 Coming up on this edition of Abledon On Air, we talk about health disparities on a national level and an international level with our guest, Shaqai Mushadrami from the National Center for Health Equity. All that and much more when Abledon On Air starts right now. Major sponsors for Abledon On Air include Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Abledon On Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM, and Spotify. 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We're going to focus on abilities, not necessarily the disability. With us on today's program is Shaquay Mushadrame from Bronx, New York to discuss his organization, the National Center for Health Equity, and why is healthcare so bad in the United States versus other countries? Joining us on this edition of Abledon On Air, Shaquay, thank you so much for joining us. It is my pleasure to be here one more time, Larry. Okay. So what are the missions and goals of your agency, the National Center for Health Equity? The missions and the goals of our agency is to do the writing by the people that we serve. We are headquartered here in the Bronx, and Bronx County is part of New York City, the wealthiest, most powerful city in the nation. But yet, Bronx has consistently been ranked the lowest in terms of the health metric. A lot of Bronx sites are dealing with issues because of health inequity, because of disparities. What do you mean by health disparities in this sense? If we're the richest country in the world, we still have health problems such as food insecurity, we have problems with Medicaid, we have people that don't have adequate health insurance when it comes to certain situations such as diabetes. So why is it that we're having so many problems? Is it because, and I'm going to say this, it's public access and it's freedom of speech, is it because that doctors are greedy and they don't want to take health insurance and they rather do private pay? No, the doctors are not the main problem. The main problem, unfortunately, is the system. And we are blessed. United States is blessed to have been the most powerful nation on earth in many areas. But also, if you look at how we gain our powers, then one would wonder how we can sleep at night feeling comfortable of our progress. For example, we get free land from Native Indians. We get free labor from Africans enslaved. We get almost free production or cheap production from newly arriving immigrants. And we get a lot of resources because Wall Street is able to engineer schemes that people put their resources. So these are all part of our free market capitalism. So I am a pro free market capitalism, but I'm also in very well attuned to how we got here and how we maintain that. So for that reason, if you look at our healthcare system, we spend more money on healthcare, but yet if you rank us among... No, we also spend more money on military if you come to think about it. The Wall Street resources that I just mentioned came because we are able to have our presence militarily all over the world. We're able to see force hand opportunities and investment opportunities, and we're able to tell all investors that we are safe and secure and you can make a ton of money. That's why a lot of governments actually buy our treasury bonds and a lot of private equity investors all over the world have no problem investing in our equitable investments. But anyway, to come back to the health, you mentioned the doctors. I don't want the doctors to be the bad guys. I want to let your viewers... The doctors are not bad guys, but there are some out there that are. No, they're part of the system. That system is built on capitalism and that system is built on protecting the interest of insurance companies and the investors that invest in them. That is why whenever you talk about affordable healthcare, better known as Obamacare, unfortunately, those mostly in the Republican side immediately said, oh, this is socialized medicine that you are promoting so you want to compare the US to Venezuela to Cuba and whatever, or to North Korea. The reason why they're doing it, because they want to scare people into believing that healthcare for everybody is something that is great because it can prevent prevention. And through prevention now, you can prevent disasters from befalling. But as long as we are denying healthcare to certain population of the country, why are we denying... Why can't it be healthcare for all? Israel has a great health system and they do. Israel created the pacemaker. They created the iron lung. They created the exoskeleton so people can walk. They created a lot of things. And yet, why can't we get free healthcare? Canada has that. They're giving people free healthcare. Why is it that we are denying people who really need it, especially the vulnerable population? Vulnerable population meaning people with disabilities. For example, for many years, because the social security system stinks because people are denied and they shouldn't be. It shouldn't take ten years to get a social security payment. You know? I mean, why should we be denied? Why can't everybody have adequate healthcare? We are a nation of lobbyists. Every industry that needs to get their voices heard needs to meet their economic goals, arm themselves with some of the best lobbyists in Washington DC. The pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare industry, all these industries have top-notch lobbyists. And every time you talk about providing insurance and healthcare for all, the first thing they come at you is socializing Medicare, socializing insurance. And because Americans in general do not want anything to do with socialism or communism. Therefore, if you attach healthcare for all to socialize medicine, then Americans say, no, we don't want it. We want our freedom, our independence, and our ability to choose what is best for us. But the bottom line is this. You know, the debate about Obamacare had opened the windows of opportunity for people to know that, yes, you can provide very reasonable coverage for all. And to do that, and when you do that, then all these preventable ailments that are laid on cost so much money, including lives, can be remedied. And so it is all about a lobbying wall that prevents us from having, you know, healthcare for all. But healthcare for all is very, very important. Now, the difference between what, again, the Republicans call socialized, you know, healthcare and Obamacare. Obamacare did not want to go that route because that route would have been fatal from get-go. Therefore, they made insurance for all affordable. That's why you have this healthcare exchange where every American, everybody can go there and based on your location, your age, and your income, then you can get healthcare that is suitable to your family's needs without any precondition or anything. I'm going to ask a question in terms of your website. It says, you use a cloud-based platform, closed-top referral, collaboration and care management platform, National Center for Health Equity, together, siloed aspects of healthcare versus a turnkey Medicare complaint chronic care management program. What do you mean by turnkey? You know, a lot of... And how does that work? Yeah, a lot of the programs that individuals are entitled to don't get them because lack of knowledge. So what we are doing is we're providing comprehensive education to what people are entitled to and what programs are best for their circumstances and also what the federal and state and municipal programs are all about. So a lot of these programs that deal with chronic care management, unfortunately, the patients who have no care. The United States is an obese nation. We have lots of diabetes, lots of chronic illnesses. So why is it a chronic care situation? Well, you know, National Center for Health Equity is a child of a program that we launched about eight years ago and the program is lifestyle, life span. We knew that in order for us to be effective in preventing individuals from dying of preventable disease and sickness, we have to promote healthy lifestyle because the social determinants of health includes environment, economic condition, and also lifestyle. Once people are able to adopt a healthier lifestyle, then people are able to prevent a lot of the ailments that are unfortunately costing taxpayers billions of dollars and taking our lives too early. So National Center for Health Equity is a product of lifestyle lifespan and lifestyle lifespan is a campaign where people, where we promote healthy lifestyle. No smoking, no drinking, no eating junk, reduced sugar consumption, reduced salt consumption, physical activities and also, you know, avoid situations and conditions that will cause harm to your mental health. So stress less and, you know, depression less situations and conditions. By the way, to let people know, this program is also going to be syndicated on Parrot TV. Yes. Is it parrotv.org or dot com? Dot com. No, no, New York parot dot com. New York parot dot com. So this program of Ableton on there and starting in 2024, we're going to be syndicated on Parrot TV so that would be www.parrottv.com as well as Orca Media and other television stations. But I wanted to go further than that. In terms of medical, why is it? Now you mentioned, you know, I think it's a lack of education when it comes to people's health. Because, you know, if you didn't have fast food restaurants, you wouldn't have obese people. If you didn't have greasy food sold in stores, you wouldn't have heart conditions. So in terms of these commercials that advertise all this food, I mean, then you have a bad health system. So in your opinion, how has the media been dealing with health care systems? Because there's public service announcements, you know, don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat, you know, we have to eat healthier. I mean, I'm going to mention it again. We had that movie Super Size Me years ago. What's one way that we can tell the media to deal with the health care system and make it a much better situation for people? You know, as you had alluded, you know, in the opening of this question, in terms of knowledge, you know, I am a Muslim leader, but my Christian colleagues have always stated that in the Bible, there's a word that says, my people suffer or die for lack of knowledge. My people perish for lack of knowledge. So that applies full circle in our lives. It's like Moses once said, let my people go. Exactly. If you guide them to where they need to go and give them more knowledge, then it wouldn't be so bad. Correct. So when it comes to, you know, the obesity rate. Let's talk about that. How bad is certain health conditions and then people need more health insurance? Well, you know, it is so bad that even the military, you know, recruitment is having challenges recruiting qualified candidates, mostly because people are overweight, obese early on. So what we must do is... We're talking about 14, 15, 16? As early as 1st grade, 2nd grade. You're talking about 67-year-olds, you know, consuming our products and services that they should never ever consume. Yeah. Our former president, and I'm going to shout him out. Please excuse me for shouting out Donald Trump. But our former president was doing McDonald's commercials, eating McDonald's on the way to somewhere, feeding a college basketball team Burger King. Is that the way you want to project healthy eating? That is. He took out... Donald Trump's family took out Obama's garden from the White House. That is one of the biggest challenges we have. When you have leaders who are so careless about the wellness of the people that follow and listen to them and depend on their leadership and judgment, that is horrendous. And if you look at, you know, before Trump, you look at Michelle Obama, the former force lady, her number one priority was to make Americans healthier, move and run and eat right and have right relationship, have right thinking. And it has met our nation, you know, positively impacted with the message. So now, followed by, you know, Donald Trump advertising, you know, junk food, and unfortunately people, millions of people follow Donald Trump, whatever he said, whatever he does, and that therefore millions of people will get hurt. The obesity rate can no longer be tolerated because there are a whole lot of health issues that are associated with obese. So what is the numbers of the obese people in the United States alone? Do you know that? Actually, I don't know. All I know is higher than what can be tolerated. Let me, let me just see. Let's look up the number. I have to do this since we are getting into numbers. But while we're, while you're searching the numbers. The adult obesity in the United States currently, according to the Food Research and Action Center, www.frac.org, Obesity and Health, the latest data includes 39.6% of U.S. adults, 39, the latest data indicated that 39.6% of adults of U.S., United States adults are obese. Another 31.6% are overweight and 7.7% are severely obese. So I'm going to repeat it again. According to Food Research and Action Center, okay, so you can find this at www.frac.org, Obesity and Health, under the heading, Obesity in the United States, the latest data indicates that 39.6% of U.S. adults are obese. Another 31.6% are overweight and 7.7% are severely obese. It has to do with the, I think the VMI number. Those numbers, those numbers are time bomb. Those numbers indicate national calamity, because obese, absolutely obesity is the foundation for so many chronic diseases that unfortunately we are now seeing increasing in everywhere. And some states like Mississippi and Alabama, you know, the obese rate is so alarming that it is taking lives of, you know, citizens too early. So the reason why, again, we set up National Center for Health Equity is to educate the public about vital information that they need to have to live healthier and more productive life by adopting healthier lifestyle. And according, I'm going to bring this up and it's very important for this, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, okay? www.cdc.gov. So according to the Centers for Disease Control, adult obesity facts. Obesity is a common serious and costly disease. U.S. obesity prevalence was 49.9% in 2017. And in March 2020 and 2021 as well. From 1999 to 2000 through 2017 and March 2020, the U.S. obesity prevalence increased by 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased 4.7% and 9.2%. So these and the estimated annual cost of obesity, right? People just eating and eating and eating. It doesn't help if you go on a cruise and eat for 24 hours. It just adds to the problem, okay? The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States. You ready? $173 billion. You see? $173 billion in 2019 alone. You see? Medical costs for adults who had obesity and vulnerable populations, meaning disabled or elderly, was $1,861 higher in 2019 than medical costs for people with healthy weight. Okay. Well, there you go. Absolutely. There you go. So it is incumbent upon all of us. You in the media, me as an activist and somebody else to take on this cause as the primary cause to saving lives and taxpayer resources. That's why we're doing it. Why is it taxpayer? Okay. So because there's obesity among young children, too. No, no, the obesity across the board. You know, children and adults and grandparents. You know, this is a nation of an obese people. And the reason for that is you have so many junk outlets out there and you have so many disease, you know, diseases that are not in compliance with health. Well, you know why? You know why? I'm going to tell you why. Food insecurity is a big problem. When food stamps does not, we talk about SNAP. Okay. The SNAP program. Okay. Because young mothers use WIC. WIC is another program, you know, where they get diapers and food and things. So, but when you either Americans don't have time to make a healthy meal or they, food is just so darn expensive. If food prices were to go down, then you would have people making healthy food. So McDonald's is not healthy. I mean, they try to be because they have trans fat and everything else. But there's two things in the way. Diabetics cannot have white rice, white bread, anything enriched. A bun with a hamburger is enriched. So that's, yes, it's not, the burger is healthy. It might be, but everything else around it isn't. Yes. Another thing, or has fast food gotten healthier in years going in the future? Can we see a healthier way of eating out? Absolutely. Absolutely. We can definitely, we can definitely make our food consumption, you know, a lot better. Let me, let me go back to, you know, what you said earlier in terms of the government subsidies, you know, SNAPS and WIC. Three years ago. Those are, those are important programs. Go ahead. No, no, they are there. Absolutely. You know, any subsidy is important because people need them and they're entitled to them. But, you know, it's not what you do, but how you do it. Three years ago, one of the campaigns that we are working on until today is to making sure that the government subsidies are beneficial to the recipients. Not harmful. What do I mean by that? If a government is allocating, let's say, $500 or $700 to a family. The government. More than that. No, I'm just giving you a number. Here in Vermont, I'm just, they allocate something like a family of four, family of five, like almost between 900 to a little bit more than $1,100, $1,200, you know. But by the time it's all said and done, that doesn't feed anybody. People got to go out and work. That is, go out and work. That is one of the, one of the reasons the campaign that we're working on, which you will associate with a legislative, you know, a piece of legislation. We want families, individuals and families who are qualified and are receiving any type of subsidies to be able to have increased subsidies, but that increase will only be used for health and wellness, meaning that if it comes to consumption, it must be organic. Preferably locally grown organic, you know, food stuff. And also. Example, food co-ops. Food co-ops are one way. It's very expensive. They need to make it more non-expensive, I guess. That is what, so that is one of the, one of the pillars of what we're saying. For example, you have food co-ops that are mostly using organic and mostly using locally grown. So, which gives economic benefit to the state and local, you know, entrepreneurs at the same time, give the consumers healthier version of what they consume. But what we're saying, let's say a family gets $500, let's say a month, you know, from whatever subsidy name. We want that $500 to be increased to, let's say, $800. The added $300 must be allocated exclusively for health and wellness, meaning if you are going to the supermarket and loading up with all kinds of junk, so that you can stretch your dollars. We want that $300 to be only used for certified organic food stuff. As well as membership, either to gyms or equipment that you can bring your home to do exercise. Health and wellness. That is what we're working on. Here's the problem. Okay. Like if someone, I know in years past, and we got one more question to ask you. I know in years past, food stamps stopped, you know, put a halt on people buying steak, certain fish or shellfish like shrimp, or lobster, you know, luxury things. Okay. You know, but canned food is horrible as far as the salt content and stuff. So what is one of the things maybe your organization can help with increasing the SNAP benefits, but increase, you know, people want a steak. I mean, it's meat, you know. But how can we deal with that? Because in years past, and then also you can't, certain situations, you can't get hot food or go to McDonald's and get, you know, things with your food stamp card. Are they changing those rules, or what? Larry, you know, government subsidies aren't meant for luxury lifestyles. Understood. You know, people need the very essential items to survive. You know, food on your table, a roof over your head and clothes on your back. But if you're using government subsidies for luxury lifestyle, then you are abusing it. And then sooner or later, you will deny the same entitlement to everybody else. So we can have healthy lifestyle without being luxurious. By the way, you know, we need to redo the consumption of steak. We need to redo the consumption of meat in general, red meat in particular, so that we can eat more fruits and vegetables and drink a lot more water. Luxury lifestyle can be very detrimental to our health and wellness, especially if you're using government subsidies, you know, to try to maintain it. It's not sustainable. It's not ethical. And it is not what these subsidies are meant for. So it's better to insist on organic, you know, foodstuff, you know, mostly fruits and vegetables and regular clean water will do it. And you will be healthier, and you will not put yourself in jeopardy of losing your entitlement. I mean, every program that ever worked, unfortunately, if it's lost, it's lost because people abuse it. And when you abuse what was intended, you know, to maintain a decent lifestyle, then you deny the opportunity for everybody else. And people do need, you know, these subsidies because people have low income, people have health problems, and people are in situations that entitle them for government subsidies. That's why we pay taxes. That's why we pay in our social security account. That's how we pay for so many other, you know, services for later enjoyment. But as of now, there are individuals who cannot do things for themselves. There are individuals who are not able to provide, you know, for the very basic necessities of life that a lot of us, you know, don't even pay attention to because, you know, we think everybody can do it. So I would advise everyone who's receiving any type of government subsidies to be prudent in how they use them and to always focus on the best way of adopting healthy lifestyle through it, meaning, you know, eating organic fruits and vegetables and drinking water. Forget about sodas and alcohols and steaks and everything else that will not add anything but more self-destruct. So what is the future of healthcare as we are still in the 21st century? You know, Obamacare can be credited for opening the eyes of the public. For so long, you know, the Republicans, again, you know, control the narratives of health and wellness. And to them, everything must be in the hands of health insurance companies that have billions of dollars from Wall Street investors. And they do not want to lose the revenue that are being driven from premiums paid. But Obamacare debates so that, yes, you can have your healthcare profits, but it should not be in the expense of Americans dying. You cannot have these young people with type 2 diabetes, diabetic, can have access to the very, very basic, you know, pharmaceutical product that can save their lives. If you do that, now you're ending up robbing the labor force, you're ending up causing taxpayers at the back end of it, more money that could have been saved. So that debate opened the hearts and minds to know that, yes, you can have not socialized medicine, you can have affordable care services without denying private entities the opportunity to earn income from premiums. And the last question in terms, do you think healthcare has become, I'm going to say this and I hope you're not upset. Do you think healthcare and the different types of healthcare out there, do you think it's become a greedy industry? Have we become a greedy population? Anything that is connected to Wall Street can never ever be detached from greed. And greed is what caused most of our problems. That's why we fight war. That's why we have trillion dollar Pentagon budget. That's why we have individuals who do not. I said greed. Greed is the reason why our Pentagon budget is a trillion dollar. And greed is the reason why ordinary American citizens who work hard and play by the book don't have the basic necessities of life. This is an apartment to live in, healthcare that can protect them and other basic things that even some European countries are enjoying as an entitlement. So we are a greedy nation because we are a free market capitalism and we want to create billionaires in the expense of the masses. Today, our economy is controlled by fewer and fewer wealthier and more wealthy individuals. Here in New York City, for example, you have over 140 billionaires that concentrate on small pockets of the city, while the masses of the residents in the Bronx can even have decent apartment and 30% homeless and jobless and chronic disease and whole host of things that could have been avoided if we were not greedy. Greed is what defines us and greed is what is hurting us and I think we need to create more activist campaigns so that we can save more lives and bring equity back in the hands of American citizens. What is the health or economic or employment or housing or public safety or anything else? Okay, well, before we end this program, by the way, it's going to air also in 2024. Able to learn is going to air on powerTV.com, powerTV.com. Before we end, we're going to do two clips for an editing that's going to be put here. This is a short year review because we really wanted to concentrate today on health care and health care of our nation as we move forward in the 21st century. Let's take a look at two clips. The first one that we are going, before we say thank you to Shaquille for joining us on the show. Let's take a look at two clips. The first one of 2023 was when Douglas Salisbury came on and talked about peripheral artery disease with one of our partners, The Way to My Heart.org. Let's take a look at that program as part of our short year in review. Let's take a look at the pad episode with Douglas Salisbury. Let's take a look at this. Welcome, Douglas Salisbury, to Able then On Air. Howdy. How's everybody doing this morning? Okay. Beautiful Friday. Okay. So Douglas, why don't we start with your story? What is pad and it's your story. So go ahead. Well, so I guess we could start like four years ago. Let's go back four years. I was working two jobs and like my one's about 18 yards a month. So I was fully engaged in life and doing the manual things and enjoying my life. And I was taking care of my mom with Alzheimer's at the time. I'd moved her in and we were taking care of her with Alzheimer's. So mine started a little bit here, a little bit there. Started with the tingling in my left leg and then my legs started to get a little bit numb when I walked too much. And by the end of the day, my legs were starting to hurt. And it progressed a little bit in the very beginning, a little bit at a time. And I noticed it mainly when I was walking. And then after a little bit, I noticed I had started having less resting leg pain, which is one of the big things. So my legs started bothering me at night when I was trying to sleep. And then it progressively got worse. And I guess the day it started for me, I was doing a yard here where I live and I fell in the yard. My leg got, my left leg went totally numb. I fell in the yard and I laid in the yard and I thought to myself, well, maybe it's time to go see a doctor. You know, maybe it's time to have this looked at because as a man, like you were saying Lawrence, in the beginning I kept putting it all because it was like, man, I'm working too hard. I may have pulled a muscle and all the things that we tell ourselves, I'll see the doctor tomorrow, this will pass. You know, I've just, I'm working too hard. So I tried to relax and do all the things that we do. And I finally saw my primary position and I got lucky in a sense that after the second time I saw him, he said, remove your shoes. So I took my shoes off and he pulled my socks off and he checked my feet. And he said, I don't feel anything down here. You need to see a specialist. So I ended up with a bachelor surgeon here in Beaumont, Texas, where I live. And through that process, I had two stents. He said I was totally blocked. My order was totally blocked going to my legs. So I had two stents put in. They lasted maybe about six months. And I ended up back with him. And through that process ended up with an order of bifemoral bypass because that's what he said I needed. So I went through that process and that lasted maybe again about six months, six to eight months, something in there. And in that process, it started off great. And then I noticed within probably within the first month after that bypass, my leg started hurting again. I was having trouble walking, but I thought maybe at this time it was just me recovering. So I kind of put it off again a little bit. And eventually I couldn't walk again. So I went back to the same doctor. He did some checking, some testing. He says, well, if we need to do an axial bifemoral because that bypass was blocked. So he said he was going to go in and clean it out and do a stem. So I'm in the operating room. And this is basically how that process went. I was out. He called my brother and said, if we don't do an axial bifemoral bypass that he would lose his left leg. And my brother's on a forklift at six thirty in the morning at work. And, you know, Grady will tell you today, what was I supposed to say, you know, do the bypass? We want my brother, he said, I want my brother to have his legs. So we did the axial bifemoral bypass. And that's what I live with today. Now, our second part for a short year review. Let's take a look at when Kim McNicholas was on. She's the CEO of thewayinmyheart.org. Let's take a look at that clip and online. We would like to thank her for joining us on this edition of able to learn and welcome Kim for joining us on today's program. Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. And it's actually it's an honor. It's been so good knowing you over the past few months that we've been cutting back and forth and now for it to come to this. And I get to see you in action and be the subject. It is really fun. You're putting me in the hot seat right now. So what the heck is a award winning journalist doing as a patient advocate dealing with peripheral audio, auto disease and let's start there. Interesting because when I first started getting into broadcasting, one of the reasons I wanted to get into broadcasting was I wanted to create documentaries that would reflect issues that affect the community. I really wanted to be a change maker and have an impact on the community and pretty much create the change that I wanted to see just be that change maker. Fast forward as I got into broadcasting broadcasting took me in a variety of different directions. I've always been that sort of trailblazer always wanting to pave a new path. I was the first female sports director and sports anchor in the San Francisco Bay area. They had some sports anchors, but I was the first full time was coupled with being in charge of the entire sports department. It didn't matter that I was the only person in the sports department. So wait a minute women for many years and then we'll get to the issue at hand, but women for many years have been have been breaking barriers. Diane Sawyer yourself that and you being the only person in the sports department. I see your point even worse. You know the thing was that someone was actually like this I feel bad about, but they fired the sports guy to bring me in. The news director actually said to me, if we hire you or you know, then we have to fire the sports guy. So I need a yes or no now. I was like, I don't want anyone to get fired. He said, Oh no, no, no, it's not a bad thing. We want to take this sports department in an entirely different direction. And so we think you're the person to do it. So I had three sports casts every night. I also became the first person to have a racing show here in the state of California sponsored by a large. It's now called Sonoma Raceway. It's one of the road courses on the NASCAR circuit. And so they sponsored it and it was really exciting. Now breaking now breaking barriers because we all break breaking barriers in our own way. But breaking barriers in the health care field. You have you have a podcast dealing with peripheral artery disease. You have a wonderful organization dealing with that. So so what is way to my heart? And how does it help patients with artery disease? And and let's go from there. Right. So just to get you to to that point of the way to my heart.org. It really was the, you know, I had gotten really far in broadcasting. I worked for Forbes magazine. I appeared weekly on Fox. I was on CNN. You know, I had done a lot of different things. And so I had branched off and decided to become an entrepreneur because, you know, for 15 years I was really covering entrepreneurship. The the the bust, boom, the bust and the reemergence of Silicon Valley. The startups I've interviewed the who's who and they taught me so much about building a company. I thought I would go build my own. And at that point, it was supposed to be an interview platform where I would train people online to to do media. And it was at that time that Sir Richard Branson's team came to me and said, hey, we need some help with some press releases for this new startup competition. What we're doing, would you mind helping? Of course, I stepped in was helping out with it. Then it progressed into we want you to see our top 10 finals over at the world's largest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, CES. And oh, by the way, can you see the finals of the top three on Sir Richard Branson's Island? And I was sitting here going, oh my gosh, I've never built a startup competition before. What would I be doing? And Sir Richard Branson's words inspired me. He said, don't let what you don't know and have never done before get in the way of doing something great. Sometimes it's what you don't know. That could be your greatest asset in creating the greatest disruption in any industry and creating the change that you want to see in this world. And so I said, yes. And he said, yep, just say yes and figure out how to get it done. Always say yes and figure out how to get it done. That's when you have the greatest offer opportunities. And so I ended up doing that. And during that time, I've added more than 5000 companies. A lot of the companies that we were looking at were in healthcare. And I ended up deciding that I wanted to launch a radio show that would feature some of these companies. And it was during that time that a couple of doctors told me that the biggest disruption in healthcare was going to be in cardiovascular. And there was this new laser that was coming out. So I went to the company and I said, hey, I want to follow your medical device from the beginning, the very first case in the FDA trial. Well, thank you for joining me on this edition of Ableton on Air. I want to wish you a very happy and healthy holidays to you and your family and to everybody within your organization. What is the website again? People want to turn to your agency. Go ahead. Our website is NationalHealthEquity.org. NationalHealthEquity.org. And you will find our contact information and some basic information about who we are and what we are working on addressing. So Ladi, thank you so much for having me once one more time. I really, really enjoy coming to your soul because I think you're doing a fabulous job in addressing the needs of a community that is always overlooked by service providers and others. And you're addressing what need to be addressed. So God bless you. Okay. Well, we would like to say a special thanks to Shikei Musatrame. He's one of our partners with the National Center for Health Equity in 2024. And we would also like to say a special thanks to our partners, the Muslim Media Corporation, and as well as Lifestyle and Lifespan. A special thanks to Shikei Musatrame for partnering with us with all these things on Abledin on Air. And special thanks to the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Special thanks to our partner in Abledin on Air, TheWayToMyHeart.org, Kim Mick Nicholas, and her agency and many, many others that have partnered with Abledin on Air. I'm Lauren Seiler. Please, this holiday season, please eat right so we can stop obesity. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time on the next edition of Abledin on Air. See you in 2024. Major sponsors for Abledin on Air include Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Abledin on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps, Domestic and International, Anchor FM, and Spotify. Partners for Abledin on Air include Yachad of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Abledin on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, www, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Abledin on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists.