Since the AHF’s founding, public health has been completely redefined not only by vital cultural changes but also by unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, get an inside look at how AHF senior leadership is changing their approach to meet the evolving public health needs beyond their initial mission.
Redefining Public Health (ft. Tracy Jones & Whitney Engeran)
Where illness, wellness, food availability, and even race intersect
GUEST BIO:
Tracy Jones: Senior management team for AHF, as well as the National Director of Mobilization Campaigns. Her work is centered largely around advocacy, and she also works closely with an affiliate organization based in her home of Cleveland, Ohio.
Connect with Tracy: LinkedIn
Whitney Engeran: Also a member of the senior management team, serves as the Senior Director of Public Health. In this role he oversees the AHF Public Health Division, which manages HIV testing, STD testing, linkage to care, as well as select advocacy and public policy work in the United States.
Connect with Whitney: LinkedIn
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[08:27] – Addressing National Public Health Issues
How a new pandemic caused the AHF to rethink public health
COVID-19 has revealed significant areas where our current public health system falls short. One such area is in the lack of coordination between the literally thousands of local public health institutions, which can hinder a unified public response to outbreaks and other urgent issues. AHF is exploring ways to better connect these organizations for more efficient and consistent responses.
[11:36] – Expanding the Meaning of ‘Public Health’
“It’s not just measles and mumps.”
AHF has also been at the forefront of expanding what it means to administer public health. It’s gone beyond vaccinations to include education, informing the public of their public health rights and responsibilities, and helping improve the lives and wellbeing of people of all backgrounds and levels of health.
[13:48] – The Power of Advocacy
How one voice becomes many
This week’s guests note how it can sometimes feel like one voice can be ineffective, but the power of advocacy is that one voice can influence another, and another, and eventually those unified voices can influence a person or organization with the power to make change. That’s when real progress happens, and it all begins with individual advocacy.
[20:17] – Expanding the Reach of the AHF
From AIDS to food shortages
Today, the AHF is working with their affiliates on a unique type of pandemic— the pandemic of food deserts, which describe residential areas without easy and nearby access to healthy groceries. This inequity often divides along economic, class, and racial lines, making the matter even more pressing.
[24:52] – Race and Public Health
Many public health issues must be viewed in context of race
The connection between race and public health inequity is becoming more and more apparent with better, less biased research, and the results are troubling. Still, organizations like the AHF are working to eliminate these inequities and ensure that everyone has the same level of access to public health facilities and programs, regardless of race or background.
RESOURCES:
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ABOUT AHFTER HOURS:
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is the world’s largest HIV/AIDS service organization, operating in 45 countries globally. The mission? Providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy for everyone, regardless of ability to pay.
The AHFter Hours podcast is an official podcast of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, in which host Lauren Hogan is joined by experts in a range of fields to educate, inform, and inspire listeners on topics that go far beyond medical information to cover leadership, creativity, and success.
Learn more at: https://www.aidshealth.org
ABOUT THE HOST:
Lauren Hogan is the Communications Manager for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and has been working in a series of roles with the Foundation since 2016. She’s passionate about increasing the public visibility of AIDS, the Foundation's critical work, and how everyday people can help join the fight to make cutting-edge medicine, treatment, and support available for anyone who needs it.
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Lauren:
Check out what's new and happening from leaders in the community. Learn the ins and outs of advocacy, events, and activations. Get involved, make an impact, and do something that adds value in your life. AHF is the world's largest HIV/AIDS service organization, operating in 45 countries globally, 16 states domestically, including DC and Puerto Rico. Our mission is to provide cutting-edge medicine and advocacy, regardless of ability to pay. Hello, and welcome to The AHFter Hours Podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Hogan, serving as your liaison to take you on a journey to learn more about AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Lauren:
Our topic for today is learn, lead, act. Before we start the show, please make sure to remember to check out the show notes so you can follow along. Now, let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to AHFter Hours, the AHF podcast, and today I have two very special guest with me, Miss Tracy Jones, as well as Whitney Engeran-Cordova. Welcome, you guys.
Whitney:
Hi.
Tracy:
Hello.
Lauren:
We're so happy to have you guys today. So really quickly, just some quick guest introductions. Tracy, can you just give us some background in what your role is here at AHF?
Tracy:
I am a part of the senior management team for AHF, and I also am the national director of mobilization campaigns. So I do a lot of the work around advocacy, as well as I work with one of the affiliate organizations we have in Cleveland, Ohio, where I'm based.
Lauren:
And Whitney, what's your role?
Whitney:
So I am the also on the senior management team, and I am senior director of public health. I oversee the AHF Public Health Division, which is in charge of doing HIV testing, STD testing, linkage to care, and some advocacy and public policy work here in the United States.
Lauren:
So I think it's safe to say that you guys wear multiple hats, to say the least, here at AHF, right?
Whitney:
It's a prerequisite.
Lauren:
So I have to ask you guys: What makes you guys stay at AHF? What about AHF do you guys love so much?
Tracy:
We'll do age before beauty. Go ahead, Whitney.
Whitney:
Thank you so much, Tracy. I so appreciate that. So what makes us want to stay at AHF? Couple things, I think. One, I've never in my life had a job where the work that I do can have an impact on such a large scale. So AHF has been in a period of dramatic growth over the last... I've been with the company now 15 years. And since I started, the company has grown so dramatically, and with it, our ability to affect change in the world and to help our patients and to help people living with HIV, and also to really advocate on behalf of issues that we care about deeply. So it's exciting to come to work every day and know that you might be able to change the world a little bit every day. So that's what motivates me. Yeah, that's what motivates me: changing the world a little bit every day.
Lauren:
Beautiful. Tracy?
Tracy:
It's a pretty cool place to work. I hear from friends and family... It's like, "So what do you do?" You have the coolest job on the planet, much like Whitney, to get up every day and know that potentially you're going to make a difference in someone's life, whether that's being able to provide them a food bag, helping them with a medical condition. But most of all, the work we get to do now changes everything across the globe. There are so many committed people that are so invested in the things that other people take for granted. It's important to us, and to be a part of a team of folks that see the world that way is pretty incredible.
Whitney:
Can I just add that... One of the things that has really been exciting for me is that if you can dream it and you can build it, then you can do it here. And we have the opportunity to create programs, to be very creative in the way we do things. And that really has to do with the fact that our CEO, Michael, is really all about people finding those things that will make a difference, finding that one thing or finding that innovation, or being willing to kind of step into doing something differently than it's been done before.
Whitney:
And I think as a culture here, we really embrace that, and that's really exciting to kind of dream up things and then get the chance to try to do them and execute them. It's pretty exciting, and I think that extends all the way from what Tracy and I do to everybody that works for AHF. If you have a great idea and you can pitch it and make it work, then you have the chance to build it. And it's kind of exciting to be in a place that allows that.
Lauren:
I think that's very beautiful. So Whitney, I'm going to come back to you with another question, because you do head our Public Health Division. So what can you tell us... What is the current state of public health? And I think what's unique probably about your perspective is you have a very broad view, because like I said, you head our entire Public Health Department. But Tracy, I'm also going to ask you after Whitney answers, because you have more of a localized view, being that you live in Cleveland, Ohio. So Whitney, go ahead.
Whitney:
So how long do we have for this podcast? I think that the... Look, the state of public health is perilous in a lot of very significant ways. Our job at AHF is primarily to take care of people living with HIV. HIV is what made AHF start, and Michael and the folks that founded AHF began this looking at how to keep people from dying on the streets, and help them die with dignity. And so the place we are in now is in the midst of a global pandemic that is not another one other than HIV. As a result of which, it's really had to make us take a hard look at what the public health infrastructure is in the world, both from how we've addressed COVID, how we've addressed Ebola, and how we've addressed HIV. So what I would say is, one, we're in a very unique position to have a significant impact on the public health infrastructure in the world, quite frankly, because we have spent the last 30 years figuring out a public health infrastructure for HIV and AIDS.
Whitney:
And that's given us a lot of experience on how to overcome barriers, how to move equipment, how to make programs work in different parts of the world. We're in 44 countries. So we've had to learn a lot, and that experience is now having application. With COVID, Ebola, other kinds of public health threats, we're in a position now to help. So for instance, as we're speaking here today, some of our teams are putting together a charter plane of relief supplies to send over to Haiti, because Haiti just had another earthquake, and got hit by a tropical storm within two days of one another. And so our colleagues in Florida are putting together a plane, and they're getting relief supplies, and they're putting those supplies on a plane and figuring out how to get it to Haiti, the people who need it. So the state of public health is perilous, but we have some solutions. And very quickly, Michael has been spearheading, our CEO Michael Weinstein has been spearheading an effort along with the Global Public Health Institute from the University of Miami, which we helped to found, to really talk about what a new global health convention needs to look like in the world.
Whitney:
How can the world address global public health issues? And I'm hoping that that really gains some traction and gets somewhere because we need it. We need it. One other quick example, COVID has been a problem in this country because not only do we have one department of health and human services, but we have, oh I don't know, 15 or 1600 health departments around the country, all of them with their own ideas about how to deal with things. States, local health departments, state health departments, federal health departments, coordinating all of those and getting it done in a way that's effective has been a monumental and Herculean task for people. And we have to figure out a better way to do it. Now I'll shut up.
Lauren:
No, we appreciate the thorough answer because this is what listeners really want to know, what's happening in the state of the world in terms of public health. So Tracy, please lend us the localized view being that you're in Cleveland Ohio.
Tracy:
Absolutely. We have an affiliate program that we call the Federation, which is nine organizations that are small, independent nonprofits that are joined together under the HF umbrella. The vision of our fearless leader Michael. And those organizations are doing Herculean work around public health. They themselves, a lot of them are many public health organizations. To answer your question, HIV is a public health issue. Racism is a public health issue. Housing is a public health issue. Food insecurity is a public health issue. All of those culminate together under what we now know to be the greatest health crisis in our history. It will be what goes down as the issue that affected us next to HIV. They both are on parallel tracks.
Tracy:
What we are doing locally is reminding people that those services have to be addressed and we've got to do it on a two prong approach. We can't drop one to pick up the other. Because in lots of ways, the epidemics are similar. The pandemics are similar. So the state of public health, as Whitney said is... For me, it feels different than it's ever felt before in that everything feels so serious. When you think about telling someone that they've got an illness that's going to change their life, that's real serious stuff.
Tracy:
But then atop that is the worry that sending your kids to school is a problem, sitting next to someone at a barbershop is a problem potentially, if you're not careful. So those every everyday tasks feel right on the surface. And then you cover that, overlay that with some of the governmental issues that we're experiencing with folks going after the right to vote for communities of color, that tells you that it is tenuous. This is not the time to get your head out of the game, pay attention, keep your head on a swivel and get in the game.
Whitney:
I think that's such an important point Tracy just made because, we have to expand what we think of as public health in general. It's not just measles and mumps vaccinations. It's also how we keep one another safe. And I think one of the tensions we're seeing right now that makes this so difficult is the tension between what we need to keep one another safe and how we feel about our own persons, whether it's taking a vaccine, or wearing a mask to protect the other people around you. What we're having to confront now as a society and up to and including racism and how we treat one another. These issues are all colliding at a time that is perilous for all of us. From our health, from a deadly disease that is surging again in this country, to the scourge of racism, which has troubled this country since before it was founded.
Whitney:
And coping with all those issues, we're having to take a new look at what does public health mean? What does it mean for us to protect the public's health? And we now know that health has much more to do than just the physical health of your body, but whether you're housed, whether you're fed, whether you're treated equally. And I think that's such an important point Tracy made. And I think we're seeing the evolution of that now really in our thinking. And I hope that AHF can help to lead through that process. And we are doing things like housing and now we're starting up a food program. And like she said, the Federation is such an amazing conglomerate of legacy and storied organizations in their communities that continue to do the work that they need to do. And they're teaching us every day how to do all of our work better.
Lauren:
So I want to ask you Tracy, because I know you like to call yourself a paid protestor, which I love. So in one quick sentence, why is advocacy so important? And I know you've kind of touched on it, but I really just want to put an exclamation point at the end of it. So why is advocacy so important?
Tracy:
Advocacy is so important and specifically to me and to AHF, because that is the way you move mountains. Lots of times I think we all as individuals get frustrated, because we think, what is my one little voice going to do? What is my one little vote going to do? And when you have the ability to say to people, it changes the world. When you come out and you stand out in front of the Governor's mansion or in front of your city hall to "This is not right, I've got a problem with what's going on." Believe me, you and your friends and those that you care about that are standing there will be seen and will be heard. In some of our localities, the voting numbers are abysmal. Where I live elections are changed by 2000 to 3000 votes.
Tracy:
So when you think about that, every single vote really does matter. We've got to get to the point where we realize that advocacy is, much like Whitney said, it's much broader than thinking about it in the narrow terms of, this is something that Antifa does or the proud boys are doing. That's not advocacy. Advocacy is when you stand up for what you believe, be that at a school board meeting, be that outside the Governor's office, be that within an organization where you feel a dissenting voice, where you stand up and say, "I've got an opinion. I really don't think that's right." That's advocacy and we all have a responsibility to do it. And believe me, it changes everything when you can put your voice out and be heard.
Whitney:
You know, can I-
Lauren:
Whitney, do you want to add anything?
Whitney:
Oh, a little bit. We serve about a million and a half people in the world right? That's what we do. We also test several million people a year and we do STD services for several hundred thousand. Sometimes the policy work that we do can affect millions and millions of people. So it's important that we know how to do the work that we care about. It's also important for us to know how to articulate that work in public policy forums in such a way to elicit change. Quick example, for about seven years, I found myself knee deep in the issue of porn stars wearing condoms. Not that that was the first thing on my mind, or how was I going to do that, but it turns out quite seriously that several porn stars were getting infected with HIV on set. And we found that the industry wasn't following the standards necessary to protect them, so we jumped in.
Whitney:
And for a good seven years, I was on the road in front of legislatures trying to get people to pass legislation to protect these workers, and what we found was something fascinating. Not only did we have to confront people's stigma about porn, about people who do porn or who are sex workers, we had to confront sex work, we had to confront the stigma of HIV among straight folks, we had to confront governments that didn't want to have anything to do or talk about it even though they were reaping the rewards of it by getting tax dollars and permit fees and all this other stuff for an industry that was unmonitored. So we got really deeply involved in that and guess what, we may change.
Whitney:
And so you find it in very interesting places, how to get something done. And the last thing I'll say is the very first time that a sentence that I had written down as part, when we were working with our lobbyist in Sacramento, the first day, that sentence became part of a piece of legislation. That legislation passed and the governor signed it. And I realized that there were five or six words that I had written that were in this law. And I thought, you know what, we could freaking do this. We can go and make this happen. And it's a very empowering feeling to know that in this country, you can affect the change if you put your mind to it and yell loudly enough.
Lauren:
I love that. Thank you guys so much. So Whitney, I'm going to come back to you because you talked a little bit about food scarcity and how much of a food crisis that we're currently in right now when it comes to people's public health. So in general, we know that AHF is now going into this space of food and nutrition. So can you tell us a little bit about how this even came about?
Whitney:
I can, but first I want to make sure to shout out our affiliates, they've been doing this for a long time. I had the opportunity to go to Cleveland, I had the opportunity to go to New York and see Iris house and the wonderful work they're doing there with their food programs and to go to Cleveland and see the fantastic work that Tracy and her team are doing, the task force of greater Cleveland. We have other affiliates that are also doing food services. So I want to start by saying that AHF is doing food services through our affiliates and through the Federation and they're doing it very well.
Lauren:
Can you tell us what our affiliates are too, since you brought them into the full?
Whitney:
Sure. So affiliates as Tracy was talking about are a Federation of legacy organizations that have been serving their communities in Atlanta, in New York, in Cleveland Dallas, in San Francisco for years as independent nonprofit organizations. And we really thought about, and I think as Tracy said, Michael, really this was his brainchild. The idea really was that there might be some economies of scale that we could leverage. If we find a way to help these legacy organizations have a greater infrastructure and help them not only with funding, but also with of the mechanisms and administrative mechanisms of running their organizations in such a way that they can focus on the fantastic work that they've been doing for decades and not necessarily always have to worry about whether the electric bill is paid, because that's really the tension sometimes in nonprofits, right?
Whitney:
It's how do you get to pay the bills also keep your eye on doing the work. So the Federation is this amazing group of people that have been doing such fantastic work all over the country. And we have the honor of really supporting them and helping them to continue to do that great work. So that's what the Federation is, they are a great bunch of folks doing some amazing work under their banners and it's our privilege at AHF to really help support that. In terms of food, we need to find sustainable models to deliver food to people in a way that they can get healthy food in food deserts and places that they need it. COVID really exposed and exacerbated that issue, right? Exacerbated the issue of food insecurity and people who had been formerly stable in their lives lost their jobs, were on unemployment and found that they couldn't necessarily feed their families.
Whitney:
So we're trying to find ways of doing better in that regard. So next week we're going to open up our first food pantry at one of the housing hotels that we've purchased that we're housing people in and it's going to be open to the community downtown Los Angeles, where there's a lot of people in need. And we're going to be trying to serve about 400 people a day, two days a week. And what we're trying to do is build a model. A model of how do we get food and deliver food to people at cost? How do we make that money work really hard and get it to people as cheaply as possible with good quality food and find ways to deliver it to them in the ways that they need it.
Whitney:
People have a basic human right to eat and to be clothed and housed and have medical care. And now that we're finally coming to this realization, I think in this country, we have to do better at figuring out ways to help them. So that's what we're going to try to do. We're going to try to build a better mouse trap and figure out how we can deliver that food in the most efficient way possible in a way that gets people what they need. So stay tuned, it's going to be very exciting.
Lauren:
So Tracy, let me ask you, because like you said, you are a part of an affiliate of ours, a part of the Federation, but you guys have been doing this food pantry model. So what have you seen in Ohio in terms of need and how we're able to service that need?
Tracy:
Yeah, much like Whitney said, there are spots in the country, and this is the thing that is most disheartening for me. There are spots in the country where people actually live where it's 10 miles to an available grocery store. There may be what we call a bodega or a convenience store that has, usually very poor junk food, but to be able to get food that is, like Whitney said, high quality and can sustain life especially for children is challenging.
Tracy:
Sometimes it really comes down to even if there's a grocery store, I can't transport the food home. So I get food in smaller quantities, which means I pay more for it. So being able to supplement sometimes is what we're able to do. We can't solve everything. As a friend of mine says, you can't boil the ocean, but what AHF and organizations like the task force and some of our other affiliates is able to do is say, if these are the things that we know that you can't get your hands on, let's provide those for you, get them in such a way and a quantity where you can transport them home or get you a ride to get them home so that you then can supplement and care for yourself so that you're not eating junk food and you're not eating this poor processed food. Especially for people who are living with HIV and AIDS, they need to have really high quality food in order to take their meds properly.
Tracy:
So that's one of the major things that the insecurity program that we've been working on is going to be able to do, is just to help people sustain life and to supplement some things that are already there so that people can do what they need to do for themselves. Because dignity is hugely important when it comes to food insecurity. People feel really put upon that they've got to ask somebody for food. So you want to make that situation as rudimentary as possible, as normal as possible, and AHF does that really well, as well as the federation.
Whitney:
That's one of those intersections. What Tracy said earlier about racism is a public health issue, this is one of those places where there's a real intersection. If you take a look in Los Angeles, in Cleveland, in Dallas, in Atlanta, in Miami, if you take a look at these places, you're going to find that in communities of color in particular and unfortunately, there is often a gap between those in whiter neighborhoods or richer neighborhoods. They'll have a grocery store right there they can go to.
Whitney:
In some communities of color, you have to go a long way to get to a grocery store where you could buy fresh food. Instead, you've got a whole bunch of liquor stores and you've got a whole bunch of fast food places where people are going to pay premium prices for food that isn't as good for them as if they were able to get to a Ralphs or able to get to a Food 4 Less, that's what we have around here, or Piggly Wiggly or whatever it is.
Whitney:
And so that's one of the things where not only our programming, but then our advocacy hopefully will start to kick in, is to try to look at these areas and say why is it that in primarily communities of color, you can't find a grocery store within three miles? That's wrong. It's racist and it has to change.
Lauren:
So while I would love to continue this conversation with you guys, we are approaching our time. So the last thing that I'm going to ask you, both individually-
Whitney:
I talk too much.
Lauren:
The last thing that I'm going to ask you guys is how do you advise people to get involved? Whether they're an employee or just simply a community member that's connected to the cause, how do people get involved?
Whitney:
Go ahead, Trace. This your thing.
Tracy:
There are tons of ways to get involved. To get involved with AHF specific as an employee or as a concerned citizen, and also there are ways to get involved within your community. I recommend you do both. This is not the time to shy away from any opportunity to get active.
Tracy:
Within AHF, we have a website, ahf.org, that has tons of information around our advocacy efforts. We welcome anybody. Once we're doing an activation in your area, we want you to come out and join us. We'll have a sign from you and a t-shirt so that you can get involved. That is the same for our staff. We have site captains, as we call them, that are very engaged in the work we do around advocacy that are in every city where we work where you can get engaged and find out information from them and come out. And we support our staff to do that. So it is time that you can use while you are at work because we're that serious about advocacy.
Tracy:
There are so many opportunities. Please check your local social media to find out. I'm sure there's a group that's interested in what you're interested in. Get involved with it. Find out what's going on. Go and be a part because your community needs you. Whit?
Whitney:
And there are lots of ways to advocate. We do Twitter rallies. We text. We make phone calls to legislators. On occasion, we stand in front of buildings with signs and yell. And as a matter of fact, I think today we had a live broadcast on Instagram of a protest that we were doing that was really fabulous. We don't just do it here. Our colleague on senior management, Terri Ford, is the head of global advocacy, and we do that all over the world in many different forms.
Whitney:
Stay apprised of what's going on. Go on our website, get involved. There are lots of ways to do it, but just know that you're with a team. Being at AHF is about engaging. No matter what your role is in our organization, there's a voice for you in our advocacy. Don't be afraid. Give it a try. It'll be fun and you'll enjoy the opportunity to really engage with folks in doing that work.
Whitney:
So I really encourage all AHF staff to get involved in whatever level you can and enjoy it because know that you're part of a team that once again is trying to change the world every day just a little bit.
Lauren:
Well, I think that's the perfect way to end, Whitney. So Whitney, Tracy, thank you guys so much for joining us today. I think so far, you guys have had the most impactful podcast for us, but we shall see in due time. But thank you guys so much and tune in next time for our next upcoming episode.
Lauren:
Thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the show, please subscribe, share it with your friends, like, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. Follow us on Instagram @afterhours, and see you next time.