Podcasts about us research program

(00:01) Impacting Healthcare Disparities Through Research(08:23) Transforming Healthcare Through Research(17:12) Expanding Healthcare Access and Training(26:10) Inspiring Future Healthcare ProvidersGrowing up in a small Michigan town, Dr. Karriem Watson was destined for a career in football until life had other plans. Witnessing the harrowing realities of health disparities firsthand after losing his mother to breast cancer and watching his father battle diabetes and cancer, Karriem found a new calling. Join us as he shares this transformative journey from aspiring athlete to a passionate researcher focused on cancer disparities, emphasizing the critical role of clinical trials and understanding social determinants of health. Karriem's story is a powerful reminder of how personal experiences can drive us to make impactful changes in the world around us.We then turn our attention to the intersection of medicine, research, and technology, featuring the groundbreaking All of Us Research Program at the NIH. This initiative offers a treasure trove of data, essential for advancing personalized medicine. Through compelling narratives, we explore how genetic screening and treatment are revolutionizing care for conditions like chronic kidney disease and spinal muscular atrophy. The conversation extends to the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare, illustrating its role in evolving data analysis, medical research, and patient care.Finally, the episode examines the multifaceted challenges of managing chronic conditions in disadvantaged communities, where social determinants of health often exacerbate issues. We explore visionary healthcare models that integrate medical, legal, and nutritional support, fostering a holistic approach to patient care. The importance of diversity and empathy in medical education is emphasized, advocating for immersive experiences and global perspectives to better understand and serve diverse populations. By reflecting on the impactful work of Federally Qualified Health Centers, we inspire future healthcare providers to blend creativity, compassion, and an entrepreneurial spirit into their practice, forging a more equitable healthcare landscape for all.

In this episode, our guests discuss the potential of large-scale health datasets to transform research and improve patient outcomes and healthcare systems. Our guests also delve into the ethical, logistical, and technical challenges that come with these programmes. We hear how organisations such as UK Biobank, Our Future Health, and All of Us are collecting rich, diverse datasets, collaborating and actively working to ensure that these resources are accessible to researchers worldwide. Hosting this episode is Dr Natalie Banner, Director of Ethics at Genomics England. She is joined by Dr Raghib Ali, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Investigator at Our Future Health, Professor Naomi Allen, Professor of Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, and Chief Scientist for UK Biobank, and Dr Andrea Ramírez, Chief Data Officer at the All of Us Research Program in the United States. "There are areas where academia and the NHS are very strong, and areas where industry is very strong, and by working together as we saw very good examples during the pandemic with the vaccine and diagnostic tests etc, that collaboration between the NHS and academia industry leads to much more rapid and wider benefits for our patients and hopefully in the future for the population as a whole in terms of early detection and prevention of disease." You can download the transcript or read it below.  Natalie: Welcome to Behind the Genes   Naomi: So, we talked to each other quite regularly. We have tried to learn from each other about the efficiencies of what to do and what not to do in how to run these large-scale studies efficiently. When you are trying to recruit and engage hundreds of thousands of participants, you need to do things very cost effectively. How to send out web-based questionnaires to individuals, how to collect biological samples, how the make the data easily accessible to researchers so they know exactly what data they are using.   All of that we are learning from each other. You know, it is a work in progress all the time. In particular you know, how can we standardise our data so that researchers who are using all of us can then try and replicate their findings in a different population in the UK by using UK Biobank or Our Future Health.    Natalie: My name is Natalie Banner, and I am Director of Ethics at Genomics England. On today's episode we will be discussing how we can unlock the potential of large health datasets. By that I mean bringing together data on a massive scale, including for example genomic, clinical, biometric, imaging, and other health information from hundreds and thousands of participants, and making it available in a secure way for a wide range of research purposes over a long time period.   Through collaboration and industry partnerships, these programmes have the potential to transform research and deliver real world benefits for patients and health systems. But they also come with challenges ranging from issues in equity and ethics through to logistics, funding, and considerable technical complexities. If you enjoy today's episode, we would love your support. Please like, share, and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts.     I'm delighted to be joined today by 3 fantastic experts to explore this topic. Dr Raghib Ali, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Investigator at Our Future Health. Professor Naomi Allen, Professor of Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, and Chief Scientist for UK Biobank, and Dr Andrea Ramírez, Chief Data Officer at the All of Us Research Program in the United States.   Andrea, if I could start with you. It would be really great to hear about All of Us, an incredibly ambitious programme in the US, and maybe some of the successes it has achieved so far.   Andrea: Absolutely. Wonderful to be here with you and thank for you for the invitation. The All of Us Research Program started in 2016 from the Precision Medicine Initiative and was funded with the goal of recruiting 1 million or more participants into a health database. That includes information not only from things like biospecimens including their whole genome sequence, but also surveys that participants provide, and importantly linking electronic health record information and other public data that is available, to create a large database that researchers that access and use to study precision health.   We have recruited over 830,000 participants to date and are currently sharing available data on over 600,000. So, we're excited to be with your audience, and I hope we can learn more and contribute to educating people listening about precision medicine.   Natalie: Thank you, Andrea. And not that this is competitive at all, but Raghib, as we are recording this, I understand the Our Future Health programme is marking quite a phenomenal milestone of 1 million participants. Would you mind telling us a little bit about the programme and something that you see as the benefits of working at scale for health research.   Raghib: Thank you very much. So, Our Future Health is a relatively new project. It was launched in 2020 with the aim of understanding better ways to detect disease as early as possible, predict disease, and intervene early to prevent common chronic diseases. Similar to All of Us, we are creating a very large database of participants who contribute their questionnaire data, physical data, genetic data, and linkage to healthcare records, with the aim as I said, to really improve our understanding of how best to prevent common chronic diseases.   So, we launched recruitment in October 2022. Our aim is to recruit 5 million participants altogether, and in the last 2 years about 1.85 million people have now consented to join the project. But you are right, as of last week we have what we call 1 million full participants, so people that have donated a blood sample, completed the questionnaire, and consented to link to their healthcare records. In our trusted research environment, we now have data on over 1million people available for researchers to use.   Of course, we have learnt a lot from the approach of UK Biobank, which we are going to hear about shortly, but the resource is open to researchers across the world, from academia, from the NHS, from industry, so that will hopefully maximise the benefits of that data to researchers, but as I say with a particular focus on early detection, early intervention, and prevention research.   Natalie: Thank you Raghib. Great to have you with us. Naomi, Raghib mentioned that UK Biobank has been running for a long time, since 2006.  It is a real success story in terms of driving a huge range of valuable research efforts.  Could you talk to us a little bit about the study and its history and what you have learned so far about the sort of benefits and some of the challenges of being able to bring lots of different datatypes together for research purposes?   Naomi: Yeah, sure. So, UK Biobank started recruiting 0.5 million participants in 2006 to 2010 from all across the UK with a view to generating a very deep dataset. So, we have collected information on their lifestyle, a whole range of physical measures. We collected biological samples, so we have data on their genomics and other biomarkers. Crucially because they recruited 15+ years ago, we have been able to follow up their health over time to find out what happens to their health by linkage to electronic healthcare records. So, we already have 8,000 women with breast cancer in the resource, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and so on.   But perhaps most importantly, not only does it have great data depth, and data breadth, and the longitudinal aspect, is the data is easily accessible to researchers both from academia and industry, and we already have 18,000 researchers actively using the data as we speak, and over 12,000 publications already generating scientific discoveries from the resource.      Natalie: So, we have got 3 quite different approaches. Recruiting in different ways, different scale, different depth of data collection and analysis, but all very much around this ethos of bringing lots of different datatypes together for research purposes. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you might be sort of working together, even though you have got slightly different approaches. Are there things that you are learning from one another, from these different data infrastructures, or how might you be looking in the future to work together to address some of the challenges that might come up from working at scale?      Naomi: So, we talk to each other quite regularly. We have tried to learn from each other about the efficiencies of what to do and what not to do in how to run these large-scale studies efficiently. When you are trying to recruit and engage hundreds of thousands of participants, you need to do things very cost effectively. How to send out web-based questionnaires to individuals, how to collect biological samples, how to make the data easily accessible to researchers so they know exactly what data they are using.   All of that we are learning from each other, and you know it is a work in progress all the time. In particular, how can we standardise our data so that researchers who say are using All of Us can then try and replicate their findings in a different population in the UK by using UK Biobank or Our Future Health. So, can we come up with common standards so that researchers can better directly compare the data that they are using? So, we are in close contact with each other.   Natalie: Fantastic, thank you. And Andrea, from your perspective obviously you are collecting data in the US. Are you finding ways of working internationally and with other infrastructures like Biobank and Our Future Health around things like data standards? It sounds like something simple, but I can imagine it is quite complex in practice.   Andrea: Absolutely, and that dialogue and understanding and learning from each other both informally in meetings and talking as well through the published literature. So, all of these datasets are actively widely used, and seeing what is coming out in publications helps us know what researchers are doing with the data. And when you see different researchers either generating hypotheses from our datasets in a different way, or testing hypotheses differently, that helps us understand where some benefit might be added to our dataset or where we really may need to grow in a different direction to meet some other research needs.   I think that every study design always struggles with that balance between knowing exactly what we want to study and therefore building very specific questions and very specific protocols, but also allowing for the knowledge that we don't really know all of the discovery we need to make and bringing in datapoints that will really generate those new hypotheses for the future.     I think for our study in particular, UK Biobank has been so remarkable in this way, helping structure All of Us to be able to contact our participants like UK Biobank and say, “Hey, we didn't really know what we were going to get, but we have put all this wonderful data together and now we need to do a deeper dive.”   So, the engagement and long-term return of those UK Biobank participants has really enriched our data, and we have learnt from UK Biobank a lot there, and hope through growing our partnerships programme that we can continue to create partnered research opportunities to strengthen that data as well. That is a new thing coming out of our group. You may have heard of it previously as ancillary studies, but we recognise the partnership that is important for those research opportunities. So, we are reporting here that we are hoping to rebrand it to reach a larger audience, and that is led by Dr. Shelley, as partnered research opportunities that will allow us to re-contact, bring our participants back, and really deepen that dataset.   Natalie: Thank you. And Raghib, I know that it is a really important part of the Our Future Health model about going back to participants, but you are in quite early stages of working out what those opportunities might look like.   Raghib: Yes, very much early stages. Just to reiterate the point for me personally, having started my research in the UK about 20 years ago, I have certainly learnt a lot personally, but we have all learnt a lot from the model that UK Biobank established in terms of collecting data and providing it to researchers, and I see these 3 studies as very much complimentary.   All of Us again have done a lot more work in terms of providing feedback to participants about their risk of disease and genetic information, and as you say Our Future Health was set up deliberately to not just be a purely observational study, but to give participants feedback about their risk of different chronic diseases as well as the opportunity to take part in not just studies to collect data, but also interventional studies to see if we can change the natural history of disease and prevent diseases in our participants.   So, that has never really been done at scale before, and that is certainly a big challenge for us to do, not just in the UK, but anywhere, including the US and working with health systems as to how best to do that. So, you know we have spent the last 2 years really trying to understand how best to recruit participants and to provide data to researchers for the next couple of years, and long beyond that we will be looking really as to how we can maximise the benefits of providing feedback to participants and taking part in interventional studies.   Naomi: I think one way in which we can all learn from each other actually, is we know how to recruit hundreds of thousands of people, the general population, into research study, and the next challenge is how do you keep engaging them, telling them what you are doing. You can't collect everything when they first join the study, or they would be with you for days. So, what UK Biobank has been doing is sending out web-based questionnaires, a couple a year, to find out extra information about health outcomes, lifestyle factors. Inviting them back to specific assessment centres.   So, we are inviting 100,000 participants back for imaging, and then again over the next few years for a second scan. So, I think the real challenge here is once you have recruited them, how to find that right cadence of engaging those participants to keep contributing their data and their biological samples to really maximise the value of the dataset for research. That is an ongoing challenge for all of us. But I have to say, the UK Biobank participants, they are an amazing group of individuals, very altruistic.   Our Future Health and All of Us, we don't give feedback, so there is nothing in it for our participants other than knowing that their data may help the future health of their children, and their grandchildren, and the rest of the world. So, that is very humbling, to know that the data that they have generated, and we have collected on them, is being used in that way.   Natalie: That's a really interesting point, Naomi, about the difference between a research study that is designed for answering a particular question. You gather specific data for a specific purpose, and when it comes to recruiting participants into that you can be very clear about what it is you are trying to do.   But of course, for all of these programmes, the whole nature of them is that you are collecting a lot of data over a long period of time, and it could be used for all sorts of different purposes. You can't say at the outset exactly what those purposes might be and what those outcomes might be. So, there is a really interesting question, and of course I would say this with my ethics hat on, a really interesting question around sort of participant trust and confidence in those programmes.   Naomi, you spoke just then about one way of retaining engagement and retaining people's interest, but I wonder Raghib and Andrea, if you have got thoughts on those sort of questions of how you can create that environment where participants can trust what you are doing with data over a long period of time, when you can't at the point at which they consent, say exactly how that data might be used? You have got a sense of the kinds of purposes, but you can't be too specific         Andrea: Sure. We know, and I have learnt from my own peers in this role, that enrolment in the study isn't the end point of engagement. All of Us's approach on engagement has been communicating with the entire community and really being there in the community, and that has been very powerful.   One effort over the last year we are proud of has been what we are dubbing participant driven enquiry, and that is where we say, “Thank you participants. We have gotten a ton of data out there for use, and funded researchers to use it all the time, but what do you, the participants, really want?” We were able to then take papers that researchers write and help tell participants and explain it in lay language, so the participants can say, “Hey, I have a question. Could you answer that for me?” Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but it has been very interesting to hear what participants want to know, and that participant driven enquiry project has turned out to be a big opportunity there.    The question they came to was not easy. Certainly, we didn't expect an easy question, but they came to us asking, “Why is my diabetes worse than someone else's? Is it the environment? Is it my genome? Is it my access to care? Why can't my diabetes be as well controlled as someone else's?”  So, that has been huge, to interact directly with our participants and help really close the loop by answering questions in the language of research and show them how their data is contributing back.    Natalie: Thank you. And Raghib, how are you sort of grappling with these questions, particularly because you are recruiting so very heavily at the moment?   Raghib: So, as you say it is a challenge, and people do join the programme primarily based on trust that we will use their data for public health benefit and for the benefit of the whole population, but they also join on the basis that they will get back information about their own health and their risk of disease. To do both of those is not straightforward. I mean, the first of those, it has been well established by UK Biobank, and about 80% of our participants also say they are doing it primarily for to altruistic reasons, which is great. But 80% also said they would like to receive feedback about their own health, which is also understandable, and so we need to find ways to provide that in a timely way, but also in a way that the health service can manage. That is going to be one of our key challenges going forward.    But to echo what Naomi and Andrea have said, I mean to maintain participant's engagement with the programme is not easy. We need to make sure that they are receiving information regularly, are kept up to date with what we are doing with their data, with the work that we are doing with academia, with the NHS, with industry etc. It is easier now than it was before because Our Future Health has been set up as a digital cohort, so we have means of communicating much more easily with our participants. But yeah, as you say we are at early stages. Over time that does get harder, to maintain that engagement. So, we know in the next one to 2 years we need to step up our work on feedback and recontact.   Natalie: Fantastic. I really love the idea of like the participant-led enquiry. That is something that I think our participant panel at Genomics England would really like to hear more about.   So, speaking about sort of ongoing engagement with participants, one of the challenges we know around recruiting into large-scale studies like this is that many research datasets don't have equal representation from all communities. That might have an impact on the quality, the representativeness of the scientific outputs that you can generate, and potentially the benefits back to patients and participants.   How are you addressing this challenge in recruitment where you may have some communities that are not as engaged with scientific research. You may have elements of distrust or people being marginalised, having difficulty accessing research and these sorts of opportunities. Do you have any examples of what has worked really well? Raghib, if I could come to you first.   Raghib: Sure. So, I mentioned I worked on UK Biobank about 20 years ago. One of the things I was looking at then was how we could maximise participation, particularly of people from ethnic minorities into the project. Because of the age group that was chosen by UK Biobank for very good reasons, age 40 to 69, the proportion of people from ethnic minorities was relatively small. So, although it was representative for that age group, I think it was about 6%, or 34,000 out of the 500,000, that were from non-white ethnic minorities.   So, when Our Future Health was set up, we knew that the population has changed anyway. You know, the UK has become a much more ethnically diverse society. But also, because it is a cohort from 18+ and I think minorities tend to be younger on average than the white population, we knew we had an opportunity to really have a big step change in the number of people that could take part in a study like this. So, our aim is actually to get 10% of the whole cohort from ethnic minorities, so 500,000 out of the 5 million from ethnic minorities. Actually, so far we are pretty much on track. So, of the 1.8 million that have consented, about 180,000 are from non-white ethnic minorities.   That is extremely important, particularly for genetic research where non-European populations are very much underrepresented in nearly all genetic databases. Secondly, from a UK context, although it applies of course in all countries, is that people from more deprived backgrounds are also less likely to take part in this type of research. So again, we have made a very deliberate attempt to try and ensure we have adequate numbers from the most deprived quintile. Again, about 10% of the cohort so far, nearly 200,000 are from that most deprived quintile who both are underrepresented in research, but also have the worst outcomes. So, this is really our first study that has been big enough in the UK to look at that group properly and understand some of the factors at an individual level that we haven't been able to in the past.   Finally, geographically, so the first time again because it is a digital cohort, we were able to recruit people from all over the UK. So, every single part of the UK is now represented in Our Future Health, particularly coastal communities and rural areas that haven't been able to take part in this type of study before, as well as Northern Ireland. You know, for the first time we have got that full geographical coverage.   Natalie: Fantastic. I suppose a lot of that recruitment approach has very much been about going to where people are, rather than expecting them to come to you. Is that right?     Raghib: That is right and thank you for reminding me. So yeah, we have had a different approach. So, we have opened up many, many more clinics than previous studies through a combination of mobile units, shopping centres, community pharmacy. Community pharmacy in particular has been very important. So, to date we have had about 400 different venues that we have been able to recruit. That is over 1 million people that have given blood samples, and that has really enabled people from every part of the country to take part. Secondly, we have kept clinics open in areas of greater deprivation and ethnic diversity much longer than in other areas, to maximise the opportunity for them to join. Thirdly, we do provide reimbursement for people with expenses to ensure they aren't excluded because of financial reasons, and again that has helped.    Natalie: So, really making those efforts is evidently paying off. Andrea, have you had similar experiences as All of Us? What has your approach been to try and ensure that you are getting a wider representation from different communities?    Andrea: It has really been a focus on the programme from the start to engage those who have not been included in research in the past and make sure the opportunity is there to participate. Our Engagement Division, led by Dr. Corrine Watson has really pioneered reaching those communities here in the US.   I think one other thing I will mention that we think about when we think about how to engage participants and reach people to return value back to those communities, is to make sure the people who are accessing the data also represent them, and we can build diversity within that researcher workforce. So, since our data was first released in 2020, we have recognised that the biomedical workforce also has a huge group of underrepresented individuals, and a lot of our researcher engagement and researcher outreach has focused on reaching those of diverse backgrounds and career paths.   To that end we have reached out and engaged historically black colleges as well as other minority serving institutions, really looking to make sure that their students and researchers can have the same access as more traditional research-based institutions in the US system.    That has been important because our system is built on cloud-based architecture and shared data that doesn't require a huge cluster on campus, and that helps remove a barrier that some of those institutions and researchers may have had. We also know they haven't been able to participate in the past, and we think that cloud architecture again can make the data much more feasible and be a huge support to diversifying the researcher workforce as we go forward. That circling back, helping them be the voices speaking to their community, helps build out that diverse participant community base as well.    Natalie: That's such an important point, because it is not just about the participants and the data you can collect, but also who is able to look at it? Who is actually able to undertake the research?    Naomi, can I bring you in here? I know that UK Biobank has been thinking a lot about researcher access to data and trying to ensure that the data that you hold, the really rich datasets you hold in UK Biobank, are more accessible to researchers from different backgrounds who may not have the same level of resources. Can you tell us a little bit about the work you have been doing on that?   Naomi: Yeah. So, just following on from what Andrea said, it is really important to get as diverse ideas as possible from across the global research community to really move public health forward.   So, what UK Biobank has done is we are putting mechanisms in place so that early career students, and career researchers, and researchers at all levels of their career from lower income countries, can access the data at a much lower fee. So, currently for most researchers it costs about £9,000 to access all of the data. So, that is 40 petabytes of genomic data, biomarkers, clinical outcomes, lifestyle factors and so on. So, early career researchers and those in lower income countries, it is about £500.   On top of that a group of big pharmaceutical companies have got together to create a global researcher access fund, which essentially covers this reduced fee so that all researchers no matter where they are from have exactly the same opportunity to access the data to advanced scientific discoveries. So, on top of that all our researchers now use our online secure research analysis platform. While there is no charge to access the platform, there are costs associated with compute needed to analyse and store the results.    So, AWS have donated research credits for early career researchers and those from lower income countries up to a total of about $500,000 per year, to use the research platform. So, researchers can apply to use these research credits to offset the costs of compute and storage. So, that means that we are trying to democratise access to researchers from all around the world.   I think actually our biggest challenge is not so much … we have largely dealt with you know subsidising the cost. It is actually making researchers from lower income countries aware that these resources exist, and that are applicable to them.   So, sometimes we hear from say researchers in Africa or South America, “Well, there is no point accessing UK Biobank because it is not relevant to our population.” You know, a third of our researchers are from China. So, even if UK Biobank hasn't got coverage of those racial ethnic populations, that doesn't mean that the associations that you find between risk factors and disease risk are not applicable to other different populations. And that is also why having different resources like UK Biobank, like Our Future Health, like All of Us, in different populations around the world, is so important in order to replicate those findings.    Natalie: Absolutely, and fantastic just to hear the attention that is being paid to trying to ensure that diversity of different types of researchers who will just bring different questions to the table, different perspectives on the data, different priorities, different types of questions.    So, speaking about that diversity of researchers, one really important part of his ecosystem that we haven't really touched on so far is around the role of industry. There are a lot of really important research questions being addressed by industry. Some that can only really come from, maybe it is pharmaceuticals, maybe it is tech.   From your perspectives, what kind of role can and should industry and commercial partners play in supporting the kinds of long-term research studies that you have set up, and ultimately trying to get to that point of sort of generating benefits back to patients and health systems. Naomi, can I start with you, for that sort of longer-term perspective for Biobank?   Naomi: So, industry are great partners for long-term studies like ours because they can bring additional funding, expertise, and technology. So, for UK Biobank, because it is so easily accessible to industry and academics alike on exactly the same terms, what it has meant is that industry, particularly big pharma and also now big tech, they can access the data, they see the value of the data for their own research purposes, and then they have invested into UK Biobank to do whole-exome sequencing, whole genome sequencing, proteomics at scale to increase the value of the dataset for their own drug discovery pipelines.   But of course, it means that the data that they have generated, which cost millions of dollars to generate, when you need deep pockets to do these kinds of study enhancements, then become available to all researchers. So, having access to these large-scale resources that have deep data on genomics, physical measures, other biomarkers, and clinical outcomes enables pharma to rapidly increase their drug discovery pipelines in generating new drugs and treatments for patients, and also those data are then shared with the rest of the global research community.     So, we found it to be a really exciting win/win in which industry get what they need to help move forward new drug targets and discovery, but also other researchers get what they need in order to make other scientific discoveries in different fields of research.        Natalie: Thank you. And Raghib, I know that for Our Future Health, that industry relationship is a really important part of the founding model. Will you tell us a little bit about how you are engaging and working with industry partners?   Raghib: Sure. So, as you said Our Future Health was set up in a different way, as a very public private partnership. Although the largest funder is the UK Government, more than half of our funding has come from a combination of life science companies, so pharmaceutical, diagnostic companies, as well as the medical charities, so the larger medical charities in the UK. That partnership is deliberate for all the reasons that Naomi has outlined. There are areas where academia and the NHS are very strong, and areas where industry is very strong, and by working together as we saw very good examples during the pandemic with the vaccine and diagnostic tests etc, that collaboration between the NHS and academia industry leads to much more rapid and wider benefits for our patients and hopefully in the future for the population as a whole in terms of early detection and prevention of disease. So, we have 16 life sciences companies that have joined as founding partners with Our Future Health who have contributed financially to the programme.    Equally importantly they have also contributed scientifically, so there is a huge amount of scientific expertise in industry, and they work with us with our Scientific Advisory Board with our scientists internally to think about the best use of the resource for drug discovery, diagnostics, new medical technologies, and new targets etc.    So, that is the vision, and so far, it is working well. It is a relatively new model to have set up a project like this in this way, but it has been a very collaborative approach, and we all recognise, all have similar aims, so recognise what we are working towards. You know, we meet regularly. We have a Joint Founders Board where as I say academia, NHS, industry, and the charities come together to decide on the priorities for the coming years.   Natalie: Fantastic. And Andrea, I suppose in the US it might be slightly different culturally from the UK, but the role of industry with All of Us, how are you engaging with those pharmaceutical, technology bodies, and partners as well?     Andrea: Absolutely, and maybe this goes back a bit to your first question. We at All of Us love learning from UK Biobank and have really seen them forge a lot of wonderful partnerships that have enriched and developed their dataset. We at All of Us have started with academia and working through partnership opportunities really intramurally at intramural centres that make up parts of the National Institute of Health. We believe that building on those close friends and family relationships we have both in the government and academia get us through our first step to be able to interface with commercial organisations. That really started with taking the first step this year to ensure broad availability of data that can maximise both use of the data available, as well as look forward to our partnership opportunities in the future.   So, commercial organisations as of 2024 have also been able to access the All of Us dataset that is that first step in thinking about what a partnership would be, and we are glad to build on the access that international organisations and academic organisations already have.   Natalie: A lot to look forward to here. We are going to have to wrap up in a moment, so I'd just like to leave you all with a final question before we have to end the podcast. There is huge ambition in all of the research programmes that you are leading and involved in, but what are you most excited about coming down the line in the next few years? What do you think is going to be feasible? What really gets you excited about the work that you are doing and where you see the potential benefits really landing in the next few years? Andrea, would you like to start?   Andrea: Thanks. There is a lot we are really excited about. I haven't had a chance yet to mention our paediatric cohort, and that in addition to expanding access for international research, in 2024 we were able to enrol our first paediatric participants. That really sets up the potential to observe participants across the lifespan. That is a huge advance for All of Us and we are excited about the paediatric work going forward.    Natalie: I love that, how do you come into the future with us? That is fantastic. Naomi.   Naomi: Yeah, if I had to choose one would be the possibility of being able to measure circulating proteins on all half a million participants. We have done this on about 55,000 participants, and just that subset alone is already generating fascinating insights for early biomarkers for disease through protein profiles and risk prediction of disease. I think having that on all half a million coupled with their genomics data and health outcomes, will bring a sea change in how we diagnose disease earlier. So, I think that is a really exciting avenue for us to go into over the next couple of years.   Natalie: Really enriching. That data sounds like a very exciting set of possibilities. Raghib.   Raghib: Thank you. There are so many opportunities here, but I will just maybe mention 3. So, the first, in terms of being able to combine the genetic data that we are collecting and all the other information about risk factors, and particularly the fact that we have this on a lot of young people, will enable us to identify people at high risk of diseases in the presymptomatic phase and then to be able to offer them both feedback about their risk of disease but also interventions that can change their natural incidences. That has never really been possible before. That is extremely important for all diseases for people, but also it is very important for our healthcare system.   So, those of you listening in the UK, I know the NHS is under a huge amount of pressure, and the current model of healthcare which has been in place really since the inception of the NHS, is to treat late-stage disease when people have already developed symptoms and signs. You know, it wasn't really possible to identify people earlier, but it is now, and Our Future Health will provide the evidence base to show that prevention really is better than cure, and to show that these approaches both lead to better clinical outcomes, but also are cost effective and a good use of resources. Of course, the new government is very much committed to this as well, you know moving from acute care to prevention, from hospitals to community, and from analogue to digital.     Finally, because our cohort has now become so large and does cover every part of the UK, and this wasn't something I necessarily thought about when we started Our Future Health, we are able to have unique insights into the health of the population across every age group, across every ethnic group, across every geographical area, and by deprivation, and to understand not just observationally in terms of risk factors, but also the impact of interventions on those different populations.   We can look at that, as I said at an individual level on millions of people to gain intelligence about what is going on in terms of public health, but also to see what will hopefully improve their health in the future. So, there are really, you know I have described transformational opportunities to improve health through both biomedical research and populational health insights now through the resource, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the UK and globally to deliver them.   Natalie: We will wrap up there. Thank you so much to our guests, Dr Raghib Ali, Professor Naomi Allen, and Dr Andrea Ramírez for joining me today as we discussed how collaboration, scale, ongoing engagement, can really unlock the potential of large-scale health datasets to drive brilliant new research and ultimately improve the lives of patients and the population.   If you would like to hear more like this, please subscribe to Behind the Genes on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for listening. I have been your host, Natalie Banner. This podcast was edited by Bill Griffin at Ventoux Digital and produced by Naimah Callachand.

Welcome to the final episode of the Evidence-Based Hair Podcast for 2024, hosted by Dr. Jeff Donovan, a leading dermatologist and hair loss specialist. In this episode, Dr. Donovan dives into the complex relationship between alopecia areata and cardiovascular risk, exploring recent studies that offer conflicting conclusions. Dr. Donovan reviews a notable study published in JAD International, which leverages the All of Us Research Program database to investigate whether alopecia areata patients are at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases. The study reveals intriguing findings, suggesting a potential link with chronic kidney disease and hyperlipidemia, but not with heart disease. As the podcast unfolds, Dr. Donovan discusses the broader implications of these findings, the need for long-term studies, and the ongoing debate in the medical community. He also invites listeners to a special event celebrating the top 20 studies of 2024. Join Dr. Donovan as he navigates through the complexities of hair loss research, empowering practitioners and patients alike with evidence-based insights. For more information on the Donovan Hair Academy's programs, visit their website.     STUDIES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE Ambika Nohria, Jill T Shah, Deesha Desai, Lina Alhanshali, Jenne Ingrassia, Alisa Femia, Michael Garshick, Jerry Shapiro, Kristen I Lo Sicco. Alopecia areata and cardiovascular comorbidities: A cross-sectional analysis of the All of Us research program. JAAD Int. 2024 Apr 8:16:46-48. doi: 10.1016/j.jdin.2024.03.024. eCollection 2024 Sep.   Lee et al. Alopecia areata is not a risk factor for heart diseases: A 10-year retrospective cohort study. PLoS One. 2021. Conic RRZ et al. Prevalence of cardiac and metabolic diseases among patients with alopecia areata. JEADV 2021  

The Wright Institute for Global and Population Health, housed in UWF's Usha Kundu, MD College of Health, will sponsor the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Journey, a traveling educational exhibit that raises awareness about the All of Us Research Program from Oct. 22-25. 

Originally broadcast October 17, 2024 For nearly the first decade of the National Institutes of Health's “All of Us” Research Program — aimed at increasing diversity in genetic research — a major component was missing: kids. “Children are approximately 24% of our population in the U.S. and 100% of our future,” Dr. Sara Van Driest, director of pediatrics for NIH's All of Us Program, told hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter. “In order to provide them with the very best... Read More Read More The post How Groundbreaking NIH Research is Expanding to Birth-to-Four-Year-Olds appeared first on Healthy Communities Online.

The National Institute of Health's All of Us Research Program is a federally-funded program on a mission to collect health data from one million or more diverse individuals across the U.S. over the course of many years, with the goal of improving precision medicine for us and future generations. The program has partner sites across the nation, as well as a mobile tour, which recently made a stop in Indianapolis.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This may be your best chance to help shape the future of healthcare! Learn how to enroll in  All of Us Research and hear what your input could mean for future research. https://allofus.nih.gov Visit our website, www.kansashealthsystem.com or findadoctor.kansashealthsystem.com.

In a world where your zip code can have as great an impact on your health as your genetic code, how can we create a healthier future for everyone? On this episode of The Health Pulse, we hear from Dr. Joyonna Gamble-George, a neuroscientist at the Yale School of Public Health, and Dr. Karriem Watson, Chief Engagement Officer of the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program, about how the All of Us program deepens our understanding of social determinants of health and addresses health care disparities.   The All of Us Research Program is a diverse, representative database composed of health data from more than 1 million people. The program has 10,000 registered users of different backgrounds and skill sets and helps them better understand and solve health challenges. Tune in to hear these health care research leaders reflect on the impact of precision medicine and how AI and other cutting-edge technology are advancing research and closing the digital divide. 

In this episode of "This is Rural Health," we continue our special series featuring excerpts from the 2023 California State Rural Health Association (CSRHA) annual conference.Dr. Borowsky highlights the All of Us study, which aims to collect comprehensive health data from participants across the U.S. and return actionable genetic and health information to them. Dr. Borowsky also discusses the exciting potential of personalized nutrition through the CAPN (California Partnership for Personalized Nutrition) project, examining how individual responses to food can guide tailored dietary advice. Tune in to learn about the latest advancements in rural health and how these initiatives are set to transform the future of healthcare.What you'll learn in this episode:Introduction and gratitude to podcast supportersOverview of the 2023 CSRHA Annual ConferencePrecision Medicine Initiative and its goalsAll of Us study: objectives and participant engagementImportance of diversity in biomedical researchChallenges and strategies for outreach in rural health communitiesPrivacy and data security in health researchReturning actionable genetic results to participantsPersonalized nutrition and the CAPN projectUtilizing microbiome and genetic data for tailored dietary recommendationsFuture directions and potential benefits of personalized healthcareConnect with Us: On Facebook | @csrha.advocateOn Twitter | @CSRHA1 and @CSRHApodcastVisit our website | csrha.orgEmail Address | podcast@csrha.orgConnect with Dr. Borowsky on LinkedInAll of Us Research Program | allofus.nih.govThe CSRHA has been a go-to resource for rural healthcare and community leaders since 1995. The CSRHA brings an accumulation of actionable insights to the next generation of rural healthcare leaders. For more behind the scenes of this podcast follow @CSRHApodcast on Twitter or @csrha.advocate on Facebook.If you enjoy This Is Rural Health, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!Learn more about the CSRHA at csrha.org.

Interviewee: Dr. Rhonda Moore  Interviewer: Dr. Lisa Meeks Description:  In this episode of the Docs with Disabilities podcast, Dr. Rhonda Moore, a medical anthropologist and program officer at the NIH shares her journey grappling with chronic pain, autism, and attention deficit disorder, all amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. She very candidly shares insight into her journey as a kid, from growing up with a brother with autism, to taking theater classes as a means to derive and learn confidence. Through her personal narrative, Dr. Moore shed light on the challenges faced by black women in navigating the healthcare system, highlighting the importance of representation and support for individuals with disabilities. The conversation was marked by a deep sense of empathy and understanding, creating a safe and empowering space for Dr. Moore to share her experiences. Together, Drs. Meeks and Moore delve into the complexities of disability, chronic pain, and the pursuit of equity and inclusion in the medical field. Dr. Moore emphasizes the significance of diverse narratives and the power of self-acceptance and support.    Bio: ​​Rhonda Moore (she/her) is an Autistic Medical Anthropologist and Program Officer for the Genetic Counseling Resource at the  National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program. Her work combines anthropological methods, ethics, data science and clinical medicine to better understand patient experiences and health disparities across culturally and medically diverse care settings (cancer, pain, palliative care), community engaged research, and the differential and ethical impacts of new and emerging technologies on health outcomes in diverse and vulnerable populations. She is writer/editor of the following books: Climate Change and Heath Equity (forthcoming, Springer 2023), the Handbook of Pain and Palliative Care (Springer, 2012, 2nd edition, Springer, 2019), Biobehavioral Approaches to Pain (Springer 2009) and Cancer Culture and Communication (Springer 2004).  Prior to serving at the All of Us Research Program, she was a Program Officer in Global Mental Health at the US NIMH. Her program in Global Mental Health focused on social determinants of health, ethics of new and emerging technologies, citizen science, climate change and mental health, and reciprocal innovation. She was also the program lead for the digital global mental health technology program in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University, followed by post-doctoral fellowships and training in Behavioral Science (Stanford Medical School), Epidemiology (University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) and Hospice/Palliative Care (St. Austell, Cornwall UK). Transcript Keywords: medical anthropology, actually autistic, community engaged research, disability in medicine, mental health, health equity, ADHD, AuDHD, neurodiversity paradigm, neurodivergence,  chronic pain, EDS, Ehlers Danlos, Fibromyalgia. Produced by: Pranati Movva, Jasmine Lopez, R.E. Natowicz, Jacob Feeman and Dr. Lisa Meeks.  Audio editor: Jacob Feeman Digital Media: Katie Sullivan   Resources:  National Institute of Mental Health. (2023). Autism Spectrum Disorder. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd#:~:text=Autism%20Spectrum%20Disorder-,Overview,first%202%20years%20of%20life.   Autism Society (2023). https://autismsociety.org/   

Chris Lunt is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience building web services and data platforms. He is in his seventh year as the CTO for the NIH's All of Us Research Program. He joined the NIH from GetInsured, where he worked to improve health insurance shopping and enrollment systems. Previously Chris ran VC-backed internet startups, with one IPO.Highlights:- Chris is hopeful about Silicon Valley going back to its roots to create sociological change by uniting people and being thoughtful about what the world should look like. Over the last couple decades it has become more venal.- Chris believes in the power of investing public money to create opportunities. He says that Silicon Valley is largely the story of a public private partnership and that it's hard to do certain fundamental research in a purely market-based economy.- Chris says that the initiatives around Web3 weren't grounded in a realistic understanding of human nature and the result was not a good outcome.- Healthcare is one of the most conservative industries but a way to drag it into the future is for the government to mandate change. Health records are currently built for billing purposes rather than for improving health. It's also not all that long ago that hospitals were using paper records until the Affordable Care Act required that they digitize.- There is a moment coming soon where there is an opportunity to completely reimagine healthcare delivery. A generalist will be able to help a person navigate between various providers and specialists instead of the current fragmented approach.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

The All of Us Research Program is undergoing the herculean task of gathering genomic data from over one million people living in the United States, from widely different backgrounds, in the hopes of accelerating health care research. However, within the scientific community many, including Ewan Birney, deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, are concerned that the way some of this data has been framed in a recent paper could reinforce racist beliefs. We also learn about the program and hear a response to the criticism from Josh Denny, the CEO of the All of Us Research Program. Over the past two years, a deadly version of bird flu, H5N1, has been spreading around the globe, killing hundreds of thousands of birds and mammals in the process. Isolated from the rest of the world, animals in Antarctica have been safe from the virus so far. But, virologist Antonio Alcamí, who is located on the continents Spanish base, confirms that bird flu has reached them, infecting Antarctic skua seabirds. And, on a less serious note, can the smell of a female cause premature death? Maybe in mice. Researcher Mike Garratt goes over the intriguing results in his new mouse study. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Image: Colorful diverse crowd in modern collage. Credit: Dedraw Studio via Getty Images)

Environment, lifestyle and DNA play important roles in personal health. By studying these factors, researchers aim to find ways to improve the health of future generations. The All of Us Research Program, a national initiative that includes the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, is inviting people across the country to help build one of the most […]

No tenemos los derechos de autor de la música que aparece en este video. Todos los derechos de la música pertenecen a sus respectivos creadores.     Estás escuchando #JUNTOSRadio ¿Qué es el programa científico All of Us?, ¿Qué tengo que hacer para inscribirme?, ¿Cuáles son los riesgos de participar en el programa All of Us?  Bryan Castro es Asociado del Programa de Salud e Investigación National Alliance for Hispanic Health, nos responde a estas y otras preguntas.     Sobre nuestro invitado:  Bryan Castro es el Asociado Senior de Programas e Investigación en la Alianza Nacional para Salud de los Hispanos. Bryan trabaja para mejorar la salud en comunidades hispanas en las áreas de vacunación, diabetes y navegación de los sistemas de salud en los Estados Unidos.  Actualmente, Bryan apoya la iniciativa Todos Juntos: All of Us Research Program, de los Institutos Nacionales de la Salud, para educar, motivar y facilitar la participación de la comunidad en la investigación científica.  Recursos informativos en español     https://www.joinallofus.org/faq    https://allofus.nih.gov/about/faq    Facebook: @juntosKS     Instagram: juntos_ks     YouTube: Juntos KS   Twitter: @juntosKS     Página web: http://juntosks.org         Suscríbete en cualquiera de nuestras plataformas de Podcast: Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music y Apple Podcast - Juntos Radio          Centro JUNTOS Para Mejorar La Salud Latina     4125 Rainbow Blvd. M.S. 1076,     Kansas City, KS 66160      

No two people are the same and that means the best healthcare is tailored to the individual. Creating a database that can shape the future of medicine. We look at what the "All of Us" research program wants from you.

AHA23 Congress Coverage: Daily Marijuana and HF ("All of Us Research Program")

Is every clinical trial created equal? In this episode, we learn some shocking information about the proportions of populations normally included in clinical trials. We specifically cover recent treatments for Alzheimer's disease to discuss how we may have failed to consider minority populations in our research and how we can use precision medicine to create more equitable clinical trials. We also discuss how we can redevelop trust in scientific institutions in the wake of the pandemic and how health professionals can adapt their research techniques to include data from historically underrepresented populations. We had a wonderful cast join us for this episode. We had Stephanie Monroe, Vice President and Senior Advisor of Health Equity and Access for UsAgainstAlzheimer's, a national advocacy group that aims to diversify the movement to cure Alzheimer's disease. After working on Capitol Hill and holding the position of Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights for three years, Stephanie's work has focused on raising awareness about the disparate impact of Alzheimer's disease on communities of color and women. We also had Consuelo Wilkins, Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean of Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence, and a Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and works with the All of Us Research Program, a national precision medicine project. She is also the Principal Investigator of three NIH-funded centers which aim to decrease health disparities for communities of color and create new approaches to recruiting marginalized communities for clinical trials.  This conversation was so fun and yielded so many valuable insights regarding how we can create more equitable research for communities of color. We hope you enjoy the episode! Interested in how misinformation circulates? Listen to our previous podcast episode with guest Evan Thornburg. Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening! Instagram: @infointhernd Twitter: @infointhernd  Threads: @infointhernd TikTok: @infointhernd  Website: https://www.kevinbjohnsonmd.net/podcast

Barbara Kimbro helps us learn about navigating life with a disability and describes how serving as an All of Us Research Program peer ambassador, volunteering, and being part of a senior community contribute to her well-being. This conversation illuminates her passion for precision medicine, people, and engagement to live life to the fullest. 

Welcome to Works In Process w/ George Garrastegui, Jr. / Ep 30 ---That's my guest, Max Masure. Max is a senior inclusive UX strategist and author who promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion within organizations. They share their journey of overcoming imposter syndrome and finding their purpose in life. Max discusses their work with the All of Us Research Program, which aims to gather health data from underrepresented communities. Max also talks about their book, “You Don't Suck,” and the importance of self-reflection and recognizing one's accomplishments. In addition, Max highlights the need for organizations to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in order to meet the changing demographics and demands of the market. They also discuss the future of the DEI landscape and the importance of community-centered design.Max's upcoming talk at the What If Summit will focus on their process of redesigning the homepage of the All of Us Research Program to create a more inclusive and community-centered design.We hope you enjoy it!---Takeaways:Max Masure helps organizations embrace a justice-focused mission rooted in social change and anti-racism.Max believes in the importance of reparations and the elevation of underrepresented communities.Max hosts workshops on supporting trans and gender non-conforming individuals, overcoming imposter syndrome, and inclusive design.The future of the DEI landscape should be community-centered, with a focus on creating new companies that are based on core equity, diversity, and accessibility.---MentionsYou Don't Suck, book.All of Us Research ProgramGeorge Aye of Greater Good StudioFollow Max Masure via:Max's Website / @madmaxmasure on Instagram ————CreditsEditor: RJ BasilioResearch and Transcription Reviewer: Or SyzflingierIntro / Outro Music: The System Has Failed Us - The Passion HiFi————Like what you just heard? Support the process and rate us on Apple Podcast and Spotify!About the Works in Process Podcast:A podcast series by George Garrastegui, Jr. — designer, educator, and curator. Works In Process is a collection of discussions that explore the creative process. I interview individuals to gain more insight into the ways they work and the projects they produce.---Subscribe to Works in Process via:Apple Podcast: http://wip.show/apple_podcastSpotify: https://www.wip.show/spotifyAmazon: https://www.wip.show/Amazon_musicStitcher:

  Lead Story: Examining sociodemographic correlates of opioid use, misuse, and use disorders in the All of Us Research Program 

Originally released in October 2021, with several important updates: this is the story of two remarkable two women -- Henrietta Lacks and Sonya Chris Ellis -- separated by decades but immortal to those who carry on their legacies, as told by two remarkable women -- Lacks' great-granddaughter Victoria Baptiste and Dr. Ashley Ellis -- the lessons their families want us all to learn from their lives, and why diverse participation in medical research, such as the All of Us Research Program, is vital.Anybody who is interested or has questions can go to JoinAllofUs.org/BWNW or contact us at AllofUs@bloodworksnw.org

Gina Green-Harris joins the podcast to discuss the importance of collaborating with communities in Alzheimer's research. Sharing her experience as a researcher with the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute (WAI) and the All of Us research program, she describes the key tenets of community engagement and explains ways researchers can build intentional, sustainable partnerships with communities throughout the research process This episode is part of a series featuring speakers from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center's (NACC) Fall 2022 ADRC Meeting, where the overarching theme was Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in ADRC research and operations. Guest: Gina Green-Harris, MBA, director, Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute Regional Milwaukee Office, co-primary investigator, co-director, University of Wisconsin–Madison's All of Us research program Show Notes Learn more about Gina Green-Harris on the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute's website and on the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research's website. Learn more about the All of Us Research Program. Watch a recording of Gina Green-Harris's talk at NACC's Fall 2022 Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Learn more about the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center at their website. Connect with us Find transcripts and more at our website. Email Dementia Matters: dementiamatters@medicine.wisc.edu Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center's e-newsletter.

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Oneida County; https://bit.ly/3G2tTZr The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that we remember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect for mixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based, you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana – with Logan too – hit the water in this Campfire Conversation, highlighting some Wisconsin's “Must Visit” water recreation locations.  Much of the conversation begins in the north, with the Apostle Islands and its bevy of options in Lake Superior. The Brule River, known as the “River of Presidents” for its history as a popular fishing and getaway spot for U.S. presidents in the early 20th century, also gets some love as its flows into Lake Superior not too far to the west. Hopping the subcontinental divide, the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway offers all of fun and natural beauty you could expect from a river. The Wild Rivers Conservancy is active along the river, and the waterfalls coupled with fishing, paddling, and hiking along the shore offer abundant options for an adventurous day. We also cover the Vets on the River Program, which is active on the St. Croix. Flowing into the St. Croix in western Wisconsin is the Apple River, which offers tubing, floating, and a variety of popular water recreation activities in the areas around Somerset, making it a big summer destination. Of course the Wisconsin River gets its due, whether you're fishing in the Eagle River area, water skiing with the best of them in Wisconsin Rapids, touring the sandstone and limestone bluffs around Wisconsin Dells, or kayaking the Lower Wisconsin Waterway. The Wolf River runs through much of the North Woods and offers unbelievably amazing fishing. Ana dives into the Madison “chain o' lakes” (literally too, in real life) as she and Eric discuss the many options of Lake Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa, and Kegonsa in the Capitol region. Other chains of lakes popular in Wisconsin also draw a wide variety of water recreation opportunities, including the chains around Eagle River, the Cisco chain on the Wisconsin-U.P. border west of Land O'Lakes, and the Waupaca Chain O'Lakes. In the south, Geneva Lake and its nearby companions – including Delavan Lake and Lake Como – draw plenty of crowds but still offer areas of serenity. Geneva Lake is one of the deepest spring-fed lakes in the state; Green Lake, in central Wisconsin, takes the title of the deepest. Its also hugely popular for boating, fishing, and water skiing. Up for whitewater rafting? Head to northeastern Wisconsin and check out the rapids on the Menomonee River! Comparisons to rivers in the Mountain West are frequently made to a section of the Menomonee between Niagara and Pembine, where the rapids and drops are truly an adventure. The Peshtigo River in Oconto and Marinette Counties also offers fantastic kayaking and canoeing; the whole area teems with waterfalls. For extra twists and turns, we recommend heading to the Driftless Region in southwestern Wisconsin and exploring the Kickapoo River, which is one of the crookedest rivers in the Midwest – if not the country. Some great options for rentals can be found in Ontario, near Wildcat Mountain State Park. We didn't forget the cities, either: explore charter fishing opportunities off the lakeshore in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Port Washington, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Algoma, Kewaunee, Sturgeon Bay, Green Bay, Oconto, or Marinette on Lake Michigan, or from Ashland, Bayfield, or Superior on Lake Superior! And for paddling in urban areas, it's hard to beat the La Crosse area on the Black and Mississippi Rivers – especially Pools 7 and 8 – or kayaking amidst the bustling action and tall buildings in Milwaukee on the Milwaukee, Menomonee, or Kinnickinnic Rivers in the heart of the city. Let's just say your options are many – and we offer plenty to choose from on The Cabin today! Inside SponsorsVISIT Lake Geneva: https://bit.ly/3wHvilfGroup Health Trust:  https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring CalumetCounty; https://bit.ly/3KjNc3T The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that weremember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect formixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based,you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learnmore here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:It's a Campfire Conversation about… camping! Eric and Ana welcome Apurba Banerjee into The Cabin togo “under the tent” and talk about everything from camping to glamping – including what helps definethe differences. Select locations for some of the best camping – including great activities, beautifulscenery, and more – include many of Wisconsin's state parks. Shout-outs go to Big Bay, Wyalusing,Kegonsa, Interstate, Peninsula, Rock's Island, Devil's Lake, Mirror Lake, Yellowstone Lake (an Audio Dave“hidden gem” from back in the day), and Hartman Creek, among others. Units within the Kettle MoraineState Forest, especially Lapham Peak, get discussed as well as select recreation areas like the famous-but-often-overlooked Bong Recreation Area. We also cover some camping areas that are businesses,including Rustic Timbers in Door County and some of the Jellystone Park options, which often pairfamily-focused activities along with whatever variety of camping you choose. For a more “out there”wilderness experience, you can camp at locations all over the North Woods, including along the PeshtigoRiver in Oconto and Marinette Counties where you go waterfalling nearby. Also covered are the ApostleIslands and Apurba shares the story of Camp Wandawega, which offers a throwback experience. You'llwant to pitch your tent after enjoying the episode! Inside SponsorsWCA: https://bit.ly/3ehxDHHGroup Health Trust: https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Burnett County; https://bit.ly/3pX15La The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that we remember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect for mixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based, you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4   Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana inspire to you enjoy a nice retreat or relaxing getaway with some places you can check out across Wisconsin that specialize in the getaway, immersion, or retreat experience. A modern retreat can cover anything from a weekend of not using your mobile phone (digital detox) to a few days of relaxation and healthy living in a bucolic countryside setting (wellness or mindfulness retreats). You can also go on a retreat to kickstart a new fitness regime, relieve stress, practice meditation and spiritual exercises, enjoy outdoor activities or cookery classes, tap into your creativity, improve sleep or self-esteem, have life-coaching - and, yes, lose weight if you must, although this is more often a side-effect to healthier living. Or, you can go on a retreat to do nothing at all. The word retreat means ‘draw back,' after all. A variety of retreat options are offered; in the category of camping and recreation, we discuss Woodwind Park, Bent's Camp, Big Rock Creek, and Camp Anokijig, which focuses on children. In the Spa/Resort category, we note several in the Lake Geneva and Sheboygan areas, including Grand Geneva, Lakelawn, and the Abbey Resort in Lake Geneva along with Sundara and Blue Harbor in Sheboygan plus the American Club's Kohler Waters Spa in nearby Kohler. We also cover The Edgewater Hotel & Spa near near the Capitol in Madison. For Artist Retreats, we cover the Woodland Ridge Retreat Center, Prairie Hill retreat, Durward's Glen (an artist's cottage) and Bethel Horizons with its Adamah Art Studio. For Spiritual retreats, we note the Christine Center, The Wilderness, the Redemptorist Retreat Center in Oconomowoc, and Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton. Then we do a deeper dive with guest Anne Krogstad, who recently went to the Wild Rice Retreat near Bayfield.If you've been considering a retreat or specialized getaway, this episode could provide the guidance and inspiration to help you find a place that can match what you may want – or need! Inside SponsorsJefferson County: https://bit.ly/3gt0NauGroup Health Trust:  https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring VilasCounty; https://bit.ly/3EB1RDp The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that weremember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect formixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based,you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learnmore here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric, Ana, and Loga welcome Harmon Marien into The Cabin to discuss fishing across Wisconsin, whereyou have 15,000+ lakes, thousands of miles of streams and rivers, the Mississippi River, and two GreatLakes from which to choose. Harmon fished competitively through his high school in Eagle River - anarea amidst the World's Largest Chain of Interconnected Freshwater Lakes – and continues to in college.Fishing teams among schools are growing significantly (which makes sense, since fish cluster in schools,too.) Part of the conversation includes how the tournaments work and how they're growing in thestate. We also discussed best times of the season to fish – depending in part on what types of fish you'reafter – and the benefits or lack thereof of various types of cover.Some locations noted include “pools,” including Pools 7 and 8 in the Mississippi River in the La Crossearea and the Winnebago Pool waters consisting of Lakes Poygan and Butte de Morts along the FoxWaterway heading into Lake Winnebago, where sturgeon spearing is quite popular in winter. The watersin Green Bay and Lake Michigan around the Door Peninsula and Sturgeon Bay offer unique world classfishing opportunities. Chains of lakes include the largest in the Eagle River and St. Germain areas, as wellas the Hayward Lakes chains along with the Chippewa Flowage in northwestern Wisconsin. In centralWisconsin, the chain of lakes around Waupaca and the Mendota/Monona/Waubesa/Kegonsa chain in the Madison area offer excellent fishing, with smaller gems nearby like Hope Lake, Lake Ripley, and RockLake in Lake Mills. Spring-fed Green Lake is another fishing gem, and with depth going down severalhundred feet, it is the deepest inland lake in the state. Along with Lake Winnebago, Lake Koshkonongoffers many benefits of shallow lake fishing, especially with many areas offering cover. The manyinterior rivers of Wisconsin offer incredible fishing opportunities, with some of the best being Wolf Riverin northeastern and central Wisconsin, the Brule River in northwestern Wisconsin (known as the “Riverof Presidents” for its history), and the Kickapoo River in the Driftless Area, where trout streams abound.Along the Great Lakes coastlines, areas like Bayfield on Lake Superior and ports at Sheboygan, Algoma,Kewaunee, Port Washington, Racine, and Kenosha offer fantastic options for charter fishing and evenjust fishing off of piers and breakwaters. The bottom line? If you want to fish, Wisconsin has practicallyevery option you could want in nearly every part of the state across every season. Inside SponsorsGroup Health Trust: https://bit.ly/3JMizCXHo-Chunk Gaming: https://bit.ly/3l2CfruMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring ShawanoCounty; https://bit.ly/3yn6z5r The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that weremember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect formixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based,you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learnmore here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric, Ana, and Logan dive into Wisconsin's bevy of summer music festival choices. Summerfest is adominant one, along the lakefront in Milwaukee, with over 600 performances across 11+ stages over 9days. It embraces a variety of genres from the largest titans in the music industry to local and emergingperformers with niche audiences. We have a discussion with Sarah Pancheri, President of Summerfest,to discuss what's new and happening for 2023 as Summerfest runs June 22-24, June 29-July 1, and July6-8 this year. But a plethora of other music festivals around Wisconsin invite you, including some majorcountry festivals: Country Fest in Cadott, Country Thunder in Twin Lakes, Country Jam in Eau Claire,Country Boom in West Salem, the Hodag Country Festival in Rhinelander and more. We also discuss Mileof Music, a unique festival in downtown Appleton with over 200 artists performing across 40 venues –which cover about a mile. Rock, folk, Americana, and even bluegrass get covered with events like RockFest in Cadott, the Harley-Davidson Homecoming Festival in Milwaukee (both the weekend of July 13-15); the Blue Ox Music Festival and Eaux Claires, both in the Eau Claire area; events at Driftless MusicGardens near Hillsboro and the Driftless Music Festival in Viroqua; the Sugar Maple Music Festival inMadison; the unique Northwoodstock at Bent's Camp west of Land O'Lakes, which we covered in a bonus episode with Bent's Camp; plus bluegrass festivals in Shawano, near Green Bay in Brown County,and the Brittany Saylor Bluegrass Festival. There's even Lifest, a Christian music festival near Oshkosh.We have details on each in this episode to help you plan to attend your favorites! Inside SponsorsGroup Health Trust: https://bit.ly/3JMizCXWashington County: https://bit.ly/3qayJALMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring MarinetteCounty; https://bit.ly/3hPiwKZ The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that weremember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect formixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based,you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learnmore here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric, Ana, and Logan welcome John Heasley into The Cabin as we all go stargazing. Some of the bestplaces in the state for truly dark skies and great viewing are discussed, including Newport State Park inDoor County, which is Wisconsin's only International Dark Sky Park. But other areas designated as “darksky” viewing areas exist in the state including the Kickapoo Valley Dark Sky Park in Vernon County,nearby Wildcat Mountain State Park, and the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway along Highway 60 (a lot ofthese “dark skies” areas are in the Driftless!) We also discuss observatories across the state, includingYerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, which opened in 1897, served as the birthplace of modernastrophysics and still hosts the World's Largest Refracting Telescope. Other observatories include HobbsObservatory in the Chippewa Valley, the Leif Everson Observatory in Door County, and the WashburnObservatory on the UW-Madison campus. For events, don't forget Wisconsin Observers Weekend iscoming up June 15 th -18 th in Hartman Creek State Park near Waupaca, and the Northwoods Star Fest goeson August 18 th -20 th in Beaver Creek Reserve near Eau Claire. We get full Moons on July 3 rd and August 1 st& 30 th this summer, with an evening gathering of the Crescent Moon, Venus, and Mars on the SummerSolstice (June 21 st ) this year. Also, the next Perseid Meteor Shower is the weekend of August 11 th -13 th ,while during much of August Saturn will be quite visible in the evening sky and relatively easy to view and admire through a telescope. Astronomers' clubs offer resources and gatherings, too. Check outhttps://wisconsinastronomy.org for clubs and programs, and listen here for details! Inside SponsorsGroup Health Trust: https://bit.ly/3JMizCXWild Eagle Lodge: https://bit.ly/2WhX1r9Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Door County; https://bit.ly/3lHoZss The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that we remember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect for mixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based, you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric, Ana, and Logan discuss “must try” ice cream shops to help kick off June Dairy Month across Wisconsin. It begins with a discussion of what ice cream and how it's made, as well as how it differentiates from some other frozen treats. From Sweeden Sweets in Superior to Scoop's Ice Cream & Candy in Kenosha, we cover the entire state. Others noted include The Pearl in La Crosse; Mullen's Dairy Bar with locations in Watertown & Oconomowoc; the classic Wilson's in Ephraim. open since 1906; Scoop de Ville in Hartford, Olson's in Chippewa Falls, Purple Door in Milwaukee; the Hawkeye Dairy Store in Abbotsford; the Historic Washington House in Two Rivers, home to where the ice cream sundae was invented; South Pier Parlor in Sheboygan; King Cone in Plover; Amy's Candy Kitchen in Cedarburg; Lily's Ice Cream Parlor in McFarland; Frostie Freeze in Fort Atkinson; Pirate's Hideaway in Eagle River; Cathy's Ice Cream stand in St. Germain; Sassy Cow Creamery in Columbus; Atwood Scoop and the Chocolate Shoppe in Madison; plus chains like Kilwin's and The Chocolate Factory. A few custard stands get mentioned too, since we got in the mood. And of course, there's Babcock Dairy Hall on the UW-Madison campus, where a proper measurement of butterfat content in ice cream was created and the ice cream is spectacular. Inside SponsorsGroup Health Trust:  https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMenomonie Chamber: https://bit.ly/3q16T9YMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

Few people with a cause walk the talk as boldly and graciously as Christine Von Raesfeld, founder and CEO of People with Empathy. Christine is a pillar of patient advocacy and allyship in the rare and chronic disease community. Through the lens of her lived experiences in healthcare, she has become a champion for patient voices, diversity and inclusion in clinical research, and equitable patient-sponsor partnerships. Christine has brought her unique perspective and honed expertise to countless roles as a featured speaker for numerous conferences on topics ranging from clinical trial recruitment to data & digital rights, from a true patient perspective. She serves as an e-patient scholar with Stanford MedicineX and a Technical Expert Panelist with CMS among other roles. Wherever possible, Christine generates momentum toward progress along her patient advocacy interests and has become a thought leader worldwide, stimulating dialog on a range of topics relevant to patients, clinicians, and industry. As a patient advisor, Christine has assisted several initiatives including the Stanford "Humanwide" Precision Medicine Program and the NIH All of Us Research Program and serves as a board member/advisor to multiple organizations and startups. For her many contributions to the field, she has been named one of the top 100 Women of Influence by Silicon Valley Business Journal, a member of the 2021 HIMSS Future50, and one of Medika Life's 50 most influential voices in healthcare among other distinctions. www.peoplewithempathy.org/

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Outagamie County; https://bit.ly/3CCUjyi The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that we remember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect for mixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based, you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome disc golfer Andrew Kangas into The Cabin as we talk about disc golf as one of the great – if not underrated – outdoor summer activities in Wisconsin. Turns out Wisconsin ranks as the 4th best disc golf state in U.S., with 426 courses, 165 courses w/ 18 + holes, 124 leagues, 51 stores that sell disc golf gear. Andrew discussed some of the finer points of the game as well as the equipment  - which is relatively simple, making it a low-cost sport to get into. A variety of course options we also discussed, from rural in the North Woods like Sandy Point Disc Golf Ranch in Lac du Flambeau, WI to urban in southeast Wisconsin like Dretzka Park in Milwaukee. Some disc golf courses are situated on regular golf courses, some follow pathways in the forest. The variety makes play a unique experience every time Other venues discussed included Rollin Ridge in Reedsville, Silver Creek Park in Manitowoc, a 36-hole disc golf courses right on the shores of Lake Michigan, and others across the state. Listen to discover one near you!Discover Wisconsin Producer Bo Chovan also joins us in The Cabin with a Behind the Scenes look at the upcoming Janesville episode, which begins streaming on the DW app May 24th at 4pm and airs this Memorial Day weekend, when it also becomes available on all streaming channels.Inside SponsorsHo-Chunk Nation: https://bit.ly/3l2Cfru  Group Health Trust:  https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pY

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Crawford County;  https://bit.ly/3Pbkeon The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that we remember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect for mixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based, you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana start a series that we'll revisit numerous times covering ethnic festivals throughout Wisconsin. Being almost the 17th of May, we begin with the Norwegian festival of Syttende Mai, which is the Norse translation of May 17th and celebrates their Independence Day. Since Stoughton has the biggest Syytende Mai celebration in Wisconsin, we welcomed Callie LaPoint and Sarah Ebert into The Cabin to tell us more in detail about Syttende Mai in general and their Stoughton festival in particular. Another sizable Syytende Mai festival happens in Westby, which isn't far from Norskedalen, a Norse cultural mecca located in southeastern La Crosse County. Other Scandinavian festivals are coming too, including Fyr Ball in Door County, which celebrates the summer solstice on the beach in Ephraim with a huge bonfire, mythical stories, and plenty of fun, food, and drink. Numerous other cities around Wisconsin note a heavy Norwegian heritage including Oconomowoc and Mount Horeb – which is known for its “Trollway,” a large part of Norse lore.You can find out more about Stoughton's Syttende Mai festival here: https://www.stoughtonfestivals.com/Discover Wisconsin Producer Jessica Vokoun also joins us in The Cabin with a Behind the Scenes look at the upcoming Wisconsin Festivals episode, which begins streaming on the DW app May 17th at 4pm and airs the weekend of May 20th-21st, when it will also be available on all streaming channels.Inside SponsorsBest Western Hotels: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fGroup Health Trust:  https://bit.ly/3JMizCXMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring OzaukeeCounty; https://bit.ly/3DPQbN0 The Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good Soda, available in all your classic favorite flavors that weremember from childhood. The diet line offers 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 sugars, and no caffeine – perfect formixers or just enjoying on a warm summer day (or any day, for that matter); always Wisconsin-based,you can follow @jollygoodsoda on social for the latest on new flavors, fun promotions, and more. Learnmore here; https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4 Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome Josh Ostermann into The Cabin to talk pizza, a favorite topic among all of us –especially Josh. Piggybacking our previous pizza-oriented piece – episode 92 – we dive into more “musttry” local pizza places around Wisconsin. All types of pizzas are represented, from cracker-thin tavern-cut pizzas to the monumental deep dish that requires heavy lifting. Some of the differences in theirstyles and prep get discussed along with locations to hit for many samples of Wisconsin's best. Ana alsobegins with some pizza history dating back to Italy and how it spread across our nation and state. You'llbe hungry for a slice – or four – when you're done listening!We also went “behind the scenes” for a look at the new Discover Wisconsin Episode covering the lovelyand lively La Crosse area with producer Jessica Valkoun. This episode, hosted by Lindsey Hayes and EricPaulsen, covers all four seasons and plenty of activities – especially outdoors! Watch for its release onthe Discover Wisconsin app at 4pm on Wednesday, May 10 th and on your favorite channels, both over-the-air and online, this weekend (May 13 th -14 th ). Inside Sponsors Jefferson County: https://bit.ly/3gt0NauMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring BuffaloCounty; https://bit.ly/3d5bKNM The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome Jillian Talarczyk into The Cabin to discuss public art and some of Wisconsin's mostnotable sculptures. We discuss numerous outdoor sculpture parks and gardens. They include LyndenSculpture Garden, which features over 50 artistic monuments across 40 acres; Stevens Point SculpturePark, with a variety of sculptures and signs amidst walking trails in the woods; the lovely James TellenWoodland Sculpture Garden in Sheboygan; the sometimes controversial, yet beautifully perchedSpillover II sculpture overlooking Lake Michigan in Shorewood; and even the unique Badger sculpture ofthe USS Wisconsin in Madison.Some outdoor parks lean more towards the whimsical to downright mind-boggling, like Dr. Evermor'sSculpture Park near Sauk City with its wild metal creations surrounding Forevertron, a towering centralfeature; Jurustic Park outside Marshfield, with incredible creations in the lush yard of a private residencewhere they will happily show you around; and Fred Smith's Concrete Park outside Phillips, whichconsists of hardened sculptures made of concrete in a variety of forms, frequently incorporating piecesof glass for color and accent.We also discuss indoor museums like the Museum of Woodcarving in Shell Lake and a number of othersculptures across Wisconsin, from salutes to Native American history to fiberglass creations from aSparta company that you can explore in their yard. Jillian caps it off with an official announcement on the next public art mural in Madison that will beunveiled on May 18th - listen for it!After, we went “behind the scenes” for a look at the new Discover Wisconsin Episode covering Carlsville.Ana, who produced the episode, describes the show and the adventures of Andrea Boehlke and hersisters as they explore some hidden gems – along with some of the better-known ones – in this littletown in Door County. Inside SponsorsVisit Lake Geneva: https://bit.ly/3wHvilfWisconsin Counties Association: https://bit.ly/3ehxDHHMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring BrownCounty; https://bit.ly/3BDNdsX The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana dive into what Drink Wisconsinbly has called “one of Wisconsin's most precious unnaturalresources”: dive bars. We welcome Jared Schutz of the Wisco_Dive_Bars Instagram account into TheCabin, along with food and drink extraordinaire Josh Ostermann, to talk about dive bars: their generaldefinition, frequent characteristics, must-haves, and their unique nature. Wisconsin has more of thesethan most states, and most have a quirky thing or two about them that makes them worth a visit. Withthe experiences of this crew, we dive into selections across northwestern Wisconsin and describe whatmakes them a good dive bar. Everything from historic taverns to VFW halls, along with someestablishments considered a central meeting place of the town, gets covered. So pour yourself a cheaptap beer, grab some pretzels, a beef stick, or a pickled egg, and get ready for a discussion that will helpguide you to finding some of Wisconsin's Best Dive Bars in northwestern Wisconsin. And yes, we willcover other regions soon!Jared checks out dive bars across the state and shares videos and their unique quirks on Instagram.Check out his account: @wisco_dive_bars on IG! Inside SponsorsBest Western Hotels: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fDiscover Wisconsin and Cabin merch: https://shop.discoverwisconsin.com/Re/Max: https://bit.ly/2R3vFoiMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring WinnebagoCounty; https://bit.ly/3miMadl The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome award-winning singer-songwriter Katie Scullin into The Cabin as we continue ourseries on emerging Wisconsin musicians and bands. Katie has performed with several bands and has herown eponymous band with touring experiences from Wisconsin to Texas. She released her first full-length album, Pieces, in 2017 using a Kickstarter campaign. The local chart performance of her song"Porch Hangs" helped land her on the cover of Maximum Ink Magazine. She proceeded to take home anaward for Best Pop/R&B Song at the Madison Area Music Awards. In 2019 she was voted Best ofMadison - Gold and Best Musician/Band by the Jefferson County Daily Readers Poll. She opened for, orshared a bill with, Bret Michaels, Big Sean, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Uncle Kracker, Gwen Sebastian,Charlie Berens, and Jay Leno. We discussed how family – particularly her siblings – influenced her topursue a music career and learn the arts of singing, playing a variety of instruments, and songwriting.She played in a band called Rivalry (as in sibling rivalry) and performed at venues like Summerfest beforeshe broke out on her own. She described how her styles and music preferences developed over timeand what it's been like to release new material as technology continues to emerge. In part due toCOVID, she also recently branched out into music production and engineering while also teaching guitar,voice, and songwriting. We also discussed venues, collaborations with other artists from well-established to up-and-coming, getting your music on Spotify, launching a Patreon, and a variety of ways as a musician and artist you can hone your craft and develop your career while living and working inWisconsin. We also have her song “Bloom” featured in the podcast, too! Inside SponsorsJolly Good Soda: https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4Ho-Chunk Casino: https://bit.ly/3l2CfruMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring LangladeCounty; https://bit.ly/2Z5ruwA The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome Josh Ostermann back into The Cabin for a thorough look at ballparks in Wisconsinwhere you can enjoy a game, from the Major League Brewers at American Family Field in Milwaukee toall the charming ballparks hosting the Northwoods League teams from Eau Claire to Kenosha andeverything in between. Along with AmFam, the three cover the locations and amenities for the followingteams and their ballparks:Neuroscience Field at Fox Cities Stadium for the High “A” Wisconsin Timber Rattlers MiLB teamin AppletonABC Supply Stadium – one of the newest in the minor leagues - for the Beloit Sky Carp MiLBteam in BeloitFranklin Field for the Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association of Professional Baseballin the Milwaukee suburb of FranklinWisconsin Brewing Company Park – also one of the newer stadiums – for the Lake CountryDockHounds in OconomowocThe conversation progresses to the Northwoods League teams, which field collegiate players – many ofwhom move on to the minors and even the major leagues: Carson Park for the Eau Claire Express in Eau ClaireHerr-Baker Field for the Fond du Lac Dock Spiders in Fond du LacCapital Credit Union Park for the Green Bay Rockers in Green BayCopeland Park for the La Crosse Loggers in La CrosseSimmons Field for the Kenosha Kingfish in KenoshaKapco Park for the Lakeshore Chinooks in MequonThe Duck Pond at Warner Park for the Madison Mallards in MadisonAthletic Stadium for the Wausau Woodchucks in WausauWitter Field for the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters in Wisconsin RapidsAlong the way some fantastic historical facts and stories are shared; memories of Discover Wisconsinscenes shot in a ballpark or two; quirks about some of the parks from observing games on cateredshipping containers to having your food delivered via small raft. Tune in for this fun look at Wisconsinballparks that will have you hankerin' to attend a bunch of games this season! Inside SponsorsBest Western Hotels: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fJefferson County: https://bit.ly/3gt0NauMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Marathon County; https://bit.ly/3uOWHjf The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: Eric and Ana welcome Ramsay Plautz from his own cabin near Merrill, Wisconsin to talk camping in Wisconsin. While the state offers many campgrounds and sites with plenty of amenities and access to nearby services, Wisconsin also offers vast woods and forest areas that can be miles and miles from anywhere – which means you must pack differently and plan for scenarios you may not otherwise encounter. Ramsay covers the 5 C's of camping survival: Cutting, Cover, Cordage, Combustion, and Container. They involve everything from tools to shelter, and from a supply of wood and something to start a fire to ways to collect, carry, and store food and water. The benefits of charcoal – which extend greater than you may think – also gets discussed along with a series of fun activities to hone your camping skills. These include getting a book on plants you can eat in the wild so you can identify what's edible (vs. dangerous!) around you, shaping your knife skills, and some great places to explore when you want to camp and truly be in the wild, living off the land. These skills can help you wherever you choose to camp, though, even if it's in a tended campsite with plenty of amenities. Join us for this lively conversation that can help you fortify yourself and other for the great outdoors!Ramsay's Instagram: @northmen_bushcraft Inside SponsorsVISIT Lake Geneva: https://bit.ly/3wHvilfJolly Good Soda: https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring WashingtonCounty; https://bit.ly/3mA98vs The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana welcome Kyla Marie Charles to The Cabin for a discussion on kid-friendly activities anddestinations across Wisconsin. Winter has been long – and it continues to show up at times – but wthspring technically here and summer around the corner, it's a terrific time to plan some trips away fromthe house and perhaps away from your hometown to explore where you can have family fun and makememories. Some highlights include the obvious Wisconsin Dells waterparks and other activities; thenagain, some great indoor waterparks are available in places like Eau Claire, Sheboygan, Lake Geneva,Rothschild outside Wausau, Pewaukee/Waukesha, Minocqua, Warrens, and Green Bay. Zoos andadventure parks are also noted from Racine and Milwaukee to Madison, Marshfield, Baraboo, ChippewaFalls, Green Bay, and near West Bend. Children's Museums offer unique interactive exhibits, as doplaces like Farm Wisconsin near Manitowoc, which offers hands-on opportunities to learn aboutfarming, farm equipment, and where our food comes from. Ways to explore nature across the statewere also discussed, including arboretums, natural caves, even the remarkable Mitchell Park Domes inMilwaukee, where you can take the kids to the desert and the tropics in one setting. Great experiencestoo, from amusement parks and outdoor performances to magic shows, from go-karts to the arts – letthis episode fill you with ideas to help your kids have some fun this spring and summer while get toenjoy, too!Kyla's Instagram: @kylamariecharles Kyla's website: https://kylamariecharles.com/ Inside SponsorsShop Discover Wisconsin: https://bit.ly/3PEtnFNMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring SheboyganCounty; https://bit.ly/3EXlM09 The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana discuss the arrival of spring and launch a new series within the podcast where The Cabinwelcomes emerging Wisconsin musicians and out more about them, their bands, their music,experiences, and aspirations. In this first episode of the series, The Cabin welcomes The Astronomers, anemerging power pop/alternative group headed by Michael Stensland and Ben Baker. Their song"Overthinking" has over 5 million streams on Spotify; other popular tunes include "Skywalking," "BadType," and their latest release "Orange Afternoon." Hailing from the Oshkosh & Fond du Lac area, theydiscuss everything from how they met in middle school and continue their college studies at UW-Oshkosh through the multi-state tour they just wrapped up that put them in front of enthusiasticaudiences from Minnesota to Florida, where they were part of The Rock Boat's lineup. The Astronomerswrite their own music, and Cabin guest Katie Scullin - a WAMI award-winning musician herself -discusses with them their songwriting process, making music videos, getting their music on platformslike Spotify, and performance experiences at different venues. Michael & Ben also share a variety ofinteresting stories. Check out their music with these links below!The Astronomers' website: https://www.theastronomersmusic.com/Instagram: @theastronomers.music Their music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Pandora, SoundCloud, YouTube,and more, access links through Songwhip: https://songwhip.com/theastronomers/See their YouTube video of their 2022 Tour highlights: https://youtu.be/Do4kmzLO0hg Inside SponsorsBest Western Hotels: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Milwaukee County; link TBD The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: Eric and Ana enjoy the potato and leek soup brought in by Logan, the audio engineer, as Ana relays stories about luck and lore. Eric shares the bad luck of the Lady Elgin, a tragic event in Lake Michigan that dramatically altered the early Irish community in Milwaukee. Ana recounted some historic facts about Irish immigration to Wisconsin along with lucky & unlucky stories provided by staff from Discover Mediaworks. Communities that highlight Irish heritage and St. Patrick's Day are noted, including Milwaukee and La Crosse – which each host major Irish festivals in the summer – along with the Town of Erin (plus Holy Hill and Erin Hills Golf), New London (which becomes “New Dublin” for St. Patrick's) and even the tiny town of Luck, Wisconsin (home to a very recent lottery winner.) The Cabin also welcomes Blake Johnston from Milwaukee's County Clare, an Irish Pub and Inn that welcomes travelers from all over. With Blake, Eric, Ana, and Logan discuss more Irish lore, Celtic languages, unique elements of Irish history from both Ireland and Wisconsin, the parades to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and the most authentic Irish food and beverage – including the story behind corned beef. In all, it's a good look at Irish heritage in Wisconsin. Inside SponsorsJolly Good Soda: https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring JeffersonCounty; https://bit.ly/3maarmp   The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana have Drew Westphal, golf-fluencer and podcaster, join them to dive into golf in Wisconsin.It begins with some golf history from St. Andrews in Scotland to the fact that Tiger Woods made his prodebut in Milwaukee. The incredible courses across the state, many with national and internationalacclaim, get covered from Sheboygan County to Stevens Point and on up to Sayner, home to the firstpublic 9-hole course in the state. Wisconsin's courses play host to many major golf tournaments andchampionships and we cover the history and future for those events. Drew discussed how many ofWisconsin's best courses are open to the public, which is not the case in many other states. Alsodiscussed is how golf has grown during and since the pandemic. He also discussed how the golfexperience doesn't always have to encompass 9 or 18 holes, the length of the game is starting tobecome more flexible. Drew offered more perspectives and tips on playing the sport – and how to getbetter – including how resources like Top Golf and X-Golf can help regardless of weather. You can enjoyDrew's podcast, Group Golf Therapy, on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/group-golf-therapy/id1576362560 or wherever you get your podcasts. It's about mental health as much as golf.And while we cover Golf Digest's rankings of top Wisconsin courses, Drew also reveals some of hisfavorite “hidden gem” courses around the state. Gran your clubs and get ready for golfing season byenjoying this episode! Inside SponsorsBest Western Hotels: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuringTrempealeau County; https://bit.ly/3D0LDCi The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation:Eric and Ana dive into Wisconsin history with a focus on Native American settlements and moundbuilders, getting some remarkable insight from Bob Birmingham, the Executive Director of Friends ofAztalan State Park. He is also a former state archeologist and retired professor from UW-Waukesha andhas authored several books on historic sites in the state. Mr. Birmingham discussed how Aztalan wasessentially the state's first city and home to the original agricultural sites. Further settlements werediscussed and how they changed based on diet, available resources, weather, health, and potentialhostilities from animals and other people. Native Americans in Wisconsin built effigy mounds – by mostcounts 15,000 – 20,000 of them - across the state. Eric, Ana, and Mr. Birmingham discuss many of thosethat have been recognized and preserved, including at Lizard Mound State Park, which was recentlyupgraded from a county park in Washington County. Other locations include Wyalusing State Parkwhere the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers meet, Man Mound National Monument near Baraboo,Pendarvis in Mineral Point and other state historic sites. The history of mining, particularly lead, was alsodiscussed as it was incredibly influential to the state's history, even leading to the state's mascot beingthe “Badgers” and the initial fur trade that established connections between European explorers andsettlers and the Native Americans already in the state. In all, it's a comprehensive look at how the statedeveloped during its early history and where you can go to learn further about, and even sense, thishistory. Inside SponsorsHo Chunk: https://bit.ly/3l2Cfru Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Racine County; https://bit.ly/3nZOask The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: Cari Greving from Real Racine joins Eric and Ana and discuss the cities, towns, notable landmarks, historic sites, and unique features across the “262” area. The inventions, industrial heritage and redevelopments of Kenosha and Racine began the discussion. Topics ranged from Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural marvels in Racine, including Wingspread, to museums and lighthouses along the Lake Michigan shores. Ana got the update on the Peeps Competition at the Racine Art Museum. We moved inland to discuss unique places to visit including the Mars Cheese Castle and the Bong Recreation Area. The conversation continued to cover Burlington – in part for chocolate and their famous “Liar's Club” - and the nearby towns of Waterford and Rochester. From there, we worked clockwise into Walworth County with the draw of Lake Geneva and the incredible beauty and bevy of things to do and see around Geneva Lake, the ski hills at Alpine Valley and Grand Geneva, Elkhorn and the productive farms, orchards, and breweries nearby. The East Troy Railroad, which runs on the original interurban line that extended into Milwaukee, still runs to Mukwonago in Waukesha County and it's a great experience for kids and grown-ups alike. We then proceeded to cover Waukesha County, which combines dynamic cities and suburbs with the natural appeal of Kettle Moraine and numerous glacial lakes. Waukesha itself is vibrant and is getting increasingly known as “Guitar Town” since Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar and multi-track recording, hailed from Waukesha. You can enjoy everything from history at Old World Wisconsin in Eagle to professional baseball with the Lake Country Dock Hounds in Oconomowoc. The 262 also covers areas north into Washington County, including Hartford with its automotive history, museums, and architecture; West Bend with its appliance manufacturing history and popular downtown; and Holy Hill, a national shrine that draws people from around the world. Finally, we head east into Ozaukee County, from Mequon up through Port Washington and Cedarburg. The shoreline of Lake Michigan north of Milwaukee's 414 area is quite different from south of Milwaukee, and we discuss how – and why. The accessible parklands along Lake Michigan in Ozaukee County include Lion's Den Gorge County Park and Harrington Beach State Park. Port Washington itself is a charming town with a New England feel, famous for fishing and its marine, lighthouses, and more. All these areas offer great history, museums, breweries, wineries, and unique spots to enjoy. We list and cover many of them by topic towards the end of the conversation, spreading the love all around “the 262.” Inside SponsorsBest Western: https://bit.ly/3zCCK3fMarshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Chippewa County; https://bit.ly/3jU2ekP The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: The conversation focuses on real-life couples whose business and other endeavors have thrived as Eric and Ana marvel at the challenges that can come from being partners in both marriage and business, Examples include George and Debbie Crave, who have made quite a business out of Crave Brothers Cheese and George and Ruth Culver, who not only owned restaurants together but whose sons have gone on to impressive feats, including Craig's founding of Culver's Restaurants. Ana and Eric also discuss Mark and Renee Ebert of Ebert's Greenhouse Village, a working farm that also offers tours and education about where you food comes from; Meagan and Paul Frank, who founded Woodwind Park outside of Menomonie and are creating a winter and recreational haven amidst the hills of Dunn County; Katie and John Hayes, who expanded a family-run gift shop in downtown Eagle River with a speakeasy-style wine bar that is really making a name for itself; Rob and Melissa Spiotto, an example of Chicago kids who spent their childhood visiting northern Wisconsin and eventually decided to relocate and get involved in the community. They own The Alley in Land O'Lakes and help lead the Frosty Snowmobile Club there. Many of these couples have been subjects on Discover Wisconsin episodes over the last few seasons. Eric brought back the story of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, stars of stage and screen on Broadway whose Wisconsin home, Ten Chimneys, welcomed many from show business to frolic in their beautiful slice of home that is now a National Historic Landmark. Anna also quizzed Eric on aspects of love – only some of which is according to science. One thing is for sure: many couples in Wisconsin have found the formula to success in love, business, and life goals; hopefully this can serve as inspiration for others! Inside SponsorsJolly Good Soda: https://bit.ly/3TSFYY4Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3Wj6pYj

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Waushara County; https://bit.ly/2XUPK3D The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: The opening discussion reflected on Groundhog Day results, including Punxsutawney Phil vs Sun Prairie's Jimmy the Groundhog (the official one, according to Congress.) The groundhog is a legendary animal for Wisconsin to some extent because of that. Once the Campfire Conversation got underway, discussions started on real Wisconsin animals as Ramsay went over some of the state records for sizes of deer, bears, a variety of fish, and more. We discussed Boone & Crockett scores, which develops the standards for records and awards for animals. Eric, Ana, Josh, and Ramsay then ventured into animal lore: land, sea, and sky creatures that are and have been myths - but possibly real - in Wisconsin history. Sea serpents in Lake Mendota in Madison; Devil's Lake outside Baraboo; Pepi, the Lake Pepin Monster of the Mississippi River; a Lake Winnebago Monster; and the Tyranena legend in Lake Mills with the Rock Lake Monster. The word “Pleasiosaur” comes up a lot. We then moved to the sky as Ramsay discussed the legend of thunderbirds; and then hit terra ferma with stories about the Windigo, the Hodag, and more on land. Inside SponsorsJefferson County: Located along the Madwaukee Corridor between Milwaukee and Madison, Jefferson County boasts over 130 miles of paddle trails on 8 different rivers and streams, providing opportunities for paddlers of all levels.   Take in lunch or dinner at one of the many restaurants and pubs along the way. The county is a hub of bicycle manufacturing and home of Trek Bicycle; Jefferson County's 60 miles of paved and gravel bike paths are a must see for a scenic tour of the rural landscapes, offering seamless connections to communities. For outdoor winter fun, check out the counties 225 miles of snowmobile Trails, 14 miles of groomed cross country ski trails, ice fishing tournaments, and the famous Knickerbacher Ice Festival. The regions lakes offer exceptional fishing and boating opportunities on over 13,000 acres of lakes. One of the states largest and most celebrated dog parks is a must see for those traveling with their furry companions through the county. A Wisconsin staple, don't forget to book a show at the world famous Fireside Theatre. There's even the little Concord Zoo, a small zoo/animal area literally behind a Mobil station and the Concord General Store, right off I-94. Find out more at https://enjoyjeffersoncounty.com/. Best Western Hotels, with five hotels in Wisconsin's southeast region, with locations in Waukesha, Germantown, Kenosha, and two in Milwaukee – both Best Western PLUS locations with one right by the airport and one walking distance from games at American Family Field. Find out more at BestWesternWisconsin.com.  Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3klM56E

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring DodgeCounty; https://www.wicounties.org/counties/dodge-county/ The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: The conversation began with facts about bratwurst and Wisconsin's status as aleader in production – and consumption – of them not only nationwide, but worldwide. Eric, Josh, andMichelle discussed some of the larger well-known manufacturers of brats and other sausages includingJohnsonville, which ships all over the world. The conversation then delves into smaller crafters of bratsand sausages in shops and markets all over the state, including places like Trig's in Eagle River, LeroyMeats in Horicon, Miesfeld's in Sheboygan, JL Richards in Oregon, Meatski's outside of Pound, LakeGeneva Country Meats outside Lake Geneva, Bessey's in Rhinelander, Fifield Smokehouse in Fifield,Baraboo's Meat Market, Louie's in Cumberland, Maplewood just outside Green Bay, and plenty moreincluding rundowns of locations in Milwaukee. The debates about buying fresh vs. precooked, how tocook your brat, dress your brat… all those that can start alliances or adversaries among Wisconsinites –we cover it all. Cabin Merch: The Cabin has some great t-shirts, mugs, and stickers and the lineup of Discover Wisconsingear is fantastic. Order online at shop.discoverwisconsin.com and use the code CABIN for 15% offsitewide! Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3klM56E

Campfire Conversation: The discussion begins with an unofficial list of the 10 most photographed places in Wisconsin. They include Lambeau Field, the State Capitol, Holy Hill, downtown Milwaukee and the Art Museum, Grandad's Bluff in La Crosse, Devil's Lake State Park (specifically Balanced Rock and the Devil's Doorway), sandstone cliffs of the Wisconsin Dells, and more. Apurba noted numerous state parks, historic mills, underwater shipwrecks, and some state natural areas including Pewit's Nest near Baraboo and Fonferek's Glen south of Green Bay. Blaze chimed in with several Madison suggestions such as the Union Terrace and Picnic Point, the Chippewa Flowage in the North Woods, Bayfield and the Apostle Islands, and even a picturesque supper club with a unique interior on a lake near Tomahawk. Katie added Wisconsin's highest point, Timms Hill, along with more state parks, lighthouses that dot the Lake Michigan and Superior coasts, Cave of the Mounds, and a Milwaukee basilica. Visit Lake Geneva; Winterfest and the U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championships are coming to Lake Geneva February 1st-5th! Check out amazing, artistic creations from snow and ice crafted by teams from around the nation by the beautiful Riviera Ballroom on the shores of Geneva Lake. Enjoy incredible shopping, food, and fun as you marvel at ice sculptures throughout the downtown area, too. Find out more at VisitLakeGeneva.com! Cabin Merch: The Cabin has some great t-shirts, mugs, and stickers and the lineup of Discover Wisconsin gear is fantastic. Order online at shop.discoverwisconsin.com and use the code CABIN for 15% off sitewide!Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3klM56E

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring GreenCounty; https://www.wicounties.org/counties/green-county/ The Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and schooldistricts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee healthbenefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: Wisconsin's winters and love of winter sports make it a terrific place to get onyour ice skates. The state does, in fact, have several gold medal-winning Olympians who are native tothe state and trained here. That includes the Pettit National Ice Center in West Allis, an official Olympictraining center. Eric showcased the Pettit and Slice of Ice in Milwaukee's Red Arrow Park, which offers awarming house and Starbucks amidst downtown splendor. Eric, Ana, and Matt discussed a number ofoutdoor skating venues, which include Green Bay's Hy-Vee Plaza at Titletown; The Plaza in Neenah;Monona Bank RiverRink in Monona; The Edgwater Hotel's beautiful outdoor rink along with TenneyPark's rink in Madison; Wenzel Family Plaza's newer outdoor rink in Marshfield; Mill Street Pond inPlymouth; and Minocqua Winter Park in Minocqua. Indoor facilities were also showcased in Baraboo,Chippewa Falls, Appleton, DePere, Superior, Lake Delton, and Janesville. You can even skate on amaintained section of Lake Superior between Bayfield and Madeline Island when conditions allow!We certainly didn't have time to cover them all, so you can find a very comprehensive list of rinks acrossthe state here: http://www.sk8stuff.com/utility/lister_rinks.asp?stap=WI Wild Eagle Lodge; located in the mecca for winter recreation and sports, Eagle River. Enjoysnowmobiling, ice fishing, winter kayaking, winter hiking and more, just steps from your door. Rightnow, you can use the code “SAVE10DWWR” to get 10% off your stay through December 31, 2023. Findout more at WildEagleLodge.com! Best Western; When you're ready for your next adventure, they're ready to welcome you throughout 40Wisconsin locations. There are 10 in the state's south central region alone, five of which are pet-friendly! Plus, with their Best Western rewards program never expires; https://bit.ly/3zCCK3f Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3klM56E

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Price County; https://bit.ly/35xZdyJThe Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCX Campfire Conversation: Our favorite topics are often food and restaurants, and here focus on places across Wisconsin who have a focus on a “farm to table” menu, connecting directly with farms, dairies, cheese factories, butchers, bakers, and more to craft menu items using the freshest ingredients most directly connected to their sources. Eric shared a number of restaurants from Milwaukee's Story Hill BKC, Morel, Odd Duck, Braise, and Ardent in Milwaukee to the famous Driftless Café in Viroqua. Ana added more restaurants including Sheboygan's Trattoria Stefano, Il Ritrovo, and Field to Fork Café, which source ingredients from their co-owned Slow Food Market on the same downtown block, which connects directly to area farms, butchers, and chefs. She also shared places like Dragsmith Farms in Barron County, where their produce and microgreens make their way directly to so many restaurant tables across Wisconsin – including interesting items like Harry Beard Tongues. Meanwhile in Jefferson County, Crave Brothers & Kraemer Cheese are showcased for their sustainable approaches to growing and raising food, including anaerobic methane digesters that produce energy, multiple uses of by-products, and even a buddy system to help young calves socialize. Apurba discussed Indigenous farm-to-table options including Ukwakhwa Farms on the Oneida Reservation outside Green Bay and the selections that make it to places like the Cedar & Sage Grill House in Green Bay. She also discussed hydroponics, Organic ancient grains for baking and a number of specialty methods at North Star Homestead Farms in Hayward. More on farm-to-table can be found at WIFarmToTable.com. Shop Discover WisconsinGet your merch for The Cabin and other Discover Wisconsin gear, use the code “CABIN” and get 15% off!Marshfield Clinic; All of Us Research Program; https://bit.ly/3klM56E