[MUSIC]
Start It up
Yo Welcome
Yo, this is your boy, Guelly Guel.
This is Common Convo
And as you know, we've started this
project with
Clark County Health Department.
As we're talking about health equity,
we're talking about
the challenges that we
face right here in Clark County and
surrounding areas
with opioid addiction or
just substance abuse as a whole, where
we are in our mental health journeys,
our wellness journeys.
And so I'm excited to consistently be
able to bring in different leaders,
different health activists, if we will,
into the studio and
have an opportunity to talk about where
we are in our community specifically.
Things that we're doing right, things
that we're doing wrong,
things we can do different.
And I think it's super important that
we stay focused on
the task of how do we
heal, right?
And for that, that's gonna mean
different things for different people.
And so today, I have the amazing, and
Pam Clark with me, I say
that super amazing,
cuz I mean, she is phenomenal and does
a lot in our community.
I'm gonna let her explain a lot of it.
And as we have this conversation about
how you play a significant part
of making sure that we do have equity
in all communities across what,
all racial boundaries, all ethnicities,
LGBTQ plus, etc, etc.
So Pam, we, and excuse the loud trucks
and airplanes that are gonna go by,
because we're in my studio and
apparently there's
construction down the street.
And when you have that, it's there.
So if I don't delete it, you
heard it, it's not my fault.
You didn't know who's watching, or if
you're listening to the podcast.
So but Pam, getting into here, will you
tell our audience, who are you?
And what do you do?
Hey, Miguel, thank you
so much for having me.
As he said, I am Pamela Clark.
I'm the Minority Health Initiative
Director at Community
Action of Southern Indiana.
I am funded through the Indiana
Minority Health
Coalition out of Indianapolis.
Who am I?
I have been in public
health for over 25 years, Miguel.
Wow, you don't look older than I think
you are in 25 years.
I know it.
[LAUGH] Thank you so much.
But 25 years, my
son, I think was three.
And someone asked if I was interested
in an HIV AIDS coordinator's position.
Okay.
At that time, I said, sure.
I had no clue about public health.
I wanted to go into business.
So I did that job for two weeks.
And then there was a
position open up to pay more money.
And the immunization
coordinator paid good money, okay?
All right, let's go.
So I took that position to immunize
every child by age two.
After I took that position, I adored
open an opportunity for me
to have my own nonprofit.
My own nonprofit, 501c3, was Southern
Indiana Minority Health Coalition.
Under Indiana
Minority Health Coalition.
I tell you, I had 13
diseases to address.
I wrote grants.
I had that coalition for 14 years.
I had plenty of volunteers, and it was
located in Clark County.
After that, I went to work, after I
lost my mom to cancer.
I went to work for the American Cancer
Society for nine years.
I covered the Mid-South Division down
in the Black Belt,
Alabama, Mississippi.
And that program was a
community-based program where we
educated women on breast cancer.
So, but Miguel, I have, this has been
like a roller coaster ride for me.
Because public health and losing so
many family members to
cancer, it became personal.
My job became personal to where I've
gotta make a
difference in my community,
where I live, where my children are
growing up, where my family lives,
where my friends live.
I wanted to make a difference.
You ever did something, I think you do.
You ever did something where it's work,
but you enjoy it so much.
Absolutely, doing this right here.
This is, I mean, it is.
It's a tedious amount of work, and just
on the technical side, being in it.
But the other part is, is that this
work for me is still
about social justice.
So much of what I cover, I had a
conversation with
Tia some years ago, and
was like, man, if I could just get
paid, figure out how to
get paid, earn an income.
Having conversations about how we fix
the problems in our community,
I'd be cool.
And so yeah, absolutely.
Good, so you know exactly what I mean.
When I start talking about even
relationships, when I start,
because you can't do
this job by yourself.
When I had my nonprofit, I
was the only one on staff.
But the key was community partners.
Clark Memorial Hospital,
Clark County Health Department.
Just churches and other nonprofits.
Sitting at the table and representing
the people you look like.
I represent, whenever I sit at the
table, I don't care where I am or
whose table it is, I
represent minority health.
I represent people of color.
I represent Clark County.
And when I say that, that's also to
identify resources
that in our community,
that our residents can use those
resources to help them feel better.
To help them get their screenings, to
help them get their medication.
But it's not always that easy, Miguel.
We talk about that.
We always had these
conversations about access.
We're saying, well, medical supplies is
out there, hospitals are out there,
doctors are out there,
nurses are out there.
Why is it that one community is saying,
hey, I have access,
or another part of the community
saying, I don't have access?
What makes it so complicated?
The difference is that when we look at
certain areas of Clark County,
there are bus lines, there are
daycares, there are jobs.
But when we look at some of the other
communities, there's not a bus line.
There's folks who may not have
completed a college education.
Education becomes an
issue, they may be low income.
There are people, Miguel, I would go
door to door in some of the communities
in Clark County, and I would ask people
about their health.
I want to know how you're doing.
I want to know if you know about the
family health center that's over across
the street.
Have you used their services?
So what I would do is I
would ask those questions.
If some women may need a mammogram, I
had one woman that
did need a mammogram,
found a lump in her
breast, but she was comfortable.
She said, I'm okay, what I
don't know won't hurt me.
Well, see, as black folks, we do have a
tendency to continue with those myths,
to continue to say what I don't know
won't hurt me, and that's not true.
So I stood there and had a conversation
with her, told her
about the family health
center, told her about the breast and
cervical cancer program.
How many people do you see?
And I know I don't hate to say this,
because you gotta go
to where people are.
And I know that may sound old cliche,
but you have to go and
you have to have that conversation.
This lady did end up going to the
family health center.
She did end up receiving services.
But if I had not knocked on her door,
she may not have went.
You're saying you have
to go to where people are.
And we talk about services, we talk
about opportunities.
So I think there's a couple things that
come to mind for me.
And one is sometimes we
don't know the services existed.
The other part is, is there something
that happens in the black community or
economically challenged communities
where there's a trust issue?
And so what I don't know
won't hurt me is more so
of a reflection of the
trust in the community.
I don't trust this facility.
I may not trust this doctor, I may not
trust this service.
I wanna remain private and I don't
trust that they won't share.
Right, right.
And part of that trust, when you start
talking about trusting your doctors and
trusting your provider, it goes back to
the Tuskegee experiment.
It goes back to history because we pass
that information down
through generations.
And what we have to do is to make sure
that we continue to
educate individuals on speaking up for
themselves when
you're talking about trust.
My own personal experience of trust
with a doctor was when
my son was an infant.
And they assumed I was on Medicaid
instead of having health insurance.
They didn't ask for my health insurance
card, they asked for my Medicaid card.
And I've never been on Medicaid, but
when I talk about trust,
I'm referring to making sure that we
have that open
dialogue between our provider.
And making sure that some people don't
trust the prescriptions
that their doctors give them.
The conversations that I have are, if
your doctor gives you a prescription,
do you understand what a
teaspoon, a tablespoon is?
A lot of people don't understand that.
It's really about health literacy and
again being your own advocate when
you're talking about
trusting your own provider.
Another example is I had a person in
the community said that they did not go
to this particular place for
care because no one looked like them.
And she was a woman, a black woman.
And being a part of the community and
having this particular
organization on my board,
I had a conversation with the executive
director and she made changes.
She made changes because you're not,
again, you're working in the community.
You're connecting them to resources,
but you're also being that ear.
You're also, as I said, when I sit down
at the table, I represent
the people that I serve.
I represent the community.
Let's address that sitting at the table
because I know sitting at the many
tables in this community,
we might be the only ones.
And what you just identified is why it
is important for us
sometimes to, for us as brown,
black people to be in
an awkward space, right?
Being the only one at the table because
when we do voice something, it may be
the first time that anyone on that
board or on that committee has ever
heard of that issue.
And if you don't advocate, if we can't
give agency to the
people who don't have agency,
then the growth that we
hope will come doesn't.
And you deliver that.
And so you can sit here and say, yes,
things have changed.
And I've worked with directors and
programs who said, man, we don't have
people of color who work here,
so we'll adjust that.
Now, not everybody does that.
Some people don't care or
they have rhyme and reason.
We'll just leave it like that.
As I said, I was going
to play nice on this.
Yes.
You are being really good.
You are because I know I
know how this could go.
But yeah, you are.
That's OK.
You know, sometimes there's a time to
carry a spear and
sometimes carry a pen in the book.
And on this series, I think it's more
about let's educate.
It's a hard conversation
no matter how we look at it.
And because go ahead.
Because you have to you have to have
that conversation about systemic
racism, discrimination.
If I feel it, if someone in your office
mistreated me and I just leave,
you're not going to hear about what
happened or why I left.
You're not going to follow up with me.
But if I see Pam on the street and Pam,
this is what happened.
I'm going to go back and we're going to
have that conversation.
It's a conversation
that we have to have.
When you're talking about
discrimination, stress
brings on a lot of issues.
Stress brings on headaches,
hypertension, heart disease.
It plays a role in a
lot of chronic diseases.
So if I'm feeling-- and I know you
understand this from 2020.
Because I keep going back with--
I know we're being recorded.
But (Maurice) Miguel, I keep going back to the
stress that I felt in 2020.
The marches that-- the headaches that I
had, the concerns I had.
Now see, that brings
social determinants of health.
So when I don't feel safe or if I'm
concerned about my teenage child,
that's part of public health.
Feeling safe is part of public health.
So I have to make sure that I address
those issues when it comes to safety,
when it comes to
discrimination, when it comes to--
so when I'm being mistreated, when I
don't feel like I'm getting the care
that I need.
And it's OK to speak up.
Just like you guys marched.
Y'all spoke up in 2020.
Yeah.
I mean, I think 2020, 19, it changed a
lot for a lot of people.
And I think for some of us--
and I'll backtrack a little bit.
I had a couple of clients that said you
shouldn't be out there.
And most people don't even
know how I got to the fact
that I was protesting anyway.
And it was weird because my daughter
wanted to go protest
in the first night the things that were
going on in Louisville
in terms of Breonna Taylor.
And so we're in night two, and I'm
watching it in the office.
And Teah and shug call.
I want to go downtown, and I have a
voice, and I want to
voice it in my head.
I said no.
And I've been telling this story.
And I was like, nah,
I'm not taking you down.
You have no idea what
that is going to look like.
And they said, well, who
better to take me than you, Dad?
You know what it's going to look like.
You know what it's going to feel like.
And I was like, you know what?
You're right.
What we don't later
understand is the amount of trauma
that we cause to ourselves being in a
volatile environment.
It was a war environment, right?
Brought on by both
government and people.
And so we have to address that.
But it gave such a new voice.
I remember sitting on one
SI's board for some years,
and we would introduce this thing about
social racism or social equity
or economics and the fact that black
folks were being excluded and yada,
yada, yada, and so on.
And we would continue to
have these conversations.
And they wouldn't really go anywhere.
It's the math didn't math at the time.
And I think what 2020 showed the US,
but very specifically at home,
was that we are not far removed from
the racial inequities that
happen across the country.
And in Clark County, Floyd
County, and across the river,
in Jefferson County, Lou, there are a
lot that are happening
that's intentional.
And it does create home, right?
It is a continuation of the inequities
that we face systematically.
And no matter how many
PAM's are in the place,
no matter how many Miguel's are in a
place, if the powers don't be,
if our mayors and our governors, people
who are ahead of our health
departments, people who are ahead of
organizations and banks
are not paying attention or don't want
a culture of equity,
then we have to
address these things, right?
Because we were not--
I would like to say we're not safe.
For a lot of people, safety in this
community, being Black or Brown,
doesn't exist, right?
We leave the home with a concern that
we live in an unsafe environment,
both from institution and individuals.
And I think part of this
conversation, I think the fact
that Clark County Health Department
said, let's have a conversation,
let's have an open dialogue about what
health equity looks like.
I asked the conversation--
during the 2020, we were all sitting in
these Zoom meetings because of COVID.
And I asked the question there, we
weren't talking about health equity.
We were talking about wealth and
economic positioning of the community
as a whole.
And I remember asking a lot of the
leadership in that room,
what does equity look like?
You're saying you want to create it,
but what does it look like?
And that conversation never happened.
The answer never came.
And we're in 2023.
I want to say the
answer still has yet been--
I have yet to hear it, but what I have
seen is a few people,
a few organizations say, let's step out
here and see if we can figure it out.
Because we don't
know what it looks like.
And we don't have a plan.
Now, there are some folks like Mayor
Treva Hodges or Mayor Treva Hodges
over in Charlestown (Indiana) has done some
really unique things in terms
of hiring practices and programming.
And she's been boisterous about it.
Yes, she has.
You've got CASI, who is
doing a great deal of things.
And so we have pockets
of folks in the community.
The fact that Dr. Yezel
with the Health Department
is out here looking at it
and saying, how do we fix it?
How do we implement things?
What's missing?
Right.
And we have to fix it together.
Yeah.
We can't-- we have to have--
when I say together, not just
with the health professionals and not
just with those folks who
are community health workers, we have
to bring those folks
to the table from the community.
We have to have that discussion, that
raw discussion from those
that it really impacts.
Because black men are still
dying from chronic diseases,
from hypertension, from strokes,
from seven years
earlier than white men.
And till this day, this is 2022.
And we are still at
the top of the chart
when it comes to health disparities.
The gap has not been closed.
I remember when I first started, we
talked about healthy people--
I think it was Healthy People 2018,
Healthy People 2016.
We're talking about
Healthy People Close to Health
Disparities Gap.
How are we going to do that?
We have to also-- we can't leave out
the part of advocacy.
We can't leave the part out
of going to the state house
and being that voice and being heard.
There was one time they wanted to--
you ever talk about cutting the Breast
and Cervical Cancer
Program dollars.
Who do you think
that's going to impact?
That's going to impact women of color.
And I don't know if you
want to delete this part,
but we're also talking about abortion.
At the state level,
we're talking about abortion.
We're talking about now--
we're talking about women of color
now going back to the alley to get this
botched up job done.
Because we are passing laws that are
going to be so strict
in the state of Indiana.
Even if a woman has been raped, she's
not going to be able
to get an abortion.
We've had this conversation
on a couple of the podcasts,
and what does the world
look like post-Rovy Way?
But here's the even
crazier question is,
what does our community
look like during Rovy Way?
Some communities were already bad,
Indiana being one of them.
I had Dr. Rita on
here in the last session,
and we talked about the
fact that one out of every four
young women will be
sexually assaulted and abused
before she leaves middle
school, and men one out of six
young boys.
And these are reported.
So we already live in an environment
that is dangerous in that relationship,
but here we are
passing laws that will--
a lot of times they
say we're passing laws
because we want to protect
an unborn child or a fetus,
and I respect that.
But at the same time, we're also
passing laws, I think,
who are protecting predators.
And I once asked a question
of some elected officials.
I said, when you pass
this law, who are you really
protecting your friends, who you know
are out here raping
and pillaging, or
the people that you're
supposed to legitimately protect?
And I think we have to
continue to have that conversation,
because there's--
I'm firm believer that we have to
protect women's rights.
There's no reason we
should be making laws that
dictate what a woman
should or can or can't
do with their own body.
That is not freedom.
That's not independence.
And that goes against the American
concept, in my opinion.
Exactly, exactly.
And another, we don't know how we're
going to come out post-COVID with
mental health in our youth.
That's another topic.
Absolutely.
We've had an increase.
And to me, one suicide is too much.
That's too many.
So this past summer for our
annual Back to School event,
I had Center Stone set
up a table just for them
to talk to parents and
to follow up with parents.
Because I want to make sure that our
kids are feeling safe,
able to have a conversation with
someone, some adults,
somewhere.
They've lost friends.
They've lost family to COVID.
So we don't know how this
COVID is going to impact
is going to have on our
children, the isolation.
I think still with going to school
and sitting in a
classroom for some is a challenge.
Is it safe to say that
COVID, the last couple of years,
there's no going back to a norm.
This is our new norm.
Exactly.
And we have to figure out how
to thrive and be safe in it.
I wonder, even in
that, I wonder how many,
when we look at the
diversity of our community,
how many therapists, how many
psychologists do we have?
Are there black, brown, or women who
are of other ethnicities?
Because we're not just a
black, white community.
We have Africans.
We have Hispanics from
all different regions.
So we really have a plethora of folks.
And are we really addressing the needs
of the people in the cultures?
Is there anything you want to share?
As we have these conversations.
I would like for
people to just get involved.
Something that I'm working on,
and I don't know when I'm going to be
able to implement this,
but it's been near
and dear to my heart,
which is crime in the
African-American community.
Something that I would
like to do is to start out
with a panel of discussion,
but I like doing things out the box.
I don't like doing the normal things.
I want to have someone
there from the trauma center,
from the funeral home.
I want to have a parent there.
I want to have, I want
to have a real discussion,
but I don't want it to end just there.
A lot of times we
have town hall meetings
and we voice our concerns.
We get up, we testify, we tell all
these great stories.
And then it just sits there.
And what happens after that?
Again, I'm only one person,
but if I can get the
community involved,
the community to share.
And when I say that community,
I'm talking about folks
that live in public housing,
folks that live in a
million dollar homes.
I want to get all these
people together in one room
so we can talk about it.
And then we come up with a plan.
Bring our mayors,
our local politicians,
bring all of those folks in
to have that conversation.
Is it going to happen overnight?
No, it's not going to happen overnight.
But Clark County always
say we're not in Oz anymore.
- No, no.
- It's not where I grew up.
I've been here all my life.
And it is not, when
I'm going to tell you,
I was in the hospital, I
was diagnosed with epilepsy
when I was three.
I was in the hospital.
I was in the basement.
- Basement?
- Yeah, I was in the basement
because black kids could not go.
Black people couldn't go.
If you went to the
hospital and you were admitted,
you were admitted in the basement.
- That's unheard of.
- No.
- I mean, it's not unheard of clearly.
That's crazy.
- No, I remember that.
- Wow.
- Yes, yes.
My mother never had any complaints
in terms of how I was treated.
She didn't have any
complaints about that.
But things have changed,
but then again, things haven't changed.
Things have been covered up.
- Okay.
- So we have to talk about that.
And you talk about Dr. Yazone,
you talk about Rita Fleming,
and you talk about Treva Hodges,
and those are just to name a few,
that are, I call,
they're on the front line
for all people, for people of color.
They're easy to approach.
They're approachable to discuss issues
that even one
individual has a concern about.
How can we get together
and have those conversations?
And sometimes we think,
oh, I'm just one person.
That's okay.
- You can be one person.
- One person can do a lot.
- That's right.
- It's the spark that moves things.
And I love the fact you said,
hey, let's move beyond conversation.
We have to have action plans in place.
And so if we're gonna
address equity at any level,
if we're gonna address the crime levels
that are increasing in key communities,
then how do we address that?
And it's not just about policing.
It is about those who are in the
community owning it.
Having some degree of ownership,
whether you have a
mortgage or you're renting it.
There's different levels of ownership.
And I think the other piece is,
is that we have to look at opportunity.
Why does crime happen?
What are the reasons?
What are the things
causing for things to occur?
And how do we begin to address that
versus just saying,
hey, this is
something we need to police
and somebody needs to go to jail.
I think that has to be a thing too,
because when we live in a community
that is focused on economic growth,
economic means, financial value,
and we have
communities that are ignored.
And we have communities that are
intentionally ignored.
And we have to address that as well.
- Because that's their problem.
- Yes.
- That's not really our problem.
- Yes, when tax
dollars came from everybody.
- That's right, that's right.
And something else I
wanna bring up real quick
is that I served on a policy
that the state of Indiana is working on
called direct service workers.
And direct service
workers, as you know,
are usually, they're like our CNAs
and folks that are
caregivers, even, you know,
I was a caregiver to my mom and
caregiver to my husband.
And caregivers, I'm
paid a lot of money.
If we could get,
if what they're talking about doing
is identifying a
career track, a career path,
but also making sure that
they have the resources.
If a CNA wants to become a nurse,
to make sure that she has those
resources to become a nurse.
Because if we can pull
them up to another level,
because we have more people aging,
we have an aging population as well.
- Yes.
- Okay, now we don't like to put our
folks in nursing homes.
They're trying to keep
folks out of nursing homes.
So if we can get our family members,
if we can take care for our loved ones,
if we can also get our
direct service workers,
if we can get behind them
and the state can pass those policies
to help our direct service workers
to become more self-sufficient,
that would also help
our economy as well.
- We've got a nice, we've
got a lot to think about.
- We've got a lot to think about.
- We've got a lot to work on.
- But that's my day.
- Yes, wow.
- If you ask me, Pam,
what are you doing today?
- That's a long list of things.
- I'm also working on infant mortality.
I was telling you about the local food
purchase the excess
grant that Community Action
just received and
working with BIPOC farmers
and working with black farmers
and working those 20 counties
and getting fresh fruits and
vegetables to those counties,
to those folks that
live in those 20 counties
and that there's only five grants in
the state of Indiana
that Community Action
is the lead agency on.
So if you ask me about that,
I'm also over here working with doulas.
I'm writing a grant to try to get,
I have a couple of doulas
that are gonna be working
with our Head Start families.
I have doulas that's gonna be working
and talking about breastfeeding
and talking about
nutrition and physical activity
and really focusing on
that, the low income families
and making sure that those
women have what they need
and connect them to resources as well.
- How do we get all of
that out there into the ether?
- Ooh.
- Like, I mean, I'm in certain spaces
and I don't always get to hear about
the different programs.
When I do pick up a newspaper,
I don't always hear about
the different new programs
and in Clark and Floyd County, we
really don't have news.
- We don't have news.
- So how do we get that
information out to the people
on an ongoing basis?
- We had over a thousand people,
individuals that attended
the Back to School event,
a thousand, every year
there's more and more.
We went to the media,
our community partners,
we were on TV, radio,
just trying to get that
information out there.
That's because people are
having a difficult time,
hard time with getting
jobs or even retaining the job
because so many people have been home.
It's hard to sit at a desk when you've
been home for a long time.
- That hustle is different now.
- It is, it's a little different, it's
a little different.
So what we do is we use
our community partners,
we use our churches to
try to get the word out.
I just started diabetes class last
week, every Wednesday.
A lot of us, we
still call it the sugar.
- Yeah.
- I don't want to have a late,
she told me she was
diagnosed with diabetes,
but she said, "You know
what I call it, sugar?
I can't say the word diabetes."
- Don't wanna own that disease.
- Don't wanna own it.
- Well, I'm in this already.
- And we're still, we've got people
still, that's okay.
- We don't have to quiet enough.
- Because we can address that.
But how do you, so are you teaching,
and I know we gotta wrap up,
so in that diabetes
class and that sugar class.
- In that sugar class, probably.
- Are we teaching new ways of eating?
- Yes, we are.
And it's not, when I
say I'm having a class
and it's facilitated by
an RN, registered nurse,
when I say I'm having a class,
it's not where she's coming in and
she's lecturing you.
This is interactive.
We're actually doing food demonstration
and we bring in partners to do this.
- Can I come film that one?
- You can come and you
get a little blender.
I mean, you're getting
some things to take home.
Every class that you attend,
you will get something to take home.
We have activities that you do.
We play bingo, you get a game,
but yet, and still, it's educational.
If you have free
diabetes, if you have diabetes,
or if you're a caregiver
to someone with diabetes,
please come out to our
class at Community Action.
We start at that class
every Wednesday at 4.30.
- So how do I get it out?
I don't know.
I think people just call me and say,
"Pam, what are you doing?"
Sometimes I don't know where to start.
- What if they don't know a Pam?
How do they find you?
- They can call Community
Action, just ask for Pam.
- Just ask for Pam.
- And they'll say, "Pam,
the minority health girl,"
and they'll put you through.
- And we need your help.
- We need your help, yes.
- From service to farm.
So when does the
farming program launch?
- That we started, we received our,
I'm gonna say in four months.
- In four months?
- Mm-hmm.
- You're gonna look for that as well.
You're gonna look
for some fresh produce
here in Clark County.
- Well, thank you for joining me.
- Thank you for having me.
- It's been most informative.
I hope that if you're
listening or you get to watch,
you picked up some information.
This is specific to
Clark County, Indiana.
But if you are watching somewhere else
or listening somewhere else,
ask yourself, what are you doing in
your own community?
What information do you have?
What information don't you have?
Are you not getting it
because you're not at the table?
And sometimes we have to
move out of our comfort zones
and show up in spaces so that we can
get the information
and then bring it
back to our community.
I'm with Pam Clark, we're at CASI
This is your boy, Guelly Guel
This is "Common Conversations"
with the Health Equity Story.
Thank you very much, and
we'll see you next show.