 All right. Well, let's get going then. I would like to welcome all of you to this evening's webinar. I'm Bob Trug. I'm director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. And for Black History Month, our center is joining with Dr. Ruben Warren and his colleagues at the National Center for Bioethics and Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University in a respectful celebration of Black History Month. So during the month of February, we will be co-hosting a seminar each Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. This is part of a now two-year collaboration between our two centers at Harvard and Tuskegee and the second year that we have worked together for Black History Month. So actually, we could have the logistics slide. So before we start, just a couple of comments about logistics, please use the question and answer, the Q&A box to send questions for the panelists. Please use the chat box for any questions that would go to our producer, Ms. Ashley Troutman. And then just to say, for security reasons, information in the chat box will only be visible to the panelists and the moderators this evening. And then we can go to our next slide, Ashley, on our upcoming events. So I'd also like to draw your attention to the upcoming sessions for the next three Wednesdays in February. Next Wednesday, Professor Vanessa Nordington-Gambel will be speaking on a fascinating moment in Black History with a lecture entitled, Educated in a White Space, African-American graduates of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1850 to 1925. On February 16, we will host a session that will focus on the experiences of health care students at predominantly white and historically Black colleges and universities. And finally, our session on February 23 will address well-being and healing for future generations, focusing on mental health and well-being in predominantly Black communities and institutions. Before I turn this over to my friend Ruben Warren, I recognize that some of you might be wondering why Centers of Bioethics would be hosting a seminar series for Black History Month, as opposed to, say, departments of history or social studies. Well, two of the foundational principles of bioethics are justice and respect for persons. And sadly, the historical experience of Black people in our country is replete with examples of disrespect and injustice. The failure of bioethics to acknowledge and address these problems is both inexplicable and unforgivable. Our ability to understand the sources of these injustices and lack of respect comes from an examination of history. And only by learning the lessons of this history can we hope to see the path forward, a path towards greater equity and inclusion. So an understanding of Black history is absolutely essential to the mission of bioethics. Let me now turn this over to my friend, colleague, and co-host, Dr. Ruben Warren, Director of the National Center for Bioethics and Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University, so that he can welcome you and introduce Professor Joan Reed, the moderator of this evening's session. Ruben? Good evening, and thank you, Bob. It is such a pleasure to once again see all the familiar faces and hear some new faces and hear some new voices. Dr. Carter G. Woodson was absolutely correct when he said that we need to take time to celebrate, to commemorate, and to reflect on things that are important. And while we do that every year, all the time, we pick out this month to target Black History Month. And one, as Bob said, why bioethics? Well, we're pushing the envelope. We're saying bioethics and beyond. We're even talking about a new framework called public authorities, which talks about community engagement, beneficence, and social justice. So this session is beyond the traditional boundaries. We ask you to open up your minds and your hearts to what we ought to be doing and reflect on what we've done. This is the time, and I'm excited for you to join us. And you've heard a moment ago about the friendships we share. And we're not talking about titles or positions. We're talking about friendships. And I'm so pleased that the moderator of this session is my dear friend for many, many years, Dr. Joan Reed. And she's got enough titles and has got enough things that we all know, Joan. But you need to know that she's the Dean of Diversity and Community Partnerships. And she's a full professor of internal medicine. So that's a really important thing for those in the academy. So do not belabor titles and positions. Let me turn it over to my dear friend, Joan Reed. Joan. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Warren. And thank you, Dr. Truth, for providing this session this evening and for providing me this opportunity to moderate. It is always wonderful to be with your colleagues, your friends, and people that you think of as heroes and heroes in the academy. So thank you for that. I'm not going to go through long introductions. The bios of our three panelists can be found on the website. And there's links to all of this. Our panelists are Dr. Louis Sullivan, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, and Dr. I'm trying to find on my screen because I know him well. Dr. George Daley, the Dean of my school. When I think about the three of you, I think about the many things that you share in your roles and your leadership roles. But you also share this really strong history with Boston in terms of your education, in terms of your training with Dr. Sullivan, having graduated from Boston University School of Medicine, but also spent time in the Thorndike lab, which was part of BU and Harvard. And Dr. Montgomery Rice, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, the same way as Dean Daley, George Daley is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. But you also share something else in common. There are all three members of the National Academy of Medicine, but you're all members of the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine roundtable on Black men and women in STEM. So very much relevant to this conversation this evening. And rather than talk about your many accolades and honors and all of your accomplishments, you're all three beyond accomplished, I'm hoping that you should share a different part of yourself and share with us briefly your own sort of early history, your personal or educational professional history and how it impacted you in terms of your perspectives about the conversation today, about the conversation about anti-racism, about equity and social justice, your perspectives from what you bring forward about creating real change in these areas. And I'm going to start with you, Dr. Sullivan. All right, did you say Sullivan? Yes, I did. Yes, very good. Thank you. Well, first of all, it was a great pleasure to be with all of you this evening and to be part of the panel and to really relate to the audience. Well, let me begin by quote from perhaps the most famous Morehouse College graduate, there's Martin Luther King, Jr. And many of you know, one of the things that he said is this, of all of the forms of inhumanity to man, perhaps access to healthcare differences are the most shocking and the most inhumane. And so that perspective from one of our great moral leaders, I think shows the importance of bioethics when it comes to healthcare. Now my personal story, I would summarize as follows. I'm a native Georgian. I was born at Grady Hospital, the big public hospital here in Atlanta during the depths of the depression, 1933. And because it was the depression, my father who was a life insurance salesman was not selling much life insurance. So he moved our family. I was the younger of two boys. He moved us to Southwest Georgia when he went into the funeral home business. We really were poor, but we didn't know that because everyone else was like we were. And to make a long story short, my father established the first funeral home for African Americans in the town of Blakely in Southwest Georgia. There was one black physician in that part of the state, Dr. Joseph Griffin in Bainbridge, 41 miles south. In those years of rigidly enforced segregation, if you were black and went to a white physician in Blakely, you had to go around back or differently. We resented that as did many in the black community. So my father with his ambulance service with his funeral home frequently took blacks in Blakely down to Bainbridge, the Dr. Joseph Griffin, the one black physician in Southwest Georgia. Dr. Griffin was my role model because at age five I told my parents, I want to be a doctor. I want to be like Dr. Griffin. That was because Dr. Griffin was obviously well respected, very successful, very influential and really had great knowledge. He could cure people of illness and injury. He could relieve their suffering. I wanted to have that capability of serving my fellow man. So he was my role model. Interestingly enough, many of you will know Dr. LaSalle LaFolle who died only a few years ago, LaSalle LaFolle was trained by Charles Drew at Howard and LaSalle LaFolle became chairman of surgery at Howard University. Well, LaSalle came from Quincy, Florida. So I was in Blakely, 41 miles north of Bainbridge. LaSalle was in Quincy, Florida some 27 miles from Bainbridge. It turns out Dr. Griffin was his role model also. So he had great influence on us. Well, in those years of segregation, schools for blacks in Georgia and certainly in the rural areas were really not very good. So my parents being very committed to my brother and myself getting a strong education sent us first to Savannah for one year then back to Atlanta after that to attend schools there. And while the schools were still segregated they were much better, they were stronger. Not only were the schools stronger there was a strong middle class in Atlanta. So I got to know other black physicians, lawyers, businessmen and most of all I learned about Morehouse College. So when I finished book of Washington high school in Atlanta, I enrolled at Morehouse College because I knew I wanted to be a physician. There, another role model came into my view. That was Dr. Benjamin Mays, the president of Morehouse College. He had a remarkable story himself having been born in South Carolina in the town of 96. It had that name because the highway 96 ran through the town with one traffic light. He went to Bates College where he graduated in 1906. The one black in his class and valedictorian in his class. He received his PhD in philosophy and religion from University of Chicago. So in 1950 when I enrolled at Morehouse College he had become president. He was eloquent, well-read, highly respected always speaking to international bodies like the International Council of Churches, et cetera. And he told us the students always aim to be the best in whatever field you choose. He said, because if you choose to be excellent when they're considering someone in your field they will have to consider you. Say, now you may not get the position but it should not be because you're not qualified. Another saying he had was chance favors the prepared mind, Francis Bacon. So he inspired all of us because all of us wanted to be like Dr. Mays. Well, we were encouraged in 1953, our junior year but not only to apply to Howard and Mahary but to other medical schools as well. So I applied to a number of other schools and including Boston University. I was quite surprised that three weeks after I sent my letter in I was hoping to be invited for an interview. I got a letter, I opened it very carefully and said, congratulations, you've been admitted to Boston University. So I had not gone for an interview, I had been interviewed locally in Atlanta by an alumnus of Boston University. So that's how I ended up at Boston University. In my class of 76 students in 1954 which is a year of Brown versus Board of Education I was the black student in my class. Living for the first time in my life in an integrated environment. I wondered, how will I be received by my classmates and by the faculty? Will I be ignored? Will there be hostility? Well, we had our first examination three weeks after we had entered and I did very well and that allayed my questions as to whether my preparation really would be very good because my classmates had finished first the second in their class from Amherst or Williams or Harvard or Princeton, elsewhere. So I had a very good experience at Boston University became class president and then decided in medical school that I wanted to become a hematologist. When I went to medical school I didn't know what hematology was because my image had been to return to Georgia as a family physician. So when I finished BU, I then went to Cornell and in 1958 in New York City, again, the picture was repeating itself. The first black house officer at Cornell Medical Center in New York, a most urban city in the country. And if you talk to anyone my age who's African-American, you'll get a similar story of them being the first there because all of this is to say we have made progress but that progress has been very recent and we need to do everything we can to really solidify that progress. So following that, I returned to Boston and after a year of pathology with Ben Kasselman at Mass General, I went to the Thorndike and trained in hematology and then I'd started my career in academic medicine. So that is how I started. Dr. Kasselman, I want to say a piece because I want to come back to pieces of this but I'm hearing in what you're saying these recurring themes of first and of stepping into places where you haven't been before. And as I think about some of the issues of today as I think about the work that's being done by the round table, we still have our youth today who are stepping in as first and stepping into places where they wonder if they belong. So when I think about someone like you who has done this and who opened the doors for some of the rest of us, I wanna just stop at this point and just say thank you for your role and what you've done in that. I wanna turn a little bit now to Dr. Montgomery Rice. And if you could share briefly part of what brought you to this place and why is this place to you important to you as we talk about anti-racism and as we talk about the importance of equity and social justice. So thank you, Joan and Dr. Sullen and Dr. Daly. It is such a pleasure to be with you and Joan, excuse my familiarity, Dr. Reed. You're on mute, you're on mute. I hear you. So my story is one of how education is the great equalizer and the importance of mentorship and sponsorship, particularly for women and black women in spaces that in the past have been really male dominated. My three sisters and I were raised by a single mother who whispered to us every night or so in our years when she was coming off either the swing share from the seven to three, three to 11, 11 to seven, all things are possible. You can do anything you wanna do. You can be anybody you wanna be. Now we found it a nuisance for somebody to be tipping you on the ear when you were trying to sleep. And I know my mother did not know about subliminal messaging but she did know about how to encourage your girls whatever you wanted to turn it. So my accomplishments have been the result of love and support and I've been blessed to have such amazing mentors and sponsors that really saw my work and my work and guided me professionally. My primary mentor in my professional career really was there at Harvard Medical School Dr. Ann Kiesling was the first woman to lead the Brigham's Invitual Fertilization Lab. And when I told her that I thought I wanted to be an REI and I knew I had to do OBGYN first but I really wanted to be an infertility specialist and I came to her lab and said, you know, I'm a Harvard Medical student and I would like to do some research because I got to make my application more competitive four years from now. And she said to me, how much time do you have? And I said, I have three weeks. And she said to me, come back when you're serious. And that played out two or three times. And I ended up spending my entire fourth year in medical school in a laboratory doing basic science research which really was the foundation for my academic career. And so I got to watch her as a woman with four kids and we were always there on the weekend. And so were those kids. And we would have them doing crayons and we would have them doing projects or I would have them trying to help me go into the mouse room because I was scared of mice and they were not. And it was just a family affair thing. And she showed me what was possible that you could be a mother, you could be a wife. You could have this outstanding career but it required people who cared about you and who were willing to partner with you. So I've dedicated my career to helping women and as a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist it's really always been about how we would advance health equity in that space because we know the disparities that were there. So equity, social justice, anti-racism and healthcare are all intertwined. Black and brown people, indigenous people, poor people and traditionally they are traditionally underserved. And we need to change that because they need to achieve health equity. And health equity is not about giving people the same thing, guys. It is really about giving people what they need when they need it and the amount they need to reach their optimal level of health. And my career has been about me being fortunate enough to have people in my life at times giving me what I needed in the amount that I needed to reach my optimal level self. My life's work has been dedicated to leveling the plan field and it started early on by having a mother who was willing to make sacrifices for her girls so that we could reach our optimal presence. As I listened to you and as I listened to Dr. Sullivan it is so very clear how those early experiences really guide and influence us as we move forward in our careers and hearing the role models at different points from the physician, LaSalle Fall and Louis Sullivan being the role model for both of them. This scientist in this position at Harvard being this role model for you and this importance of role models, mentors and others within our lives. Thank you both. Dr. Daly, can you give your perspective? Yeah, Dr. Reed, let me just start by saying what an incredible privilege it is to serve on this panel with Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Montgomery Rice. And also what a privilege it has been and what a learning experience it has been for me to serve on the round table, black men and black women in STEM fields with Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Montgomery Rice. And I serve currently as a fellow dean of a medical school with Dr. Montgomery Rice and count her among our tremendously distinguished graduates of Harvard Medical School. So this is just, this is really a thrill for me. I also learned something from Dr. Sullivan every time I hear him speak, I learned something. But we both trained as hematologists but I learned that his father was a life insurance salesman. And that's another connection that we have because I grew up, my father was a traveling salesman. He sold ties and gloves all over the Northeast and then later on became an insurance salesman. And I think there's a good influence from a salesman in medicine because my dad connected with people. He loved people and he always reached out to people and that was a value that I really treasure. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York which actually had a multi-ethnic composition. It was relatively integrated. But I have to say, very personally, I had some very close dear relatives who were extraordinarily racist and classist. And I just remember from a very young age feeling uncomfortable when, for instance, my uncle would claim our superiority and our station in life based purely on our parentage and not on the content of our character, if you will. And I recall being viscerally, just viscerally uncomfortable about that. Because deep down inside, I had friends who I valued for their integrity, their work ethic, their humanity, their caring for others. The kind of, I think, values that led me in part to pursue a career in medicine. And those values that I inculcated in my experiences growing up helped shape me when I got to Harvard. Coming from a small town where 10 or 15% of the kids went on to college at all, I got to go to Harvard. But I remember as a freshman feeling that same awkwardness that I had felt from my uncle because Harvard was more segregated, more classist than even the small town that I had grown up in. So I think those early experiences did definitely shape me. And as I've adopted various roles throughout my academic career, whether it was running my own laboratory or running a small clinical transplant division to now being Dean, is that basically, I think it's the values that truly matter. And one of the key values is the importance of creating equal opportunities for everyone to flourish. To flourish. And that's something that I am still driving towards. Dr. Reed, you're a tremendous partner in my quest to do that on behalf of our community. And I just think it's part of what a great institution like Harvard Medical School should be advancing. It's a core principle to seek social justice, equal opportunity for all, so that all in our communities can flourish. Thank you. We carry our youth forward. You know, I'm a pediatrician, so this is all good to me. How we raise our children makes such a difference in this world. You all have this association with these institutions that have amazing histories, have important mission that are embedded in a society and a structure that was created with some of this injustice embedded in it, some of this racism embedded in it, some of these negative things. You look at some of the outcome from Flexner, et cetera, some very good things for academic medicine, some things not so good for others. As you think about where we are now, and I want to take us to where we are in very current terms, we're in a time where if we look across our country, there's this sort of awakening for some, reawakening for some, and some of us we've just been awake every day of our lives because we live being awake all the time. But we have institutions and places that are saying that you can't teach about racism, you can't teach about slavery. We have in the past 48 hours at our historically black colleges and universities experiencing bomb threat. So as we moved forward, there's a part of us that is still carrying some of this history. And I'd like you to speak on that. I think that as much as we have this opportunity to talk about a mission and the work that we do and how we can work together to really counter racism to also talk about what is happening in the news as we speak. Dr. Montgomery Rice, I'm gonna start with you. Thank you. You are right. We are in the middle of this situation with the situation with the bomb threats. And someone asked me today, was I fearful? And I am reminded of a quote and I was trying to make sure I can remember it, that fear is just a call to exercise courage. Fear is just a call to exercise courage and without fear, you can't have courage and without acting courageously in any situation. You won't do that unless you have something to protect, something to honor, something to prove, something that you're committed to. Fear is that call to action and that action should be courageous. And so when I think about where we are right now and where we've come from since flexing, and I said Warhouse is the youngest of the schools. So, you know, we were the one of the ones that were closed down or disenfranchised with the flexing report during that time. And so we've had the opportunity to build upon the legacy of what's possible. And we have done that. And of course, that was led by Dr. Louis Sullivan, who was our president and dean at that time. And so we've had this opportunity to continue to advance what's possible. And so when we find ourselves in this day and time, I think about being fearful, but it only makes me more courageous. And when I talk to my students and my faculty, I tell them that is even more important for us to stand still and stand tall, because this is our time to demonstrate to the world what it looks like to be advocates and champions of health equity. And no one said that that path would be easy. No one said that they had even seen the pathway to health equity. What I am also reassured though, you talked about the awakening that people have had. There were many people who believed in the achievement of health equity, but they didn't quite know how to get there. And sometimes they were afraid. And I'm talking about institutions and individuals with power to be the first one up. And now I think they too are fearful for where we would be if we don't stand up. And we are seeing those institutions become courageous and said no more and declare anti-racism on their campus. They're talking in name and social injustices. They understand more clearly their commitment to people and understanding that when we take that oath, it is not about winning the prize or being just the best surgeon or all the other accolades. It is about the people that we are going to be honored to impact and care for. Thank you. Dr. Sullivan, you've had this amazing journey. And you've got as far as part of what you were doing in terms of BU and your degree and then your training and born diet and other things, but and the remarkable programs that you started at this university. But as Dr. Montgomery Rice mentioned, you went to Morehouse and you started at Morehouse. And as I think about the challenges that we see today, why was there a need for a Morehouse? And as you looked at what we're seeing today, is there a continued need for institutions such as Morehouse? I know that you are in the process of writing a book that speaks about our Black minority health professional schools, but what led you to do that then and what can we learn from what you did then that we can apply today? Well, first of all, I would say, I would certainly want to agree with Dr. Rice that we need to continue to plow ahead and not let these threats of bombs, et cetera, deter us whatsoever. You think about what happened with WB Du Bois and John Hope, who was president of Morehouse College in the early part of the 20th century. They worked to form the Niagara Movement, which was a predecessor of the NAACP. You think of people like Martin Luther King, Reverend Lowry and the others, and people like James Meredith who walked the highways of Mississippi in spite of many threats. You think of Stephen, Brian Stevenson in Montgomery, who has built this memorial to all of the lynchings that occurred, et cetera. So I think all of us in spite of these conditions need to continue to push ahead. Let me say this, I ended up as a research hematologist when in 1974, Morehouse College decided they wanted to start a medical school. And as an alumnus of the college, I was asked to serve on a committee of alumni who were in academic medicine to advise the college on this. We worked for a year. We thought, first of all, we were skeptical, but then by the end of this year, we were all enthusiastic. We thought that it was not only possible, but that it should be done. So Morehouse College undertook this, and I was fortunate to then be asked to be the founding dean, and that gave me an opportunity because in essence, for me, this met the actual fulfillment of why I went to medical school in the first place. I went to medical school intending to be like Dr. Griffin. I ended up pushing vitamin B12 across cell membranes and looking at the effects of alcohol on blood cell production. And while that was very exciting and very productive, starting the Morehouse School of Medicine was an opportunity for me to really return to Georgia through my graduates of the Morehouse School of Medicine and become those physicians in those medically underserved areas. Because when my father took our family to Blakely, Georgia, he formed the chapter of the NAACP. He started annual Emancipation Day celebration January 1st of every year. He would have people like John Wesley Dobbs come to Blakely to urge the blacks to vote. He sued the school system because they were separate but not equal. So in essence, in addition to preparing me for a professional career, an educated career, my father and my mother were preparing me and my brother for careers as activists. So that's why I found the challenge and the opportunity of developing a predominantly black medical school to be very exciting. And the need for it is as follows. In 1950, 2% of America's physicians were African-Americans. When we were 10% of the population, by the mid-70s, we were 12% of the population but only 3% of the physicians. Morehouse School of Medicine was founded to really help address this, not by itself but to help serve as a model for all medical schools to be much more active in becoming more diverse institutions and training their students. So the opportunity to do that was really a great sense of fulfillment. Now today, we still have only 8% of today's medical students are African-American although African-Americans are now 13% of the population. And we hope to have a society one day that it won't matter whether you're black, white, red, yellow or what have you. But we're not there yet. And we know that many people feel much more comfortable having a physician who understands them, their language, their culture, their value system and who respects them as individuals. Because as I said, growing up in a segregated society, we had to accept the outer markings of this segregation but we resisted it wherever we could. And that's how my father was always going down to Bainbridge, taking people to see Dr. Griffin. So we need to do everything we can to improve the health of our citizens. And part of that is having more diverse health workforce, not only in medicine, but in all of the health professions in dentistry, nursing, et cetera. And we also need to improve the health literacy of our populations because we can really improve the health of our citizens in a great way. The final comment I want to make because my friend Ruben Warren with this bi-ethics center there, Tuskegee, is involved is this. One of our great educators was Book of Washington. Book of Washington, as you know, went to Tuskegee as a principal and he built the science of that institution with George Washington Carver, the chemist who changed the agricultural economy of the South through the products that he was able to develop with the peanut and the potatoes. And it really made the farmers much more economically viable there. And George Washington Carver, of course, was a great scientist coming out of Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. And then after he received his PhD from Iowa State going to Tuskegee to form that science center. Book of Washington partnered with Julius Rosenwald. And many people don't know the story of Julius Rosenwald, who was head of Sears Robot, a catalog company. And living in Blakely, we ordered a lot of things through Sears catalogs. But Rosenwald worked with Booker D. Washington to form 5,000 schools for blacks, elementary schools and high schools that didn't exist in many of these communities. And there are many people today whose education occurred in these Rosenwald schools. So fundamentally, we've had predecessors who faced odds much more challenging than the odds we have today. And I say our job and our challenge is to continue to move forward. Because what we are trying to do is to realize the meaning of the Declaration of Independence of all men being created equal, and we're working towards a more perfect union in our society. We're not that we've never been a perfect union, but we're moving towards it. So what we're doing in our activities is trying to help all of us working together, black, white, yellow, what have you, to work together and get beyond these prejudices that really have some people who feel threatened by people who are not like them and carry out these acts of bombing and intimidation, but it's not going to work because we're not intimidated. We're going to continue to move forward and we're going to make this country live up to the full meaning of its destiny. That's why I'm pleased to be doing what I'm doing. And that's why my early life shaped my career where I ended up training more young people, not only who are African-American because Morehouse School of Medicine has always been integrated from the beginning. We've had white students, we've had students from abroad, we've had Chinese students, et cetera, because everyone needs healthcare. And our purpose is to really see that people get the services that they need. Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. And I'm going to ask you, Dr. Daly, we talk about these incidents and what's going on today. What is the role for a Harvard Medical School in this? What is the role for predominantly white institutions in this space? And part of what comes to mind as Dr. Sullivan is talking is this idea and concept and what Harvard's doing around this better together, that you can't do this alone. HBCUs can't do this alone. But could you give the Harvard perspective on what we're seeing and what's happening? Yeah, let me say I think that Harvard has a particular prominence in our society. And coming with that prominence is the responsibility to react and to also lead. I'm incredibly proud that Harvard Medical School can be the school that attracts the most outstanding students and then they go on and they become remarkable leaders like Dr. Montgomery Rice. So we play a really, really critical role in shaping the highest standards of academic achievement. And so one of the things that we really think we have to do as a predominantly white institution is make sure that we are taking advantage of all the opportunities and giving those opportunities in a more equitable manner. And so I say this in part, Dr. Reed, because I wanna applaud so many of the things that you've done as a leader at Harvard Medical School and a leader nationally, especially in the way that you've built these incredible pipeline programs. Because I think the pipeline programs are going to lift people and give them opportunity so that they can carry the banner of Harvard and be leaders across the country. I think about the way that you bring high school students and undergraduates to our community for a weekend of intense immersion in science through the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program, an immersion in mentorship. Many of those students have gone on to careers in biomedicine. You've created the Hinton Scholars Program that has served almost 1500 students since 2003. You've created this visiting clerkship program where we get outstanding students, many of whom from the historically black colleges, historically black medical schools coming to the Harvard system to do their clinical clerkships to realize that they can seek opportunities in our fantastic hospitals to become leading physicians. It's a start. It's one way that Harvard, which is an incredibly privileged community, can open its arms and be welcoming and then create the kinds of opportunities that lead to leadership. And the reason that I'm so proud of the so many leaders that we have trained who have been driving diversity across biomedicine. Thank you. When you think about where we are now and I'm looking at the time and we're gonna open it in a few minutes for those of you who have questions to put them into Q&A, are there things that we can do together? Our historically black colleges and universities are predominantly white institutions across institutions to address these issues of what I call trying to intimidate issues of racism, issues since it's around table that's looking at issues around diversity and equity and inclusion, which then means you also have to address some of the social determinants and education and access for the members of our community. Are there things that we could do together that your institutions may have taken on themselves? And you could tell us about those, but also where we could partner in moving these forward. And let me again start with you, Dr. Montgomery Rice. Thank you, Joan. So, I have always been the person who said, okay, I'm gonna stick with what our expertise is and our expertise at Morehouse School of Medicine is educated in training culturally competent providers. And so lots of people have always said, well, if you really wanna increase the number of students and students of color going to medical school, why don't you open up another black medical school? Well, my answer to that was most schools have in their mission somewhere diversity. So first of all, why don't we hold it about accountable to what their mission says? But then when I think about what we could do at Morehouse School of Medicine, what we recognized was that we really have been very successful at this. We've grown our class size at Morehouse School of Medicine over the last 10 years. We've doubled the class size, but we could do more. And so last year we announced a partnership with Common Spirit Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in the country. The CEO and I, Lord Dean, decided that we could do something right now that could make a difference. And so we're on a journey to open up five regional medical campuses with Morehouse School of Medicine at Common Spirit sites. We've picked naive sites, naive to undergraduate medical education and GME, and many of them will be really focused or in towns and areas where there is an access challenge. And we're gonna open up 10 graduate medical education programs with no less than three disciplines. And as we grow, Morehouse School of Medicine will become 225 students who will be hopefully, 50% of them will be recruited from those communities through our pipeline programs. And eventually they're gonna find their way back to those communities where they graduated from high school, where their mother is working on a paper factory, or their grandmother was cleaning somebody's house. And they're going to see their loved one having been able to experience what's possible because of the foundation. Now, that was two CEOs, myself and another CEO who runs the largest not-for-profit health system in this country saying we can do something now. And we are well on our way for success. And so I think that what people have to become is very intentional and understand what their responsibility is with the resources that they are asked to steward, how to leverage them for transformation, not just change, for transformation while they are sitting in the seat. Be intentional, intentionable, and be actionable. Thank you. Dr. Daley, can you talk a little bit about the space of what we could do together? Well, I'd be very receptive to any of a number of creative ideas. I'm very excited by the fact that Dr. Trug, who runs our Center for Bioethics is closely connected to Dr. Warren and Tuskegee. And that's just a perfect example of the way we can come together around critical issues, academic and otherwise. I also think in our own communities, Harvard Medical School is trying to make a greater effort to reach out and engage and be more socially responsible. We saw in the COVID era, especially with the disparities in just vaccination and also the access to the trials of vaccines that the leadership of our trials actually ended up coupling to the community health centers in order to recruit a more diverse population in those trials so that we could have a better understanding of the function of the vaccine. I'm very excited by the recent development of the Office for Community-Centered Medical Education that has sprung up in our Center for Primary Care. The goal being to engage our medical students more in the communities to have their educational experiences be really just immersed in the communities of color around Boston who will be benefited so much by the presence of our medical students and our medical students will benefit so much from the enriched learning experiences that they'll gain there. So I think we need to work together as institutions but I think we also need to come together as communities and I'm certainly hoping that we can continue to do that at Harvard. Thank you for that. I think about as we come together for communities, I think about our work with the Health Equity Compact and our work with King Boston and community-based organizations and where we partner with those organizations. I have a slightly different question go down this path and wanna put this to you, Dr. Sullivan. What do you think are some of the remaining larger barriers for our black community as we think about the next generation? What are some of the things we need to address and remove as we look forward? The students of tomorrow. I think the major barriers are as follows. First of all, the income or the wealth of the average black family is really minimal. We need to do everything we can to provide financial resources for these young people if they are to realize their dream of going to college, going to professional school, et cetera. One of the things that has been rather encouraging to me has been the virtual spontaneous actions of a number of people in the last 18 months to the COVID pandemic as well as the unfortunate police incidents around the country where we've seen people like Mackenzie Scott give major grants to more than 21 black colleges, grants of $20, $40 million, et cetera. Hastings of Netflix, similar dollars to places like Morehouse College and Spelman, et cetera. And then of course, the $100 million that Michael Bloomberg gave to the four black medical schools. Those are remarkable, but those by themselves are not enough. What I would like to see is something to continue this culture of giving that we've seen and have it continue not for a year or two, but for a decade or two or more. And I happen to be a member of a council of past presidents of black colleges that's here in Atlanta, some 19 of us. And we've been talking about this if we could really see that the resources come to black colleges that they never have had that they could do a much more robust job in preparing young people for careers whether it's in medicine, law, business or what have you. So that's one thing. The other thing I would suggest is this, I think our institutions can work closely together. Back in 1977, I was involved in forming the Association of Minority Health Affection Schools which at that time included Mahari Medical College, Tuskegee Veterinary School, Xavier College of Pharmacy, Morehouse School of Medicine. And we then grew to 12 institutions which are all four of the black medical schools, the two dental schools, the veterinary school of Tuskegee and the seven colleges of pharmacy. This association has worked on a number of things and really in a sense like Julius Rosenwald and the great work that he's done, the Association of Minority Health Affection Schools is not well known. Well, we've written a history of that association which will be coming out this fall from Johns Hopkins Press because many people don't know the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities exists because of the activities of this association. There's a research endowment program that exists because of that. There's the RCMI program that came into being because of the work that we did. So that's one example of institutions working closely together. And the other comment I would make is this. In 1968, while I was in Boston as Professor of Medicine at Boston University, we worked with Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth and Vermont, Brown and the University of Massachusetts to work to recruit more black students to our medical schools. This was following the unfortunate assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. And many of you remember that around the country colleges and universities were trying to think what could they do in response to that? So these medical schools came together. We had a recruitment weekend. We brought 24 students, black students from 24 black colleges in the South to urge them to apply to our medical schools and to go back to their colleges and encourage their friends to apply. So that was the Thanksgiving weekend, 1968 in Boston. The following year in 1969, Harvard I think had some 11 black freshmen. Boston University had six. Every one of these schools that participated in this weekend when we worked together in our recruitment activities, every school except for Vermont had more black students. Larry McCrory, who is an African-American physiologist at the University of Vermont was disappointed but it was not his fault. I think the students who came thought that Vermont and the North Pole were the same place and therefore they didn't do so well. But so I think that activities that we can combine in educating young people is mentoring them, counseling them because if they end up going to Pittsburgh or to San Diego or to University of Miami, that's okay. We want to have them in the health professions. So I think we could work together in helping to lift the spirits and the sites of many young people, whether it's in Boston or in Baton Rouge. So I would like to see us working together on things like that. I think it would have a major impact in broadening the pool of students coming into our schools. Actually collaborating and working together to bring more forward. One of the issues that come up in parts of the questions or chats and one of the issues we often hear about are issues around literacy and the quality of the education that our students are receiving and it impacts their health status and low education and job opportunities. But it also impacts their entry into our profession and moving forward in these spaces. Is there a role for our academic centers in our communities to think about or address issues of literacy for either for patients, be it for the students in the schools and the educational system? I'll start because Morehouse School of Medicine seven years ago adopted the Tuskegee Airmen Global Academy. It's a K through five school that is about five miles at the most from the school. And up until COVID, we have 130 of our employees who are certified to go into the school for active engagement with the students. Four times a year, we bring the entire population of the school, 600 students to the school and engage with them in an activity. There's mentorship that's ongoing. At the beginning of every school year, right before it begins, we do a strategic planning session with the teachers. What are we focusing on this year? Is it reading, is it math? Is it third grade reading? It's a fifth grade math, whatever it is. And that's what when we go into those schools, that's what our focus is on, right? When we are interacting with those students. Our students have won the state science fairs for their grade level. We built them a robotics laboratory. We do all type of science projects in a group manner. We have music programs. We have a robotics team that has gone to championships. And all of this is because we understand that we have to make this investment now for what may happen 20 years from now. And it's just a partnership in that school with at the bottom when we started. And I knew it wasn't just us, but our influence and our impact of our 130 or 50 employees and all of our students who are engaged there, they will tell you made a difference. And now that school is a much higher functioning school. And we believe that we are making a difference by investing early on. Thank you. Dr. Daley. Well, I am reminded of some of the, research that was shared with the round table by Raj Chetty, one of our economists of disparities in inequality at Harvard who has probably done more than any other economist to shed light on the challenges of our society that start very, very young. And that the disparities start with access to preschool preschool education, disparities in access to childcare and the burden that childcare places and the challenge of having any of our young people achieve their ultimate capabilities if they can't also have society take some responsibility to educate and care for our children. So I think we leaders of these institutions, we can advocate very strongly for the importance of universal preschool, the importance of expanded childcare. I mean, most societies in the most sort of enlightened societies realize that by providing access to early education and childcare, it lifts everyone's capabilities and it improves the general lot economically, intellectually. And I think we have a stronger voice to be heard there. Thank you. I think that the part of what we bring in terms of our research or knowledge building are exploring different areas. But you didn't say it. I think the other part, and it's much like you, Dr. Montgomery Rice, there's other ways that are concrete for Boston Public Schools, part of the AP biology students and their teachers actually do their classes at Harvard Medical School. And so I think there's a part of this that's just the concrete and on the ground. Yeah, you're talking about MedSci, right? This MedSci program was part of it, which is an unbelievable and exciting program that I've taught in. We have students taking physiology at Boston High Schools who then come to the campus in a simulation lab and they're put through the same kind of rigors as our emergency room physicians are to see a patient. The patient is actually a mannequin, but there's someone behind the screen that's answering the students' questions in real time and they walk them through a real clinical engagement. I think it's inspired our students to go into healthcare. Our high school students, but it's gotta start earlier than that. I think that there's so much time lost between the early days and by the time we get to high school, we really need to be enriching educational opportunities across the board. Thank you. Dr. Sullivan, as you have had these roles with the Secretary of Health and starting medical schools and being on this round table in so many different places and so much influence in different places, your thoughts in terms of where we can step in around these issues of literacy and the education of our youth and how we are or are not preparing? Well, I certainly want to agree with Dean Diggily's comments that we need to have the help of economists and others. And one other example I would like to add is that of James, well, his name is James Coma at Yale, Charles psychiatrist, African-American. Jim Coma for years has worked to improve the functioning of inner city schools and he's developed what's called the Coma method and working to really turn failing schools in the K through 12 system into successful schools. I don't know all of the things are involved in that but I think we need to do everything we can to encourage the replication of programs like that because as George said, it'll lift everything in our communities. So because the problem all of us struggle with is the pipeline is narrow when it comes to students coming into our health profession schools. We need to broaden that pipeline. We need to get those youngsters in the fourth and fifth grades when they're thinking about what they will be when they grow up, when they imagine themselves doing something, when they will begin to work towards that. So if we could really get them while they really are excited and keep them excited and stimulate it, I think that will really be a great contribution that we'll make not only to the health professions but to our societies in general. So I think what we have to do is be broad citizens. We have to be health professionals and health educators and researchers but we have to be citizens to see that all aspects of our society where we are privileged but we need to be sure that others get the privileges that we enjoy and in so doing, I think we'll make a tremendous contribution. So that's a challenge I think we confront. Thank you. And so, as you know, I said before as a pediatrician agree if I could start in utero, I'd start in utero and I'd start with women's health as we think about our children and their future. But also how to- And you know, I do believe, Joan, you know, I believe you can start in utero, right? So I think that an environment where those babies are matters, we talk to women about reading to their babies, decreasing their stress, creating an environment that is comforting. And you talk about the microaggressions that women experience. We believe that does influence what is happening and perhaps transcends to what, you know, mechanisms of fight and flight that baby is going to be born with. And so I think it does begin in utero and I think we need to be cognizant of that. As you know, as a women's advocate and I talk a lot about maternal mortality and infant mortality and we have to have a prevention and wellness strategy around that. And once those babies are born, though, we then have to wrap them in the same type of care and protection that we want them to have in utero. And we cannot be hypocritical about it. So when we sit here and talk about, we are want to be pro-life. People say they wanna be pro-life. Pro-life doesn't just mean keeping the baby in utero. It means advocating for that life once that baby is born. And so you talk about pre-K, that ought to be just standard. And anything else that a child needs to be successful in this country. And I'm gonna say, and it extends from there all the way through. As we talk about the middle school programs and we talk about high school and we talk about this continuum along these multiple paths that our students can follow. Part of what has come in here is we started to talk about some of these social determinants of health. We started to talk about issues of health disparity. And as I look at some of the questions that have come in, one of them is around thoughts and insights about how we address these health disparities and how African-Americans specifically that's can effectively start to address health disparities and improve health. So not only what can we do as system and do our research, but what can African-Americans and cells do to improve the health of our families and our community? Dr. Sullivan. Well, I think I agree. We need to improve the health literacy in our population and the pandemic has shown this in spades because here we have the paradox of having developed tremendous vaccine for this new virus within a year of its appearance with remarkable results, remarkable effectiveness. But the problem we've run into is a lot of people don't trust the science or don't trust the administration of it. So I have been rather surprised and disappointed that a public health issue has become a political issue. So I think we need to really work to improve the level of comfort and trust in our general society in our healthcare system. So that's a responsibility that we have because I was in medical school when Salk developed the polio vaccine that changed the picture of polio overnight. In 1956, we had people at the Haynes Hospital there in Boston in Iron Lungs helping them breathe to keep them alive. The Salk vaccine came along the following year. There were only one or two cases. We changed the culture then because with the polio epidemics, mothers wouldn't let their children play with their friends right on the street. They wouldn't let them go swimming, et cetera. But the Salk vaccine changed this. So we've had remarkable advances in science but the level of trust in science somehow has been eroded. So we have to work on that. Improving the health literacy in our citizens I think is where we would start. Thank you. I was coming to you next, so perfect. Oh, okay, all right. I was gonna address a similar issue but no, no, please, please address that. But I wanna add another piece to this because we haven't talked about a part of it. So addressing that in terms of the science and where we've been excellent in where we have not hit the mark. But can you also talk a little bit? And I'm gonna ask you to talk about what did we do with our medical students so that they don't do the same thing that we've done? Are we teaching them differently or training them or educating them in different ways to be aware of things that we might not have been aware of? And I think about everything from the racism and how the structural racism and how it's embedded in medicine. And so a part of what we're doing well, what we've done well and where we're missing out but also how are we teaching our students so that they'll do better? Yeah. Oh, wow, that is such an important issue. So, let me first sort of as a segue from the earlier question is to recognize that, physicians can be remarkable agents of social justice. And I think we have a responsibility. Everyone interacts with the doctor at some point. And medicine should be a force for democratization and equality. But in order to get that, we really need physicians who can reflect the diversity of our community, right? We need physicians who can relate to the lived experiences of the people that we serve. And so we have taken a deep dive in our medical education program. We had a anti-racism task force led by Andrea Reed, who is our associate dean for the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs in Fidencio Saldana, who's our dean of students. And that was a phenomenal analysis of the whole spectrum of medical education at Harvard from admissions to recruitment to the nature of the curriculum. And in the analysis, we realized that we have to really change the way we teach. We have to let all students, students of color, students from different backgrounds have to understand the deeply entrenched concerns of racism in our society. We know that black men are more amenable to preventive care when they're seen by black doctors, right? Black women are three times more likely to die after giving birth in white women. Black infant mortality is cut in half when they're cared for by a black doctor. We know that pain is undertreated in black Americans relative to white Americans. So we need to teach medical students to recognize disparities and to be advocates for change. And John, if I can add to this. So Morehouse School of Medicine is one of the four historically black medical colleges, right? And so people think that, okay, oh, we got a wrapped up in the bag. We had it all together. We don't. So we just hired our first chief diversity, inclusion and belonging, okay, leader, right? And the reason for that is because inclusion matters so much. The sense of belonging. And just because somebody looks like you sometimes, that doesn't mean that they're going to be inclusive or you're going to have this sense of belonging. And so we are all a work in progress. I think the most important thing is, again, being courageous and recognizing and naming the challenge, naming the problem and then framing a solution that is guided by the diverse thought based on diverse people's experiences to create the richest solution. Welcome in people to the table and people not being afraid to voice some of their inadequacies of not understanding, of voicing what George said early on. I know that there were racists in my family or people who didn't think about people with the love of care. And I was uncomfortable with that. All of us know that, right? All of us had this, whether you were black or white or Mexican or Asian, all of us had this, but all we courageous enough to have that conversation and to say how that may have influenced a biased, how we see people, how we treat people, how we care for people. Once we get it out there, we can then collaboratively come up with a solution that can change mine and change hearts and end up positively impacting the people that we are here to serve. Thank you. I, as we are nearing our time when we are gonna have to end our session, I'm struck by the importance of our understanding ourselves, our history and how we were raised in our own values and what we bring, part of what you were just talking about. And how that influences our decisions every day and our actions every day, but it's so seldom that we reflect. And there are so few spaces to have the kind of dialogue that you mentioned. And as I look out, I see so much dissension. I see so much fear of sharing. Am I saying it the right way or how will it be interpreted or jumping to assumptions that ends the conversation and our ability to move forward? Three of you are leaders who have to lead, have led and are leading organizations where dialogue is so important, where it is so important for us to create this space for conversations. Honest dialogue where people can bring their authentic selves and transparency. Can you talk about part of this because it's an issue in our institutions, it's an issue in our nation of being able to have these conversations and just some of your take. I don't think you have magic bullets, but this is such a critical juncture in time and such an important issue for all of us. How do we not just talk to people who look like some like think like ourselves but expand that. Dr. Daly. Well, I have to say is I'm reflecting on listening to Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Montgomery Rice that how humbled I feel and how much I've learned just from what they've said, what compelling communicators they are. You know, I think that someone like me in my role has to be willing to admit their own ignorance, their own inadequacy, my own vulnerability, especially around these very sensitive issues. I'm still learning and I hope I'm still growing and I hope I'm still working towards becoming a better person, a better leader, someone who understands the struggles, many of those struggles that we've been speaking about this evening. So I won't stop trying to articulate the values that I think our community should be driven by and those values include social justice and equal opportunity for all. I just think that we have to be willing to acknowledge the struggle and bring together our community because if we are, well, to use your phrase, Dr. Reed, we are better together. We're better when we work together. And Dr. Reed, I will say that the influence that shapes us into who we are and how we see people comes from many places and spaces and in many colors. So many people would believe that I went into OBGYN, the reproductive end of the knowledge because of some great experience and I did have great experiences with women, but it was really a white male at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Isaac Schiff, who is the kindest person in America, okay? No doubt about it. And he told me something early on. He said, presume good intent until somebody proves it otherwise. Okay, good intent. And that's what he did, that's how he lived his life. That's how I saw him all the time. Good intent. And then the second person who affirmed for me that I had gone into the right specialty was another white male, John Thompson at Emory University, a graded hospital. He wrote to Lance textbook. He never walked into a patient's room without knocking on the door first. He never touched a patient before saying, Mrs. Jones, may I grab your hand, Mrs. Jones? May I examine you first? It was that bad side manner and that care regardless of who that patient was, that level of respect that was provided and given. He saw the humanity of those persons, both Dr. Schiff and Dr. Thompson. And that's why I knew that I had gone into the right profession. Those were the people who I wanted to emulate. And so what I would say to people is, look around and give people the opportunity to show you who they really are. And you will be surprised that how much you will learn and how much people wanna give if we give them the space to do so. Thank you. As we, before I turn this back over to Dr. Tru and Dr. Warren, I'd like to turn to you, Dr. Sullivan, and your wisdom and your thoughts about how we move forward as individuals, as organizations, how do we create the space to be better than we have been, to be better than we are now, to communicate better, to give better care, to address these issues that have plagued our country for so very, very long. Dr. Sullivan, last word, and then Dr. Tru and Dr. Warren. Well, I think we need to be inspired by those who have come for us and follow their examples. Because I think both Dr. Bailey and Dr. Montgomery Rice have said it very well. None of us is a perfect being. We all have our faults, we all have our deficiencies, but what we need to do is recognize those many positives that exist in others and reach out and have that as a bridge so that my goal is to really work to see that I'm a better person tomorrow than I am today, to see that my community is a better community tomorrow than it is today in my country. You remember, I said, we are working towards a more perfect union, though we've never had that, but I haven't lost faith in that possibility. So I think if we keep that commitment, we'll get to where we want to go. It'll take a lot of work, but I think we're prepared to do it. And I'm encouraged by this discussion because that shows that we have the fortitude, we have the commitment, we have the desire to be a better country, to be a better person. And we as individuals who have enjoyed the opportunities that this country has, in spite of the many obstacles, we need to enlarge those opportunities for everyone and understand that when we create opportunities for other people, we don't lose anything. We gain the people who are doing the bombings and the threats, those are people who don't understand that if they embrace their brother, rather than reject their brother, they enjoy a better life, they enjoy a better community. So that's what we have to do. We have to continue to reach for the beloved community. And we as the physicians have a major role to play. We have an exalted position in our society because of what we provide, for what the integrity and the honesty that we should have when we are at our best. We need to continue that. And the final comment I would make is this, we've had tremendous development of our science and our technology and we want that to continue. But we don't want that to sideline us. We have too many instances of really becoming captured by our technology. Walking into a patient's room, looking at our computer rather than looking at the patient, we need to be sure we preserve the humanism in medicine because I often say that medicine and the other health professions are science-based, but they operate in a social setting. So that means we need both the science and the humanism to be an effective professional and to provide the best services. If we keep that balance in mind, we will become a better society. That's the challenge that we have and to open the opportunities for everyone. This will make things better, not only for those who gain those opportunities, but for those of us who really have been advantaged by our system as it is now. Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. Thank you, Dr. Montgomery Rice. Thank you, Dr. Daly. This has been inspiring. I've learned a lot. I am so proud to be a physician. I'm so proud of what we have done and what we can do moving forward. I am so happy that I can call you my friend. Thank you very much. And now Dr. Choog and Dr. Warren. Yeah, just to say, it's been a gift and a privilege to be able to be a part of this conversation and I hope you'll take a moment to look in the chat box. There's so many people that have expressed that view. It's really, I can't say how much we thank you for what you've done here. So, and thank you for the participants too, who participated as well. And I know you weren't able to see all the comments and stuff, but the questions and things you asked were very helpful. So good night, and I hope to see everybody in the Wednesdays to come. Dr. Warren, anything to add? Simply to say you all were talking ethics because you're living it. And so when somebody says, I'm an ethicist, ask them if they're living it. This has been a fantastic opportunity and I couldn't be more pleased and more proud. And we had three guest speakers, but we had a fourth. And that was Joan Reed. So let's not get it twisted. We had a wonderful opportunity. So thank you, Joan, and thank you Dr. Sullivan. Dean Bailey and President Montgomery Rice. This has been a wonderful, wonderful evening. And of course, my dear friend and colleague, Bob Drew. Yes. Thank you. Thank you all for doing this. Appreciate it. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Bye-bye.