08 - Melanin & Medicine, with Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo
“That is the threat that we have in the many places that we work — the threat that if you’re too visible, if you demand too much, you will be removed, you will be restricted and you will be retaliated against. And it hurts my heart and it just every time we see it and it’s just trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. And a lot of times, we don’t have places to go, and the healer doesn’t have places to heal.”
As the country continues to grapple with the impact of racism in our communities, we wanted to understand how an institution like healthcare - which prides itself on scientific objectivity - was coming to terms with the impact racism has on doctors and patients alike. We reached out to Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo, a leading voice in advocating for black women physicians, to talk about her experiences as a doctor, as a patient and as a community builder seeking to heal with more than just medicine.
We sat with Dr. Uwemedimo on a canal separating her Long Island town of Baldwin, from neighboring Oceanside, New York. It was one of the first warm days of spring, and it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood was out with a leaf-blower or lawnmower, and every bird had a lot to say, especially the ducks and geese and laughing gulls that Omolara’s kids consider their pets.
Luckily, Omolara is practiced at staying serene amidst chaos. She was a practicing pediatrician for many years in the United States as well as in several countries across Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while also teaching at Columbia University Medical Center, and founding the organizations Melanin and Medicine — to support black women doctors — and the Coalition To Advance Antiracism in Medicine.
She holds a bachelors degree in biomedical sciences from the City University of New York, she received her medical degree from New York University School of Medicine and completed her residency training in pediatrics at the Boston Medical Center / Children’s Hospital Boston. She completed a research fellowship in health services research while completing a master’s degree in population and family health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Links and things:
Melanin & Medicine website - https://omolaramd.com
Coalition To Advance Antiracism in Medicine website - https://caamjustice.mn.co/
Transcript
Omolara:
All right. We are on my dock. I'm calling it mine, but our family's dock. This is in the backyard of our house. I chose this place just because, to be very honest, I will let you guys know I grew up in Brooklyn and in Queens. I'm a very city girl, and when we came to see the house, this place was like, "Oh, my god. Wow. Wait. Why do I feel ... " Because I've always been someone who is not as connected to nature. A little bit like, "Ugh."
The water's just calming, and I really love being out here alone because it's just allows for me to get some clarity. I'm someone who has a lot of thoughts, a lot of ideas, and sometimes this is the place to just sit and open up.
Emily:
As the country continues to grapple with the impact of racism in our communities, we wanted to understand how an institution like healthcare, which prides itself on scientific objectivity, was coming to terms with the impact racism has on doctors and patients alike.
We reached out to Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo, a leading voice in advocating for Black women physicians, to talk about her experiences as a doctor, as a patient, and as a community builder seeking to heal with more than just medicine.
Jay:
We joined Dr. Uwemedimo on a canal behind her home in Long Island, New York. It was one of the first warm days of spring, and it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood, from people with lawnmowers to ducks, geese and laughing gulls, were out and about enjoying the waterfront.
Omolara:
I was a child who was very ... Lots of nasal issues, sinus issues, so I was at the doctor a lot. I can't even remember her face as well as I just remember the relationship, my pediatrician, who I would see often. I just loved going there. I just loved ... She was always so inviting and happy. I was just like, "Wow."
A lot of times as children, you see adults, and you don't see a lot of adults who are extremely joyful and love the experience. I loved that. I was like, "Wow. What makes her that way?" I didn't know, but I put two and two and said, "Is it the pediatrics that she gets to play with kids all day?" So very young, I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician.
Then when I finally got to medical school, I couldn't connect with anything else. Actually, to be really, really honest, the thing that really sealed the deal was an elective that we did in peripheral vascular surgery. We had to deal with feet every day all day, and I was like, "If we have to see an adult foot, it's out." So that sealed the deal there. I would not see adults at all.
Jay:
Because of adult feet.
Omolara:
Because of adult feet.
Emily:
That's legit.
Omolara:
And it sealed the deal. There were other things, but I remember that. I was like, "Oh, god. No, no. This is horrible." But I literally loved kids. I really loved how you don't have to be serious. You can just be free, and that's what they connect with.
Emily:
I'm curious. When you're a pediatrician, you not only have this relationship with this kid, but you've also got the parent. You've got the family in the mix. Tell me about that relationship where you've got really two people you're caring for as a clinician.
Omolara:
Yeah. I think the thing about this is it's funny because when I went in, I forgot about the adults. I was like, "Oh, yeah. These little fun beings are actually connected to these humans." So it was in medical school when I started to get at that.
It really was kind of difficult in the beginning just because you see parents ... As someone who wasn't a parent, you see them and they are basically giving the thing that's most precious to them and trusting you with that in pediatrics. There's a lot of emotion around that. It could be negative or positive emotion.
Initially before I became a parent, I couldn't understand kind of, "Why don't you trust me? Let's just do this. Let's get this together." I used to get upset and just when there was a lot of pushback around things that I thought would be helpful.
After becoming a parent and really being able to now not have to sit in this space of, "Well, I'm the doctor and I learned these things," and really coming to a space of, "Oh, my god. Parenthood is crazy, and I have no idea what I'm doing." And that vulnerability, that lack of knowing everything, it allowed for me to get into a space where I could really connect with parents in such a better way.
Now it's funny because I stopped clinically practicing at the beginning of 2020 as we started to work on my businesses. And a lot of the parents when I left the practice were like, "We're following you. Wherever you're going, we're following you." There's this connection, I feel.
I told my friend, I said, "People are really territorial about their pediatrician, like very connected, and now the parents are the most important thing." So now that I transitioned into Melanin, Medicine, Motherhood, I did that because of the connection and the bond with women, and they became my favorite part.
The relationship, the talking, the connecting and the intimacy, where a lot of times they're telling you things that they're either ashamed or feel bad that they can't tell other people that "I don't know this," or "I can't do this." For right now, that's my favorite part of pediatrics.
Emily:
Hmm. So that connection to that other woman, that mother who's there, that parent and the dynamic and the space it opens up by virtue of just saying, "The door's shut. It's okay. Tell me what's going on. "
Yeah. That's beautiful. I know when we first met, you and I were at South by Southwest.
I heard you give a talk about some work you were doing about supporting some of your families who were immigrant families. And needing to find a new way to support them by bringing in things that you don't really traditionally think about in medicine.
In particular, you were talking about connecting with legal services. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that, and also what brought you to this place where you were looking for these non-traditional pairings to complement the way you were able to show up for your patients.
Omolara:
Yeah, that's rooted a lot in my background in global health. I'm the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, and so I was able during my childhood to go to Nigeria quite often and was really confronted with a lot of the equity issues. Didn't know what that word was at the time, but confronted with the fact that people who look like me, who are part of my family, had completely different lives and was angry about it.
So I actually spent a lot of my time from when I was 19 ... I remember telling my mom, "I'm going to Kenya. I have this one big backpack. We're going to go for three months with this group." And she's just looking at me like, "What are you doing?" I didn't know what I was doing. But I knew that there was a lot that I wanted to impact, and the most extreme of it was what I had seen was in sub-Saharan Africa, so I wanted to be connected with that.
When I finally had kids, and that became medical school and residency and then after residency living abroad, and when I finally came back to learn more about how to create programs better, a lot of what I had learned there was kind of there wasn't a disconnect between health and what people lived daily. Those 20 minutes that they spend with us are so minimal and such a small piece of what's probably contributing to their health.
So you got to see that, and it was always evident in the encounter that you couldn't separate it. I couldn't separate that. When a child came into my office and had no shoes, I couldn't say, "Okay, we're going to focus on your medicine and not talk about this elephant in the room of what's happening. Why is this ... " I couldn't talk about the fact that, "Why is your grandmother here and not your mother or father," because they've died of HIV, and what that means for your family.
So when I came back here to work and practice, that border, that wall between healthcare and the other stuff that maybe we'll send to the social worker, it always caused a tension for me. I was like, "Why do I need to send that out? If the parent knows me and trusts me so much, how come we can't we figure out ways to address this within here?"
So that was when I started thinking about what are the ways we can bring those things inside. And the people connected most were immigrants because I in some sense knew what they had left.
I knew and from my parents I knew that. They're coming here and not having the support, sometimes not knowing the language and feeling so far removed from the people who are supposed to be your support system, that there was like this kinship around immigrant families. And I knew so how much they needed.
I felt not at ease, so I think that was the reason why it was like, okay, I would see these children and they're perfectly fine from a health standpoint, but homeless or but unemployed parent, living with like three other families in one house. So it was about thinking about ways that we could integrate that.
That first started with just trying to find places that we could refer. And then it next became actual programs where we could put people into those places and be able to communicate and actually provide services in a meaningful way. It just keeps catapulting.
And that's how lawyers finally came into it because we realized a lot of the things we referred for weren't happening, even with a letter from the doctor. We realized that having lawyers on board was really helpful for families for those things that really a social worker just couldn't fix.
Emily:
Wow. From those connections, I mean, it sounds like obviously it makes a big social difference. Did it also make a clinical difference?
Omolara:
Yeah, yeah. That was the fun part. So just trying to look at that, one of the things that we have found when we were looking at a few things that ... Like well-child visits, I think, was one of the papers that we had been working on. Far and away, social support and housing were really important pieces for whether a parent would come in, whether a parent would be able to have continuity of care.
We found some really interesting connections that had been already published around food insecurity and obesity. And the fact that I can't tell you to eat these things if all you have money for is the cheapest things, which are usually the things that will make you obese. So yeah.
I think the issue for us a lot of times as physicians is even if it seems ... A lot of us are really scared to go there. We're like, "What can I do? That seems so large." It's about thinking about even the acknowledgement of what is the one thing that you could do. What's the most courageous thing that you could do in that visit for that family?
Yeah. So that's been interesting to see how creating programs like this not only cause more trust in the encounter where now parents were like, "Wait. You do this? You're going to help me with the immigration issue?" The trust and the bond that that has for the parents would be like, "Well, actually, he's also having this and this is also happening." So this person values me; this person listens to me. So that has been really helpful.
If people don't know about Boston Medical Center, it is like one of the holy grails of innovation. Everything that you can imagine, whether it be Reach Out and Read, which was a reading program that they instituted, whether it be Project Health, which turned into Health Leads, which was a program where they brought in navigators and they wrote prescriptions for housing, for food, whether it be tax preparation in the waiting room, that is the place that inspired me when I got there.
I saw all these physicians, and I was like, "What? You just don't see patients? You're working at the homeless shelter where you're doing ... You're working in Congress?" It was just like, "Oh, I didn't know physicians, like we had that breadth, that we could do these things." So that really was an inspiration to say, "I've seen it done here. Let's look at this new site that I have, and let's think about how it needs to be really formatted and adapted for the families that we see."
The reason why immigrants were such a focus was that my practice was in Queens, and every door you opened was new language, new person, new background. We needed to create a program that had that kind of diversity.
So when we thought about, "Okay, we don't have money. We don't have all of the things. What do we do? Well, we have students; we have a university. We have all of those things. We have a lot of them who are also low income and also come from the same backgrounds and speak the same languages, so let's start to connect."
That was how we started. We started with students, and that allowed for us to take a model that was unfunded, start it and then get funding. Little by little, I think it's now becoming everyone's realizing this is actually not just a nice thing to do; this is the thing that you have to do.
Emily:
Yeah. You have to do it. I wanted to pick up real quick on something you mentioned earlier, which was that it requires a little bit of bravery on the physician's part to start this. Why bravery? What does it take about being brave in that moment to talk about these subjects?
Omolara:
Yeah. In medicine, medicine has a certain connection to apprenticeship where you are learning from the people who have gone before you. That can be both good and bad, right? Because if everyone's done things a certain way, you're very likely to do it that way as well.
There's a certain amount of bravery, especially in medicine, which is very scientific and evidence-based, to say, "You know what? We're going to try this experiment, and we're going to do it a little bit differently." The concern, of course, has always been people's lives. It's doesn't go without consequence if the thing that you do is not helpful and actually harmful.
So there's a certain level of bravery to think differently. There's a lot of groupthink in medicine, and definitely for those of us who don't look like how medicine traditionally looked like is a lot of just bravery in one being in medicine. And then too, trying not to rock the boat. You're just trying to make sure you finish and complete.
But there's also kind of a bravery of recognizing when you have a shared experience with the people you care for and you know that what you're doing is not sufficient. And a bravery of going back to, "Do no harm," going back to beneficence and saying, "If this isn't sufficient, what is it that I need to do differently? And how do I do it and bring others with me?" A lot of times I feel we just need a few people to be that brave with us.
Jay:
You have a really impressive and brave career as a physician, a researcher, a leader in global health, a professor. But in another interview you had mentioned you had reached a point of pretty serious burnout. I know that burnout has reached epidemic proportions among our practitioners in this country. What are the factors that pushed you to the breaking point?
Omolara:
Yeah. I talk about something called the "value myth," so especially with the Black women physicians I get to work with, it's this idea that a lot of times Black kids, kids who are marginalized, when they have these dreams of what they want to do, a lot of times they are told, "That's good, but remember it's going to be hard. It's going to be this. You're going to have to work twice as hard, and it probably won't be valued the same."
So you grow up connecting your value, which should be inherent just as a human being on earth, connecting it to your work. And anything that stands as a roadblock, initially your first reaction is, "Maybe I didn't work hard enough and let me work a little harder. Let me do it this way. Maybe I need to add this on, get this degree with this too."
So even if you think about, we find Black women as one of the most educated demographics in the US and one of the most underpaid. And the idea is because we've almost been indoctrinated to this place of overworking, overproducing and undervaluing.
I would say that I was a definite victim to that. I'm also the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, I mean, Nigerian people who we just know that that's also ...
Emily:
Lot of pressure there?
Omolara:
Lot of pressure. But I think ultimately what happened was this idea of producing, producing: I'm going to be the best educator, I'm going to be the best clinician, I'm going to be the best researcher, and I don't want to give anyone an inch to say that I'm not doing my job to the fullest degree.
That looked like staying until midnight after seeing patients in the office, to finish those notes and make sure no one tomorrow could say, "How come that note wasn't done?" And all of these obsessive things that I look back now and I'm just like, "Wow. How many nights did I miss?"
So ultimately in 2018, I got to a breaking point. I actually had so much research going on that I actually was able to buy out most of my salary and to protect most of my time. But I was just still seeing patients one afternoon a week because my patients would've rioted in the streets if I wasn't there. I was the only Spanish-speaking doctor, I was the only Black doctor, and they were very connected to that.
So I got to a point where I was teaching at the MPH school. I was doing multiple research projects. I was seeing these patients, and none of my patients would no-show because they had waited months to see me. So I think I got to a point where I was no longer ... I usually could fake it, quote/unquote, like fake the, "Yeah, hey. I'm doing well." And then I got to a point where I couldn't and I knew that I had to step away.
So I had that discussion, which was really hard. And writing the letter was really hard, to tell patients that I'm not going to be practicing.
And because that's what had defined me for so long, it's like, "Who am I if I'm not that?" I filled up that time. So instead of taking the time off, I filled it up, did more advocacy. And six months later, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Emily:
Oh, wow.
Omolara:
I was like, "How did this happen?"
Yeah. So I did realize that even though I had taken that time out, I still was filling it up. I still had the same habits that were telling me, "You can't have this time off. You have to do something with it."
Emily:
Wow. So really not even giving your body the chance to rest and catch itself.
Omolara:
Yeah.
Emily:
Wow. You mentioned that it was important to your patients that you be there, not only because you could speak Spanish but also because you're a Black doctor. Can you say a little bit more why it's important especially for communities of colors to have Black doctors?
Omolara:
Yeah. Often a lot of us call ourselves the Two Percent, like Black women are 2% of all physicians in the US, and it's stayed like that for a very, very long time. Lisa Cooper did a really interesting study from Hopkins. She actually did a study where she observed and looked at the interactions and the health encounters of discordant patient/provider race, so meaning patient is Black, provider's white.
What she found was that those patients had a negative aspect a lot of times or a lack of affect, which meant that their faces were more kind of glossed over, not as dynamic or happy. They talked less in those visits. And in review of the physicians, in interviews with many of the physicians, they talked about how their patients seemed to be less motivated and less interested in their care.
So what we know is that there's a disconnect in even the US where 75% of white people don't have Black friends, don't have people who are their friends. Not people who they work for them or people ... But friends. That separation takes away the ability to truly share in the experiences, to really start to understand people and also start to understand the challenges that they face.
So I think that what we're seeing is we're seeing that Black doctors tend to be a safe space in healthcare, which a lot of times has not been a safe space, starting with the origins of slavery up to now. And many of the things I've learned were very racist, like the things around lung volumes and thinking that Black people had smaller lung volumes and actually having devices that had a race correction, which we know is not connected at all to race.
There's been studies recently where Black kids received less pain medicine than white children. Also studies where they asked med students about pain, and there's the thought Black skin is thicker than white skin among med students. So it cuts to a point where it's just so vital to have us, not only to care but also to be in those rooms to really advocate and say, "This is wrong how you're doing this, and this is how it needs to be done."
But it also leads to burnout because let's say I'm in a hospital. I'm taking care of my patients, but I always have my eye on the other Black patients who I'm not taking care of and just checking and seeing how are they doing. It does become emotionally taxing to always have to kind of look and make sure and add and reach out. You know?
Emily:
It's twice the work on you.
Omolara:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jay:
After the death of Dr. Susan Moore, a Black physician in Indianapolis whose pleas for help with her worsening COVID condition went unheeded, you tweeted, "One can't help but wonder whether the outcome would've been different if she did not undergo repeated delays in care that were undoubtedly due to her being a Black woman and the lack of respect and trust that we often face. These are the issues we face as we give up so much to take care of our patients even in harm's way. And when we find ourselves as patients, we are disrespected, devalued and dismissed. It cost Dr. Moore her life. Her medical degree did not save her from the racism that she endured while battling for her life."
In saying her degree did not save her, there's a heartbreak for a world in which it could have or should have been different. I'd just love to hear a little more about that.
Omolara:
Yeah. As someone who not too long ago was recently hospitalized, I had never had COVID, of seeing what that illness does. It's absolutely tragic. I know in my illness, one of the things that you think about is that you need all of that energy, all of your physical presence to fight that illness.
For her having to divide that energy that needs to be there to build up her immune system, to get to that place of recovery, and to have to divide that to fighting for her to be treated and to be seen, I just think about the stress, the increase in what we call cortisol. How her immune system now had to, instead of focusing on the disease, had to be focused on this as well.
I just worry, this issue of not being believed and there being delays in care and ultimately if we have questions, being thought of as hostile instead of inquisitive and curious. My heart bleeds for her because I think every Black woman physician who saw that had no ... It triggered because it was like, "That could totally be me." And when I saw her, I was like, "That was me." Right?
Because I remember having this infiltrated IV and asking, "Someone take this out. This is really painful." "We'll be right there. We'll be right there." And then taking it out myself and trying to hold ... You need people to fight for you. I often talk about why didn't she have a group of us as Black women physicians with her or that we could have rallied? I know I had that and that was so needed. I had friends who came in and were grilling doctors. They were like, "What's this?" and how to do this.
So I do believe that that day when I saw that, couldn't think of anything else. And I literally, as soon as I saw it, after, I just wrote whatever I wrote in that tweet because it needed to get out, because I couldn't function. And a lot of times we're expected to work after we see things like that.
Literally yesterday, seeing the video of the representative in Georgia and seeing her arrested for literally just being visible, taking up space and demanding access, I think that is the threat that we have in the many places that we work. The threat that if you're too visible, if you demand too much, you will be removed, you will be restricted, and you will be retaliated against.
It hurts my heart every time we see it, and it just is like trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. A lot of times we don't have places to go. The healer doesn't have places to heal.
Jay:
So you have created with, it's Melanin, Medicine & Motherhood, you've created a space for support and healing. Maybe you could tell us more about that.
Omolara:
Yeah. That's my baby. I have two babies, but that's the third one. Melanin, Medicine & Motherhood was after my diagnosis, and I did not ... If you could tell me when I first started medicine that I would create something like this, I would be laughing my heart out.
Melanin, Medicine, Motherhood is this space that I created while on medical leave. I was relearning how to walk. It took me about three and a half months after my diagnosis. Like I said, I had defined myself by work.
I remember I was in the hospital bed, and my brother called me. He was like, "Omolara, what brings you joy?" I sat on that question for like two weeks because he said, "You can't bring up other people, can't talk about how much it's joyful to help other." He said, "What brings you joy?"
Emily:
Hmm.
Omolara:
I was like, "I don't know. I don't know." So when I thought about it, I thought about the things that were most meaningful to me. I remembered that there was this theme about really being that space for Black women, whether they be mothers in the office or whether they be colleagues who are junior faculty or who are, I don't know why, always calling me and asking me, "Hey, what do you think I should do for this?"
Realizing that, "Oh, maybe that's a gift of mine." And I knew that there wasn't community because I felt isolated, and I knew that maybe there needs to be a community. Initially, I thought it was for Black working moms, but when I was creating a Facebook group for those moms, the ones who never spoke were the physicians.
And I knew it was because it's not safe. We a lot of times have to be the person with the answers, not the person with the questions.
So until there was a space ... That's when I decided to shift. So in January, 2020, I shifted completely and I said, "I'm creating a space just for Black physicians and women physicians." People were like, "Okay. This should be interesting."
I started with just a few physicians that I was like, "Hey, do you want to connect and talk about balance and figuring out what you want to do with your life and stuff?" I tried to create a curriculum around it, and it became a course. Then podcast and all of these things and resources and blogs, so it just started to just grow. Now we have I think about 45 women in the actual coursework and paid community, and we have about 1,350 in our Facebook group.
Emily:
Wow.
Omolara:
It really is a space where women can just share, but they feel like they can be vulnerable and not have to have all of the answers. Those freedom spaces are far and few in between. I often say I don't really want safe spaces or brave spaces. I just want to be free.
Emily:
Hmm. There's such an interesting intersection of that persona of doctor who needs to be the brave face, who needs to have the answers, who probably was one of the smartest people in her class for years and years and years and, as you mentioned before, had to work twice as hard at everything to get there to then take a moment and be like, "Well, wait a minute. What is my joy? What do I need? Where do I turn to?" It's not a skill you practice in terms of not having answers or being vulnerable.
I'm curious for you, what have been some of the most surprising insights that have come from that community for yourself?
Omolara:
I think how well we hide. What I mean by that is like when we finally engage with some of the women and we're getting behind everything, behind the degrees, the diplomas, the accomplishments. And how either scared or even just like devaluing their accomplishments or that lack of feeling like "I can do it."
Emily:
Like turning down your shine?
Omolara:
Yeah. Those things. I just, like you sit there and I hear from the women that the most powerful piece has been sitting there and realizing, "I'm looking at these women who are amazing, and they have the same issues and struggles that I have." I think all of them just feel validated. They're like, "Oh, okay. It's not there's something wrong with me."
This is a common shared experience that a lot of times is bred from medicine, bred from the society, bred from patriarchy, bred from white supremacy. A lot of times we've personalized it and thought it was an incompetence of us or a problem with us that we had to fix.
There are issues that we have to fix which have to do with our competence and owning our power. But then there are things where we spent so much time trying to fix us that we haven't had the time to demand that institutions and environments fix themselves too.
So now I see women who are deciding to open new businesses and start podcasts. I've seen women who have gotten off blood pressure medicine. It's crazy.
Emily:
Clear to impact once again.
Omolara:
Yeah, I was like, "Is this what this supposed to be?" But lost weight. All of these things.
Emily:
Oh, man.
Omolara:
It's like, "Oh, my gosh." Honestly, I am a facilitator. I'm a convenor. But the power's the community and we need community.
Emily:
In thinking about community, there's a beautiful sisterhood that you've created, and the things that you're working to dismantle so many of us to help break down these structures, dismantle white supremacy and dismantle these trappings of patriarchy that double down on it all the time. I heard in another interview make a point that I often think about, is that especially as a white woman wanting to help do this work, I mean, I did not show up as a ally but as an accomplice. So I'm wondering if you could tell a little bit about accomplice-ship.
Omolara:
Yeah. I wish I could say that those words came from me, but they didn't. But I loved it as soon as I heard "accomplice." Because a lot of times allyship is, the epitome of it is really "I'm there for you. I see what you're dealing with." But there's no risk to be an ally.
A lot of times Brittany Cooper talks about whispered allyship, one of my favorites, where you put yourself out there and later get a email or a pat on the back after the incident about how awesome that was. That's not helpful. Not.
So accomplice really is the idea of what is it that you have to lose by doing this, by saying this? What are you risking? Because the person who's going through it is risking everything. They're in this space, and you get to have a choice of what it is: Do I keep my privilege or do I put it on the line?
Accomplices really are the people who are going to be in the middle of media and say, "That was absolutely outrageous. You don't need to be saying that," and saying it to people who they know. Possibly could either jeopardize what their future is, but saying it because it's the right thing to do.
So when you think about an act and when you think about how I'm helping, what is it that you are putting out there? What are you putting out on the line? When I think about accomplices, I think about people who are willing to listen, willing to put themselves on the line. And we need you.
One of the things I've said is that a lot of times when we complain about things, they go in the Black people complaint bucket never to be seen again. But when you'll say it and you're in that circle with us, they now [inaudible 00:42:38] over, and we are happy about that. We're excited about that.
I think more people who are doing that and saying, "I'm going to use that privilege that I have in real time, whether or not it costs me fill-in-the-blank," that's an accomplice.
Jay:
Right.
Omolara:
It's not just you reading the book. Now it's like, 'What needs to change?" Camara Jones, who is a goddess in my eyes, one of the former presidents of the American Public Health Association, talks about racism like in the airport that moving walkway, the one I always take because I never want to walk.
So that moving walkway in the airport and how you can just stand there and do nothing and just be a good person, and racism is just moving along and you're there. It's like you actively turn around and look ridiculous to all the people who are standing there and are walking the exact opposite way. That's what anti-racism looks like.
And it takes effort to walk ... You're trying to get to the other side, and it's going to be hard because racisms just moving. It's like "Come on. You don't have to do anything. Just stay still." So I think of it's going to be active.
It has to be active. You have to think about this is not going to be easy work for you.
Emily:
Yeah. And I think a lot about of not just risk we're taking because an interesting idea, but what can you do to push against the comfort that white supremacy promises you, right?
Omolara:
Mm-hmm.
Emily:
It's more comfortable to stay quiet or to whisper it behind the stage. It's more comfortable, and the privilege doesn't redistribute itself. It takes active effort to do on behalf of others.
Omolara:
Correct, and I want to say this. Because one of the things, I had a master class yesterday for the women, and it's called Strategies to Navigate Racism as a Black Woman in Medicine. One of the ending slides that we talked about was what about you when you commit a microagression? Right?
Emily:
Mm-hmm.
Omolara:
Because don't think that we got a whole bunch of privilege. I have a whole bunch of privilege as a Black woman who gets to live in a place that she can own and has certain degrees and a certain income. It's the same thing, like you said: How do I get uncomfortable for people who don't have that? For people who ...
I have an invisible disability but don't have a visible disability. I am part of the norm in terms of the majority, in terms of my sexual orientation and all of those kinds of spaces. Where am I in the in-group or the, quote/unquote, "out-group"? And how do I make sure that I am making space for people to come in?
Because it's not necessarily inclusion, I like to say, that we want. I don't really like diversity, equity, inclusion, because that lever then doesn't stand on me. It stands on the people who have excluded us to finally say, "Okay. You can come in."
The thing is, I've never asked to belong, never asked to melt into your melting pot. What we want is access. The levers of change, we want access to that. What Representative Park Cannon wanted was access.
Jay:
It seems like you've brought together in a powerful way individual and community medicine both in your public health work, in your creating community space, healing spaces. There's also a powerful archetype of the wounded healer, and that seems like you embody that. It brings power to your leadership and your medicine when you share your journey with MS. It's almost revolutionary to the perfect, all-knowing, infallible doctor that inhabits our imaginations.
Omolara:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's not me. What I found really early before my diagnosis was, like I said, a young mom not knowing what I was doing, but having to be the person to tell mothers, "Actually, you should do it this way." And when I finally was like, "I don't know how to do that either," let's sit and talk through this. Let's try this. What do you think?" when that vulnerability showed up, in medicine a lot of times we're taught to put that [inaudible 00:47:45] there, and that's professional.
I haven't found that to be the case in the medicine I practice. I've found that the most beautiful relationships I've had are with moms who saw and know my kids' names and also know what I share with them. And being able to share the fallibility of ourselves, I think brings our humanity to a place where people feel more trust and feel like, "Okay, she's human and she has some information that could help me."
So then it becomes a place where you can have shared decision making because I feel like, "Look, you're the expert at this little human being you've brought here. I'm not. You're with this person all the time, so you tell me some, I'll tell you some information, and I'm pretty sure that we can come up with something that might work." That has been revolutionary.
I think in the work and thinking about community, some of my ... We do something weekly called Office Hours, but we do Spotlights. And what we do in Spotlights is that it's kind of the epitome of not having to be the guru, just the contributor. So I used to think, because that was the medicine in me, that I had to be the one with all the answers, and "This is how you should do it."
What I found the power was in the diversity of the perspectives that the women who decided to come into this sacred space held. In Spotlights, you get two minutes, three minutes to talk about what you're struggling with, and then there's four or five minutes for the group to weigh in and say, "What about this?" "Oh, I know this person who does this," or ... And you get the benefit of it.
And after, I will potentially, if I need to, say something maybe to add. Oftentimes, I don't have anything to add because the community's that powerful. The people who are affected know what they need, and it's whether or not we're willing to ask them. The patient who comes in knows what she needs. She's asking us to see what is it that we can contribute to helping her find the solution.
Jay:
Mm-hmm. And it gives her agency and empowerment that in the long term is critical to long-term health.
Omolara:
Exactly.
Emily:
That's such a paradigm-shifting way to think about it, though, because so much of medicine is God in a lab coat, right? And "This is where you go for your pill," and "Thank you very much, Doctor," and that's the thing.
But this is a foundationally different way of even conceiving of ... You even start with conceiving of health differently, with all of these other things that are contained within it. It's a really powerful thing to not only have that multiplicity of definitions for health, but multiplicity of definitions for healer.
Omolara:
Mm-hmm.
Emily:
And who then contributes to that?
Jay:
It's more of an ecosystem approach.
Omolara:
Exactly. Yep.
Jay:
You have the barnacles here and the water and the gulls and the reeds and the clams, and they're all working collaboratively.
Omolara:
Together.
Jay:
And there's no one is orchestrating it.
Omolara:
Correct. Exactly. And no one's the leader, right?
Emily:
Mm-hmm.
Omolara:
No one's like, "Without me, this could not exist."
So yeah, we have a lot to learn.
Emily:
Absolutely. Well, one of the things we like to do is a segment called Far Afield, where we ask people to think about the things that they're learning about, they're interested in maybe as a hobby or something which they got obsessed with and just happened to gone on a Wikipedia death spiral and they're way too much about.
But in the spirit of bringing lots of new things to learn into the mix in these conversations to enrich this ecosystem, can you tell us something that's maybe far afield from what we would expect from the conversation we had so far, but is something that you're passionate about or super interested in?
Omolara:
You know, I have two girls, and gosh, they're like role models. I'm just like, "How do you guys just know at six and eight? That's not fair." I have been really interested in how do I not mess them up. That's been a really interesting thing for me. And how do I potentially not let society mess them up?
I think one of the things that I will say that I've been totally obsessed with is what are the different ways that we can start really early with helping kids, and girls in particular, start to find who they are and also to live for themselves unabashedly. My daughters, we've been on a death spiral in shock pink.
So let me tell you about ... And they have a group that they have. It's called Entre Leadership. Well, Entre Leadership Girls Academy, which I put them in. Which is basically they meet on Tuesdays, and they talk about business ideas and what they want to do and what it takes to ... Negotiation was bad because they're using that against me now.
Emily:
Wow.
Jay:
Yeah, careful.
Omolara:
But yeah. They did that. But one of the things that I think in [inaudible 00:53:28] that was funny because you sit there and they're learning all these things about everything. So I had this pitch that I was doing for our practice, Strong Children Wellness, and I told them, "Everyone be quiet. I'm going to go downstairs because I have a meeting and it's a pitch." And my six-year-old comes to me and she's like, "A pitch. Well, how much are you asking for it?" I told her the number, and she's like, "Are they seeking equity?" I was like ...
Jay:
She's six.
Omolara:
I was like, "No. This is not ... " And she's like, "Oh, good. Okay, okay. Good. That's good because I don't think you should give it." I was like, "Who am I talking to?"
Jay:
Incredible.
Omolara:
So it's that time together where we're sitting there and they're talking about, "Yeah, he shouldn't have spent so much on the merchandising," or whatever on the ... And it's just like, "Wow." I love ... Because as Black little girls ... I know nothing and learned nothing about money when I was little. I learned not to like, that money was bad and that people who had money were inherently not people who ... It had to be either/or. Right?
You had to be a starving artist or ...
Emily:
A healthy relationship with money.
Omolara:
It's like beautiful to see them be like, "Well, this is what I want and I'm going to do this with it. I'm going to help these people with it. I'm also going to have this nice thing and I'm going to be ... " It's just nice to think about ways that we can empower women to feel like they should get what they deserve. I love bringing them into the business and starting to hear their thoughts and ideas.
And then they've talked about when I die. I'm like, "I'm not even 40 yet." When I die, "I'm taking over and we're going to do this and we're going to change this." I'm just like, "Okay, can I get a break here?"
Emily:
That's incredible. It's almost like an MBA before they get to junior high.
Omolara:
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I think it's exciting for me, and I'm just trying to think about ways. Somebody talked about when you see something enriching your child, what are the ways that you can take that and help to enrich other children?
Emily:
Mmm.
Omolara:
So that's been something that I'm really thinking hard about, like thinking about how with the coaching and the thing that I do, how do we get a little earlier and a little earlier and a little earlier? So ...
Jay:
Last weekend, we just moved into spring officially. So in the spirit of that, I'm curious about what seeds are you planting? What feels like fertile ground in the things you're working on?
Omolara:
Oh, I mean, what seeds am I not planting? Gosh. I'm a ideator, so that's problematic many times for my sleep. But I would say the seed that I'm planting right now is trying to get a little bit better in terms of like I'm a very high introvert, like high, high, high introvert, and starting to work on how do I find more space to connect with others? I have loved the pandemic, unfortunately, as many introverts have.
Emily:
Same.
Omolara:
Yeah. But I do realize the power of that connection and not even so much for me but for others who have needed that. So I've been doing some things, like starting to write notes to my friends. Like write it and then take a picture of it and send it to them as texts in the middle of the day. Just little things to make sure that they remember that I remember them. So I'm starting to do more of that. It's a slow process, trust me, but those are some things that I'm working on.
Jay:
Wow.
Omolara:
I think one of the things that is really important is that the lack of silence. I know we came out here and we were like, "Okay, this is good." But I'm actually happy that it's not silent. Zora Neale Hurston, she has this quote that I always talk about, and it's not a funny quote or a happy quote. She's just like, "If you're silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it."
And so I just enjoy and revel in noise now. I'm saying what I want to say, saying how I want to say it, letting people know what I want, what I demand, who I am.
Yeah, I feel like that's my anti-racism, honestly.
Jay:
Well, thank you for being with us, spending the time with us, inviting us to this place. And for bringing your heart and your wisdom and your truth and your voice.
Omolara:
Thank you so much for this opportunity. I really enjoy this. I was like, "We're going to be outside? Okay." Just tell me ... And it's absolutely so different. So congratulations on your being different and going with it and being innovative. It's exciting. So thank you.
Emily:
Thanks from listening to Wild Talk. This episode was produced and edited by Matt Dellinger and Jay Erickson. Visit our website, wildtalkpodcast.com to see photos from each episode, related links, and more information about our guests. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to rate, review and share with friends. Be well, and we'll see you out there.
