This episode of Profound Conversations will explore the intersection between cultures of care, the dynamics of loss and grieving, as well as the impact that donation has for families that give and receive the gift of life. Our intent for this episode will be to create new understandings and pathways to wellness within the context of great loss.  

The opioid epidemic refers to the enormous surge in opioid addiction and overdose over the last several decades in the United States.  Much of the epidemic has its origins in medical practice. Devastating consequences of the opioid epidemic include increases in opioid misuse and related overdoses, as well as the rising incidence of newborns experiencing withdrawal syndrome due to opioid use and misuse during pregnancy. Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any previous year on record. An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid.Episode VI will explore the less than obvious connections between mental illness and substance abuse. We would like to assert that one, often overlooked foundational connection is, the unhealthy need that leads to the opioid use, which completely destabilizes a Healthy Mental decision-making process. Are we still in an epidemic in 2022? What are harm reduction policies and what have been their outcomes? Which populations are currently most affected? What can individuals, neighborhoods, communities, cities actively do to assist in solving this epidemic? What are good Samaritan laws? Are their signs that the tide is changing? What are the Trust factors in need of transforming that will lead to satisfactory resolutions?Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

The overriding opinion within the medical community of practice is that  caregivers should attempt to reduce psychiatric barriers to successful transplantation.  However certain questions remain after years of debate: (i) are current evaluations uniform throughout transplant centers throughout the country?  How should we view transplant eligibility criteria that exclude patients with affective and psychotic disorders from transplantation on the basis of their psychiatric diagnosis?    These and other questions will be explored during this in depth hour of Profound Conversations with our esteemed guests from the medical community.Conversationalists:Farha Abbasi, MDMichigan State University Dept. of PsychiatryClive Callender, MDProfessor of Surgery, Howard University HospitalShawn-Paul HarrisonMedical Navigator SpecialistLouisiana Organ Procurement AssociationAnil Paramesh, MD,Professor of Surgery, Urology, and Pediatrics Tulane University School of MedicineJoey BoudreauxChief Clinical OfficerLouisiana Organ Procurement AgencyProfound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

How do we ‘re-imagine trust’ such that we effectively engage the hearts and minds in communities throughout America?  What is our responsibility as professionals within Public Health?  What are the things the we need to talk about when we talk about 21st century community engagement?    Our efforts to Re-Imagining Trust: Engaging Hearts and Minds in Communities Throughout America must create more practical and effective solutions, drawing on the listening of diverse groups.  Our efforts should improve citizens' knowledge and skills through immersive experiences. Our task is to begin the conversation that generates these outcomes. We must continue to explore new ways to empower and integrate people from different backgrounds, as we seek to understand the interpersonal barriers which contribute to complacency.  We must also remember and speak into the critical role of ethics in policy, medicine and community care.  We must increase the likelihood that initiatives and solutions address the true challenges; challenges which often remain hidden in blindspots. Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

“To overcome the challenge of special interests that work against the conditions that create health, we need to extend the sphere of what we talk about when we talk about health so that our conversation includes factors like money, power, love, hate, culture, the environment, and politics.”Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health (Sandro Galea, 2019)As the United States faces unparalleled challenges due to COVID-19, racial disparities in health and healthcare have once again taken center stage. If effective interventions to address racial disparities in transplantation, including those magnified by COVID-19, are to be designed and implemented at the national level, it is first critical to understand the complex mechanisms by which structural, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized racism influence the presence of racial disparities in healthcare and transplantation. Policies that foster inequities at all levels (from organization to community to county, state, and nation) are critical drivers of structural inequities. The social, environmental, economic, and cultural determinants of health are the terrain on which structural inequities produce health inequities. These multiple determinants are the conditions in which people live, including access to good food, water, and housing; the quality of schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods; and the composition of social networks and nature of social relations.Profound Conversations views racism not as an attribute of minority groups; rather, as an aspect of the social context and is linked with the differential power relations among racial and ethnic groups. Most studies of racism are based on African American samples; however, other populations may be at risk for manifestations of racism that differ from the African American experience. Asians, Hispanics, and, more recently, Arabs and Muslims are subject to similar inequitable opportunities in health and health care.Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

Part of the huge job in successfully building healthy communities lies in accurately identifying behaviors that lead to breakdowns which impede progress. Episode II will explore co-work processes which enable organizations to effectively build and maintain internal trust; while also examining models of coalition development that map targeted, evaluative measures, which create effective collaborations and cultures of trust.Highlights of the EpisodeIn public health, and public health, it's essential to have trust between those who provide services and those who are consumers of servicesIn the line of in working with organ procurement organizations and hospitals and physicians, you know, ultimately, our focus is on these families that have lost a loved oneTrust and integrity, that, for me is foundational trust means everythingTrust is woven into every aspect of what we doYou can tell who people are pretty much in the first 10 secondsIt's not about being successful in your organization, it's about being successful with peopleIt is making sure that you can give everything that you have of yourself, to help them and that gaining something in returnWe have to break down those words and concepts, and perhaps shape them in a way that's culturally appropriate and sound for our communityIf you go into a hospital, and your expectation is for your loved ones life to be saved, and you don't know that they have died, and there has been times where the conversation of organ donation has happened prematurely of a person dyingI started that conversation with my daughter and family. It's in my advanced directive that I'm an organ donorTrust is always talking to that person where they are without any assumptions without trying to push them into a box or categoryProfound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

“As leaders, as neighbors, as colleagues, it is time to turn to one another, to engage in the intentional search for human goodness. In our meetings and deliberations, we can reach out and invite in those we have excluded. We can recognize that no one person or leader has the answer, that we need everybody's creativity to find our way through this strange new world.”                - Margaret Wheatley. [Remembering Human Goodness, Shambala Sun, September 1999] Trust is a two-way street.  Each healthcare servant has the family trust and cooperation at stake.  Lack of trust creates inconsistency in the delivery of care and influences patient family choices. Episode one we will explore how medical ethics influences trust as well as govern patient and family rights; and to what extent does multicultural competency influence organizational approaches toward a more dynamic and inclusive culture.  We will also seek to understand the underlying factors which erode trust and how to transform these dynamics at their inception and from breakdowns to breakthroughs.

Michigan healthcare leaders, Muslim communities to convene on ‘Building Healthy Communities’ and lifegiving donation/transplantation‘Profound Conversation ArenaTM’ to be moderated by media personality Joia Jefferson-NuriMichigan healthcare leaders and Muslim communities are to convene on ‘Building Healthy Communities’ and life giving donation/transplantation. Eversight, the Ann Arbor-based global eye bank network, and Muslim Life Planning Institute (MLPI), a national community-building organization, will host Building Healthy Communities: Michigan Medical & Religious Partnerships | Lifegiving Donation & Transplantation.Muslim individuals and families, healthcare professionals and other providers of services to Muslim communities in southeast Michigan and beyond are encouraged to join the conversation exploring anatomical donation and transplantation in the context of Islam. Fewer residents are registered as organ, cornea and tissue donors in Wayne County—Michigan’s most populous and diverse county—than anywhere else in the state, according to Gift of Life Michigan. Yet the need for transplants in this county is relatively high.Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

Michigan healthcare leaders, Muslim communities to convene on ‘Building Healthy Communities’ and lifegiving donation/transplantation‘Profound Conversation ArenaTM’ to be moderated by media personality Joia Jefferson-NuriMichigan healthcare leaders and Muslim communities are to convene on ‘Building Healthy Communities’ and life giving donation/transplantation. Eversight, the Ann Arbor-based global eye bank network, and Muslim Life Planning Institute (MLPI), a national community-building organization, will host Building Healthy Communities: Michigan Medical & Religious Partnerships | Lifegiving Donation & Transplantation.Muslim individuals and families, healthcare professionals and other providers of services to Muslim communities in southeast Michigan and beyond are encouraged to join the conversation exploring anatomical donation and transplantation in the context of Islam. Fewer residents are registered as organ, cornea and tissue donors in Wayne County—Michigan’s most populous and diverse county—than anywhere else in the state, according to Gift of Life Michigan. Yet the need for transplants in this county is relatively high.Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.lifeThe Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

Michigan healthcare leaders, Muslim communities to convene on a Building Healthy Communities and life giving donation/transplantationProfound Conversation Arena be moderated by media personality Joia Jefferson-NuriEversight, the Ann Arbor-based global eye bank network, and Muslim Life Planning Institute (MLPI), a national community-building organization, will host Building Healthy Communities: Michigan Medical & Religious Partnerships | Life giving Donation & Transplantation.Joia Jefferson Nuri as coached more than 50 C-Suite executives and scheduled, written, and coached twelve TEDx Talks (including her own) with two more to present in Fall 2020. Joia has been on the leadership teams at NBC, CBS, C-SPAN, and BET, working as a senior producer, anchor, reporter, and host.The online, interactive, Islamically informed discussion among southeast Michigan healthcare professionals, service providers and Muslim individuals and families will explore in session one Michigan Medical & Religious Partnerships featuring:Session two will explore Life-Giving Donation & Transplantation featuring:Monir Moniruzzaman Ph.D. U of Toronto, Department of Anthropology at Michigan State UniversityImam Johari Abdul-Malik, National Activist and Social Justice LeaderSheik Ibrahim Kazerooni, Imam Islamic Center of America, Dearborn MichiganKelly Ranum, Chief Executive Officer, Louisiana Organ Procurement AgencyLesley Compagnone, Director of Community Affairs for Washington Regional Transplant Community (WRTC)Collin Ross, CEBT, Eversight Global Eye Bank Network, Ann Arbor MI