of uninformed. So, you know, I think that you know, why an example? Or rather, I'll back up that uninformed piece is particularly important right now, as we see more and more kinds of organized misinformation and disinformation. Right. So as an example, when I'm in focus groups, I can predict with very, you know, a lot of certainty, what are some of the kinds of key narratives that are coming to the surface where people are kind of undecided? One of them might be, well, EV batteries are actually worse, you know, for the environment than, you know, driving a car, or there's no way that we're going to be able to electrify everything the grids can't support. Or it may be that solar panels actually create more emissions when you produce them than they save in their lifetime. So these kinds of things that are very dominant are kind of recurring pieces of information. And when people who are not thinking about this a lot or deeply, as much as maybe you were, I are people who are listening to this. So when people encounter these, this kind of information or confusion about what are the actual solutions? They really don't know what to think. Right? So like a third of us sit within that category, right? If I actually don't know how to make sense of the information that I'm hearing, right, and I don't trust so much of it. Because I know that, you know, I know about misinformation, I know that I shouldn't be, you know, you know, trusting everything that I hear, etc. So that's kind of the deal with the movable middle, right? So they believe climate change is real and not climate deniers. They just may be conflicted or undecided, or just not, you know, as informed because they're not thinking about it on a daily basis.   Dan Seguin  22:32 Now Amber, why is it important for the average communicator, like those in the energy sector, for example, to better understand the strategy behind climate change communications?   Amber Bennett  22:45 Yeah, um, I think because climate change is a super wicked problem, and is really complicated. And maybe me rambling on for the past 20 minutes might give folks a sense of the things that, you know, we were trying to think about and grapple with all at the same time. And so I would say that, in other cases, although arguably, I would argue that information, probably doesn't work it in on any issue. But what we do know, is just giving people information, they're not, you know, people can't reason their way into kind of behavior change. So, you know, we live within systems. You know, we live within communities where, you know, we're surrounded by friends and family, we see ourselves as kind of certain types of people. There are all of these kinds of social needs and emotional needs that humans bring to the table, that climate change communications, and I would argue, probably any good communications needs to attend to. So this sense of belonging, right, so I belong to a community. Other people like me think and act this way, or I expect other people like me to think and act this way. Being able to understand even what the problem is can kind of create shared understanding so that people who are making decisions aren't making decisions that don't consider you that kind of shared understanding peace. People need a sense of efficacy, control in their lives, they need some agency, they just don't need someone making all these decisions on their behalf without any involvement. You know, people want to be good people. And to be able to ask questions and to challenge things that are going to impact their lives without being dismissed as a climate denier or shamed or whatnot. And people trust others for different reasons, right. So scientists are highly tuned lasts. politicians aren't big corporations aren't, right. But the ones who are often leading this conversation in public are big corporations and politicians. So all of those are the things that we need to attend to when we think about, you know, climate communications, and because it's such a complicated problem, and extends to so many aspects of our life. And to be fair, there's a lot of organized opposition and strategies to create polarization to create misinformation. There's a lot happening all at the same time.   Dan Seguin  25:43 Okay, let me ask you this, what effect does it have to all be on the same page?   Amber Bennett  25:51 I often give the analogy of an orchestra, right, where we all have the same song sheet, but we're all playing different instruments. And part of that is, you know, there is a role for the government in setting regulation. And there's a role for activists and advocates to be, you know, opening up new possibilities, holding governments and corporations to account. But actually, we also need businesses to be building out the products and the services and the and the things that we'll be using in our lives. And you need all of these different actors operating all at the same time. And, you know, to live, I guess, within an ecosystem, so I'm very skeptical of how one message is the efficacy of one message, I think that really what is helpful is if people are exposed to and have the ability to make meaning out of climate change, and out of energy transition through many different parts of their lives, and they actually have many different avenues to talk about it and to create, you know, a shared understanding of what they want for their future, or where we're going.   Dan Seguin  27:23 Let's move to electrification, and renewable energy. Cool? These are important pieces of the world's response to climate change. For those in the energy sector who have a direct relationship with electricity consumers, is there a certain messaging that we should be sharing with our audiences?   Amber Bennett  27:47 Such a great question. I might change, I might have a different thought while I'm making a cup of tea, you know, in a couple of hours from now. But I think that there is a very, goes back to the question that we talked about with literacy. And also goes back to some of the things I mentioned around people needing to have a sense of control in their lives. Right. So what we know from the research is that people's motivation to do something as a whole has a lot less to do with their perception of risk than it does there because their perception of their ability to act, and that that action will make a difference. What people really, I would say, based on all the things that I look at and read and whatnot, want is a place to act that makes sense. And that is relevant to their lives. So I think for folks who work in electrification, work in renewable energy, a part of what we need right now is both to fill in all of the pixels around, like, where are we going? What is this going to look like in my daily life? What are the things that make sense for me to do right now? And how are the things that I'm doing making a difference within, you know, the broader community that I know and love and want to make sure it's safe and prosperous? And all of those things? So I think what we're, what we need, in part, are those people who are responsible for infrastructure, for services, for that kind of daily life to start filling in the pixels of what is this going to mean? Because people get a little stuck on, like, blind faith. We're just going to hand it over and other people make decisions. People want to have a conversation. They want to have a space where they can kind of create a shared understanding, right, like a public imagination of like, where are we going? And what's it going to be like when we get there? And what is it going to need in my daily life? And so I think that there's that part, like, what is this going to look like? And then I think the other part is, what are you asking me to do? And how is it gonna make a difference? For me and for my community, Canadians are very generous, right? They're willing to do stuff, even if it doesn't benefit them, if they really believe that it'll, you know, benefit the broader community or collective good, they'll step up. But I would argue that we haven't done a really good job of giving people tangible, practical, relevant things that do make a difference. Neither have we done a great job of filling out the vision of what this is gonna look like, right? It's kind of a little bit like a cliff at the moment, right? We're all going to transition to renewables. And we haven't filled in, what is that actually going to look like? Right? Am I going to have a gas station at the end of my street? I don't know. What is it going to look like? That's what I would say is storytelling, right? What's the story of what this is? How is this going to happen? And what it will look like when we get there.   Dan Seguin  31:27 Okay, Amber. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Hydro Ottawa has committed to being net zero by 2030. Does this kind of messaging resonate with the general public? Are there best practices in how to communicate this type of message in order to influence and maybe even promote change in our community?   Amber Bennett  31:51 Well, I would say if we kind of got back to, you know, when we think about Canadians, right, so I think that you've got a little section of folks who sit on one end, who net zero by 2030 makes a lot of sense. They understand what Net Zero is, they understand why you've chosen 2030. They understand what getting to net zero, you know, even means, however, it's likely that a section of those people are kind of skeptical. Why? Because they've been hearing a lot of targets, and not a lot of action, you know, for many, many decades. And then, so that's, you know, that one group, right, we start to see kind of dropping, you know, belief that, you know, it's possible, or that's going to happen. And then you have that whole other group in the middle that I was talking about, where net zero means absolutely nothing. The word the language, net zero means, you know, I'm being a little bit brutal, but it's true, right, where net zero doesn't really mean a whole lot. And, and neither does 2030, or the importance of it. And I think, you know, I sitting in a boardroom or a meeting room the other day, and we're talking about targets, and it really struck me when the person on the other side said, we know that this is ambitious, and we know that it's impossible, but we have to say it, because it's actually what science requires of us. These are not a political target, it's actually a scientific target, that we need to reduce emissions by this amount by this period in time, even if we'll never get there. That's what science requires of us. So I think all that to say, targets, I think are very helpful for administrators, for policy makers, for business leaders, etc. To help, you know, turn the ship, and to help start getting the kind of resourcing and planning and whatnot in place. But for the general public, what they actually want is what we were just talking about, tell me where we're going and tell me what I have to do. And tell me why it makes a difference.   Dan Seguin  34:17 Cool, Amber. You were a co-author on an incredibly helpful document entitled, climate messaging that works, talking about energy transition and climate change in Canada, which outlines the concept of message triangle. For me, it was a simple takeaway that could be immediately implemented into any communications surrounding climate change. Could you share the coles note of the message triangle with our listeners?   Amber Bennett  34:50 I can, and I would love to. And I suspect that, you know, there'll be parts of what I'm about to say that begin to resonate with some of the past things that I've said or are connected to. So really in a triangle, the underlying principle is that we're trying to create a whole story or a whole narrative for people. And that has a lot to do with how human beings and how we have evolved and how we make sense of the world, we make sense of the world through narrative and through stories. And so when we just give people one piece of something, it doesn't satisfy the way that we have been trained. Since, you know, the, since the beginning to kind of make sense of the world. So what we want to do is we want to give people a challenge that has to either be overcome, or that we're at risk of losing something. So there's a challenge, there's a choice that we have right now that we need to make. And then there's an opportunity. And if we can hit each piece of that triangle, what we're doing is we're creating a whole story for people, which allows them to make sense of why are you taking my time? And why should I listen to you? So you know, as an example, when we talk about the challenge, you know, part of this is really, I think, being more clear about the cause of climate change. But also, what are some of the challenges that we're seeing, that are related to climate change within our communities? You know, I was listening to a CBC program the other day, and there's an entire community in Newfoundland, that's actually moving back from the water. And this is, you know, after the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona and whatnot. So, you know, some of the challenges that we're seeing, what's the challenge that we're trying to overcome? And ideally, I would, right size that at a community scale, right? So people feel overwhelmed when it's my personal individual problem. But if we can begin to talk about this as a community challenge, then people are much more likely to engage because they don't feel like doing it all on their own. Similarly, a choice, right, as communicators, if we're talking specifically to communicators, we often leave out the choice at the moment, what is the call to action? What are you actually trying? What are you asking someone to do? Is it voted a certain way? Is it a conversation? If it takes a particular action, we need something, there's some sort of choice, and there's some sort of action that has to create tension within this story, right? All good stories have a choice that has to be made by the main, you know, character, and then the opportunity. And I think, you know, part of what I've been talking about around, where are we going? What's it going to look like when we get there is that opportunity. So if we're talking about the challenge, is, you know, we're seeing increasing extreme weather, that's because of burning fossil fuels and pollution, the trapping blanket, our choice right now is we need to electrify and that means building infrastructure, the opportunity that we have is at a community scale, both for you know, ourselves and and for others. This kind of, you know, whatever might be the relevance of it right, we'll have a more dependable electricity supply. You know, if we're all in EVs, and we have backup, you know, batteries in our cars, when the power goes out, you know, you've got a little mini generator that you can draw on that gives you electricity, you know, through the storm or something, whatever it might look like. But that's the point is that we're trying to create a full picture for people. We want to talk about, what's the challenge? What's the choice? And what's the opportunity on the other side?   Dan Seguin  39:22 Now, climate change has been a hot topic for oh, God, at least 20 years now. Are there any challenges with keeping an audience engaged and interested for so long?   Amber Bennett  39:36 Yeah, there's actually a woman out of the States who wrote an article. Her name is Suzanne Moser. And it's something I'm going to botch the title but it's something like, you know, Climate Communications 20 Years Later: What Have We Really Learned? And I think that in fairness, I think we've learned a lot, right? I think most people understand that it's more complicated than just giving people a brochure at this point. And I think that in 20 years, we've done a much better job of crystallizing, what is it that we need to do? However, there's also been 20 years of misinformation, 20 years of broken plans and not, you know, unachieved targets etc. And I was chatting with a woman the other day and, and she's like, because I kind of feel like forest fires and floods and hurricanes are doing the job that we used to do, you know, which is creating alarm and concern and demonstrating like, this is real. And it's a big problem. So I think in 20 years, we've had 20 years more of all of that. But we haven't, you know, but, but rather, I would say the job now in this moment, is the pathway, right? And giving people that kind of those choices, that control, and that sense of agency, that they can do something about it. And we need to get on with the action part, right. So we can't leave people in just concern. Because our minds can only hold so much anxiety and concern at one time, amongst all of the other things that we're concerned and anxious about, you know, climate change is just, you know, even more dreadful, particularly, I think, for younger people. So we can't, you know, people can only stay there for so long before they start to kind of check out because, as I go back, you know, I kind of mentioned it in the beginning. It's like our sense of whether or not we or our sense of motivation, or motivation to act has a lot more to do with our sense of being able to do something about it, rather than the risk that it that it proposes or that it is, so yeah. So, I would say the challenges of keeping people interested or if you can't give them something to do, then, you know, at a certain point, you kind of have to just check out of the conversation until, you know, you get clear about what are you asking me, and I think that this kind of anxiety is a real problem. And so the road for them, this moment really requires us to get much more clear about where we're going in the pathway forward.   Dan Seguin  42:52 Okay, Amber, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions, and we've got a few for you. Are you ready?   Amber Bennett  43:00 Ready to go? Okay,   Dan Seguin  43:03 What are you reading right now?   Amber Bennett  43:05 Wine Witch on Fire by Natalie Maclean, I think.   Dan Seguin  43:09 Okay, now, what would you name your boat? If you had one, maybe you do. Maybe you don't.   Amber Bennett  43:17 I don't have one. And it would be a miracle if I ever have one. So I'm going to name it a Miracle.   Dan Seguin  43:24 Who is someone that you truly admire?   Amber Bennett  43:28 This is kind of really out of left field, but I'm gonna go with it. So during COVID, there was a woman named Trinny Woodall who used to do What Not To Wear on the BBC. It was like one of the original kinds of reality programs, like one of those. And, you know, I'd love to be more philosophical than this. But I admire her because her whole... a) she works so hard, but also she just wants to make women of a certain age or any woman just feel good. And I really just admire someone whose life and business and purpose is really just trying to make other people see the goodness in themselves or to feel better about themselves. So she's, and she's also for any one who's interested. I mean, a social media magician, like she's, she's magic in terms of what she did. She started during COVID and kind of as a comms person, like, Yeah, amazing. Kind of how she has set herself up as an influencer.   Dan Seguin  44:42 Okay, Amber, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Amber Bennett  44:51 Magic? Yeah, this is hard. Okay, so just bear with me. Great start! This is not as rapid as you probably want. I'm moving houses. I bought a house. And there were two moments in like, one was do I put an offer in? Or do we put an offer in? And then there was another moment, kind of later on. And in both cases, I was about to say, I was going to pull back and say no, you know, I'm not going to go forward with it. And I kid you not, in that moment, the wind picked up. So in one case, I was outside and the wind picked up and got very, very strong where I was standing. So the first time you know, you can kind of blow it off. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. That was weird. But it happened twice. It happened a second time. And then the second time where I was, you know, kind of stuck. And, you know, wanting to retreat and I got a little, you know, scared about, you know, kind of taking the leap. And in that second time, the same thing happened, where the winds picked up, and they got a little bit stronger around me. And then they calmed down afterwards. And not in a like, oh, I kind of feel like no, it's kind of little, you know, it was very dramatic. And so anyways, I move houses tomorrow, so I'm gonna just put that out to magic. Not quite sure. It doesn't make a lot of logical sense. Why? Why did we do it? But we're there now.   Dan Seguin  46:26 Now, what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Amber Bennett  46:32 Yeah, I'm, like so many parents. And I would argue women in particular, the double bind of having to take care of kids as though I don't work. And work even though I don't have kids. And I think for a lot of parents that was the impossible situation and I don't feel that that's really gone away.   Dan Seguin  47:02 This next one I always enjoy. What have you been watching a lot more of on Netflix or TV lately? What's your favorite? In other words, you know, what's your favorite movie or TV show?   Amber Bennett  47:17 I love the Peaky Blinders. And I've gone back and I've watched certain episodes again, just because they're so delicious with the costumes and the characters and the whole thing. I'm, yeah, totally enthralled. Yeah, love it.  Okay.Now, lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now. Um, I think that if anyone were to see my email inbox, they'd be very surprised at, you know, I think communion policy was the king for so long. And I think finally, we're at the point where we're beginning to understand that the public has to be on board, the public actually needs to have informed consent about so many of these choices. And we need a social mandate to ensure that climate action is the third rail, right? You know, if you're going to be a leader in this country, or business operating in this country, then you need to be a climate leader, and you need to be a climate business, it has to be fundamental to all of the decisions that you make, and how you and how you operate. Because science doesn't give us any other choice at this moment. So that's, so I think, the kind of realization that we can have all the technology and all the policy that we want, but if people aren't on board, then it's never going to happen. And so I get to work with very interesting people, unexpected from all walks of life, and you know, different sectors who are beginning to understand that, really, this is something we're going to work on until all of us and those beyond. For many generations, yeah.   Dan Seguin  49:12 Now, if our listeners want to learn more about you, Amber, or your organization, how can they connect?   Amber Bennett  49:18 Yeah, well, easiest is to go to our website, so Re.Climate, so that's reclimate.ca. And folks can sign up there if they want to, you know, make sure that they get more information on events, and we do lots of, you know, webinars and talks and we release reports and, and whatnot. So that's a great thing to do. And I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn. So Amber Bennett, and I also share lots of things there. that I find interesting.   Dan Seguin  49:59 Well, Amber. This is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Amber Bennett  50:08 Yeah. Great questions. Great chat. And thank you.   Dan Seguin  50:14 Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

The Biden administration recently proposed a new rule to change health care privacy protections under the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). The rule would limit access to medical records if inquired in the interest of “reproductive health.” The proposed rule has created huge blowback because it is seen as a way to get around state laws regulating abortion and transgender procedures. Twila Brase says the change reveals what a myth HIPAA is in protecting health data and only now in the interest of protecting abortion and child transgender treatments, does it decide to beef up HIPAA.  Topics discussed:1. Is the proposed HIPAA rule a tacit admission that privacy under HIPAA is a myth?2. What is the proposed rule?  Will it block states from investigating providers who violate their laws?3. What is the “personal representative” as mentioned in Biden's proposed rule?4. What about protecting minors who flee to other states for “reproductive health” services - will this rule encourage that?5. Does HIPAA protect any medical information?6. Do you expect Biden to eventually sign this legislation into law?  Read more on the issue here:  Congress Moves to Protect Abortion With New Privacy Rules - https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/07/hhs-wants-to-change-hipaa-privacy-to-protect-reproductive-health-care-by-annemarie-schieber/

The Biden administration recently proposed a new rule to change health care privacy protections under the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). The rule would limit access to medical records if inquired in the interest of “reproductive health.” The proposed rule has created huge blowback because it is seen as a way to get around state laws regulating abortion and transgender procedures. Twila Brase says the change reveals what a myth HIPAA is in protecting health data and only now in the interest of protecting abortion and child transgender treatments, does it decide to beef up HIPAA.  Topics discussed: 1. Is the proposed HIPAA rule a tacit admission that privacy under HIPAA is a myth?2. What is the proposed rule?  Will it block states from investigating providers who violate their laws?3. What is the “personal representative” as mentioned in Biden's proposed rule?4. What about protecting minors who flee to other states for “reproductive health” services - will this rule encourage that?5. Does HIPAA protect any medical information?6. Do you expect Biden to eventually sign this legislation into law?   Read more on the issue here:  Congress Moves to Protect Abortion With New Privacy Rules - https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/07/hhs-wants-to-change-hipaa-privacy-to-protect-reproductive-health-care-by-annemarie-schieber/

Today, we delve into a recent controversial ruling. In 2021, a state law was passed, the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act, giving survivors of child sexual assault a three-year window to sue their abusers and related institutions. However, last Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Colorado effectively nullified this law, stating it retrospectively burdened past actions and infringed on due process.Support the show: https://www.montrosepress.com/site/forms/subscription_services/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

‍(If you DO want to work with Studio8E8, be sure to mention this podcast/ episode!)Reach out to Studio8E8 here: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍‍Hey what's up guys? In this Monday Morning Marketing episode, I'm joined by our good friend, and website expert, Joshua Scott. Joshua breaks down his four essential website attributes that contribute to a seamless and engaging patient experience. From intuitive navigation and captivating visuals, to personalized content and convenient appointment booking systems, we explore how these elements can elevate your online presence and attract more patients to your practice. We also discuss the rising concern for ADA(American Disabilities Act) compliance, and how you can stay in the clear if this is a concern in your area!‍Join our conversation for actionable tips, trends, and must-haves to enhance your dental website's user experience and drive success in the digital realm!‍You can reach out to Joshua Scott here:Website: https://s8e8.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuascott/Email: joshua@s8e8.com‍Other Mentions and Links:‍SwellGoogle Ad WordsLocalMedNext HealthPractice by NumbersChatGPTDon NormanModentoHIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability ActBirdseyeADA - American Disabilities ActADA Compliance Company - Equally.aiDentistry IQ‍‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Josh, so talk to us about websites. How can we utilize this, or what advice or suggestions or methods can you give us that will help actually attract new patients through our website? Joshua: Hey, Michael, always great to be back for another mm m. TripleM, mq, I dunno what you call it, Michael: m squared Joshua: times three m and m and m Monday morning Marketing.Uh, but no, I, I wanted to kind of come at this, uh, from a little bit of a different conversation that we've been having with our clients lately. They actually started as a conversation with our team. It actually kind of started post covid conversation with the team. Some of the trends we were seeing and then has, Build out with our client base, but it's really a conversation behind your website's UX design.And what that means is a user experience design. And so when you get into kind of agency and design world, especially with, with digital products, mobile products, you're gonna hear people talk about the ux, like, what's the UX like? Or, I really enjoy the ux and what that means is, You're not just putting something out there for function, you're putting something out there that's designed with the user in mind.So I thought we would talk about that for a little bit. Some areas we're seeing that and then actually kind of hit at the end, maybe some ADA compliance that just kind of seems to be at odds with that. But we can talk through it a little bit. Okay, man. Yeah, let's dive into it. So, um, uh, just me doing a little research, uh, Don Norman, is the one who really kind of coined the term user experience.He's a cognitive scientist. and he said user experience encompasses all aspects of the end user's interaction with the company, its services and its products. And so when you're putting out a website, Anymore. I mean, this is the digital version of your practice. Like before people step in the door to this physical practice, they are on your website.This is how people experience you, that patient experience, that new patient experience. And so it's your ux. Really designing a site without a mind is about the feelings and emotions users experience when interacting with your website. So if you think about that right now, kind in this post covid world, think about it from a, a convenience.Lens, right? Like we all now are interacting with our healthcare providers. We're interacting with our pizza, like our Friday night pizza place through, through text. You know, I mean, I'm placing an order online and then I'm getting a text. Hey, your order's been submitted, you know, be here in 15 minutes. And then as I'm pulling it up, I get another text.Your order is ready. Come, come in and pick it. Pick it up. So we're all interacting with our favorite companies like this. And so thinking about that user experience from that type of convenience, user friendliness, part of it, I think is number one. So, convenience, uh, user friendliness, the journey.And really just what do you want people, like, what do you want them feeling when they get off of the website? that's the question to ask. You can build a website that's SEO forward, uh, you can build an a, uh, website that is like going to convert for Google AdWords. But I think you also, an equally important question in that is what do you want that patient to feel?Mm-hmm. Is it frustration because they've had the, like, input stuff into a form four, four times? Or is it because they were two clicks away from making an appointment and they go, wow, that was easy. Michael: Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Okay, so let me ask you personally, what do you want to feel? Yeah, your dentist, like your people that you go visit.How does that work? Joshua: yeah, when it comes time to actually convert on a transaction. Whether I'm ordering pizza on Friday night or whether I'm scheduling a healthcare appointment. Yeah, I want it to be easy. I want it to be straightforward, Michael, you know, when you're on those like websites and it just feels like it's from like 1995 when you're trying to like, like the form that comes up.Mm-hmm. You're like, wait, what is this thing? It doesn't have auto fill. Like you've gotta type in everything. Um, You know, you drop down, like, like your country gets a dropdown menu and it's, and the United States is all the way at the bottom when 90% of your users are in the United States. Yeah. You know, those types of things.And, and you go like, that's not that big of a deal. It just is, you know, like we're talking about as least amount of friction as little time, convenience, friendliness as possible. Michael: Where do you see the drop off? Then if you can give us like a, a number on that where it's like, okay, man, they almost made it.To submit that form, but you lost them here. Joshua: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know that I have data on that. I think some of this, and one of the things I wanted to talk about was really kind of the four, I think, convenience pieces of a website right now, kind of post covid and, and I think some of this, to answer your question is cuz the first one is, is about online scheduling.Like I think. We're just at a place now, like, man, you've gotta have online scheduling on your site. and when you ask like, what's the drop off? I think if you're using a lot of these premier, uh, partners out there, like Local Med Next Health, you know, practice by numbers, some of these guys, I think they've built really good user experiences into those apps.So, you know, I don't know that you're gonna have that much of a problem, but if you're using, a different one, I, I don't even know a good example right now, but, here's one of the things I recommend, right? Like if you implement online scheduling, go through that process yourself and schedule yourself an appointment to see how it feels.I, I've seen so many practices implement things like this, and then they're like, I don't know, like I'm like, you're getting 18 texts within a 48 hour period of time. Is that what you wanted? Well, why? I didn't know that. And I'm like, well, right. But like put yourself through that process. Tweak it, edit it.Make sure it's saying what you want it to say. Make sure it's doing what you want it to do. But you know, online scheduling is huge. You're gonna see an increase in your website, effectiveness, uh, you're gonna see an increase in new patients. It's just all these things. Now, um, there's actually stats and, and reports out there that are saying online scheduling.It's actually reducing no shows, which is everybody's argument. Like, oh, if I, if I do online scheduling, no shows are gonna go up. On the whole, once you get that implemented and you build systems around that nohow go down, it saves staff time. You're gonna get better insights into your data online. Uh, and it's mobile accessible.People can make an appointment right on their mobile phone. So my first one there was, was online scheduling. Get that implemented. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. I like that, that you mentioned you gotta build systems around it because, you know what I mean? We always just thought like, yeah, you have that button on there and that's it.Yeah. Uh, but it's the. The follow up process in the systems. Awesome. So what are the next Joshua: stuff? Yeah, the the next one is, is, I mean, there's, there's four of these really, but it's, it's implementing these integrations to make this a more friendly and convenient experience. The second one's chat, you know, adding a live chat feature, uh, dentistry iq, so it can double the amount of website visitors scheduling an appointment.you get this online schedule app, but if you add text, those online appointments go up twice as much. It's just facts from dentistry iq, uh, and I think, you know, 63% of millennials right now say that they prefer chat over phone calls. Again, that's just in the world we're in. If you have to pick up the phone to call an actual human, we feel like it's an inconvenience, you know, like, like, man, why am I, why are they making me do that?So, you know, I think implementing chat into your site, just making sure I, I'm not a fan of the automated chat bots. I still don't think they sound human. So I think you still gotta have somebody like on that and monitoring it. But again, like we're talking about optimizing your website for that ux. If you have online scheduling, but you don't have chat, you're potentially leaving half of those conversions on the website.Mm-hmm. So I think that's an important piece. Michael: Okay. So chat and not so much like the AI chat is what you're saying, right? Like actually have somebody on there at 11:00 PM like where it's like, Hey man, the beer bottle just broke my tooth. What do I do? Or, or what are you thinking? Joshua: Well, you could set up like hours around it, you know, and, and when people are available to monitor it and you can kind of turn it off and on for sure.Um, but yeah, you know, I mean chat, g p d as, as good as it is, um, I don't know that we're quite there yet for answering those, those questions and, and plus I, we, People just have still an expectation that chat means there's another human there. Um mm-hmm. You know, responding to them. so I think that's a big one.You know, patient forms is my number three and, and I'm bringing these up man, cause I'm actually not a partner. Like, I don't partner with any of these companies. and we, we integrate, we've built integrations with all of them, you know, into our, our web experiences. But I'm not from Meto or Local Med or, yeah.You know, Nexel, like promoting it. I'm just going, no guys, these are really, really important tools that we see the analytics behind it. It, it's huge. And so, you know, I think Patient Forms is a third one. Uh, you know, we're now, it's like it's tipped more than 50% of patients want online forms before they get to an appointment.Uh, nobody wants to sit there with the clipboard and fill stuff out. And then, you know, the other thing too is like, what online forms are doing is it's really consolidating stuff into, you filled it out one time. I don't know how many, uh, healthcare appointments you've been to where it's like, You answer the questions on the phone, then you get the form and you fill it out again.And each form has like your mailing address on it. You know, so like the new patient form, you gotta like write out your whole mailing address. Then the health history form, you gotta write out your mailing address again. Yeah. And then the HIPAA form, you gotta write out your mailing address a third time.And it's like, why are we, I get to the point where I'm, I'm so irritated writing out my mailing address. and so online forms reduce that. Uh, it improves accuracy again, like if your front office is just swamped. Man, putting some of these efficiencies in place will help them a ton. Okay, Michael: gotcha. So patient forms online.Joshua: Yeah. Yeah. And, and then the last one man was just reviews. Um, you know, and I know we all like know the importance of reviews now, but really just building that into your web experience. Again, it's that user, um, that UX first, seeing social proof, giving pa your patients a chance to, you know, one, the two clicks away from leaving a review as well.yeah, I don't know. I don't really need to go into the. The importance of reviews. I think we're all there now in 2023, but Swell BirdEye, these are both companies that do an amazing job with that. And um, so, so I think as you're thinking through the UX of your site, the first question, big picture was how do I create a easy, convenient, friendly user experience for my patients?Here are four tools I think will help you do that if implemented. Right. and then before we go here, I can talk about ADA a compliance a little bit. Okay. Yeah, Michael: man. Let's, let's dive into that a little bit because I know, um, I think that's coming up a little bit more often now. I don't know, do you see that or?Joshua: We do. Um, and, and just to be clear, when we're talking about ADA compliance, we're talking about American Disabilities Acts, not the American Dental Association. And so it's really about, uh, we see it more in bigger cities and honestly specifically San Francisco. So, um, for whate and. and we've, we've actually seen a little bit in Dallas too, uh, and maybe one in New York, but it's, I think it's, what happens is it's where somebody else has a lawsuit brought against them for their website not being ADA a compliant, and then all the other dentists in the area freak out about it.And then we get it like emails from our clients like, Hey, are we ADA a compliant? And so the, the question to that is really three levels of it that I want to give you. So ADA compliance is about making your website. Compliant for Americans with disabilities. And so that includes things like color, font size, the color of the font on the backgrounds, how big the buttons are, things like that to help, you know, people with disabilities navigate a site.the truth is that is often at odds with. The experience, the aesthetic experience, the brand experience we want to create with a website. Mm-hmm. And so the quick answer is our websites and I, and most people out there have done a base level job of creating a website that's a d a compliant. So we kind of go, here are the factors.We think we want the buttons to be a certain, you know, a size on a phone. We want it to scroll. When it comes to like, you know, you put text over a photo. Is that ADA a compliant? Probably not. You know, they want white text on a black background or white text on a dark blue background, something like that so people can read it easy.So there's a couple solutions and one of 'em, you can get an a ADA widget that actually lives at the bottom of your site. You can click on it and then you can actually adjust anything you want. You can adjust colors, you can take the pictures out, you can increase the font sizes. So it gives your users the ability to come on and go, wow, this font size is way too small and increase it.Mm-hmm. Or, I'm having trouble reading that text over the photos. Let me take those out and replace 'em with solid backgrounds. So that's one option. The downside is they start messing around with this stuff and it, it makes your website look jacked up. I mean, we, as a team, we were, we were messing around with some of these sites on a Monday morning.With this ADA compliant widget, and it's like, it, it can really, I mean, you wanna laugh and have a good time, it can really make your website look crazy. yeah, so it's, it's kinda, but that tends to, I think it's like 30 bucks a month that tends to solve most people's issues. If you're in an area where you're just hyper aware of it, hypersensitive you, you've got lawsuits happening left and right.Like if you were in San Francisco, I would tell you there's even a third level of working with, uh, some of these agencies. They will custom design this, like they'll take this widget and customize it for your site. So it's not just applying like blanket parameters, it's actually like increase the font. It increases the font in scale overall.So the website actually still looks nice and is functional. And they typically provide consultation and even legal protection. Typically those packages are like 3,500. but they, again, they customize the a d a, uh, whatever parameters on your site. So your site still looks good if they have to adjust that.But it also offers some legal protection as well. Michael: Well, do you guys, the Studio 88, do that customize. Joshua: we actually will provide that to our clients as a, um, if they get into that, we basically connect them with that company, with that agency. And, and Michael? I, I don't know it off the top of my head.I kind of, you know, we were chatting about this for a minute before the show and I was like, yeah, I can talk about it. I can send you who we work with. You can maybe put in the show notes. Yeah, Michael: that, yeah, that'd be awesome. That'd be, especially for our San Fran. Yeah. I don't know why it's only happening out there, but you know what I mean.Or Dallas too, but, Joshua: San Fran and California, man, it's a whole different world and I think when it comes to, um, governing Yeah, so it's, they just tend to, to have different regulations than sometimes the rest of the country. Yeah. Michael: It's crazy, man. But awesome. So you've given us a lot to think about, especially when it comes to much just building systems to make it efficient, right?To make it. More human with the chat feature. Uh, patient forms, efficiency, and then the reviews. Obviously reviews are super duper important no matter what, right? That's that, that's that proof that you're talking about that we're gonna need no matter what. And then, um, putting the systems around, the online scheduling.Awesome. Josh, man, we really appreciate this. If anybody has any questions or they wanna reach out to you, where can they find you? Joshua: Man, best place for me. Uh, if you wanna hit me up on Instagram, uh, it's at Joshua Scott. I'm still in that account still. Check it. DM me, tell me you heard the episode. I'll, I'll, you know, shout out you back.Uh, you can also visit us online at s eight e eight.com. That's the letter s, the number eight, the letter E, the number eight.com. And uh, you can reach out to us there as well. Michael: Nice man. And guys, check out Studio 80 eights websites. They're, uh, we were talking about this right before we got on in. You guys are all about the user, right?Use your experience first, especially the design. Everybody, pretty much everybody listening right now kind of knows about like, okay, we've heard of Studio 88 and how elevated you guys are, right? So, um, I highly recommend people if they want, can they just schedule like a free, I don't know, like, Hey man, check, check out my stuff.Can you, can you check it out? For Joshua: free. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. That's actually part of our kind of, uh, initial consultative phone call is just like going through like, what are you doing? Like, what's working, what's not working? What, what's your budget been? You know, we look at the website, look at the seo, kind of do an analysis so that we go into it.We, we actually can give advice too. A lot of times what I tell people is I'm like, I hope you at least walk away with some advice on this phone call, whether or not you want to use us or not. Even if I'm my second opinion, you're like, this company's telling me X, Y, Z, and I'm like, Yeah. Uh, x, y, Z is right.So, you know, if you need the second opinion on it, like we, we can do that as well. I like that. Michael: Yeah, Josh told us. Yes. So we're gonna do it. Gotcha. Awesome. So guys, that's gonna be in the show below. Definitely schedule your free comprehensive assessment, um, and check it out. So thank you so much, Josh for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode.Joshua: Always a pleasure, man.‍‍‍

Sean was joined by Ashley Morgan and Robert Liles of Liles/Parker to discuss Medicare Part C Appeals and how different the process is from traditional Medicare Part A and B Appeals... Once again, this was such an incredible episode with two of the best attorneys in the administrative process! About Ashley Morgan: Ashley Morgan is a Partner at Liles Parker. She focuses her practice on regulatory health care compliance matters, fraud and abuse, and reimbursement issues. Ms. Morgan represents health care providers across the country in connection with a wide variety of health law issues including coverage disputes, documentation concerns, compliance, medical board complaints, and exclusion / termination issues. She has worked with an assortment of providers including dentists, home health companies, hospice agencies, pain management practices, primary care and specialty physicians, mental health professionals, physical therapists, and licensed acupuncturists. Ms. Morgan is one of only a small percentage of health lawyers who has also trained and passed the certification examination requirements to become designated as a "Certified Professional Coder."  About Robert Liles: Mr. Liles first began working in hospital management after receiving both an M.B.A. and an M.S. in Health Care Administration. After graduating from law school, he was hired as an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) in the Southern District of Texas (SDTX) where he primarily handled False Claims Act cases. He was later promoted to Chief, Financial Litigation Unit. Shortly after the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Mr. Liles was asked to serve as our country's first National Health Care Fraud Coordinator.He was detailed to Washington, DC and was later promoted to the position of Deputy Director, Legal Programs, for the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), a component of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). While at EOUSA, he advised Federal prosecutors around the country on civil and criminal fraud statutes, schemes, investigative tools, privacy concerns, and compliance issues. 

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‍Welcome to today's MMM! Today are explore how utilizing AI can benefit your dental practice in reputation management, marketing, and content generation. We'll discuss how ChatGPT can help you craft responses to negative patient feedback, or emails that you don't quite know how to respond to. Using context such as "I'm a personal relations person, how would I respond to this negative comment?" is a great place to start for negative reviews! Additionally, we'll delve into how you can use ChatGPT to market your practice by requesting tailored messaging to reach the patients that you want. Finally, we'll explore how you can leverage ChatGPT to determine the most efficient ways to carry out tasks in your practice.‍To dig into these tips and more, catch my conversation with Dr. Justin Scott here!‍You can reach out to Dr. Justin Scott here:Email: drjustin@puredentalhealth.comWebsite: https://www.virtualdentaloffices.com/Practice Website: https://puredentalhealth.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virtualdentaloffices/Practice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puredentalhealth/‍Other Mentions and Links:ChatGPTTonya Lanthier - Dental PostHIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability ActOtter AIChatGPT 4Bar ExamBingRev TranscriptionDescriptAdobe Premiere‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: hey Justin. So talk to us about AI and chat, G P T. How can we utilize this, or what advisor suggestions can you give us that will help our workflow efficiency or front office tasks within our practice? Justin: we we're training the whole team to, to use chat, g p t especially the marketing department.And we, we were using it to. I think that the best way to use it is for content generation, for thinking up ideas of what to say. If you're writing content, say for your newsletter or for posts for content. For any type of marketing sort of thing. It's really, really helpful. Even for reputation management, I'm, I'm using it a lot for responding to bad reviews or maybe even an email that comes through from a patient that uh, is angry.It's like, how do I respond to this? Mm-hmm. Uh, What's the most professional PR way to respond to that? It's really good for that. I use it for HR questions. My staff member did this and uh, how should I deal with it? Or am I gonna get know labor laws pretty well? Legal questions, it's pretty good with that kind of stuff.So I actually got rid of my HR legal monthly fee saving money. Uh, So it's already getting rid of jobs. Which a lot of people are, are afraid that it's mm-hmm. Gonna do. But uh, I, I don't think it does everything for you, but it, it does so much of the thought, like if I sit down to write down something, I, I can figure it out.I took AP English, I'm, I'm pretty good with writing, but it would take me a really long time. It can write it like that. Yeah. I can say, write a blog post. Make it 500 words. Boom. I got you one. Okay. Well, okay. Change it to say this. Boom. It changes to that. Okay. Well actually I want it to be a thousand words.And can you write it from, you, you can, do all sorts of crazy stuff like tell it to write it and the voice of the King James version of the Bible and it can do it for, for you like that. I mean, just anything that you want it to do. It can, it, it can pretty much do. Obviously there's no use case for dental office for doing that.Cool. Yeah, yeah. But like today, I was using it to write a bio for myself, for my, for my website, for my new company, VDO. I'm writing a book, so I took my book and I pasted it on there and I said, take this information, write my bio. And then I wrote bio, but it, it didn't have my name cuz my book doesn't have my name in the, in the text because it's on the cover of the book.I'm still writing it. So I was like, it's, my name is not Dr. Smith, it's Dr. Justin Scott. So can you replace it and rewrite it for that? Also, they entered some stuff that I didn't want, so I take that out and put this in did it and copied paste it and sent it to one of my my assistants and told 'em to add it to the website, you know?Yeah. So changing and editing content makes it just so much easier to do. Michael: Nice. Okay, man. So you said you use it for two things that kind of picked my interest was how do you respond to a bad review? Like what kind of prompts do you put in it? So it can sound like you when there's a review? Right. So, Justin: you know, I say act as a whatever.So act as a PR person and tell me what is the best way to respond to this review. And you know, sometimes you get a person that's complaining about all sorts of stuff. You may wanna give some contacts for the particulars of the situation, but it basically says, we're really sorry to hear that you didn't have a great experience.but it's, it's tailored to the specifics of what it says. Mm-hmm. Uh, It's probably a lot easier cause I, I'm emotional. I, I'm gonna respond wait a second, you did this, you know, but that's against hipaa. You're not allowed to do that. So when I did one the other day, she was complaining about her case and saying, this is what happened.This is what happens. And it says, well, according to hipaa, we can't discuss your case, but we'd love to be able to talk to you and figure out what's going on. We've talked to her a bunch of times, but this is for the. For the people they're reading it. This is for reputation management, so that someone's reading it says, Oh, they, you know, she had a problem, but they really cared and they wanted to take care of, and they offered to offer, you know, help to make sure that she solved it.That's what people really care about that, that you're gonna help with that. So, but if you basically just say, can you, how would you respond to this review as a PR person? Or you can just say, how would you respond to this review? That's a pretty darn good job. Michael: Yeah. Nice. Okay. I like that PR person, right?Act as a PR person. And then the HR questions, what HR questions have you been? Like Justin: asking, oh gosh. I mean, a staff member threat. I mean, I'm just making something up. Mm-hmm. Threatens threatened to harm herself at work, you know, and, There's all sorts of stuff.I mean, we just go on to Facebook and read the crazy stuff that happens in dental offices, but how do you legally respond to that? I'm not an HR person. I don't know. Questions, obviously, it always says, well, I'm not a lawyer, even though it has passed the bar exam. Yeah, G4 has, so you have to pay 20 bucks for G B D four or you can use Microsoft Bing, which gives you access to, to G PT four.The older ones, g PT 3.5, they didn't do as well on the law exam and stuff like that. But yeah, it's crazy how fast those things are learning and getting to be more useful and better. Uhhuh, Michael: I didn't even know that it passed the, the bar exam. Justin: What? It's got a long list of all the different tests that it's passed Now, some tests it's tried, it hasn't done as well, but legal law tests and also you have to use your brain like you have to read it.You know, I'm, I'm not gonna, actually use it for legal advice, but it may like at least give me hints the right way, you know, so that I have an idea of something, you know, so. Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. So then how are you utilizing it for marketing right now? Give us, like, if you can, a step-by-step process of this.Somebody who just right now, God on Chad, like, I'm gonna listen to Justin tell me this, and hopefully it will, it'll do this result. Justin: So I think the most easy thing is, for instance I actually did a podcast with another guy. We were talking about the best way to do it. If you're doing video, for instance, you, you're doing a podcast.If I was doing a podcast, what I would do, the first thing I would do is I would transcribe it and you would transcribe it with a bunch of different softwares are out there that can do it. So Otter AI is one can transcribe things for you. Des d e s c r i p t is another AI software that you can transcribe it.Just Debbie Premier. Rev.com. You can pay someone to transcribe it for you per hour or whatever. A couple bucks an hour. So you take that and then you past that into chat GBT and say, okay, write me a blog post about this conversation that we had so that I can put on my website and link this back.So you do that. So now you got your blog posts. Now you say you put it back in, you say, okay, now write me a YouTube thing cause I'm gonna place this on my YouTube and, and put me some, some great hashtags in there. And also, what should I include in the comments section because I wanna make sure that I'm doing everything.So it may say, Oh, well to, you wanna have some sort of email capture device. Like you wanna have a P D F that can be on there, that can be linked. So then when they watch this, now they can download that. Okay, make that for me too. Okay. Now take that and, and make me an Instagram post. Make me 10 tweets will link back to that uh, thing.So you've got this pillar content of video, and then you take the transcript and you use it. And then you spread that all around using chat G P T on all the different social medias that you can go on. TikTok, you can go on different things. All of the different ones have different sizes that they want you to do things or you know, some you want to use more emojis and depends on what you're trying to target.And you can ask it, well, if this is what I'm trying to target. How should I go about doing that? And I do that a lot cuz I'm not a marketing expert. I'm just asking chat, g p t. A lot of these questions, everything I'm telling you I've learned from chat g p T. so another thing is that learning, learning what the best way to do things are.Just asking chat, g p t, what is the best way to do this? Or what is the best way to market this? Or what is the best way to measure this? What is the best way to do an AdWords campaign? What should I do first? Any kind of marketing that you need to do, it really does have great answers and ability to teach you to do those things.So, yeah, I think content generation and being able to take that into slice it and dice it into every different firm and fashion is great. It's a lot of work. I have a, a couple of virtual assistants that I've trained to do all these different things, and that's what the VDO is about is uh, we hire virtual teams for.Dental offices so that they can help them do things like marketing, social media, because the real key is consistency with content. And that it's engaging. And then the measurement because you have to measure the, the impact of your marketing. And that's a lot of work. And if you're practicing dentists like me, being able to do all that stuff is, is very time consuming.Some people like to do it, but it's hard for me to, to be able to put all that together. I like them to aggregate it for me so that I can. Help direct it where I can. Yeah, that's what virtual Michael: dental offices is, is like, it's uh, so for example, I'm a practice owner and then uh, I need a team to help create these campaigns.Market provide strategies, right? Like run the Instagram for Justin: me kind of thing. Yeah, so we train them to do that. We have our processes that we've already trained people to do, so then we hire people and it's very inexpensive because we're hiring them typically in the Philippines. So average cost for somebody is under 12 bucks an hour, you know, where you can't even hire somebody for less than $20 an hour to be your hygiene.The center to work at the front desk these days in Atlanta at least. So we hire somebody and then we just train 'em to do the different things. That someone wants 'em do to help come up with social media captions. And, and the best way to do that is you use chat pt. I mean, naturally most people that you hire is not gonna be able to come up with great engaging content.But chat, PT can and they can access it and use it. You don't have to be smart to be able to do it. You don't even have to have great English. You can just mm-hmm. Ask it to do it right. And you can even ask it in tag go log, which is the main language of Philippines, and it'll. Translate it to English for you very easily.Nice. Okay. It's a great tool for us. We use it all the time with everything that we do. Michael: Are you using it in your front, like your front office is using it right now or no? Justin: We use it for like predeterminations answering patient emails. I think that it's, it's good for just general questions, you know.But it's not great for like real specific questions for insurance and stuff like that yet. Mm-hmm. But. Give it time, it will. So it just needs to be trained, the right data sets. It's just, it's, it's based more on general data versus real specific data. So, but like marketing for instance, which is very general data, it's got a ton of stuff but specifics on insurance, dental specific insurance, it's, it's not as helpful, so.Mm-hmm. But I've asked questions like, what is the c d t code for this? I mean, you could, you could just Google it, but it also will find stuff that you typically could just Google. Michael: Because it's more like a conversation, right? Google gives you a ton of options, but this will give you like, here's what I think.Yeah. And the best option, right? Like one and the best kind of thing. Like right. One that isn't Justin: perfect. I mean, it's not perfect, but man, it's, it's pretty cool. Cuz it feels like a lot of times it's a lot more just straight to the point. You don't have to go clicking on random stuff and dealing with a bunch of spam.Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. You haven't used this. You gotta try it. It's, it's awesome. I got psyched about it. When I started using it. I was like telling my mom and all these people, A lot of people were just like, what? I don't care about this, you know? Yeah. But I'm like, this is revolutionary. This is awesome.Can you see all the things you can do with it? So it's the type of person that is attracted to this kind of thing. Some people just don't care, you know, they're like, whatever, you know? Mm-hmm. But uh, to me it's just like super exciting, super fun, nice play with. Michael: Can you give us one other AI kind of tool we can utilize within the practice?Justin: Let's see. AI tool that we can utilize in the practice. You mean with Chet or with some other type of ai? Some other type Michael: of ai. Justin: Let's see. I really like uh, the script which is a is a video editing app. So I talked about video editing, so if you're doing any kind of video, it's really great for transcribing the, the text and then if you need to edit things like for instance, the uhs and the ums that are coming up, anytime you're having a conversation with, I'm sure I've said it all the time.I, last podcast I had 400 uhs and ums and filler words. So it automatically pulls up all the US ums and filler words. The, the likes and the A means and things like that, you know? Yeah. You know? Yeah, exactly. And all it's on a like a script, kind of like Microsoft Word or. Slides, you know, like the, the, the Google Slides or something like that, or PowerPoint and you just delete it and it deletes the whole scene.So basically the way you edit the video is just by deleting words. You can copy, paste and move 'em around or correct the specific words. So I've been using that a lot. To do little videos. I made a really cool video that's a testimonial for one of my staff members so that I can. Help try to find an assistant.Unfortunately the in-office assistants are really hard to find. One of the reasons I started the company is because it's so hard to find good people nowadays. so I'm actually actively marketing, creating video content just to try to track people to come apply for my job. I pace the. Dental assistant add out.No one responds. And, and this is not just with me, this is industry-wide. I've talked to people that run like my, one of my friends is Tanya Lanier, who owns Dental post.com, which is the biggest well, she, she, she sold it, but she used to own dental post.com, and it's one of the biggest. Places where people post job ads in the country for dental offices.And she says it's happening everywhere as well as I'm part of d e O, which is Dental Entrepreneur's Organization. I'm hearing about it from all over the, the country that one of the biggest problems is just recruiting people is Michael: really challenging. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to help though. That's a good way to help to use that, you know what I mean?Right. To create it the way you wanted to create it and, and, and put your spin on it. So. Awesome. Justin, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, where can they contact you at? we have Justin: a website ww dot, www.virtualdentaloffices.com with the S at the end, O F F I C E S. You can, uh, email me directly, d r justin pure dental health.com.That's my, my dental office, P U r e D E N T A l H e A L t h.com. And we have Instagram for both of those as well. So yeah, reach out anyway. You'll find me Justin Scott. Awesome. So guys, Michael: that's gonna be all we one in Atlanta I know, but that's gonna be in the show notes below. So definitely go check it out.And Justin, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Justin: Cool. Thanks man. Have a great week.‍‍

Listen to ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology essay, “At a Loss: Patient Deaths and Clinical Research Coordinators” by Dr. Hermioni Amonoo, a Carol Nadelson MD Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The essay is followed by an interview with Amonoo and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Amonoo puts out a call for support for clinical researcher coordinators to manage grief after patient death in clinical trials. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: At a Loss: Patient Deaths and Clinical Research Coordinators, by Emma C. Deary, BA; Elizabeth Daskalakis, BA, Janet L. Abrahm, MD; Sue E. Morris, PsyD; and Hermioni L. Amonoo, MD, MPP (10.1200/JCO.23.00040) As clinical research coordinators (CRCs) working on health outcomes research in patients with hematologic malignancies, we frequently navigate a patient's chart to coordinate study appointments and collect clinical information. When opening a patient's electronic health record, a snapshot immediately appears on the screen with the patient's medical information: demographics, problem list, medical history, allergies, medications, and so on. However, there are times when the chart does not open immediately, and our stomachs drop. A small gray pop-up box that we know all too well reads: “You are opening the chart of [patient's name], who is deceased. Date of death: [date].” We dread that pop-up box. We feel shock, followed by profound grief for the patient and their loved ones. The three words in that one sentence pack an irreversible reminder that our workplace, the place we love, is the same place in which patients and families can experience their worst nightmare. Every time we wait the seconds it takes a chart to load, we hold our breath, hoping that box does not appear. CRCs, sometimes referred to as research assistants, conduct the day-to-day activities of a research study. In human subjects research, this often means performing chart reviews, calling patients to administer surveys, meeting them at clinic visits, or talking to them about different aspects of their treatment and recovery. CRCs like us are typically young, early 20s professionals, who recently graduated from college and are still trying to figure out their career aspirations. We may have previous research experience working in undergraduate professors' laboratories on organic molecules or with student research participants. Aside from volunteer experiences, we usually have not had professional interactions with seriously ill patients. CRCs are the people patients associate with the research study in which they have enrolled. Through frequent study check-ins and phone calls, we build relationships with patients and often chat about nonclinical matters. Patients tell us about their children, grandchildren, pets, daily life, hobbies, and work. The more we meet with study patients, the more we learn about the intricacies of their lives: how they met their spouses, how much they miss seeing their families, and what they love about their hometowns. Even after only a few encounters, we form strong bonds with many patients from a wide variety of backgrounds. As we follow them along their treatment journey, we find ourselves fiercely hoping the treatment works. When a patient dies, we cannot help but think of their life partner, husband, or wife, the friends they will never see again, their children, and their grandchildren. We remember their hobbies and the thoughtful ways they greeted us before appointments. We remember the numerous phone calls we made to remind them of our meetings. We remember the days they were smiling ear to ear under their masks and the days they felt so sick that they could not pick up their heads to look at us. As CRCs, we do not communicate with patients outside the study. We are not their doctors, nurse practitioners, or anyone who has direct involvement in their care. But, we accompany them as they ride the highs and lows of cancer treatment. So, after a patient dies, we often struggle to understand our own emotions and what role we played in their lives. We record their death for the study and are expected to move on, seamlessly, after discovering someone has died. Our role as CRCs may be tiny compared to those of other providers, yet each patient's death has a profound impact on us. We recall the first time we learned that one of our patients died. We became motionless at our desk, distracted and unproductive for the remainder of the day as our thoughts returned again and again to that unexpected warning box. We were hesitant to even speak to each other about how we felt. Thoughts of “I should not be feeling this upset” and “maybe I am overreacting” blocked us from processing or trying to understand our grief. These thoughts were isolating, and we were unaware that many of our colleagues could help us share this burden. Knowing that patients with serious illnesses die did not protect or prepare us for the waves of emotion we experienced when a patient in our study died. Some of us have had personal losses after which we also thought: “Maybe I do not have the right to be upset”— a childhood friend we are no longer close to dies, or we learn that a good friend has had a miscarriage—and our grief is confounded by our feelings of guilt. We experience disenfranchised grief1: grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially accepted, or publicly mourned. For us, there is no place to grieve with the patient's family or the clinical care team. Over time, our grief builds up, and it is hard to find a way to release it. Friends and family do their best to understand, but because they do not work in health care, they can find it difficult to grasp the complex emotions we experience. We seek solace with each other, but lacking coping mechanisms or clear direction, we ultimately bury our grief to continue doing our job. Oncology and palliative care clinicians routinely care for seriously ill and dying patients. To learn how they deal with their grief, we asked our Dana-Farber Cancer Institute study principal investigator and three palliative care clinicians (two physicians and a psychologist, who is a bereavement expert) how we could begin to process our otherwise disenfranchised form of grief. We learned that Dana-Farber Cancer Institute palliative care clinicians hold weekly bereavement rounds or remembrance2: a time carved out every week to read a poem or listen to a song and then share meaningful stories about each patient who touched their lives and had died that week. We adapted the bereavement rounds for our laboratory group of CRCs and principal investigators. We spoke about each patient we had lost, sharing the things that most affected us over the course of our interactions with them. We spoke of Jack (names are changed to protect patient identities), who was beloved by everyone in the clinic. His hearty laugh could be heard throughout the halls whenever he came in for a visit. On the last clinic visit before he died, Jack's appointment was delayed, and he sat in the waiting room for over an hour. When we offered to help find him a room, he stood up and offered a hug in gratitude. The memory of such a seemingly routine request stayed with us for weeks after his death. When we spoke about Jack and his family during these bereavement rounds, we were able to share the wave of grief that overwhelmed us, that grief we had kept suppressed for over a year. We also shared stories about James (names are changed to protect patient identities) and his wife; they met in college and had been together for more than 50 years. Throughout his treatment, James told us often how upsetting it was that his immunosuppression prevented him from spending time with his grandchildren in person. Our hearts broke thinking of his wife and the reunions with grandchildren that would now never happen. Surprisingly, speaking about patients in our studies who died felt like a welcome release; finally sharing these memories and the worries we had harbored since each patient's death was restorative. Bereavement rounds have been invaluable in processing the grief we experience throughout the year. We found ourselves wishing we had known of them sooner, although it would be hard for CRCs who do not work with palliative care programs to be told about them. Through our quarterly bereavement rounds, we have learned to foster healthy grieving processes, creating time to honor each patient and acknowledge their impact on us. This investment in our health and well-being has been crucial to maintaining resilience in the face of challenges that our job entails. We feel cared for by the larger program and know it is investing in us as whole people. Our professional development now extends beyond Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act training and Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative certification to include education in bereavement, burnout, self-care, and compassion fatigue. Direct supervision and mentorship around grief and loss incorporated into our routine check-ins and meetings have been helpful, as well as an open door policy with our supervisors for informal support. We frequently debrief in response to challenging interactions or situations, including the death of a patient. The designation of this safe space has emphasized a culture of support in our team settings. Learning to lean on each other when faced with emotional experiences has become a core aspect of sharing regular study responsibilities, especially when a patient dies. One practical strategy which  has helped us is going on a grief walk. After learning of a patient's death, we stop work and take a 15-minute walk, either alone or with a colleague. We give ourselves the space and time we need to begin our grieving process. Losing patients is part of our job as CRCs, as it is for many health care providers. Implementing programs and routines to understand and lessen the emotional burden on us has helped us better navigate our duties while fostering the coping strategies we need to do our job well. We want to learn and to immerse ourselves in academic medicine, and to do this, we need the support of our research team and institutions if we are to navigate the grief we feel when our patients die. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Associate Editor for Art of Oncology and a professor of medicine at Stanford University. Today we are joined by Dr. Hermioni Amonoo, Carol Nadelson MD Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. In this episode, we will be discussing her Art of Oncology article ‘At a Loss: Patient Deaths and Clinical Research Coordinators'.  At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures.  Hermi, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us. Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: Thank you, Dr. Shapira, for the warm welcome and introduction. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Let me start our show by asking this very broad question, and that is how did this article come about? We normally have first-person reflections in Art of Oncology, but this is a group reflection pulled by collective first-person plural, and clearly, you played an important role. How did this start? Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: So as you know, my line of research is trying to understand the well-being needs of patients with hematologic malignancies who are undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. So this is a really seriously ill group of patients who we are trying to understand what well-being looks like for them in the midst of a serious illness and quite intensive treatment with several toxic side effects and a prolonged recovery. And so in doing this work, unfortunately, a lot of our patients, even in our trials, pass away either from their diseases or complications from the treatment. And so I have noticed over the past few years that a lot of my clinical research coordinators who are young, 20-something-year-old, freshly minted college graduates, who are very critical to the work that we do, have to grapple with the loss that comes with working with our patient population. A lot of these individuals take on these clinical research coordinator roles because they want firsthand experience with patients, but that is one thing. But then working with patients who you bond with, even from mundane conversations, and then having them die was a huge sense of loss and frankly, a bit of a surprise for them.  And so, as a psychiatrist, used to sitting with people in grief and helping them reflect different losses that they encounter, but I quickly realized that supporting my CRCs was a little bit more than even what my training had prepared me for and definitely, my training as a researcher hadn't prepared me adequately to be able to support these young clinical research coordinators. And so in our struggle, or I would say I've had a burden for this for several months, I would say a couple of years now. And so one of the ways that I struggle, I manage different burdens is to write about it. So I sort of shared the idea with my clinical research coordinators, a couple of them now, and they really caught on to the idea. And so we decided to share what our experience has been with this. And then I also reached out to a couple of colleagues in palliative care and the director of bereavement services at our cancer center to also support us, or support me to support our clinical research coordinator. So that's sort of how this idea came about. And that's a really long-winded response. I'm sorry. Dr. Lidia Schapira: It's so interesting to think about this, writing as a tool for processing a difficult experience is something that we often discuss with our authors for first-person narratives. What makes this entry and this essay so original, in my opinion, is that this is a group effort and you have so beautifully spoken about the need to, especially for these very young 20-something-year-olds, to process this very difficult experience of grief. And in addition to this manuscript, you speak here of doing this through some form of bereavement rounds, something that you've taken from a clinical setting where we find that it helps support people working with patients who are very ill and who experience a lot of losses to the setting of a research lab. Tell us a little bit about how that idea came about, how you're implementing this very original and useful tool in your own group. Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: It started out with, before instituting what we call remembrance rounds, my CRCs would typically call me whenever they heard of a patient's death. They will literally call my cell phone, I'll stop everything and sort of take a moment of silence with them and ask them how they were doing and check in via supervision and things like that. But it definitely felt inadequate considering the amount of pain that they experienced with the whole process. And so our palliative care teams have this remembrance of bereavement rounds every week. And obviously, on a palliative care service, they have a lot of patient deaths per week where pretty much every clinician on the team would get together for half an hour to an hour. You have different members leading these rounds where someone will share about a patient who had passed away, a memory or something about the patient, and the whole group will reflect on it.  For our purposes, we thought it would be great to adapt that for like a lab setting. Fortunately, we don't have a huge volume of patient deaths per week but we realized that a month or every three months we would have close to between five to ten patients who would die from our trials, which is, again, a lot. And so, in conversations with our Director of Bereavement Services and our palliative care colleagues, we picked that time frame every quarter to get together as a lab where the names of patients in our trials who have passed away would be shared. And different members of the team who have interacted with a given patient will share, like a memory, either from a conversation, a poem, or a song, or something that brought to life the individual as a way to just process and acknowledge the loss that comes with losing patients. And I think it's also even more critical in the lab setting because, unlike the clinical setting where there is some form of a closure because as a clinician you may be able to call the patient's family and you sort of have permission to do that. But in the research setting, my CRCs felt like once they recorded the patient had died, they had no business in calling family members or doing anything like that. And so it was helpful to create the safe space to process all of that.  In addition to the remembrance rounds, we also arranged with our bereavement services in the cancer center where there are actually cancer center bereavement cards where clinicians could write notes to families. And so our CRCs have started doing that as well, where we could use the cancer center template and if they wanted to, could write a note to the family as a way to share how they were feeling about the situation with the families as well. So that is something that in addition to bereavement rounds, we started doing which is also helpful. Dr. Lidia Schapira: I was very moved and I was very struck, as were the reviewers, by a few things in your article. One, is that you take responsibility for supporting your research assistants. Two, is that you take on what I will say is an almost mentorship role for helping them process this in a way that sort of still leaves them engaged with the content material and stimulates their growth as professionals. And hopefully, some of them will be future medical students, physicians, and maybe even oncologists and psychiatrists. In fact, our reviewers wrote that after reading your paper, they had implemented similar protocols in their own labs and that's pretty amazing. So tell us a little bit more about how your efforts, you think, contribute to creating a more supportive culture in general in our workplaces, both in the lab and research setting, but also this translates into clinical settings. Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: So I think maybe more so than others, I see my clinical research coordinators as really critical partners in the work that we do, especially in clinical research. They are the face of the trials that we do in some ways. They meet all our patients who are eligible for our studies. And they do spend a lot of time with them, especially in the longitudinal studies that we do, where there are multiple assessments. They are calling patients, they are speaking with them in waiting rooms, and they are really essential to a lot of things that we do. When I think about how much we compensate them monetarily wise, it really isn't a lot for really talented college graduates. And so I think, for me, I view an intangible way of making this whole experience worth it, based on how much they contribute to my research program, is to really mentor them. I think as an individual, mentorship has been very critical to my own career development, and working and mentoring CRCs is one way that I pay it forward.   And I think because that is very much a part of our lab and our team culture, the CRCs are also willing to go above and beyond and really contribute to the work that we do. Because there is so much that as a principal investigator, you can't always be with them 10 hours in the day that they are working. But when you really get them to latch onto the heart of what you're doing and knowing that they are also going to grow professionally and explore different things about medicine, in general, has been really rewarding. In fact, I've had research coordinators who came in thinking they wanted to do Ph.D. in psychology programs, but then in interacting with patients, they have expressed interest in potentially pursuing nursing. I have a CRC now who came in thinking one thing and is going to nursing school this summer. And so I think there's really a great opportunity to expose them to the breadth of clinical experiences like in medicine. And one way to do that is to be intentional about looking for opportunities to allow them to see things beyond what they even thought they wanted to gain out of the experience because we can't pay them as much.  Dr. Lidia Schapira: Let me tell you that after this podcast you will be getting emails from people who want to work with you. It sounds like you're an ideal mentor and so collaborative and so generous in your mentorship. It's amazing. I was also thinking, as you were speaking about the people involved with patients and families who are struggling through very difficult times and die, some of our staff, not the ones involved in research, but the people who book appointments and get to know the patients and listen to their stories, they also need a place to grieve and they need to be notified when patients die. And most of us don't have sort of a system or a process for thinking about that, and maybe we should, taking a page from your playbook here of thinking about all of the people who interact with patients and all of the people who are themselves impacted by what happens to these people we take care of and many of whom are so generous as to participate in our research studies. So let me end with a forward-looking question and that is do you have, as a researcher, any interest in studying this? Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: Again, thank you for your really generous and nice comments about the mentorship. And I totally agree with you that there is definitely room to care for a broader range of our clinical team, not just people who have hands-on clinical duties or interactions with our patients. And I think it's even more pertinent in these times post the COVID pandemic, where a lot of individuals who work in clinical settings and again, COVID being the great revealer, it sort of uncovered how a cross-section of hospital staff are really impacted by different difficult things that happen in the hospital. So I think there is a lot of room to even look at how different staff manage loss and grief of patients. And patients dying is just one form of loss that we all have to grapple with as clinicians. But I think it's an area that a lot of people haven't even considered before, and I think there's a lot of room to study the impact of some of the things that we are doing in a research setting. I am open to that. I would need collaborators to do that, because to be able to do it well, I think it's not like an area of expertise yet. I feel like I am growing in this space myself, which was part of the impetus for reflecting in this perspective. I know the director of bereavement services has also been open to extending this to other labs in our cancer center and so I am totally open to that. And if anyone is interested in exploring this in a more rigorous and robust way, as it does deserve, I think I'm open to collaborating with others to pursue this to its fullest.  Dr. Lidia Schapira: That's good for all of us. And my last question, Hermi, you've been so generous with your time, is this: if you look back or think back about your early days, your formative years as a student, or maybe if you also worked as a research assistant, did you have a mentor who took the time to listen to how these experiences were falling on your soul? Not just whether or not you showed up for work every day, but how you were thinking about this and taking stock of your own losses. Dr. Hermioni Amonoo: So yeah, I think I have had a village of mentors who have been really invested in me as a human being first beyond work-related interest, and I think that has been really instrumental. And I think my mentors have had to explore some of these topics with me because of my own personal losses and I think having family deaths over the course of my training. And so I've been really privileged to be a beneficiary of mentors who really focus on helping their mentees grow. Not just in a technical way or a career development or professional sense, but really being attuned to how much, for lack of a better word, someone being well in their soul and in their mind, really is interconnected to how well they do professionally such that you don't burn out or lose the sense of joy in the things that we are doing. So I've definitely been a first-hand beneficiary of that, and my psychiatric training probably also makes me a little bit more attuned to those things than probably in other fields of medicine. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Well, thank you for a wonderful conversation. Thank you for the work that you do and for sending your work to Art of Oncology, the JCO. So until next time, thank you all for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of ASCO shows at asco.org/podcast.  The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.  Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes:  Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio:   Dr. Hermioni Amonoo is a Carol Nadelson MD Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  

AWS Puts Up a New VPC Lattice to Ease the Growth of Your Connectivity AKA Welcome to April (how is it April already?) This week, Justin, Jonathan, and Matt are your guides through all the latest and greatest in Cloud news; including VPC Lattice from AWS, the one and only time we'll talk about Service Catalog, and an ultra premium DDoS experience. All this week on The Cloud Pod.  This week's alternate title(s): AWS Finally makes service catalogs good with Terraform Amazon continues to believe retailers with supply chain will give all their data to them Azure copies your data from S3… AWS copies your data from Azure Blobs… or how I set money on fire with data egress charges

Episode #5 printables: Kirby 40mm Fume Extractor. wikipedia: The Kirby Company is a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and home cleaning accessories, located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is a division of Right Lane Industries. lugcast: We are an open Podcast/LUG that meets every first and third Friday of every month using mumble. wikipedia: The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. wikipedia: Rammstein is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band formed in Berlin in 1994. Goodluck with all the rest of the band/music chatter. I can't understand any of it. youtube: Burger Dance. Please no. Why did I signup for this. wikipedia: Syphilis is most commonly spread through sexual activity. wikipedia: Death was an American death metal band formed in Altamonte Springs, Florida, in 1984 by Chuck Schuldiner. Death is considered to be among the most influential bands in heavy metal music and a pioneering force in death metal. wikipedia: Death is a Detroit rock band formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1971 by brothers Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney. wikipedia: BitLocker is a full volume encryption feature included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with Windows Vista. dell: Latitude E6410 Laptop. slackware: Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. puppylinux: Puppy Linux is an operating system and family of light-weight Linux distributions that focus on ease of use and minimal memory footprint. tails: Tails, or The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity. debian: Debian, also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. wikipedia: Trusted Platform Module (TPM, also known as ISO/IEC 11889) is an international standard for a secure cryptoprocessor, a dedicated microcontroller designed to secure hardware through integrated cryptographic keys. pine64: ROCK64 is a credit card sized Single Board Computer powered by Rockchip RK3328 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit Processor and support up to 4GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 memory. docker: realies/nicotine. wikipedia: rsync is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and an external hard drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. funkwhale: Listen to your music, everywhere. Upload your personal library to your pod, share it with friends and family, and discover talented creators. mumble: Mumble is a free, open source, low latency, high quality voice chat application. youtube: Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West). Why?! youtube: Shaddap You Face - Joe Dolce. ironmaiden: Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. wikipedia: Kamelot is an American power metal band from Tampa, Florida, formed by Thomas Youngblood, in 1987. wikipedia: Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band from Kitee. wikipedia: Kitee is a town and a municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the North Karelia region. wikipedia: Evanescence is an American rock band founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by singer and musician Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody. wikipedia: Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in London in 1968. wikipedia: Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. wikipedia: Black Sabbath were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1968 by guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. toastmasters Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. bbc: The British Broadcasting Corporation is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. matrix: An open network for secure, decentralized communication. wikipedia: The General Data Protection Regulation is a Regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area. wikipedia: The Gopher protocol (/ˈɡoʊfər/) is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. wikipedia: Gemini is an application-layer internet communication protocol for accessing remote documents, similar to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Gopher. wikipedia: Slipknot is an American heavy metal band formed in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1995 by percussionist Shawn Crahan, drummer Joey Jordison and bassist Paul Gray. wikipedia: After Forever was a Dutch symphonic metal band with strong progressive metal influences. The band relied on the use of both soprano vocals and death growls. metallica: Metallica is an American heavy metal band. wikipedia: Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970 by Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals) and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals), later joined by John Deacon (bass). wikipedia: Brexit (a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET). The UK is the only sovereign country to have left the EU or the EC. imdb: A WWII bomb group commander must fill the shoes of his predecessor and get the performance rating up to snuff. wikipedia: Twelve O'Clock High is a 1949 American war film about aircrews in the United States Army's Eighth Air Force, who flew daylight bombing missions against Germany and Occupied France during the early days of American involvement in World War II. wikipedia: The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). IRC IRC is short for Internet Relay Chat. It is a popular chat service still in use today. wikipedia: Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is a line of small-form-factor barebone computer kits designed by Intel. plex: With our easy-to-install Plex Media Server software and Plex apps on the devices of your choosing, you can stream your video, music, and photo collections any time, anywhere, to whatever you want. ubuntu: Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. ebay: Buy & sell electronics, cars, clothes, collectibles & more on eBay, the world's online marketplace. amazon: Amazon Renewed is your trusted destination for pre-owned, refurbished products. wikipedia: Ryzen is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. wikipedia: Apple M1 is a series of ARM-based systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac desktops and notebooks, and the iPad Pro and iPad Air tablets. wikipedia: The Apple M2 is an ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac notebooks and the iPad Pro tablet. wikipedia: A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC /ˌˈɛsoʊsiː/; pl. SoCs /ˌˈɛsoʊsiːz/) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. wikipedia: ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. youtube: One Woman’s Wilderness. wikipedia: Felix Unger (born 2 March 1946 in Klagenfurt, Austria) is a heart specialist who served as the president of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts for three decades. geekflare: How to create APT Proxy using a Raspberry PI with apt-cacher-ng? gpd: The world's smallest 6800U handheld Exclusive performance optimization tool Support SteamOS system. pine64: ROCK64 is a credit card sized Single Board Computer powered by Rockchip RK3328 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit Processor and support up to 4GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 memory. wikipedia: Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. wikipedia: Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows developers to run a Linux environment without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting. wikipedia: In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. wikipedia: A Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a laptop or tablet running the Linux-based ChromeOS as its operating system. virtualbox: VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. wikipedia: Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. gnu: Published software should be free software. To make it free software, you need to release it under a free software license. microsoft: MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS. apple: software license agreements for currently shipping Apple products. cdc: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). nhs: The NHS website for England. wikipedia: Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. wikipedia: Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a discontinued series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems. wikipedia: Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. oggcamp: OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. penguicon: A happy place where hackers, makers, foodies, open source software junkies, anime buffs, and science fiction fans of all ages and backgrounds come together. mozillafestival: MozFest is a unique hybrid: part art, tech and society convening, part maker festival, and the premiere gathering for activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world. fosdem: FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. wikipedia: A hybrid integrated circuit (HIC), hybrid microcircuit, hybrid circuit or simply hybrid is a miniaturized electronic circuit constructed of individual devices, such as semiconductor devices (e.g. transistors, diodes or monolithic ICs) and passive components (e.g. resistors, inductors, transformers, and capacitors), bonded to a substrate or printed circuit board (PCB). wikipedia: A real-time clock (RTC) is an electronic device (most often in the form of an integrated circuit) that measures the passage of time. eurovision: The Eurovision Song Contest. wikipedia: Blue laws, also known as Sunday laws, Sunday trade laws and Sunday closing laws, are laws restricting or banning certain activities on specified days, usually Sundays in the western world. wikipedia: A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. businesspundit: The Commercialization Of Our 25 Favorite Holidays wikipedia: Leave It to Beaver is an iconic American television situation comedy about an American family of the 1950s and early 1960s. wikipedia: The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. who: COVID-19 transmission and protective measures. forbes: CDC: 10 Ways To Dine Safely At A Restaurant With Coronavirus Around. restaurant: COVID-19 Restaurant Impact Survey. subway: Subway is an American multinational fast food restaurant franchise that specializes in submarine sandwiches, wraps, salads and drinks. dominos: Domino's Pizza, Inc., trading as Domino's, is a Michigan-based multinational pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 and led by CEO Russell Weiner. mcdonalds: McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. wikipedia: In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other. wikipedia: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions colloquially known as lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, cordons sanitaires and similar societal restrictions) have been implemented in numerous countries and territories around the world. wikipedia: COVID-19 lockdowns by country. bbc: Covid-19: What is the new three tier system after lockdown? wikipedia: A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory. cdc: It’s important to keep your blood sugar levels in your target range as much as possible to help prevent or delay long-term, serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease. wikipedia: Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. wikipedia: Powerade is a sports drink created, manufactured and marketed by The Coca-Cola Company. katexic: busthead (bust-head). noun. Cheap, strong liquor, usually of the illegal variety. skrewballwhiskey: The Original Peanut Butter Whiskey. olesmoky: Peanut Butter Whiskey. thepartysource: Blind Squirrel Peanut Butter Whiskey 750 ml. Thanks To: Mumble Server: Delwin HPR Site/VPS: Joshua Knapp - AnHonestHost.com Streams: Honkeymagoo EtherPad: HonkeyMagoo Shownotes by: Sgoti and hplovecraft

On this episode of The Cloud Pod, the team discusses the new Amazon Linux 2023, Google Bard,  new features of Google Chronicle Security Operations, GPT-4 from Azure Open AI, and Oracle's Kubernetes platform comparison. They also talk about cloud-native architecture as a way to adapt applications for a pivot to the cloud. A big thanks to this week's sponsor, Foghorn Consulting, which provides full-stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. This week's highlights

In this double-show, Leah Garces, President of Mercy for Animals, discusses initiatives to protect taxpayers, farm workers, chickens, and pigs in an unprecedented and long-overdue marker to the 2023 Farm Bill -- the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act -- to be considered in the U.S. Congress in Fall 2023. After learning about these issues, U.S. citizens can contact their Congresspeople to express opinions on this critical bill, as Senators and Representatives in the House would need to sign on to it this spring and summer. This link helps you easily make contact: https://mercyforanimals.org/iaa/   The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act was put forward by Senator Cory Booker, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who worked with Mercy for Animals and other farming groups to propose this groundbreaking legislation to start to hold accountable a corporate-dominated animal agribusiness industry, especially to get companies to better prepare for (and pay for) inevitable natural disasters and pandemics. So I devoted a double-long show to this topic, especially since the myriad problems with industrial animal agribusiness rarely get addressed in Congress (due to a powerful agribusiness lobby), despite how much the public disapproves of factory farming and how much taxpayer money goes to subsidize it (millions of taxpayer dollars annually are bailing out profitable factory farming corporations, especially during disasters, but also routinely in subsidizing their feed crops rather than subsidizing fruits and vegetables humans need to be eating more of). This radio show and this bill shine a light on many problems with factory farming that most of us don't know. In this this 49-minute show recorded in March 2023, In Tune to Nature host Carrie Freeman interviews Leah Garces, long-time farmed animal advocate and current President of the nonprofit group Mercy for Animals at https://mercyforanimals.org/ With her on-the-farm experience, she helps us understand all the various exciting initiatives of the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act and what it proposes to do to help humans (agricultural workers, incarcerated workers, and also taxpayers and some smaller ‘growers' in debt to larger animal ag corporations) as well as helping other animal species in terms of reducing some of their immense suffering. From slowing down the kill-line speeds, to including chickens and turkeys in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, to prohibiting the killing of pigs too lame to walk, to reducing the time that hungry and thirsty animals are kept in transit to slaughterhouses, to offering severance pay and healthcare to vulnerable farmworkers in disasters, to prohibiting the continued exploitation of incarcerated workers made to work in factory farming disasters – this Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act is long overdue and needs everyone's attention, as the Farm Bill only gets amended every 5 years. Also, in Dec 2022, Vox wrote a great overview of Sen. Booker's act titled “Sen. Cory Booker has a plan to stop taxpayer bailouts of Big Meat.” In Tune to Nature is a weekly show airing on Wednesdays from 6:30-7pm EST on Atlanta indie station WRFG (Radio Free Georgia) 89.3FM hosted by Carrie Freeman or Melody Paris. Please consider donating to support this 50-year old independent, non-commercial, progressive Atlanta radio station at https://wrfg.org/   PHOTO: Leah Garces and rescued chicken Take care of yourself and others, including other species.

In this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, I'm joined with dental marketing expert Christa Nes-Iadicola, who shares four key tips for a great patient experience: consistency, simplicity, cohesiveness, and connection. Consistency means patients know what to expect when they visit and you deliver! Simplicity ensures that the whole process is low friction, with easy scheduling and no need to re-ask questions. Cohesiveness makes sure your team is on the same page, answering commonly asked questions in a uniform fashion. Lastly, connection is the unique experience aspect, calling your patients by name and taking detailed chart notes. She also emphasizes approaching patients with servitude, not entitlement, and sending personal letters to patients who leave. Drop in on my conversation with Christa for valuable insights on improving your patients' experience!‍You can reach out to Christa Nes-Iadicola here:Email: info@christanesllc.comWebsiteFacebook‍Other Mentions and Links:Denta DentalHIPAA - The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‍‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Our Sponsors & Their Exclusive Deals:‍Dandy | The Fully Digital, US-based Dental Lab‍For a completely FREE 3Shape Trios 3 scanner & $250 in lab credit click here: meetdandy.com/affiliate/tdm !‍Thank you for supporting the podcast by checking out our sponsors!‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey Krista, so talk to us about patient retention. How can we utilize this, or what advice or suggestions can you give us? That will help us with this. Christa: Yes, Michael? So I think when you talk about patient retention, it really comes down to, one thing, and that's a great patient experience.And to have a great patient experience, I think you really need to dial in for. Key points. and the first one is consistency. You have to have your systems and protocol in place. Um, the patient needs to know what to expect for that appointment, and then you need to deliver that. So once that is done, that's the first step in trust.After you repeat that process in every area of your practice, the patients begin to trust you. So, um, when you think about systems and protocol that you need to have in place to have good patient retention, There really are a lot that go into it, but if you look at just a few, look at your policies, look at your cancellation policy.Look at your confirmation policy. Do your patients know what they are or are they calling to cancel their appointment? And the staff is. Annoyed that they're canceling their appointment within two short timeframe, but they never were aware of your policy. That creates friction between the staff and the patient, obviously.So the patients need to know exactly what to expect on every level. So this is prepping them for their appointments. If it's a first appointment, even if it's a return appointment, they want to know what to expect. And once you're hitting those x. Expectations, um, then the patient starts to trust you. I think you also have to think about your policies when it comes to follow up.So when you're following up with patients that cancel, are we just letting them fall through the cracks and then picking it up at another time when they're not necessarily thinking about that appointment anymore? Or is there a good protocol in place that we've became consistent on within the staff?obviously when you're looking at patient retention, your attrition rate will start to go up as soon as those patients hit a certain month mark, and they're not reappointing. So look up at how you're reappointing. Are you reappointing? And what is your follow-up system look like? Most offices these days use um, automation, which is great, but when are you going to get a personal touch and.in that process with the patient. So is what I find with the offices that I work with is that a lot of staff will have limiting beliefs, in this area specifically. They'll say, well, I'm looking at their history and it shows that we've texted them this many times. I'm not going to reach out and annoy them.But the simplest form of communication and even texting, still using the automation, but just saying, hi, this is Krista from this dentist office, is a way that your patients do start to respond. Um, and at times you may have to, yes, pick up the phone and contact them directly, but patients are just like us busy, so they're appreciative of that.So I think. , there's a a big hold up with the staff that I see that are in charge of doing this process. It's just not being done because they simply don't think it needs to be, or they feel like they're annoying patients when they do that. So the second one, that I think is a key factor, especially in today's world.Like I said, patients are busy is simplicity. So is it easy to schedule in your practice? do you send online forms? But in that initial phone call you're asking further address, . No. So I see a lot of redundancies like that. Or are you having them fill out your med history form, which obviously is necessary and they're entering all their insurance information.But then when they come in, that's the first question that you're asking them. Do you have a copy of your insurance card? Makes the patient feel like, well, why did I spend all that time doing it for you? So we really need to get the simplicity in the office and look at, again, look at all of your. , are they simple for the patient or are they about us?So are they about making our jobs easier or are they simple for the patient? And I believe that, um, when you really take a step back and look at the patient experience and look at the staff process, that it all can be intertwined and be easy for the patient and still work for the staff. but it does take some work to get it there.So, um, a huge one that I see, and I was actually in an office just this morning and this happened was, insurance, right? Insurance is confusing for patients. A lot of times patients will have a medical insurance card and it won't have the dental on it, and they'll say, well, I didn't get it until card, which is true.And you know, people that work in a dentist's office, staff members do know that to be true and. , I can think of the top three in my area that are notorious dental insurances for not giving a dental card. Right? And I, I would say Delta is one of those among any area, and we all know and have the capability to log into that Delta website, type in a social and a birthdate when that patient is standing in front of you.and pull their benefits up within, I won't even say minutes, within a minute. So that's something that's totally at our reach that I see offices passing back to the patient, well, you need to talk to your hr. You need to find out who's your dental insurance, or We can't file, or we can't see you, or whatever.The thing that they're saying is, when really if you would just type that number into Delta or do a employer search on your, practice management software, they all have it, right? The the answer is right there in front of us. So if we put in a little bit of effort for that patient is what happens is it kind of clears out all of the backend side of things.You're not having to follow up with that patient, make sure they did call back, then verify the benefits, and then send the claim. making that effort for the patient coming up with an. and then your backend process is cleared. So in this case, the patient, he did find out who his insurance was through and he was just saying, oh, I just have a member id.I don't have a card. Is that okay? I said, yes, we can help. I messaged him back. I just said, I'll just text you back and make sure everything's good. And he said, wow. Thank you so much. Your staff is awesome. I am so happy because this was such a stressful morning when I didn't have the insurance and I was trying to find the information.So, as we know, dental insurance doesn't make things easy for us either. They don't make it for the patients easy as well. So I think that's an. Major area where the staff members are always more well-versed than the patients that you really can help them. And that kind of thing goes a long way. Um, so if we approach talking to our patients with an attitude of servitude rather than entitlement, you should have brought me that card.That was your responsibility. You knew you were coming for an appointment, whatever their reasoning may be. If we approach it with an attitude of how can I help? , then that patient obviously is going to have a better experience. So the next one that I see is cohesiveness. And this kind of plays into the other ones as well, um, into consistency.But the patients will ask the same question multiple times. We all know that. So they're going to ask the same question when they call and talk to the front desk as they may ask the clinician when they sit down for their appointment. So is that answer always the. or are we contradicting each other within that answer?So if one staff member answers this question and. another answers it differently. Um, it can often turn into a he said, she said situation, right? And then depending on your office culture, depends on how that's gonna play out. Are you gonna start having staff members throw each other under the bus or, um, what's that gonna look like?Are you gonna just always speak? Calling saying, oh, well, we have to get our office manager involved and they can figure it out. Um, so what does that look like? Is there a cohesive feel in the office? and is there a positive. Office culture on how the staff are interacting with each other as well as the patients, how the doctors are interacting with the staff and the patients.Is there a cohesive kind of culture that the patients then know to come and expect and can be true at your office? . so if you really have all of these three things dialed in, your patients will start to trust you because they'll have no reason not to. Right? Um, so then I think there's one last piece that if you add in, it just takes your office to the next level.And that is the piece of connection and care. So you have trust without this, but then when you add it in, you really start to get those loyal patients that you then have no problems, retain. . when you think about that, there's really a lot that you can do with it and you can really cater it to your office and the core cultures that your office has to offer.Um, but the first thing is make it each visit personalized. And it, it sounds silly to say out loud, but I'll tell you the number of offices that I walk into and hear the front desk speak to the patients and. Hi, what's your name? Is Unreal. So there's no better way to make a patient feel like a number than saying, hi, what's your name?So when you, again, look at your practice management software, they all have a place for a patient photo. So your check-in person, your greeting person, . patients typically come in on the hour, half an hour, somewhat staggered, but there's no reason that even if you have 15 patients coming in on the hour, they can't look at those patients and use some sort of deductive reasoning to see their name.Or I don't even care if the patient sits down in the waiting room after they've greeted them, and then they figure out whose name it is and check them in. Right. So there's really. To me, no excuse for that. And there's a number of strategies that you can use on that as well. But that is the first.Point. typically in the patient experience when they're coming into the office that you really wanna set the stage because you have been expecting them, right? If they canceled their appointment, you would've been mad at them, so now they're here, so be happy with them, right? So if we look at it like that, um, I think it starts to change, but, uh, it's also knowing how to speak to your patients, right?So anytime you're asking your patients, Do something. Obviously you're going to have those certain protocols that you have in place and anytime you're asking the patient to do something, they may not want to say. You only schedule your um, major procedures in the morning. . So add in the value of why that's important, not for you, for the patient, and then talk to them in that way.So say, Michael, uh, I know that you prefer later in the afternoon, but for this procedure, the doctor does it first thing in the morning. We don't double book at this time so you can have his full attention and we can get you in out here as soon as possible. Well, now you understand why that's necessary before you just understand that that doesn't work for your.right? So it's knowing how to add the value to the patient with what your. asking them to do. and then there's a lot that you can do to make the experience personal. Obviously adding in your chart notes, something that you spoke about the last time, and then following up on it the next time, that makes the patient feel that you do remember them.Um, and usually if you have the chart notes down, you can kind of trigger the memory on that. Um, one that I see a lot too is, uh, and I think this is very important for the. Is to prep the doctors that day with larger practices. Like, Hey, you, you have done an exam on this patient before You just met them one time.They're a little overdue, so it was eight months ago, so I'm not sure if you're going to remember them, but don't go in and reintroduce yourself. Right? Nothing worse than that. So, , make them aware, of the patients that they're not meeting . And the best way to do that again, is to have those structures and protocol in place, but then have that connection point and reference it from last time.So then once you kind of, and, and all of these things are harder to do of course, if you don't have your systems and protocol in place. But once you do, then you can really start to. Personalize it. You can do a lot of it with automation as well. Um, you're gonna put a personal touch on it, but even in your software, if you are talking to patients and they're expecting a baby, or they're getting married or graduating or retirement, there's a lot that you can do with that in the form of cards, emails following up the next time, and really just kind of connecting with that patient on the level of, Hey, well, Only, you know, we're really relationship in this way, but we really do care for you.Um, so I think that is major. And again, even if you approach contacting patients when they're overdue or due for treatment in a way of care, , and this is a team effort, and you relate it back to their chart notes. While I see the last time that you came in, doctor was concerned about this area, so he asked me to give you a call to follow up on that because we, we wanted to make sure we got that taken care of for you.So I think it's really about being intentional in the way you do things and realizing that. Um, it's a team effort. It's all going together. You need to be keeping good notes. You need to be referencing each other's notes, and you need to be follow up in that way, even stating, Hey, no, you canceled your appointment cuz you were sick or you feeling better?How's it going? Can we get you scheduled back in? referencing all those notes is it's just going to make the patient feel like they're not a number. they really. Care. So I think that is really key as well, on, um, retaining the patients. And then of course, if you do have a patient that decides to leave, make sure that you, you make them aware that you will miss them, right?Mm-hmm. so. And then a letter that you're saying, Hey, thank you for time with us. If anything in your future were to change, we would always love to have you back and extend that invitation and open the door. So if they were not happy with their new office, they can come back to your office, um, but without feeling embarrassed or, or like they shouldn't have left in the first place.Michael: Yeah. No, that's wonderful. if you could real quick, let us know, would this be really helpful in the morning huddles or like in a team meeting to make sure, like, let's make sure we're all cohesive here with, with our patients. Christa: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, go over certain points in the morning huddles.There's a lot that you can do. And again, it's a team effort and it's just about being intentional. you may have a patient coming in and their spouse hasn't been in, in quite some time. Well, it's okay, you know, make sure you're not breaking any HIPAA laws obviously, but ask about that. and say their spouse is gonna go home and say, Hey, I was just at the dentist's office and they were asking about you because you, you haven't made an appointment in a while.So there's a lot that you can do internally too to kind of get those patients back on the books. But the morning huddle is the perfect place to kind of, um, prep for this, or even if, if a patient had a rough appointment the last time to really make sure that you make this experience. better, So be aware of those things and then if you do have a patient that has a long wait time or something, um, figure out a way that you can kind of remedy it so they can get back to that consistent experience and realize that that one time was the outlier.Michael: Awesome. Krista, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her in the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you Christa: directly? Yeah, they can email me at info krista ness llc dot. Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below, so definitely reach out to her.Krista, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Christa: Thanks, Michael.

Imagine that you are hiring a new English teacher. None of the people who apply have any of the qualifications to teach English. No teaching degree. No English degree. No experience in the classroom. Would you hire any of them? Probably not. Now here is the irony. Many of the people making curricular and legislative decisions about education don't have the qualifications to be hired within education. This is a problem. In this episode, we hear how standardization, high-stakes testing, and policy decisions made by non-educators may be contributing to teachers' decisions to leave education. Music:  Theme Song By Julian Saporiti  “So Stark (You're a Skyscraper” by Matt LeGroulx is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license. “Cat and Mouse” by Scott Holmes Music is licensed under a CC  BY license. “Space (Outro)” by Andy Cohen is licensed under a CC  BY license.   “Home Fire” by Nul Tiel Records is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license. “Press Conference” by Blanket Music is licensed under a CC BY-NC license. “Things Change” by HoliznaCC0 is in the Public Domain.  “Living Life” by Scott Holmes Music is licensed under a CC BY-NC license. “Boulevard St Germain” by Jahzzar is licensed under a CC BY-SA license.  “Hungaria” by Latche Swing is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license. “Business Getaway ” by Scott Holmes Music is licensed under a CC  BY license. Transcript: I used to listen to the Dixie Chicks's song “Wide Open Spaces” before wrestling matches because I would get too wound up. It helped me slow down my breathing and relax.  In junior high and high school, I was fixated on winning and losing. I'd get a pit in my stomach, psyche myself up and out, all to my detriment. I was terrified of failing, of being a disappointment or an embarrassment.  Then I went to college. I walked-on to the University of Wyoming's wrestling team. During my meeting with Steve Suder, the head coach, he told me, “You know, you'll be walking into a room with a bunch of state champs. Are you worried about that?” I told him, “No, I'm not” because those were the guys  that I wanted to be wrestling against. I was a two-time state placer and I had nothing to lose. Suder said, “Good,” and then told me that he never won state either, but he ended up being an All-American for the University of Wyoming, so there was hope for me.  During our conversation, in between adjusting this chewed up yellow cushion he used as a back support, he told me that I was like the pretty girl's funny friend at a party. I'm not someone he noticed right off the bat, but once he got to know me, he was happy to have me around. He meant this in the best way possible, and I didn't mind.  I made the team, worked my butt off, won some matches, and lost more than I won. And I hate losing, but it felt different. I was excited to be wrestling, not nervous. Suder made it clear that his expectations were low, but he was happy to have me. I focused on gaining experience and the process and growing as a wrestler and a person. And I got to wrestle a guy named Brent Metcalf, who is the only person I wrestled that had a documentary made about him. When someone asked Metcalf why he didn't celebrate wins, he said, “I don't want to give my opponent the satisfaction of watching me celebrate, which would make it look like a big deal that I beat him.” This dude is a monster.  It was an extraordinarily humbling match. I had no control of my own body - his fingers were in my mouth at one point, but I learned what it was like to wrestle the best. It was eye-opening.  My tenure as a collegiate wrestler only lasted that year,but I remained in contact with Coach Suder off and on until his passing in 2019. And I had changed. My priorities shifted from valuing product to process.    When I became an assistant high school wrestling coach, the head coach had also wrestled for Coach Suder, and so we continued his tradition of emphasizing process. And what I noticed is that the wrestlers felt less pressure. They only tried being better today than they were yesterday. And when they have that mindset, success, though not guaranteed, is more likely. They are wrestling to compete and to score points. And even if they don't have success, they do the best they can do at that moment, and that's always worth being proud of.  In education, we focus on the product, on assessment. There is an obsession with passing or failing and we seem to have forgotten the value of process, which is where many teachers live. So today, we are going to look at how a structure of education that values standardized assessments could be contributing to teachers deciding to leave the profession, and because some of the frustrations with standardized assessment is a federal issue, which is too much to address here, we'll explore a possible solution to the high stakes assessment issue in Wyoming, which would hopefully keep teachers in education.  This is Those Who Can't Teach Anymore, a 7-part podcast series exploring why teachers are leaving education and what can be done to stop the exodus. I'm Charles Fournier. Here is part 5: “Education has a Tourist Problem” Mark Perkins: I do think that for a lot of teachers who are leaving, and this is speculative, but I think it's reasonable to assume that if you alleviated some of the assessment requirements within their schools, their satisfaction would increase. I don't think that that's a jump.  This is Mark Perkins, he is an Assistant Professor of Education Research Methods at the University of Wyoming and he is talking about the survey results he gathered about teacher attrition in Wyoming. So many teachers, both teachers leaving and teachers staying, reported that they were not happy with assessments. As we've heard from teachers that left teaching, there wasn't one thing that pushed them out of teaching. It was the layering of factors. And if we want to keep more teachers from leaving, it would be worth trying to address some of the most consistent factors. Aside from overall well-being and feeling supported, assessment is one the most consistent teacher frustrations. Now before we get into what specifically teachers don't like about assessment, I think it's important to think about why education currently has assessments, and this goes back to what we talked about last episode: the purpose of education and needing to be able to measure success for whatever that purpose is. Simply put, we need to reflect on what we want kids to know and how we can measure what they know. Mark explains. Mark Perkins: And so what does school success really look like? That sounds like an interesting, easy question. It's like, Well, kids know how to do math. Well, okay. What does that look like? Well, they can add, subtract, divide. All right. So what? When you start drilling into the actual requirements to exist and inhabit the world, the factors become much more latent than what we measure. But we fixated ourselves purely on content. During our conversation, Mark explained that there are a ton of other things that we want for students: self-awareness, identity development, civic consciousness, the ability to have some gumption and as Mark phrased it, drag a horse through the mud. But none of those qualities are easy to measure, which means it's more difficult to measure a teacher's overall effectiveness. This brings us back to the focus on content.  Mark Perkins: But all of the focus has been on reading math, science and somewhat government. How does a teacher who navigates let's call it the multivariate universe of being an educator. How do you evaluate teaching for the holistic aspects of the job? While we don't?  It would be difficult to assess students and teachers in the Multivariate Universe of education, as Mark puts it, so we assess a few content areas, and only a few things in those content areas. Many mission statements want to acknowledge the whole student, but we only assess a fraction of the student.  For example, I have a grant application unit for my sophomores. They do research and write a grant to receive hypothetical funding that they can use to address a real problem within our community. I don't limit students on what kinds of problems they want to address, so students have looked at drug use or homelessness or access to sports or social justice issues.  When students submit their grant applications, we go through a selection process. Students read each other's grants anonymously and identify ones that meet all of the grant requirements and would, in their minds, best serve our community. By the end of the process, all of my classes vote on the one grant that should receive the hypothetical funding. Every year I've done this, the grants that make the final vote, the ones that all of my students have pushed forward, are philanthropic and genuinely kind. And I tell my students this, usually as I tear up, that this project gives me hope for the future because through their research, writing, discussions, and voting, they prove that they are empathetic humans. I learn much more about what my students can do through this project than any standardized assessment that I've been required to administer. And this is a frustration echoed by teacher after teacher. If the thing that is used to reflect a district's success is a bubble-sheet test, that can feel pretty disheartening. Because from the teachers' perspective, the results of those tests, the results that are reported in the paper and raise community questions like, “What are they even teaching kids in school?” those tests lack validity. They're not the best way to measure whether the kids are alright, and Mark has questions about how well these tests show what kids know and how well they predict the future success of students, which is often how standardized tests are used. Several teachers pointed to the frustration that rather than getting students ready for life beyond high school or to be a life-long learner, they are forced to think that the be-all-end-all was the ACT or SAT.  So engaging and authentic instruction gets replaced with teaching to a test. From Mark's research and work in assessment, he sees that those assessments might not be worth the time we are putting towards them. Mark Perkins: And I have a suspicion that the predictive validity of these tests is not that good. And my suspicion comes from a very large body of literature that has looked at ACT/SAT versus high school grade point average and college level English math and general college grade point average. And yet, we invest an amount of time, pressure and money on these measures. What this means is that a grade point average, though imperfect in its own right, is a better predictor of future student success, whether they are college or career bound, than a standardized assessment. So what a teacher measures in their classroom is a better indicator of future success than what a standardized assessment shows.  And if this isn't enough, the amount students are tested is tremendous. This saps their energy and the energy of teachers who have to say, “I know this is the 573rd test, but you've got this.”  Mark Perkins: We need to simplify and make assessment parsimonious. We do need to assess, but we certainly only need to take our temperature one time and evening, maybe two, when we have a cold because we know that it's going to say the same number every time. Measuring is not teaching. I want to reiterate what Mark just said - measuring is not teaching. I also want to clarify something about assessment. Teachers use informal assessments all of the time. And these are different than the high-stakes standardized assessments.  Good teaching makes use of valid and authentic assessments often. When I was writing this episode, I got talking with my wife, Jennie,  about assessment, because this is what you do when you marry another teacher. When she taught Advanced Biology, she created these elaborate group tests that students would get excited about. She used assessment as a learning tool. Her thought is that you don't know what you know until you need to apply your knowledge.  This is why I like the writing process because it's an act of creating and synthesizing. It's a great form of learning.  So the right assessment can be an informative learning tool, but the high stakes, fill-in-the-bubble, standardized assessments that teachers are frustrated with are not that. Mark explains that in order for those standardized assessments to be more valid, there should be some adjustments.  Mark Perkins: I think that we could more wisely use measurement, and education. I think one of the first problems with high stakes testing, is the fact that the majority of these tests have no impact on students. Now. You don't have to be draconian about it .But we make intelligent decisions based off of test scores. And we provide students with logical and rational incentives.  From the teacher's perspective, it's hard to convince students that the tests matter because students don't see how they are relevant to their lives. I try to give students some perspective before tests, like “No it doesn't impact your grade, but  if you go through and randomly click answers to finish early, the people who care about these tests will think you're not learning anything, and then they will change curriculum and make you guys only learn from a textbook. Do you want that?” They usually shake their heads no, but that doesn't mean they care any more about the test. Many teachers struggle to care about the tests as well. They don't like the kind of standardization the tests force that does not allow for freedom in the classroom. Shane Atkinson, who we heard from in the first episode, left teaching after 13 years, and part of his decision to leave had to do with a lack of autonomy, some of which is tied to standardization. He pointed out that there are some districts that are so standardized, their days are mapped out in a binder. Shane Atkinson: This is what you do, then you do this, here's the question you should ask, have them fill out this worksheet. Day two… I think that's been done under the guise of equity. You don't want a kid in this classroom at this school to get a much different or better education than a teacher in the classroom next door. And I get that. So the idea is, well, to keep it equitable, they should be doing the same thing in both of those classrooms during that period of their US History class. Again, you're making decisions based on a minority and applying them to everybody, even if you're doing good work. That does everybody a disservice.  The hope is that every kid will receive the same quality of education, so teachers are expected to stick to a curriculum, and in some instances, stick to a script. Much of the push towards national standardization came from the George W Bush Administration's, 2001, No Child Left Behind Act. Jaye Wacker, whose voice we heard in the first episode and who quit teaching after 31 years, felt like the No Child Left Behind Act did a lot to undermine public trust in education. And it did it through standards.  Jaye Wacker: No Child Left Behind set impossible targets. And basically year after year after year, it undermined public confidence in education. So then we needed the standards we needed to prove that we're doing something and yeah, I get it and I agree with it. You know, let's prove what we're doing. But this homogenization that we've talked about _____ High School in their curriculum, the most diverse curriculum in the state, and their kids are outperforming all these homogenized curriculums.  Part of the impossible targets from the No Child Left Behind Act included a 100% proficiency rate for all students by 2014 - this meant that all students would be able to perform at grade level by 2014. This sounds nice, it is great rhetoric because of course no one wants to leave any kids behind, but this goal disregards so many variables. Many students are below grade level because of severe physical and or learning disabilities, and some will never make it to grade level. This doesn't mean an effort to get all students to proficient is a bad goal, it's a great goal, but not reaching this goal made it look like schools were failing. But the Act made it so schools were destined to fail. Though this Act has since been replaced, along with the unrealistic proficiency rates, its negative impact on the view of education is still present. Wacker also pointed to the reality that homogenized education doesn't necessarily produce the best results. This is a pretty common view of standards. A teacher who wanted to remain anonymous said. "On a societal level, I think standards are the worst thing about education, and that's a wide-open race... In my opinion, standards have lead to a homogenization that is stunting our growth, and solve problems that don't exist. I don't want education to be the same everywhere; I want to be a local restaurant, not a McDonald's." For a more scientific point of view, my wife, Jennie, who left teaching after 7 years compares standardization to evolution. Jennica Fournier: So I think that standards homogenize things. So I don't know if your high school teacher was too afraid to teach you about evolution. But in general, we evolve best as a species if we have a really diverse gene pool. Basically if our education system was a gene pool, we'd be fucked.   So from an evolutionary perspective, species that are standardized or homogenous, don't survive adversity very well. Diversity is necessary for survival, and this includes diversity of curriculum. Jennie explained that we might struggle as a country to solve problems when everyone has been exposed to the same standardized curriculums. Jennie points out that there would be benefits to having students prioritize local issues. Jennica Fournier: So essentially we need kids to have a set of skills that match their environment at a local level in order to solve problems at their local level versus everyone in the US only knowing how to solve a generic set of problems. So many teachers see standards as an impossible bar to be reached that stifles their ability to be creative in their classrooms. Another part to the frustration with standardization and standardized assessments comes from the preparation required to take them and the pressure associated with the results. This is preparation and pressure that Mark, who discussed assessment earlier in this episode, says might be unnecessary. Molly Waterworth, who we heard from in a previous episode and who left teaching after 8 years, explains how frustrating that process of preparation was.  Molly Waterworth: ACT/SAT prep, hated that. Totally hated it. And I never really figured out a way to do it super meaningfully. It just felt really meaningless because I just couldn't connect it to anything relevant. I just have to say to the kids, “I'm doing this so that you know the format of the test, and that's why we're doing this.” It's not fun. There's no way to have a discussion about whether or not somebody answered the correct question on ACT/SAT practice. My biggest motivator and the thing that brought me the most joy in teaching English was discussion and parsing through complexity and finding our collective way through something big and doing ACT/SAT prep just didn't ring that bell. Having to teach towards a test that doesn't seem valuable, or to work towards standards for the sake of standards can leave teachers feeling powerless. I don't know that anyone likes to feel powerless, to feel like their hands are tied behind their backs. Several teachers decided to leave education for jobs that gave them more autonomy, where they didn't feel like they were jumping through hoops.   I personally have never been a fan of doing things just because. If I am required to give a test, I want to know that it matters. I do the same for my students, I want all of their work to feel relevant beyond the classroom. Most teachers are the same. They want to know that what they are doing is relevant, and many don't feel like the layers of standardized tests are relevant.Students, like most other humans, want to feel like what they do matters.  At least that's what Anjel Garcia wanted from her education.  Anjel Garcia: Kids just don't have any respect or like reason to care about school, and I think that connects back to they don't know what they are doing there.  Anjel took my college-level English class and graduated last year. She is a phenomenal artist - I have one of her paintings hanging in my classroom - and she is going to college for art. For Anjel, she thinks school should help students find a direction for their lives.  Anjel Garcia: I think it's to find a passion and to find something that you want to pursue in life. But we're at the point where you're only doing it so that you can cram and learn that information, and then forget it the day after the test. They're not actually doing it in a way that's teaching kids how to find interests. Which is something that many teachers enjoy. Engaging students in the joy of learning to find their interests is such a gratifying part of the job. And helping students identify interests means teachers would be able to individualize education for students. As we heard last episode, this is what many students want in their education - individualization. So a shift in the mission and a deprioritization of standardized assessment could create a structure that ends up valuing individualization. If we don't make this shift, we will continue with a structure that devalues individualization and does not promote the joy of learning. This is what that feels like to Anjel. Anjel Garcia: It's kind of extreme…with the prison system, they treat everyone the same way. They treat them like animals. They aren't treated in a way that rehabilitates them to be better people or to be prepared in the world, and I think that sort of connects to school.  Students shouldn't feel like this, and teachers often feel powerless when it comes to assessment. To ease student pushback they rely on the district, state, or national mandate. The “Sorry guys, we have to do this.” So a shift to prioritizing the joy of learning will be a positive shift not only for keeping teachers but for making education something that students find joy and value in.  Still, despite teacher frustrations and the possible lack of validity of standardization and standardized tests, they are present because there has been a historic problem with equity in education in the United States. This is why Marguerite Herman sees value in standardization. Marguerite has a master's degree in education, has some experience teaching, and served two terms as a School Board Trustee. And she agrees that there are some downsides to the standards, but she was pretty adamant that they are necessary.  Marguerite Herman: To standardize things, you lose a lot, but you also have these assurances that again… I use the term bean counter. I don't want to be dismissive of that responsibility - bean counters have to answer themselves to others. I've known Marguerite since I was in Kindergarden - she used to help with religious ed when I was little, and I went to high school with her kids. When she was on the school board, I could always count on her to attend events I put on for my students - author visits or student projects. Marguerite is involved and someone I knew would be well-informed and honest with me about her role on the School Board and about education policy.  When I told her that teachers are frustrated with standardization and assessments, she acknowledged teacher frustration but defended assessments because they offer quality assurance and a way to make educational funding decisions, even if the standardized assessments are imperfect.   Marguerite Herman: You know, with funding comes accountability. And to some extent, people want a number, especially legislators who are not educators. They want to know, what's your competence here, what's whatever you're proficient in. Anytime you index a number, there's just a lot of data that's lost because you're reducing, you're obscuring, a lot of nuance. You don't get any nuance, frankly. It's imperfect, but you need something, and I'm not challenging that.  Marguerite explains that something is needed to ensure that all students are benefiting from their public education. And her job as a Trustee on the School Board was to ensure that.  Marguerite Herman: Well, once again, the statute kind of lays it out. At the school board, we are elected as trustees, and let me just dwell a moment on the word trustee, which is that you have undivided loyalty to a beneficiary. That word was picked. It's not like a delegate and something like a representative. You don't represent a sub constituency. You represent every child in this district - they are the beneficiaries. So everything you do, you should have in your mind, “I am using all the possessions, the assets of our district, to provide for the educational benefit of every child.”  I want to pause on this definition for a moment because there has been some divisiveness on school boards across the country. Marguerite's definition is succinct -  Trustees serve their beneficiaries, so Board Members serve kids. This means the tribalism that has moved into school boards across the country should get left at the door. School boards serve students and no one else. And when I say students, I mean all students across the religious, racial, sexual, gendered, intellectual, and political spectrums. This is no small feat to serve such a diverse spectrum of students, but that should be the goal despite what interest groups think or who is in the capital. And this is why Marguerite is adamant that even if our current system is imperfect, we need something. I agree, we need something, but I don't think what we have currently is that something. And Marguerite explains that the data  that the legislators  want don't come from what a teacher sees.  Marguerite Herman: The feds want their numbers, and the legislature wants its numbers. “This is the teacher's honest opinion of the learning that went on” and said, “Yeah, that's fine. But you know, show me the test score, show me the performance I want to see”. And so, you know, we dance to a lot of different bean counters.  So the people that want to track progress, as Mark pointed out earlier in this episode and Marguerite reiterates here, don't necessarily want to hear what a teacher has to say about a student's success - even though a teacher is an expert and is highly aware of their students' capabilities. And even though, as we heard Mark explain earlier, a student's gpa, made up of teacher grades, is often a better indicator of a student's future success than the results of a standardized assessment. But teachers aren't trusted. The feds, the legislature, whoever it is that is running quality assurance wants an easily read progress report that covers a few content areas.  Remember the idealism about the purpose of education from last episode - it often fizzles at the feet of a standardized structure that takes the word of a test over that of a teacher, the human who actually knows the kid. Idealism and authentic learning and genuine human growth are harder to measure than the few content areas that can be measured on a bubble sheet. Still,  I know Marguerite is right - the assessments and the standards are a way to document, in an easily measurable way, that an effort is being made to assure an equitable education for all. That does not mean the way we assess nor the assessments themselves are valid, good for kids, or good for teachers. So let's change them! Let's make our purpose of education, our assessments, our measurements good for kids and good for teachers! Right? It should be easy! We know that kids want to feel like what they do matters, that they want curriculums that are more individualized. Right? So we need to talk with someone who understands how these things work, and how changes could be made to the current system. Here's Chris Rothfuss. Chris has been a college professor, he has run a college summer program for high school students, and he is the father of kids in the public school system. He is also the Senate Minority Floor Leader in the Wyoming State Senate and a member of the Joint Education Committee. Chris was one of two Wyoming legislators to get back to me, and the only one who agreed to meet with me.  Chris Rothfuss: The intent of that Accountability Act, as it ended up looking, was to figure out which districts and specifically which schools were struggling, and then provide them with the resources, a system of supports, to build them up and make them better.  The Wyoming Accountability in Education Act was adopted in 2013. It took over federal accountability requirements established by the No Child Left Behind Act and preceded by the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA. ESSA requires states to give annual statewide tests in reading/language arts and math to every student in third through eighth grade and once when they are in high school, and in science at least once in each of grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12. So the Wyoming Accountability Act, through the Legislature and Wyoming Department of Education, interprets federal requirements and sets goals for student and school achievement. So what assessments are used, how students are assessed, and how many assessments are given beyond the federal requirement is dictated by the state. And Chris acknowledges that there might be an issue with assessments.  Chris Rothfuss: We may be overtesting. If there were a way that we could do sampled testing if we could be a little more thoughtful about how we're doing it, if we're not using it as a direct educational instrument, then we don't need every student tested, we really just need a statistical representative sample.  But at this point, testing for a statistical representative sample is not how assessments are being used. Federally we have to test every student in most grades at least once a year, but many students are tested much more than this. Even so, I like the idea of shifting to a statistical representation especially if it means less tests. Statistical representative sample testing is already used at the federal level by the National Center for Educational Statistics - an entity of the US Department of Education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP tests, also known as the Nation's Report Card, are given every two years to randomly selected fourth and eighth graders to test English and Math. So we already have a model for using these statistical representative sample tests, and it might be worth seriously considering how to do this - to quit overtesting. Chris calls the amount of tests part of the unintended consequences of standardization.  Chris Rothfuss: So we in Wyoming adopted some world class standards. The unintended consequence, though, as you set that as your mission, teach all of these students all of these standards, is that you've only got so much time in a day. And you've got more standards than you're capable of teaching in a school year. So when that becomes your priority, and you know, you're going to be tested on your knowledge of those standards, and you know, you're expected to improve your knowledge of those standards. As you're thinking through our well, what are we going to do with each of our days, you don't think head to the mountains? I think about heading to the mountains on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean we get to go to them. These unintended consequences of standards and assessments are a reality. The individualization of instruction and the exploration that teachers talked about last episode are often a casualty of an overwhelming amount of standards that must be covered. But a move towards individualization, and less emphasis on standardized assessments is possible. But it will require a legislature that is informed and understands what adjustments should be made in education. Chris Rothfuss: I don't think there's necessarily a misconception that the folks that are making decisions about education, don't understand education. That's regrettably probably accurate. Chris points out that many of the people with the power to make policy decisions about education think they are qualified to make decisions about education because they once went through the education system. Many of these people want to run education like a business, like a factory. They use words like stakeholders and incentivize, and they want annual progress reports. These are people that don't necessarily acknowledge or make decisions about education based on best practices. Chris Rothfuss: I spent the first I don't know how many years of my time in the legislature trying to ensure that our Wyoming education model did not utilize that pay for teacher performance. Because the literature makes it very clear that that is the wrong approach. Best Practices make it very clear that that's the wrong approach. But policymakers so often choose that approach because they don't take the time to really understand why it's an awful approach.  Folks like legislators disregarding best practice or research-based practice is a foundational aspect of why teachers are leaving education. Teachers are experts in their field, but education has a tourist problem. You know, those people who are close enough to education to feel like they are a part of the system, but the actual educators, the educational locals if you will, don't see it the same way.  And  teachers are tired of being dismissed or treated like they aren't experts. The educational tourists assume that their time as students makes them an expert in education - policy is put into motion by folks who aren't informed enough about education to be making decisions.  This is so frustrating as an educator. Nothing irritates me more than a non-educator, upon finding out I'm a teacher, starts telling me how I should do things. It's almost as bad as sitting next to an arm-chair quarterback trying to explain how Josh Allen should be throwing the ball differently.  Chris is aware of this frustration of having unqualified people making decisions about education, and he is at a loss as well. Chris Rothfuss: Education is certainly not a business. But at the same time, imagine you were a business and you were hiring for the job. Instead of electing for the job, you would immediately eliminate the entire slate. And this would be true of so many of the things so many of the positions, so many elected officials. If it were a list of applicants and you were the hiring officer, you'd just be like not qualified, not qualified, not qualified. How did we get to the point where our elected officials And the folks that we put in charge could never even get a job at the institution they're being put in charge of. Think about that. Many of the people in positions to make policy decisions about education do not have the qualifications to be hired within the education system. Why do we accept this?  When the people in charge of the institution aren't involved in the institution, they aren't informed enough to be making decisions that are in the best interest of those people, the students and teachers and administrators, that are in that institution daily. This results in bad policy or policy fueled by animosity towards education or animosity towards any federal institution.  Chris Rothfuss: We've moved away from having a supportive team of pro-education legislators on the education committee that was struggling and working to do what was best for K-12 public education and really working hard to now over the last few years, embracing this mentality that our public schools are failing, and that somehow, for profit, religious charter schools from out of state will solve our problems, or decreasing funding will solve our problems, or belittling teachers and calling them out. Maybe holding them responsible for tiny actions or making them post everything that they're doing every single day online for parents to nitpick is somehow going to help. We haven't really in the legislature seen anything that I would call a strong positive pro education proposal in probably the last four years, But what we have seen are policies that attack educators or education as a whole, and this is exhausting as a teacher. For many this adds to the feeling of being disrespected. If our elected officials, people who are seen as community leaders, are attacking education from an uninformed platform, it perpetuates a devaluing of education, thus a devaluing of teachers. And teachers are tired of it, and it's contributing to why they are quitting.   Chris Rothfuss: We have some of the least informed policy makers shouting the loudest about their beliefs in education, that they're entirely unqualified to bring forward and promote. And yet, by being the loudest voice in the room and an angry voice, it's just easy to generate a mob mentality of support behind you, and to advance what is effectively bad policy and bad legislation, so we're seeing that.  And what's scary is that these poorly informed policymakers are in positions to make policy change, to make lasting impacts on education that will further ostracize teachers, hurt students, and likely make more teachers leave the profession.  Marguerite gave an example of a policymaker putting a footnote in a budget bill that tried to reject teaching Next Generation Science standards, which, as Marguerite put it Marguerite Herman: Which is like modern science. We hear about evolution, you know? I think we kind of got that one settled. Let's question gravity, shall we? Okay. I'm making fun of it, but it was, teachers had no idea it was awful. That's what happens when the legislature, which is politics, let's face it, folks, gets into the curriculum, they do not have the expertise. And then Pollock's politics doesn't always produce the greatest results, let's just say. Chris had examples of bad bills too. Chris Rothfuss: Teachers Not in Legislature In fact, when we hear when we when we bring legislation when we got some horrible bill that's coming before us in the legislature, like the horrible bill we had last year that would have required everything that teachers were doing, be posted on the web. Awful bill, bad premise, and certainly awful motivation. As far as I can tell, the only motivation is, you know, we don't know which books to burn if we don't have a full list.  So that awful bill, we didn't have a lot of teachers come up and provide public testimony against that bill, you think the whole classroom would be full, right up until you realize that no, all of those teachers were teaching at that moment in time, and would have had to take time off from teaching to come provide testimony against that lousy bill. So we don't hear the chorus of voices from the expert educators, we hear the chorus of voices from the folks that have the free time to come and yell at us. This is a great irony. Teachers who would have strong opinions about such a bill and who would be impacted by the bill, are not able to advocate in person because they are doing their jobs. And at a moment when substitutes are in short supply, leaving school to attend the legislative session is even more difficult.   Still, teacher advocacy was something that both Chris and Marguerite pointed to in terms of making a difference in policy. Policy includes curriculum choices and assessment choices. But for a teacher to speak up about assessment or curriculum requires a level of vulnerability that many teachers don't feel comfortable with.  Chris Rothfuss: Well, it's certainly understandable that when the teaching community has its strong supportive views for diversity of educational materials that are and that view is effectively contrary to a school board that again, is usually not expert, or particularly proficient in pedagogy or or education. It's going to be disconcerting for the teachers to step up and advocate because again, they're in fear for the protection and preservation of their job, and it's a flaw with our system.  I have felt this constantly over the last eight months as I've interviewed folks, researched, written, and produced this podcast. I don't know who I might offend or upset - Wyoming has a mighty small population And I don't know what impact this series could have on my job. It's a risk, but dammit, I'm tired of seeing teachers at the end of their tethers. I'm tired of being a teacher at the end of my tether. Something has to change. We need to fix this.  We need to listen to the experts, to teachers who know what they're doing, who know what good assessment looks like, who know what engagement looks like, who know the power of relationships, and who know that teachers are stretched thin. And Chris says, teacher voices could make an impact.  Chris Rothfuss: And public testimony does make a difference. And believe me if those 250 educators were able to show up and weren't obligated to be teaching at that point in time. That'd be very compelling. Beyond speaking up in legislative sessions, part of the solution to retaining teachers, might require some reflection on the roles of everyone in the multivariate universe of education. So my question to both Chris and Marguerite was if teachers should have more of a role on school boards. I asked this because many teachers point to the reality that school boards are made up of non-teachers. Not many other professional boards are run by people outside of the particular field. Marguerite was adamant that teachers should not be on school boards - she explained that's not how the statute is written. And Chris worked through the question in a very diplomatic manner, but he acknowledges a problem with people getting on school boards who are there for the wrong reasons.  Chris Rothfuss: This gets back to the question of who should govern whom and how. You'll have some people on an average school board, typical school board, that know something about education, hopefully. And then you've got people that are just mad about education. And then you've got people that are pointedly trying to slant education towards specific interest groups interests, that might be fully counter to K-12. Chris sees value in teacher expertise, but like Marguerite, he points to the possible conflict of interest with having teachers on the board.   Chris Rothfuss: It is hard to have someone on a governing body that is in the role that the body is governing as a voting member, although that can be dealt with, you can have some votes that they're there for, like the policy decisions they are included in, but maybe not the personnel decisions, there's a lot of possibilities there. So I'm one that certainly is concerned that we do not have anywhere near enough expertise on our school boards. There's no obligations for qualifications. So a lot of the problems we have stem from that lack of expertise. And ideally you want to balance.  Having some balance is a step towards a system that will retain teachers. In order to keep teachers in education, it will be important that teachers have a voice in education policy and decision making. Teachers shouldn't be a scapegoat when things go wrong, nor should they be excluded or put in positions where they exclude themselves from decision making positions because they fear retaliation or because they are so busy that they can't make room for something else.  We need to reimagine and consider the roles of everyone tied to the education process because right now, the teachers working with kids and engaging in the education process are often left out of the conversation. Dylan Bear, a teacher we heard from a few episodes ago, had the best analogy for how we should think about everyone's role in education.  Dylan Bear: Imagine, a fence, you know, like a round pen for a horse. The respect has to come from all angles for someone to learn. And you have to have the community showing respect of the education system, you have to have parents showing respect, you have to have the students show respect to the teacher showing respect for that. And so this ring of respect has to be there, of the education system. Or else if one of those falls out, like have a parent, dad or mom say, I'm not dealing with my kid at school, I call the principals and then once that happened, that kid got out of the pen because now he goes the path of least resistance to leave the education system.  The key image that Dylan is presenting here is the ring of respect that requires everyone associated with education to have a role, and trusting each other to cover their role. And for Dylan, even though he points to an analogy of a horse pen, he says this could take place anywhere.   Dylan Bear: And it doesn't have to be four walls and bricks and the fence at the school. I think that's such a weird way to learn. I love going to the mountains and going on trails where now you're vulnerable, and you want people to respect you and trust you. You look at the different environments for education, so different. But yeah, trying to get what needs to change to me is you have to have communities that value teachers that don't want to use that negative language. You have to have kids who value it. So education has to be a collective of support with and around kids. To gain that support and trust and collectivity we need to have a clear purpose of education - this echoes last episode. Right now, we base the purpose of education on how we evaluate students or how we can cover a tremendous amount of material. An unintended consequence of having so much material to cover is that education might feel like a grind to students. A grind without a sense of purpose makes it difficult for students to care. So to shift what is happening in the classroom and to create a structure in which roles are clear and supportive of one another in education, Chris thinks legislators should start by listening to teacher concerns. Chris Rothfuss: So when we hear from our teachers, what their real concerns are right now, and when they come back to me as a legislator and say, mental health is the problem for both students and teachers. We should listen. And we should adjust because at the end of the day we're not these rulers that are supposed to be at a distance and making proclamations. Our job is to listen and to learn from folks that know what they're talking about. And then try to put in place policies that affect change that enable everyone to do what they want to do and are trying to accomplish. And particularly in the public education system, we have that constitutional obligation to provide this high quality education for all.  For Chris, the role of legislators is to seek out experts to inform their decisions about policy that will impact those experts. So, for policy about education, legislators ought to speak to educators. And to do so in a way that is welcoming and doesn't just put more work on teacher plates. Chris also pointed out that to help mental health, which would contribute to keeping teachers, he thinks there should be a push to shift our priorities away from developing workers, which ideally means a shift away from high stakes assessment.   Chris Rothfuss: Honestly, if our first priority was joy in learning. As job number one, just imagine how much more we would learn. And that's the message that comes if we want to set it at the legislative level, we want to set it at the school district level. It does come from the policy leaders setting what is the mission? And right now our mission is develop workers. Chris explained that the role of legislators is to set the education mission, which could be seen as a purpose of education. And he thinks, especially at this present moment of teacher attrition and teachers and students both struggling with mental health, that the mission should prioritize the joy of learning. And if that mission is set, evaluative practices and accountability models can be adjusted. This will then dictate how school boards will work to achieve the new mission's objectives. It's a top-down shift, but if the top (legislators) consult the bottom (teachers and students) then it's more of a down-top-down shift? Whatever it is, it might help. Chris said that he would even be willing to take a drop in proficiency if we have happy kids and happy teachers.  Chris Rothfuss: My absolute ideal is to heavily prioritize joy in the classroom, and to focus our efforts, our resources, our activities, and our prioritization towards building joy in the classroom, with the expectation that with that joy, you would be addressing mental health issues, both for the teachers and for the students. And I'd love to see where that takes us. And what that means is ratcheting back this prioritization to build robots and the prioritization of score high on tests. And I'll take a 10% less proficient happy group. I will. At the end of the day, they can learn a little more math later. And if they're happy about education, then I think they'll have an opportunity to learn a little more about math later.  This mission would also shift the roles of us, the collective us, parents, teachers, administrators, legislators, community members, everyone, to not think of our K-12 experience as the only time we should be learning. If there was an assumption that learning was a lifelong process, Chris believes that we might have a cultural shift that results in valuing and enjoying learning, which would have a major impact on how teachers are viewed.  Chris Rothfuss: We think that you have an education phase in life. We've built a system around the idea that you have an education phase, phase one. Phase two and beyond never get any more education. Avoid, if possible. I would love a system where everyone just kind of keeps going back to school.  The move towards life-long learners that Chris is proposing would be a conceptual shift, but it could be supported concretely by a move away from overtesting or overemphasis on testing. Because our current system requires testing, this might mean we reimagine what testing looks like all together. Could it be a conversation? Something more authentic than a bubble sheet? Federal regulations have some flexibility there. Either way, the amount of attention given to Summative or End of Course testing is focusing on a product and not the process. Focusing only on the product is not creating a culture that loves learning - it's kind of the opposite. It's creating anxiety and pressure around learning. So if we can lessen the stress by drastically cutting back the amount and pressure of assessments, maybe we can focus on process and create a joy of learning.  So, by shifting priorities away from high stakes testing, we can stop structuring education in a way that prepares only for tests. This might mean loosening the grip on what curriculum can look like or what courses can be offered. For example, I once taught a course at the University of Wyoming called the history of Swing Dancing. We looked at the correlation of historic events and their impact on popular culture. When the class ended, a group of girls continued their final project and created a club on campus called Real Women Real Bodies. This class encouraged students to continue learning beyond the restrictions of the semester.  When I proposed to create this class for the high school setting in my district, it was declined because it didn't fit within the Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. So a shift might allow us to create new, novel courses that might inspire students to continue learning and growing well beyond the course. Such a shift will likely reinvigorate teachers who almost all have unique expertise and would love to incorporate such things into a course.  So, as Chris pointed out, to adopt a new educational direction, it must start with a shift in mission at the legislative level - hopefully fueled by teacher input. And I think it can happen, especially in a state like Wyoming that wants to be a national leader in education - it even says so in the Wyoming Accountability Act.   So creating a mission that prioritizes the joy of learning by focusing on process over product could happen.  Then how the decision is implemented should trickle down. Hopefully, this would result in teachers wanting to stay in education. And if all of this happens, if we can make that allegorical ring of respect and support that Dylan mentioned,  just imagine how much better the education will be for our students. Students will ideally feel that joy of learning and feel like what they do in school has purpose because that's what many of them want from school.  This is idealistic. But when making changes, we need to strive for idealism and not be guided by fear. Because what we have now is not working. Many people are aware of this and are already taking steps to make changes that will hopefully make education better and help keep teachers in education. Next episode, we're going to take a look at what people are doing to help keep teachers in education. This includes Task Forces, Mentoring Programs, Fellowships, and more. That will be next time on Those Who Can't Teach Anymore. Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share episodes with everyone you can think of. This episode was produced by me, Charles Fournier. It was edited by Melodie Edwards. Other editing help came from Noa Greenspan, Sarah-Ann Leverette, and Jennica Fournier. Our theme song is by Julian Saporiti. All other music can be found on our website. A special thanks to Anjel Garcia, Mark Perkins, Shane Atkinson, Jaye Wacker, Jennica Fournier, Marguerite Herman, Chris Rothfuss, and Dylan Bear for taking time to sit down and chat with me. If you are interested in seeing Mark Perkins' full report, “Teacher Attrition in Wyoming: Factors to Consider” you can find the link in the transcript for this episode and on our instagram page @thosewhocantteachanymore.  This podcast is funded in part by the Fund for Teachers Fellowship.

What Does HIPAA Actually Do? HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is name dropped a lot, but frequently misunderstood. Many are surprised to find that the “P” stands for portability, not privacy.  Misunderstandings about what's protected under the law go way deeper than its name. The law outlines protections only for health information shared between patients and health care providers. This means that any personal health data shared with someone who is not specifically mentioned in the law is not covered.  If a period tracking app shares personal health information with Facebook, that's not a violation of HIPAA. Neither is asking for someone's vaccination status.  Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with Tara Sklar, professor of health law and director of the Health Law & Policy Program at the University of Arizona, to explain what's actually covered under HIPAA.   “Research By Us And For Us”: How Medical Research Can Better Serve Trans Communities Trans medical care isn't new or experimental, and study after study has shown that transition-related procedures—such as hormone therapies and surgeries—are incredibly safe and effective. But most long-term studies on trans health focus on the first few years after transitioning, leaving unanswered questions about the years after. Similar to members of other marginalized groups, trans people have long been treated like “case studies,” rather than potential experts when it comes to scientific research. So while researchers have studied trans bodies for decades, they haven't always asked trans people what they need to know about their own bodies, such as: If I'm pursuing medical transition, how will my bone density change after years of taking estrogen? If I take testosterone, will I also need to get a hysterectomy? How will my hormonal and surgical options affect my fertility?  Now, a new wave of medical research—led by trans medical experts themselves—is trying to fill in those blanks and address the needs of trans communities. Guest host Maddie Sofia speaks with Dr. Asa Radix, the senior director of research and education at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and Dallas Ducar, nurse practitioner and founding CEO of Transhealth Northampton. They talk about the state of research on trans health, and how studies can better address the needs of the trans and gender diverse communities.   Food Pantry Venison May Contain Lead Iowa requires warning labels about the possible presence of lead in shot-harvested venison. Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska do not. A walk-in freezer about two stories high sits in one corner of a warehouse owned by a food bank called Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Inc. in Hiawatha, Iowa. Chris Ackman, the food bank's communication manager, points to the shelving racks where any donated venison the organization receives is typically stored. Known as the Help Us Stop Hunger, or HUSH, program, the venison is donated by hunters from around the state, and Ackman says the two-pound tubes of ground meat go pretty quickly, lasting only a few months. “It's a pretty critical program, I think, because there are a lot of hunters in Iowa,” he said. “And, it's well enjoyed by a lot of families as well.” Similar programs around the country have been applauded as a way for hunters to do something they enjoy while also helping feed those in need. Iowa hunters donate around 3,500 deer a year through the program. From the hunters, the deer goes to a meat locker, where it's ground, packaged and shipped off to food pantries around the state. But before it hits the shelves, Iowa officials require a warning label on the venison package. The label reads: “Lead fragments may be found in processed venison. Children under 6 years and pregnant women are at the greatest risk from lead.” Then, in bold type, the label notes: “Iowa has not found cases of lead poisoning from lead in venison,” along with a number to call for more information. Iowa stands out among Midwestern states in requiring a label warning about the potential hazard of lead ammunition and the fragments it can leave behind in shot-harvested game meat like venison. Donated venison in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska come with no similar warning label. Read more at sciencefriday.com. Museum Exhibit Celebrates Queerness In Science Last year, the California Academy of Sciences debuted “New Science: The Academy Exhibit,” which celebrates 23 incredible LGBTQIA+ scientists. The folks in this exhibit are challenging the exclusionary practices that are all too common in scientific spaces, with the aim of creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment. It is a celebration of queerness in science. Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with the curator of this exhibit, Lauren Esposito, who is a curator of arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences and founder of 500 Queer Scientists, based in San Francisco. They discuss the exhibit, the importance of LGBTQIA+ representation in STEM, and, of course, arachnids. The exhibit is free and open to the public at the California Academy of Sciences, and it is also available online.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs at sciencefriday.com.      

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is warning about a new variant of COVID-19, the BA.2 variant, and suggested that lockdowns may again be back on the table. Fauci told CNN that the United States may need to “pivot and go back to any degree of mitigation that is commensurate with what the situation is.” Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning that if an end to the pandemic is declared, the agency would lose the additional powers it received under the public health emergency. This includes its current powers to tap financial reserves and to avoid normal requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. And in other news, there are contradicting rumors around the state of the Russia-Ukraine war, ranging from a ceasefire to an assassination order, to an alleged risk of a coup in Russia. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp we'll discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience. ⭕️ Stay up-to-date with Josh with the Crossroads NEWSLETTER