Each episode is a dynamic blend of interviews, storytelling, and practical takeaways, showcasing the power of multidisciplinary collaboration to address systemic racism and improve health outcomes. From the methodology behind successful team projects to the nuanced process of engaging communities, we illuminate how shared leadership, restorative practices, and intentional planning can create sustainable, impactful change. Whether you’re seeking inspiration, tools, or evidence to amplify your own efforts, this podcast offers a space to learn, reflect, and act.

What to Expect in Each Episode?

• Engaging conversations with health equity leaders and community partners
• Insightful stories that connect personal experiences with broader data and research
• Practical tools and resources to implement promising practices
• Honest reflections on challenges, lessons learned, and the transformative power of shared leadership

Mandy LaBreche  00:00

This is the Promising Practices for Health Equity podcast brought to you by the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program, a national leadership program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Krystal Lee  00:11

Hello and welcome to promising practices for health equity, the podcast created by the interdisciplinary research Leaders Program, affectionately known as IRL, drawing on nearly a decade of experience, we explore innovative and actionable strategies to meaningfully advance health equity. I am your host, Krystal Lee, and I have had the pleasure of serving as a Senior Advisor for IRL Since 2021 I am a curriculum development specialist and educator who creates transformative, equitable and just learning experiences so that all students can experience the joys and rigors of learning. I am thrilled to be here with my amazing colleagues and CO hosts, J. Robin Moon, Mandy LaBreche and Cody Cotton in each episode, one of our co-hosts will join me to talk with our guests about how they approach their health equity work. This podcast is for public health and social sciences researchers, public health practitioners, educators, students and funders. We’re here to share stories, insights and tools to amplify your efforts to create a healthier, more equitable world. First and foremost, let’s get to know our fabulous team, Robin. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to this work.

Robin Moon 01:31

Hi, Krystal. Thank you. Hi. I am J. Robin moon. I am the Associate Director of Research at IRL. I am a transdisciplinary scholar in social epidemiology, a practitioner and entrepreneur for Health Justice and an educator in public health. I joined the IRL in 2020 in the thick of the pandemic, to bring in the expertise of implementing robust scientific research on the ground with real people, letting the rubber meet the road, as we say, bringing together the community leaders and members and academic researchers and creating programming to support these activities. Mandy, I’ll toss it to you.

Mandy LaBreche  02:12

Thanks Robin. Hi everyone. My name is Mandy LaBreche, and I work as the Associate Director of Operations for the IRL program. I consider myself a day one person, because my first day working for the IRL program was actually the launch day for the inaugural call for applications for Cohort One. All the way back in February 2016 I came into my role as the person in charge of Program Operations, working with a small team, mostly behind the scenes to help make the program come alive. A lot of the early work was focused on recruitment and selection for our annual call for applications. We now have seven cohorts of fellows and teams. Another big part of my role was helping shape the program experience that included things like the curriculum, networking, webinars and in person and virtual and hybrid meetings, I’ve had the enormous privilege of being able to contribute to almost all areas of IRL, and now I’m so excited to be working with Krystal Robin and Cody on this podcast. Working on IRL has been a really amazing ride for me, both personally and professionally, as a program, we’ve learned so much since day one, and I can’t wait to share about the evolution of the program and how truly inspired we’ve been by the work of IRL fellows and teams. Cody tossing the mic over to you.

Cody Cotton  03:31

Thanks. Mandy peace, everyone. My name is Cody Cotton, Director of Culture and human engagement for their interdisciplinary research Leaders Program. In this role, I focus on fostering an inclusive and collaborative environment that supports our teams of researchers and community partners. By integrating principles of cultural agility and human centered engagement, I aim to enhance our collective efforts towards advancing health equity. Additionally, I serve on IRL Community Action Advisory Board, also known as the CAAB, where I collaborate with fellow members to provide guidance and support to leadership and IRL teams. Our goal is to ensure that research initiatives are deeply rooted in community engagement and effectively address health equity challenges. Krystal, back to you.

Krystal Lee  04:19

Thank you, friends. So the goal of this podcast is to amplify what we are calling promising practices for health equity. Robin, can you help us do some level setting for our listeners? Tell us what is a promising practice and what is health equity.

Robin Moon 04:34

Sure? Promising practice means an activity, procedure, approach, policy or technique, that has shown positive results in a given local situation. It is to be distinguished from the best practice, as we say all the time, in that it might not have the kind of statistically significant or robust by the number defined by the. Media and research community for different reasons, for internal and external, but that it is worth understanding what makes it promising and worth replicating, adapting or adopting it elsewhere. Health Equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. And note that healthy here means not only an absence of infirmity but thriving to live up to one’s best potential in life. This requires removing structural obstacles to health, such as poverty, discrimination and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs and their pay, quality, education, housing, safety, environments, financial credits, so on, and of course, including healthcare, both of these concepts require individuals being in and with the community, not in their own vacuum, and that is where this podcast comes In.

Krystal Lee  05:59

That’s right. Thanks, Robin. Each episode, we’re going to be talking with members of the IRL community about the strategies that they are using to promote and achieve health equity. Mandy, you’re one of the original members of the leadership team. Tell us a little bit about the IRL program.

Mandy LaBreche  06:18

Yes, happy to so I always like to describe IRL as a hybrid research and leadership development program that supports teams of researchers and community leaders who are focused on community engaged, action oriented and equity focused Health Research. Each year since 2016 we’ve had an annual call for applications for teams of three people, two researchers and one community partner to apply for the program. Each call for applications has had one to two annual research themes that explore various social determinants of health, and more specifically, I’ll just do a quick power jog through each of our themes. So starting with Cohort One, the themes are early childhood and health and housing community development and health. Our cohort two themes are individual and community resilience and youth development and violence prevention. For both of our themes for cohort three, they are focused on rural America, and they are social and economic determinants to promote health in rural America and solutions for better healthcare delivery in rural America. Our cohort, four themes are clinical practice, social services and health and community development and health. Our cohort five themes are community environment and health and Families and Child Health. And then moving on to our cohort six, themes, the focus was structural racism and community health and well being and structural racism and health care. And last but not least, our cohort seven just has one overall theme, and that is structural racism and health. So during the three-year experience, IRL teams conduct a community engaged research project, and they actively participate in curriculum and networking activities to advance their research leadership. Most of IRL programming is done remotely. We consider ourselves a distance learning program, with the exception of two to three in person meetings per year. The IRL program is a 10-year initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and we are currently in our ninth and final year to date. We have seven cohorts in the program. Each cohort is made up of 12 to 15 three person teams and 36 to 45 individuals that we refer to as fellows. And just a few numbers to share, pretty impressive, if I do say so myself, we have a total of 297 fellows in the program, and 99 teams with research projects in 46 states and Puerto Rico.

Krystal Lee  09:03

Thanks. Mandy, sounds like there’s never a dull moment in the IRL universe, huh? Cody, you are the director for culture and human engagement. Tell us about where the idea for promising practices came from, and a little about the audience that we have designed this podcast for.

Cody Cotton  09:23

Yes. Thanks, Krystal. Our goal is to build capacity among people who are working towards health equity. I believe that every person has a part to play in this work, but specifically we want to reach people who are looking for innovative approaches and lessons learned from personal experience. This includes researchers, educators, students, community organizations, policy makers and foundations and other funders who are working in the field of public health. I want to note that while we’re talking specifically about the public health space, we also believe that the promising practices that we will highlight throughout this podcast can be. Applied in any discipline or field, everyone could take something away from this podcast.

Krystal Lee  10:06

Thanks, Cody, so this will be a time limited podcast series, right? Meaning that it’ll be limited to three seasons. Can you all tell our listeners what they can expect to hear and learn about over the course of each season, Mandy, I’ll go to you first.

Mandy LaBreche  10:25

Over three seasons, members of our IRL community will share their stories, experiences, reflections and lessons learned. Season one examines the development and evolution of the IRL program. In this first season, we’ll hear from our program directors and members of the National Program Center. They’ll share their perspectives and insights from the creation and evolution of the fellowship program, the strategic decisions made along the way, and the value that IRL aim to bring to the health equity landscape. We’ll then discuss how the promising practices of emergent strategies and restorative justice have contributed to honing our approach to community engaged research.

Robin Moon 11:04

In season two, we’ll hear stories, reflections and lessons learned from IRL fellows who, in their own communities and teams, conducted this community engaged, action oriented, equity focused, health research and together reimagine new possibilities for true health equity. We will hear about real and honest challenges that they have experienced and had to overcome that are individual, community oriented and structural, and they will share the promising practices that they have created through it all to bring about true, meaningful health equity.

Cody Cotton  11:44

And finally, in season three, we will dream together. We’ll talk about what the future looks like for health equity, looking beyond our current challenges. We’ll dig deep into the promising practices highlighted by our fellows in season two, and the ones we use as a program, such as restorative practices, asset based, storytelling, critical self-reflection and many more.

Mandy LaBreche  12:07

By the end of season three, we hope our listeners will feel inspired to use these and other promising practices to connect with each other, engage with their communities and advocate for the systemic changes needed to ensure health equity for all.

Krystal Lee  12:22

Thanks, y’all. For the benefit of our listeners, it’s probably prudent to take some time to talk about some of the terminology that we will use and some of the beliefs and assumptions that we hold terms like community, engaged research, interdisciplinarity, beloved community and health equity. Robin, can you tell us about these terms and what they mean within the context of the conversations that we’ll have throughout this podcast?

Robin Moon 12:52

Yeah, sure. The IRL program is based on five major beliefs and assumptions. Number one, we believe that change can be accomplished through research, specifically community engaged research, which we define as a research approach, where members of the community actively participate as partners throughout the research process, from the beginning to the end, contributing their insights and perspectives to ensure that the research is relevant and beneficial to their needs, rather than just being studied on by researchers. It emphasizes collaboration and mutual benefit between researchers and community members. Number two, the quality of community engaged research is better when it is led by the community and when it is interdisciplinary, which goes beyond integrating knowledge and perspectives from multiple academic disciplines, by actively involving stakeholders outside academia, like community members or practitioners to Create a shared understanding and solution to a complex issue, often transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries. It essentially aims to bridge the gap between academia and real-world applications by including diverse perspectives. Number three, the change we are working and dreaming towards is health equity for all, as mentioned previously, health equity refers to that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Number four, we also believe that this work is most effective when done in community, and one of the promising practices we have committed to is building a beloved community. A beloved community is a term coined by Josiah Royce, a philosopher and a theologian from the 19th century, but it’s been popularized by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr the beloved. Community is a concept that has inspired social justice work for decades. Dr King believed that the beloved community would be achieved by replacing racism, bigotry and prejudice with all-inclusive spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood, and that poverty, hunger, homelessness will be eliminated. It is described as a society that is practical, realistic and achievable. Finally, fifth, we believe that if the promising practice we discuss on this podcast are implemented far and wide, that we can achieve health equity.

Krystal Lee  15:42

Thanks, Robin, and I want to thank you all for your incredible insights and thank you to our listeners for starting this journey with us. In our next episode, we will talk with Luis Ortega of storytellers for change, about the use of storytelling as a promising practice for creating a just and equitable world by fostering empathy, harvesting collective wisdom and facilitating healing. We want this to be a two-way conversation, so we’d love to hear from you, our listeners, what promising practices have been impactful in your work to achieve health equity, what are some key challenges you’ve had to overcome? Share your thoughts with us via our LinkedIn page, where we will also share our show notes and resources discussed in each episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to promising practices for health equity so you never miss an episode. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, thanks for joining us today, and remember, we’re all on this journey together. We’re all learning together, and every step we take together brings us closer to a healthier, more just world. Until next time, keep innovating, keep collaborating and keep pushing for change.

Mandy LaBreche  16:59

Promising Practices for Health Equity is produced by the interdisciplinary research Leaders Program, a national leadership program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A special thanks to our guests, our production team at Studio Americana, and to you, our listeners for being a part of this important conversation.