Equity Commons

We have been blessed to make it to this point and share the impact of Youth Medical Mentorship to communities! Both Joshua J. Knowles, MSW with The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation and Michelle Thomas with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma helped us secure portions of our funding to dedicate towards evolving our simulation model to include both hands-on learning and AI and VR training experience for trainees at all stages of education. Most medical softwares are not designed with our targeted market in mind, so being able to meet innovative colleagues in Dr. Aubrey J. Grant M.D. FACC and Whitney A. White at Equity Commons through the AAMC Conference has been a gamechanger. YMM has zeroed in on a critical bottleneck to the rural and underserved communities as the age to which students are able to shadow and build positive experiences to healthcare needing to be 16 instead of 18! It has been incredible to collaborate with great research minds in the state like Dr Denna Wheeler, Dr Matt Vassar, Dr Micah Hartwell, Ph.D., ACSM EP-C, Luke Lawson, PhD, and Dr Delia Kimbrel to build a model around the concept of “evidence based recruitment and retention” and allign with the data thanks to collaborative spaces like the Mayoral Health Coalition led by Dr Jabraan S Pasha, MD, FACP Addressing these policies to connect school districts to internships has come through working with the Oklahoma Hospital Association and the Oklahoma Workforce Commission by the way of Kami Fullingim and Cher Golding to develop as well as recruit and retain our future healthcare professionals in Health Professional Shortage Areas. This past week we had a major breakthrough as our partnership with Equity Commons has been able to yield a training for students to understand HIPAA and prepare for their first clinical shadowing experiences in high school! Securing a grant from the George Kaiser Family Foundation helped bring the software from the east coast to the plains of Oklahoma starting with our first ever youth summit in Cherokee Nation at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences! Students from Tahlequah Public Schools, Sequoyah High School, Muskogee Public Schools, Henryetta High School, and Keys High School participated with over 90% receiving a passing score on their HIPAA Quiz after the simulation training! (Most missed question was in regard to the Minimum Necessary Rule). Now it’s time to kick it up a notch and rally the community with 2 more summits engaging over 400 students this month in our state and partnering with organizations like Campus Tulsa under the visionary leadership of Brooke Randels, MPA to look at the interactions necessary to grow home grown healthcare professionals! As we partner with Hillcrest HealthCare System on 3/10 at Tulsa Tech Lemley Campus for our Spring Summit, we would love to connect with our local tech minds and businesses to how we can work together to improve health outcomes and education through health literacy!

We have been blessed to make it to this point and share the impact of Youth Medical Mentorship to communities! Both Joshua J. Knowles, MSW with The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation and Michelle Thomas with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma helped us secure portions of our funding to dedicate towards evolving our simulation model to include both hands-on learning and AI and VR training experience for trainees at all stages of education. Most medical softwares are not designed with our targeted market in mind, so being able to meet innovative colleagues in Dr. Aubrey J. Grant M.D. FACC and Whitney A. White at Equity Commons through the AAMC Conference has been a gamechanger. YMM has zeroed in on a critical bottleneck to the rural and underserved communities as the age to which students are able to shadow and build positive experiences to healthcare needing to be 16 instead of 18! It has been incredible to collaborate with great research minds in the state like Dr Denna Wheeler, Dr Matt Vassar, Dr Micah Hartwell, Ph.D., ACSM EP-C, Luke Lawson, PhD, and Dr Delia Kimbrel to build a model around the concept of “evidence based recruitment and retention” and allign with the data thanks to collaborative spaces like the Mayoral Health Coalition led by Dr Jabraan S Pasha, MD, FACP Addressing these policies to connect school districts to internships has come through working with the Oklahoma Hospital Association and the Oklahoma Workforce Commission by the way of Kami Fullingim and Cher Golding to develop as well as recruit and retain our future healthcare professionals in Health Professional Shortage Areas. This past week we had a major breakthrough as our partnership with Equity Commons has been able to yield a training for students to understand HIPAA and prepare for their first clinical shadowing experiences in high school! Securing a grant from the George Kaiser Family Foundation helped bring the software from the east coast to the plains of Oklahoma starting with our first ever youth summit in Cherokee Nation at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences! Students from Tahlequah Public Schools, Sequoyah High School, Muskogee Public Schools, Henryetta High School, and Keys High School participated with over 90% receiving a passing score on their HIPAA Quiz after the simulation training! (Most missed question was in regard to the Minimum Necessary Rule). Now it’s time to kick it up a notch and rally the community with 2 more summits engaging over 400 students this month in our state and partnering with organizations like Campus Tulsa under the visionary leadership of Brooke Randels, MPA to look at the interactions necessary to grow home grown healthcare professionals! As we partner with Hillcrest HealthCare System on 3/10 at Tulsa Tech Lemley Campus for our Spring Summit, we would love to connect with our local tech minds and businesses to how we can work together to improve health outcomes and education through health literacy!

Musings from the Clinic: I saw a woman in clinic last week with pretty severe CAD after an MI. Turns out a cardiologist had flagged her coronary calcification a decade ago and told her to get on aspirin and a statin. She never did. I asked her why. She was honest about it. The interaction left her feeling like her concerns didn't matter much to him. So she decided not to follow the advice. Fast forward ten years. No preventive meds. No lifestyle changes. Then the MI happened. What struck me wasn't that the cardiologist was wrong about the medicine. He wasn't. The evidence was clear. It's that his recommendation didn't stick because she didn't feel heard. I think about this a lot in my own practice. How many times do I give solid clinical advice that doesn't actually change behavior because I didn't take the time to understand what my patient is actually worried about? The medicine is only half the equation. People follow recommendations from doctors they trust and feel heard by. That's just how it works. TLDR: Clinical judgment only matters if your patient trusts you enough to follow it.

Musings from the Clinic: I saw a woman in clinic last week with pretty severe CAD after an MI. Turns out a cardiologist had flagged her coronary calcification a decade ago and told her to get on aspirin and a statin. She never did. I asked her why. She was honest about it. The interaction left her feeling like her concerns didn't matter much to him. So she decided not to follow the advice. Fast forward ten years. No preventive meds. No lifestyle changes. Then the MI happened. What struck me wasn't that the cardiologist was wrong about the medicine. He wasn't. The evidence was clear. It's that his recommendation didn't stick because she didn't feel heard. I think about this a lot in my own practice. How many times do I give solid clinical advice that doesn't actually change behavior because I didn't take the time to understand what my patient is actually worried about? The medicine is only half the equation. People follow recommendations from doctors they trust and feel heard by. That's just how it works. TLDR: Clinical judgment only matters if your patient trusts you enough to follow it.