Raise the Line

“My superpower is asking questions, and that's pretty good training for just about anything,” says Raise the Line guest Esther Dyson. She has decades of experience as an advisor to and investor in companies in a wide range of sectors -- from education, to healthcare, to information technology. Her current focus is Welville, an organization she founded that’s running a 10 year project aimed at developing models to improve health in small communities. “We're basically a coaching organization. We're not giving them fish and we're not teaching them how to fish. We're helping them build their own fishing schools.” Tune in to this episode of Raise the Line to hear Dyson speak with Osmosis Co-Founder Shiv Gaglani about her fascinating career witnessing the birth of the high-tech era and her nonprofit's current proposal to improve the health literacy of underprivileged children in Muskegon, Michigan by getting them involved in measuring their own glucose. Their ultimate goal? To help communities become healthier and more equitable places, and inspire other communities to do the same. Listen in to find out why Dyson believes the inability to think long-term has caused so many of our problems, and why the “human infrastructure” investments being contemplated n Washington are so important. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“What makes me successful? My simple answer is, 'I tried.'” Today's guest, first-generation entrepreneur Ashwin Damera, seems to embody the humility he advises to others. His personal motto? “Life is to give.” Damera's startup online education company Eruditus/Emeritus partners with top-tier universities such as MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, and Columbia, bringing accessible and affordable education to executives and schoolchildren alike, with the aim to impact one million students by 2025. Tune in to this engaging episode of Raise the Line with host Shiv Gaglani to learn about Damera's road to edtech entrepreneurship, and find out why he believes up-skilling and re-skilling may be the largest social problem of our generation. Hear about the COVID-accelerated “fundamental shift” in the way learning happens, and how the Eruditus/Emeritus SPOC model (small, private, online courses) serves the serious learner. Plus, uncover Damera's valuable tips for budding entrepreneurs on the best form of fundraising and what most influences the success of a startup. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Growing up in the Philippines, Dr. Emerson Ea’s dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the high cost of education. He studied nursing instead, and realized the work was more than just a science—it was an art. “That was quite a revelation,” he tells host Dr. Rishi Desai, and now he can’t imagine another path. Beyond decades of clinical work, Dr. Ea earned a Ph.D, a DNP, and became a professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, where he’s now a dean. The Covid-19 pandemic upended not just his educational universe, but his advocacy and research -- often focused on health outcomes in the Filipino American community -- which the pandemic hit with devastating force. But as he envisions the road to healthcare equity, Dr. Ea focuses on the power of education to enable the next cadre of nurses to create better healthcare systems. Tune in to hear how Meyers College of Nursing made the best of online learning, the essential role of Filipino American healthcare workers, and why a nursing education opens literally hundreds of career paths. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Ten years after taking his first opiate-based painkiller after dental surgery, today's guest, Dr. Richard Morgan, was arrested for conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and ultimately spent nine years in prison. “You start to do things that you can't believe you're capable of,” Dr. Morgan says, recalling the progression of his substance use disorder. Now, he is a full-time clinical instructor on track to regain his license, and was just named the coordinator of NYITCOM's Doctor-Patient Relationship (DPR) 1 course. In this fascinating and candid conversation, host Shiv Gaglani explores the moments that led Dr. Morgan down the criminal path, his time in prison, and the inspiring story of how he was able to rise from the depths of addiction to serve as a resource and motivator to others. Tune in to learn about the sometimes subtle signs and symptoms of opiate addiction, and why Dr. Morgan thinks that in order to fight the opioid pandemic, it's essential to share an opiate medicine curriculum with students early on. “I really feel this can make a difference.” If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

A fascination with data drew Dr. Brian Caveney to Labcorp, a lab testing and research company which has processed more than 50 million COVID-19 tests and runs more than half a billion medical tests per year around the world. For Caveney, all of that data provides opportunities for insights into how the healthcare industry can improve. As Chief Medical Officer at Labcorp and president of Labcorp Diagnostics, Caveney considers how labs can better analyze their findings, and how to best frame and communicate these findings to healthcare workers and the public. That’s a particularly urgent task in light of the COVID-19 crises, and an attendant crisis of public confidence in the medical profession. “The lab is often in the shadows of medicine, and may go back in that regard after COVID is over,” Caveney tells host Dr. Rishi Desai. But he hopes healthcare providers retain a deeper appreciation for how, if used intentionally, lab tests can bolster patient understanding and trust. Tune in to hear why political meddling at the CDC was so dangerous, the difference between law school and medical school, and how Labcorp managed huge demand for tests amid a fractured global supply chain. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

In the ongoing effort to increase diversity in the healthcare workforce, Dr. David Lenihan believes one key factor is being overlooked: medical school admission policies that prevent a broad enough pool of applicants from being considered. That’s why, when he was Dean of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York, “we pivoted hard.” Mindful that less privileged students often lack the benefits of a robust childhood education, they stopped considering freshman year GPA as just one of many changes. More recently, as he tells host Dr. Rishi Desai, Lenihan has applied the philosophy at Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico. In a nation where large swaths of people lack access to quality health care, Lenihan’s long-term strategy rests on a simple theory: “If we want graduates to go back and practice in rural America or urban core America,” he says, “quite simply you have to select students from those areas.” Tune in to hear about Lenihan’s plan for a medical school in St. Louis, his run for state senate, and what the MCAT’s verbal section overlooks. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Mentioned in this episode https://www.valerahealth.com/ If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

Helping to lead one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools is a challenge at any time, but Dr. Vineet Arora is stepping into that role when the fight against COVID is far from over. Although her work as Dean for Medical Education at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine is new, she is no stranger to Pritzker having served as a clinician, researcher and educator there for the past 16 years. One focus for her will be student and provider burnout and self-care, issues she is steeped in due to a research interest in sleep and her past role overseeing the clinical learning environment. “Friends don't let friends drive drowsy. Even some sleep is always better than no sleep,” she tells host Dr. Rishi Desai. Arora says one upside of COVID is that it has helped healthcare workers get in the habit of questioning their own fitness for duty. “The whole idea of a symptom check-in and not coming to work when you're sick is a sea change for medicine.” Tune in to this episode of Raise the Line to hear about her personal journey into hospital medicine, what physicians can learn from pilots, the importance of reverse mentoring and why she believes the post-COVID environment holds great opportunity for those joining the field. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

To his father’s occasional befuddlement, Dr. Zeke Emanuel’s prolific, eclectic, and high-profile career in medicine, academia, and government has been driven less by strategy than basic curiosity: “I do what interests me at the moment,” he tells host Dr. Rishi Desai. The impulse has at times put him at odds with the conventional wisdom, whether it was espoused by a Harvard Medical School dean or the World Health Organization. But he says his contrarian tendencies have also helped him anticipate dramatic turns in the world of healthcare from emerging bioethical quandaries around end-of-life care, to best-practices for allocating scarce medical resources on a global scale. “Trying to anticipate our problems and trying to solve them: That's been an approach I like to say has fueled my career,” he says. Tune in to learn from one of the country’s leading authorities on healthcare reform how we can simplify the U.S. healthcare system, distribute vaccines more ethically, and why Benjamin Franklin is “the most brilliant person ever born on the North American continent, bar none.” If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast

“If you want to reach marginalized populations in general, but in healthcare as well, you've got to build a bridge based on trust,” says Dr. David Carlisle whose mission, as leader of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, is to train people from underserved communities to return home to provide healthcare. From Carlisle’s perspective, the pandemic has highlighted the longstanding and devastating disparities in health status tied to race and ethnicity, which has added urgency to efforts to reach and improve care for these populations. As he has witnessed with testing and vaccination programs held at CDU, affinity is a key ingredient in building trust. “When the surrounding community became aware that there were people on campus who spoke the same languages, shopped at the same shopping centers and attended the same churches, our numbers skyrocketed.” Listen in to learn what how the Delta variant is impacting education this semester, and for a riveting, impassioned plea to the unvaccinated to protect themselves and their communities as well as the frontline healthcare workers who are risking their lives to treat COVID patients. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast