How are you? Good, how are you? I just made you a co-host. Thank you. You can probably stop recording. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for the African American Physiatrists Building and Bonding Within the African American Community. My name is Dr. DeJuan Carpenter, and I have the pleasure to be the chair of the African American Community for this year. I also have a vice chair who will be introducing herself momentarily, but just a little bit about me. I am currently an inpatient practicing physician. However, I have done pretty much all of the post-acute care settings, and I'm currently in practice in the greater New Orleans area. And today, obviously, given that 2020 has been a year of, I'll just say, differences, maybe challenges along the way, we are fortunate enough to still be able to have this virtual platform where we still can network and get together. And so that really is most of what we're going to focus on, and I'll get into kind of our overall objectives in just a second. Dr. Williams? I'll go ahead and take myself off mute. Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Coriander Cori Williams. I have the pleasure of working with Dr. DuJuan Carpenter as her co-chair for this session. I'm really excited to see such a good turnout. I'm really looking forward to hear what everybody has to share with the group. Currently I work as an inpatient physiatrist, but I also work within the SNF setting as well. I also have my own personal private side business where I'm a PM&R consultant. My biggest hope for this group is really to help build mentorship within the group. As an early career physiatrist, I'm really passionate about seeing us link up. So you'll hear more about that later. We just wanted to say hi and greetings. Thanks, Dr. Cori. All right. So just to get some of the formalities a little bit in there, this session will be focused on networking and strengthening the needs of our community. As we all know, these needs continually evolve. And so the focus tonight will be on identifying issues or barriers to connections amongst members. And additionally, we want to focus, as Dr. Cori said, on mentorship opportunities and needs of members within the community in various practice areas. So with that being said, our learning objectives include identifying the current and ongoing needs of community members with the focus on opportunities to increase diversity and inclusion amongst our respective organizational environments to determine and facilitate mentorship opportunities within the community, as well as creating those opportunities for those areas where none are currently available, initiate the leadership development process, and of course, to create new connections and foster deeper relationships. So without further ado, Dr. Cori, are you ready to go through our first poll? And just so you guys know, too, let me say, please feel free to put any questions or comments in the chat. We are continually monitoring that, and we want this to be as interactive as possible as is on a virtual platform. All right. Okay. So let's go with our first poll, then. All right. So our first question is, what was your current stage in your career path? We have you listed starting as early as medical students, so we still want our medical students to kind of chime in, all the way up into our seasoned members who are 25 plus years out of residency. I'm really excited to see good turnout there. We're going to give people a couple more seconds, there's about 30, about 30 or so more seconds left to answer. You think that's fair? Yeah, I think that's good. We got about 80% of people that have voted so far, so we're doing pretty good. Let's see. That's right. Seasoned. Seasoned. There you go. Oh, and there may be a few fellows, so if you're a fellow, I guess you can take your pick as to where you want to say if you're in the one to five years out of residency, because technically it's not a residency, and if you want to comment in the chat, just so we kind of know roughly who you are. All right. I'm going to go ahead and close out polling. Okay, great. All right. Now, it seems like the results kind of lead towards the big majority of those who are 25 plus out, 25 years out of residency, with the follow-up of those being residents, and then those who are one to five years out of residency, then six to 10 years, and then 11 to 15, and then 16 to 20. So we have a really good mix of people here. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of opportunities for connections and for opportunities to share wisdom as well as new knowledge, so I'm really looking forward to see how that kind of pans out for us as this session continues. Yeah, that's great. I love seeing the residents in the room, too. Yeah. So let's go on to the next polling question here, too, which focuses mainly on geographic area. So we're really interested in seeing where our members are located, kind of divided it basically northeast, southeast, midwest, southwest, Rocky Mountains, Pacific, and other. And Dr. Corey, did you mention where you are in practice? Good point, I'm down in Texas. I'm in the Houston, Texas area. So I'm looking out for all my southwest people. I hope we show up strong, but it looks like we're losing this one. All right, we'll give it a couple more seconds until the full one minute. And if you commented other, feel free to let us know where you are. All right. So we have our winner. Seems like the majority of our members in the northeast area, followed by the southeast, and then we have midwest and the Pacific area tying with southwest and other kind of trailing near the end. Can the person who mentioned other tell us exactly where that is? Are we international or? Let me see if I can check in the chat. Not quite. Well, it can be a secret. No pressure. Maybe we can share that later on. All right. We don't want you to be put on the spot. No way. All right. Well, again, thanks for everybody multiple time zones tuning in today. All right, let's go on to the next. Let's see here. We're launching this poll. This one we want to hear more about what are the areas and the subspecialties that different people practice within. We understand that we are a diverse group of people who can work in different areas. So share as much as you can. Seems like pain management and spine rehab is coming up top. So is general rehab. Oh, it's losing again. Yeah. Then there's a good portion of other as well. Y'all are keeping us on our toes, please. Other chime in. We want to hear what the other is. I'm always interested in how people creatively use their PM&R degree. And so if you guys could share what your area is, that'd be really insightful for those who are maybe seeking alternative paths within the field of PM&R. And especially for the residents, I think only just recently, kind of in my time of practice, did I realize that there were so many more different practice models and things like that that I didn't realize as a resident. So OK, Dr. Merritt says multiple. OK, you must have been one of the others, because you don't fit into one of those categories. Gotcha. TBI, spinal cord, amputee, integrative care, pain, and musculoskeletal. OK, neuromuscular. Muscular, nice. Great. Dave Welch here. I'm basically retired after 40 plus years of general rehab, but I'm still doing public health. Awesome. Yeah, so many pathways. So let's see here. PM&R. I think we've reached our limit there. So we get to see that our overall winner was pain management and spine rehab, followed up by general rehab, then trailed by pediatric rehab. That's a pleasant surprise. Then followed by spinal cord injury and sports medicine. Let's see, and brain injury and MSK. And then lastly, stroke. That's a shocker, with a mix of other kind of combining different things, and also including the neuromuscular condition as well. All right, it's good to see such diversity in the audience. Yeah. All right, let's see if we can go on to our next poll question here. Sorry, still navigating the Zoom. Forgive me, guys. All right, next question up is about community priorities that we have in progress at the moment. The first question asks, what is important for you to get out of this community? So as a physiatrist, as interested in either that you're African-American or you're interested in kind of how to contribute to the African-American community, what's important just from you as a member that you seek to obtain from our group? Me and DeJuan are really passionate about making sure that the members actually get the best use out of the group as possible, and that when we reach out to you guys, it's things that are actually concerning to your highest needs. And so we'll delve into that a bit more. And for this question, we'd really appreciate some feedback from the audience to get a little bit more insight as to why you may have selected that option. Would that be a good time to do that now, DeJuan? Is that OK? After the poll closes out? Well, yes. I think we're going to come to that, because part of that question is also how people tend to connect, because I'm seeing a lot of peer-to-peer connection. We're going to try to reach at least the 80 mark, the 80% voted before closing out, so we'll give it a couple more seconds. All right. I think we're close enough. Yeah, that's good. All right. So leading the pack is peer-to-peer connection. So that's actually really good, because we're trying to seek unique ways that we can interact, especially in this time when we're all so disconnected and it's harder to even do meetups, even locally or academically. So it's really, it's really great to hear that you guys are also interested in still maintaining and building connections, despite the challenges that we face with the pandemic. Next up seems to be resource sharing, followed by best practice sharing and career advice. And we once again have our other category. For those who may have marked other, if you can include within the chat box, which you may be referring to, we'd appreciate that insight. We have some that's come in already. Sustainability of the community, mutual support, sanctuary for safe sharing, transfer of wisdom. I love that. Advocacy. Absolutely. And then Dave is here to offer peer-to-peer help, mentoring on how to advance within the academy and non-practice opportunities. Okay. Awesome. Perfect. Perfect. All right. Let's see here. So do we want to progress to the next question or? This is the last actual poll, but the follow-up question, peer-to-peer connection was the number one, which I kind of in my head was going through what may be some of the top ones, but with peer-to-peer connection being one of the main goals or importance for a lot of people within the community, I would offer a follow-up question and what would you say would be the best method of doing that? As Dr. Corey mentioned, we are still kind of within the pandemic time. So the face-to-face meetups have definitely been limited, but with regards to even online offerings, there's so many different opportunities, whether it's a social media platform, whether it's the AAPMNR website, what would, as a community, as a whole, what are things that people most like to really create that connection ongoing. Because I think I love these meetings where we get to all meet up in one place. But I think that connection and support needs to continue also throughout the year so that, you know, we're building upon each annual assembly meetup, you know, that needs to be. So you can feel free to put that in the chat. If you want to raise your hand, we can see you that way. And then you can actually have the floor. I would love to not just see your beautiful faces, but also be able to hear your wonderful voices as well. I'm looking for the hand. Okay. Take the floor. So I think sometimes the way we support each other is by working on some type of project together. Because as we're reaching back to lift somebody up, we're networking and reaching heights together. And one of the things I put in the chat was my concern about the pipeline for physiatry careers, meaning African Americans to become physicians, to become physiatrists, and then to move into whatever aspect, research, clinical care, and to be supported in that movement. So I know that sounds like a lot. And it is. And just know that those are the kinds of things we can do when we have a thought of it, as part of our purpose. I see little kids that come in with their parents or younger patients that I, are you going to be a physician like me? I'm starting the pipeline wherever I can. And I think it's important that we start empowering students at all levels. I do mentorship in the local high school, working with different medical schools, and then programs. So there's all kinds of ways to move that kind of agenda forward, if we're thinking of it in a thoughtful way, and we're sharing our ideas with each other. Very good points. Thank you. And that's exactly what we hope to get out of this, is to really start laying some of that groundwork so that we can all move that mission forward. And so that if anybody else wants to raise their hand, let me make sure I get it right. If you go to participants, you should have a box, I believe, that comes up that gives you the option to wait, raise your hand. And then we can see that. And Dr. Dave, do you have a full name in case people want to reach out to you with regards to the mentoring and things that you mentioned as well? Yeah, I'm Dave Welch, I'm up in far northern New York, and I was going to follow up with what Dr. Bernal just said. One of the programs we have here is a thing called New Visions, which is a program for high school seniors. And it's an opportunity to learn about careers in healthcare. And when I was in practice, each of the students would rotate through my practice, but we also took them to the State Medical Society annual lobby day down in Albany, and so on. And it's something I've been doing for about 20 years. And again, I think if you get that opportunity to talk to kids right at the very beginning, and turn them on to the idea of medicine, it's really helpful, and gives them a view of what really goes on. Very good. Okay, um, we have a good number of turnouts. So because we want to continue these kinds of conversations, I think it would be good also for us to do some breakout groups, so we can actually collaborate on a little bit smaller scale, and then come back as a big group. And before we do the breakouts, we want to make sure that we have names and contact information, because one of the things that I think has been an ongoing is that we do have a very good diverse range in terms of practice areas, as well as locations, and where people are within their stage of practice from the residents to the fellows all the way up. I think really being able to put those connections kind of face to face or computer to computer at this point, would be really great to continue to foster these relationships and working on projects and the mentorship that I think everybody has really kind of touched on. All right, um, Dr. Pori, are you working on like a spreadsheet for this? Yeah, I'm currently just trying to record all the different names. Okay, so that it's a little bit easier so that when we do our breakout groups, you can either respond yay or nay if you're interested, and keeping in contact and either being a mentor, being a mentee, and letting me know your field of interest, you know, your area of interest, and if you want to work locally. And then hopefully, you know, if you give a phone number, an email, we can at least connect you with other people in the area with similar interests. That's the hope. So by the end of this, whoever feels comfortable, no pressure, but if you're seeking someone, leave the information and I'll make sure to help to build those connections. Okay, and I do know that our back office is helping us as well with the information that you use to log in, so we do have that also. All right, so let's, this is going to be kind of random because I really, you know, we really hope that you guys just kind of get placed with people of, you know, different backgrounds so that we can facilitate a good networking opportunity here. So let's go ahead and break up into groups and we will come back. Let's see, we're done here. Let's do maybe 20 minutes in our groups and then we'll come back as a larger group and move forward from there. Sound good? Catherine left in mid-sentence. She just left. I found a button to click and I just went for it. Tell me. I was saying that one of the things I did for this conference just to help myself, you know, with self-care is to treat the virtual conference as if I were going in person. So I budgeted in for commute time to be there. I'm budgeting for some commute time to return home so I can process all the information. I'm really trying to be very deliberate about that too. Even though I'm taking the conference from home, be really good about boundaries that way so I can make sure I get the most out of the conference and also feel as though I'm not detracting from my work or from my home life. I already budgeted for it. Well, yeah, I took time off so I could have that faith and time. I think it's important. I think you guys are lucky. My job was like, you're not traveling, fit them in in your day. So I kind of wish I would have taken some time off though. There's a lot of great sessions. Thank you. Hello, welcome back everyone. Hello, hello. Sounds like we had a lot of really good conversations going. Lots of great ideas. I love that last part about self-care. I wish I would have been able to work that out as well to make it I am actually at the conference instead of the multitasking that's been going on. But nonetheless, we are all here and back in our groups. I had hoped to be able to hop to different rooms but I think our conversation was really good and so that didn't really happen. If you guys don't mind, there's some, I think, really good ideas for us to work on. At least that we got from our group and then maybe one or two people can comment briefly on some of the things that came out of their group. So we talked a little bit about actually kind of creating a newsletter of sorts. I think one of the things a lot of people get information in different ways. So whether you are a social media kind of person, if you're reading things on the AAPM&R website, that may be easy enough to facilitate a newsletter to see what's going on with people, what opportunities exist. I know that the AAPM&R as a whole tries to do a really good job of that but this may be just another platform for that. We talked a little bit about sponsorship and opportunities to get involved, particularly on the national leadership level, as well as creating a list of people that do have interest in leadership so that those people can be identified and possibly going back to the sponsorship thing with having someone to help them, guide them to where it is that they hope to be. There also was mention of mentors as well and mentors even local and on national levels, which I think would be really good. And then also with regards to some of the disparities that we come across, having a registry of sorts where we keep information on patients and their respective backgrounds or ethnicities or cultures and their diseases and the treatment that they get or don't get or the perception of treatment that they do or do not get, which Dr. Weinstein was gracious enough to mention and include in that that there are registries being started for things like low back pain that we would be able to possibly include in all of that as well. So I think we definitely have some good ideas. Anybody else? We still have a little bit of time so that we can... I could talk a little about what we talked about in our group was definitely mentorship, the pipeline and starting early even in elementary school, self-care and work-life balance. Oh that's a really good one. And Catherine has a program on PBS called Second Opinion. I hope she puts it in the chat so we'll be able to check her out. Oh please. So just a little piece on it. I'm not on the program. I am one of the medical advisors to the program and so the big for me the reason I wanted to be present for this session is that you know as we all know representation matters and one of the things that the producers and I have worked on a lot over the last couple of years is to make sure that the physician experts that we have on the panels as well as the patients represented are diverse. It's really important that patients and the PBS viewing audience be able to see people of color and experts of color and what medicine looks like. It's not the... it's not what it used to look like and so we really want to make sure that that is very well represented. So part of my role is part of the reason I wanted to be here is also to get an idea from a almost like a speaker panel point of view. You know what are some of the experts and hot issues out there. Where is the research evolving because that's where the program looks to represent the science very well. So that's part of my reason for for being here and just to get an idea. Give people an idea that hey this is out there. You know your medical degree allows you a lot of opportunities and some of them are a little bit outside the box. So social media and TV are out there and we're really trying very hard to be very curated in our representation on media. Yes thank you for that. All right that's like two groups. I know we had more than two groups. You can put it in the chat if you don't you know like to speak in a big group. I'm happy to read it for you or maybe it's already covered. So Catherine let me just say congratulations on that way to be PM in our goal. I think the comments regarding mentorship and representation are very pertinent in this time. You know I feel strongly that we have some amazing mentors in the academy that are all very willing to be tapped into for various types of mentorship whether it's in your career whether it's moving up through the ladders of an organization such as the academy or a different organization. So always feel free to reach out to any of us. I think we love helping young career physicians find their way to a successful kind of career. We want to see fellow physiatrists be at the highest levels of hospitals and hospital systems and even at the country level. The other thing I'll mention because it's not necessarily always seen by the members of the academy is that the academy has heard the voices of its members for many years now and has really started over the last five years to take a real hard look at you know what we're doing as an organization to bring young physiatrists especially those of minorities and physiatrists of color up into the organization in a way that develops their leadership skills and gives them an opportunity to be leaders within the organization. And I think if you start looking around you're starting to see that. You'll see it at the board level but you're also going to see a lot of it welling up within committees, community leaders, committee leaders. Those are the people that go on to be board members and presidential lines and presidents. So it doesn't happen overnight but we've worked really hard and our presidential line has continued to carry this flag and we feel very strongly that our organization needs to be representative of our members and so we definitely recognize the need for more leadership and of our minority physicians and that's why we started the diversity and inclusion committee that reports directly to the board. And so I encourage all of you guys get involved and if you enjoy organizational medicine you know we'll help you get to where you want to go. I would follow up with what Daryl just said that there are several of us on this call. Daryl, myself, Stu Weinstein, Michelle Gittler, Andre Panagos who are heavily involved or have been heavily involved with academy leadership. We're here to try to help you guys advance and move ahead and one of the ways to do that is get involved with committees and so on. So I encourage you to volunteer. I spent years sitting on the sideline and finally offered myself to become part of something and that opened one door after another which was just unbelievable. Margaret Keating is also on the call. She's really your head person to contact among the staff to volunteer and Stu is going to be appointing a whole bunch of people to chair committees and beyond committees as soon as he takes over as president the next couple of days. So this is an opportunity for all of you to step forward and really speak out. I feel badly that we're not in person otherwise you could all walk up and talk to us afterwards but Margaret, I'm going to ask you to make sure that a copy of all the emails we put together on this gets sent to everybody on the call so that we can all be in touch with each other as needed. Yes, thank you very much for all of that. I think again if 2020 hasn't shown us anything this year is that we definitely are stronger together and so the only way that we're going to you know make any changes is for each and every one of our voices to be heard and you know for us to get involved. So whatever way you feel comfortable doing that absolutely get involved and see how many more minutes do we have. I think we have about 15 more minutes or so. A few just in case people have to get off let me make a few announcements. Let's see, Brandy has mentioned about the session Creating Pathways to Leadership that is occurring tomorrow. It is a live session. Brandy if you don't mind just putting in the time for that just so that people readily have that information. Also with regards to getting involved in an African-American community please join our community if you haven't so that we can continue to inform you and give you updates about what's happening. Also tomorrow morning starting at 10 o'clock is the multicultural session that will be held. Several people actually in here, Dr. Merritt, I know you're in here somewhere, will be part of that as well as myself and Dr. Williams will be moderating that session. Then also Dr. Bernal is one of the finalists in the FISE talk so don't forget to put that on your calendar so that you don't miss that. We have a lot going on and a lot of opportunities and I'm really glad that despite all of the challenges we all have been able to still come together and provide these ideas and really make some valuable changes. We definitely will get all of these contacts, emails, and things like that. Oh hi Dr. Means, I didn't see you there. So yes, Dr. Means will be also on the panel tomorrow as well. If it's okay, I just wanted to say a few last words. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay, so as I said before, I'm Corey. I'm the woman who's collecting all the names and emails and locations. I will email everybody who writes on their email by the end of this week in order to see and you guys can reply back to me with the questions that are outlined in the email. If you are unable to get your information to me tonight or if you want someone else to send me the information, I put my email address in the box for you guys to share with other physiatrists who are interested in contributing to this cause. I really just need an email, a name, and where you're from and we'll just take it from there. We're collecting the information all tonight. You should hear back from us soon as far as our plans of helping to increase connections, but I'm one person so bear with me. Thanks guys. The staff will help too. They're back there, you just can't see them. All right, any other last final thoughts, questions? I still see things in the chat. Hello. Yes, hi. Hi. I just wanted to briefly introduce myself because you can see the face, but I haven't said anything. I'm Dr. Corrine Velez. I'm going to be also one of the panelists tomorrow at 10 a.m. So, hi everyone. I'm one of the finalists too for the FIS talk. I'm currently working at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System, so if there's people interested in knowing more of opportunities within the VA, I'm happy to assist, but I am very grateful for this opportunity and loving the passion that you can see here with everyone. I'm interested not only in mentoring residents and med students, but I'm also interested in leadership positions, so I really appreciate being a mentee. For all of you that are out there that want to mentor me, please sign me up. I'm all for it. Yay, thank you. I just want to give one last pitch to say why is any of this important. Well, leadership is important. We run teams. We're the cutting edge of health care, and it's good to be in the family of PM&R to hone those skills. Okay, and we're facing in the midst of a pandemic. There's a lot of unknowns, but we're the creative specialty that's coming up with how we're going to deal with that, too, so it's a great opportunity, and it's not another burden. Don't think of it that way. It's really that's something that will nourish you and will build your skills and increase your value. I'm just really happy to see everybody. I'm just, me and Debbie and, you know, Tony and some of the others, Kevin, we're just like really, we've been waiting for a long time. We're really, really happy, and we're proud of you, and this organization, Juan, Corey, you guys are doing a great job. Keep going. We hope everyone will come and participate in this session and get other people to come. I want it to be a diverse group tomorrow, not just us speaking to ourselves as usual. We already know the situation, but try to get your program directors. Try to get your chief residents. Try to get your colleagues. We need allies in the process, and they need to hear the story. We have, you know, 15,000 slots in 1,500, whatever it is, 1,500 slots in 64 Black residents, I think was the number, so we got to do better than that. How do we build this pipeline? And we can, and thank you, Dave, and thank you, Michelle, and, you know, your support, your stalwart, just willingness to be real and authentic and be part of the process, and walk the walk. That's what it's all about. You got to walk the walk, and, you know, we need allies in this process, and so we thank you for braving it, and everybody learns and grows together. It's wonderful. You're going to say something, Michelle? There's Brenda. I did want to say, I'm reading the chats, and it is a beautiful thing to see, and like everything, when we disrupt a system, it gets messy before we see the clear path, so I'm just hopeful we'll all continue to be supportive during the messiness, because things are about to get messy. Yeah, it's real messy. It's a hot mess. It's a hot mess. I've been working all over the country in the last eight months in this pandemic, and let me tell you, this is a situation. About to get messy? Oh, well, you know, we don't even have a real president yet. Let's not even go there, right? What are we doing? Messier. That's it. It's all quality, but that's what we do. We're in the, you know, can't roll off the floor. You keep moving. That's our world. We're physiatrists. We find something good in it. We're going to find a way. Yeah. Creatively. Exactly. That's it, and so that's the thing for you guys. Remember, I mean, polio epidemic. Come on. AIDS epidemic. You know, this is an opportunity for learning and growing and applying previous experiences to a new situation and figuring out how you're going to get through it. That's what we do. Right. Totally agree with that in exhibiting the leadership that we all clearly have as physiatrists, so networking and team development, you know, bringing everybody up and along and moving forward. And remembering where you came from. Don't forget. Don't forget. Do good work every day and try to bring somebody else along as you do it, and as John Lewis said, get into good trouble now and then. That's it. Get in a lot of good trouble. I was the ultimate troublemaker. More than now and then. So, any questions? There's a lot of wisdom here right now. The young ones there, you guys. Put in the chat if you don't want to ask while we got a few more minutes of us. We still have a few more minutes, so let's take every opportunity that we can right now. I want to hear, how do you feel about it? Do you feel your future is good? I mean, I'm interested to know. How do you feel? Are you scared? This is Melita Moore. I was just going to talk briefly about the stat that you just said. Again, I'm from MedStar National Rehab Hospital in DC and said 64 black or minority applicants out of 1500. And so I've been practicing for a decade. Most of my time has been at UC Davis the past three years at MedStar. So I have been part of this academic process interviewing medical students currently doing that now. One thing that I did want to mention to this group about people are seeing the pipeline and mentorship and sponsorship. You know, orthopedic surgery has a fantastic program that they have created called Nth Dimensions, N-T-H Dimensions, focuses on females and minorities in specialty fields, so mostly orthopedic surgery. But they have several PM&R medical students that have gone through their process. They have a fantastic program that has been in existence for a long time. They work very closely with AALS. And so I just think that we have already something to model after, if not partnering with Nth Dimensions and kind of starting from the ground up versus creating something on our own. But they have been able to increase the amount of minority and female orthopedic residents throughout the U.S. So I would certainly suggest that maybe we reach out to Nth Dimensions or discuss how we can start a pipeline or a program similar to that. Wonderful, Melita. I hope you'll bring that tomorrow to the session and share that in the chat for the other program coordinators. Absolutely. Excellent. Nth Dimensions, yeah. Who else has something to share? Something good to say? Young people, calling young people. That's a qualitative term nowadays. Yeah. Well, I think I'm a little older than you, but I will jump in. This has been a very good experience even though we haven't been able to see each other, hug each other. But this community is strong and I hope everyone realizes how strong and beautiful you are. And I wanna give some kudos out to Dave who's been a mentor for me. Most of you probably don't know it, but Dave has always sought me out at the Academy and kind of poked me along and said, hey, Brenda, you're interested in this? And I'm like, well, yeah, sure, let's do that. And that's what it takes. It takes someone who recognizes your value and then encourages you to go beyond what you think you might be able to do. So thanks, Dave. It's all about it. Yeah, any residents or fellows have questions? I don't wanna put you on the spot, but at the same time, I think this is important kind of prime time for you to get some questions or maybe even make a comment. I wish I hadn't been as bold when I was a resident. So now's your time. If anybody's still here, residents, fellows, anything. Hi, Dr. Carpenter, this is Charles Canyon. I just wanna say thank you for early in the year, helping get some of the message out for the Fit Board applications. We've got a really nice team set up for the next year. Oh, good. Particularly thanks to Dr. Merritt for laying those foundations for the Fit Board. And we're looking excited to getting the word out in any way that we can help collaborate with all the communities, but particularly the African American community. We look forward to making that a more dynamic relationship. Wonderful. Yes. Everybody's zoomed out. And that being said, I know we do have a lot of trainees on the call too, but never hesitate to reach out and give us ideas of how we can help represent you guys through the academy leadership too. Cause I know that's something that comes up now and again. So never hesitate to reach out. I'm not a resident or a fellow or anything like that. I'm assistant professor down here at Mizzou. One of the things that we were looking at when I came on board was, when we look at the numbers of students interested in going into PaymentR from med school and trying to increase our numbers here of not only, well, of our minority students, cause I'll say it, I am the only black person in my department I am the only black person in my department. Residents attending, it's been like that for years. And so when I came here, down here, I thought it was important for us as we start to look at residents to pay a little more attention on those minorities and different backgrounds to get them involved. But one of our thoughts was being here in the middle of the country, middle of Missouri, so not even a big city, how do we get people's interest to come out here even to do an away rotations when those were available or even consider coming out here to this part of the country. One of our thoughts was to reach out to maybe some of our schools that didn't have their own PaymentR residency programs or one of the HBCU medical schools to see if students would be interested in linking up with us, our PM and our department to either do talks or either activities with the students in med school. So I would like to know if anybody out there has any connections to programs maybe at our Howard or down at Morehouse or any of those other schools, I'd be interested in talking to people down there so that we could expand our reach because I wanna get more people out here. I just don't know where the interest is yet. I can just tell you for one thing that Howard does not have a physiatry program at all and just has two physiatrists under the orthopedic department that do general rehab. So that's not a place to look. I was just talking to the leadership there about that last week. So if I find anything out, I'll let you know. Okay. I think also the Student National Medical Association, which is a national organization of students and they even have college branches is a great organization. I was in the leadership of that at one point and a great partner to work on exposing young people. Now we have this virtual thing, people are more comfortable with, they don't have to travel all the way to where you are and encouraging electives. That's what we used to try to do to pull students to do that. It's particularly hard in places where they don't have the training, et cetera. But I think that the National Medical Association, Student National Medical Association or other organizations as well, that people should remember, everyone hopefully is joining as well. And to reach out to them as the same kind of pipeline, things are going across all specialties. Well, good luck to you all. Thank you. Well, good luck to you, Vivante. That's great. Thanks. I've been doing the SNMA conference. Well, I was supposed to do it this year and I did it last year. So I've been trying to pull in people when I'm there for just PM&R in general, even if they don't like Mizzou, I'm like, do PM&R. So I have been looking at those places. I would say, yes, SNMA conference would be a great place to recruit. I'm a resident at UW currently. And then advertising, you could do a diversity sub-internship. So having away rotations at your school and specifically for diverse applicants. UW does this in quite a few different departments. We're working on it in our PM&R department. And I can put the link here in the chat box so you can learn more. And our PM&R department actually just started when I got here, basically a visiting student diversity program for the department. So we just started it, but COVID came and it was supposed to be our first class. So hopefully, next year, a year after we can get it back. Yeah, it takes a while. To help with that too. We are kind of at our time, but I wanna see if I can quickly throw in, there was a question. As a resident future fellow, can you give some advice, suggestions that we can do to help maintain or develop the pipeline while at the same time, attempting to maximize my own training education to perform at the top of my ability? That's a loaded question. Well, you do it as you go along. Yeah. Hi all, this is Brandi Waite over at UC Davis Sports Medicine One thing when you're trying to maximize your own experiences and make them count for you growing forward, it's really about how you present the activities that you've done. So on your CV, you should have a section that you list in like service to the medical community and show that the mentoring that you're doing or the outreach or the different things list every single one of those things. If it's an hour, if it's a half an hour, if it's a noon thing, list those as things that you've done as service to the medical community. And a lot of the medical centers now, when they're looking at residents and fellows, part of what they look at is dedication to service. And also within the UC system here in California, there's specifically questions about your contributions to diversity that are as a statement that every applicant for the job at UC Davis has to put in. And so those are things that will really set you apart. If your statement is, I like everybody, love sees no color, that's gonna be really not as important as somebody who can say, I volunteered here, I did this, I know why we have to move this direction and couching your experiences as something that's actually going to truly move the medical field forward and help reduce health disparities, help create more diversity at higher levels in academic medicine and other places. It's how you spin what you do. Everything that you do is worth it. You just have to write it and present it in a way that allows other people to see the value. Randy, I wanna totally echo that and say that that would be so much more meaningful than some of the research projects people hop on and that don't demonstrate that they're dedicated to the project. They've just hopped on it so they could say they have research experience. It would be so much more meaningful to see applicants engaging in their community in some way, whether it's longitudinal from being in college or in medical school or opportunities that are maybe more public health related than sequencing the DNA. I would reiterate that same thing. And one of the things is a common problem among medical people is that we always are putting off until something else happens. Once I get out of medical school, everything will be good. Once I get out of residency, everything will be good. Once I get out of the fellowship, everything will be good. The key is that you've got to spend some time volunteering and giving back all the way through this process. Don't wait until you're 50 or 60 years old to start volunteering. Get involved early and stay involved. You will drop in and out depending on what your family and other commitments are, but get involved. It helps in the long run. Yeah, I think Amy echoed that same sentiment. She said she loved being the resident on the community because she learned more than she gave back. And I think I would agree with that. It improves your quality of life. You know, if you're just focused on career, you don't have the breadth of quality of life that really gives your life meaning. So you really have to explore areas that fill you up other than your career and your work. So I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good way to work with patients. Yeah, and I think also it helps you, one, to create some meaningful connections, but I think it also helps to shape, in some ways, kind of what you actually see your career path becoming or your leadership experience. I think some of us, you know, we didn't realize until we were involved either in certain communities or certain volunteer groups. So that can definitely shape your future career and leadership experiences. I think we technically are kind of at our time. And as much as I would love to continue all of these conversations, we have to cut it off here. Again, I think I wanna say, one, just thank you so much to the AAPMNR leadership that is here, the staff that has been helping and emailing and making sure that this virtual platform is gone off without a hitch. I really appreciate all of your help. And I can say, and it's on behalf of myself and Dr. Corey, as kind of the leaders of this community, it has been such a pleasure to be able to spend this time with you guys. We look forward to the future sessions. And also, don't forget, tonight is kind of the official opening of our annual assembly. So Dr. Gittler will be having the opening plenary keynote and presidential address that starts at 7 p.m. tonight. Again, don't forget about the other sessions that start tomorrow. So make sure you check your calendars, get involved in a community, regardless of whether it's the African-American community or any other one that you feel fits you. And let's continue doing this thing and being bold as physiatrists. Dr. Corey, you have any final thoughts? I know you're hard at work there. Contact me, you'll at least get a preliminary email today, just to kind of reach out to everybody, let you know I got the right email. If you don't get an email from me today, you're welcome to reach out to me. Like I said, I'm on Facebook, very easily searchable. And so if I somehow got the wrong email or something switched up, just reach me on Facebook, Corey Williams, I'm in the Houston, Texas area, and I'll be sure to get you on the list as soon as possible. Thanks everybody who sent in their information. I really appreciate you contributing to building the community. And you can also send an email through AAPMNR itself directly to the community, so we can get that as well. So thank you all and look forward to seeing you again. Thank you. Good night. You're welcome. Great session guys, take care. Love you Corey. Bye. Later. Fabulous, thank you so much. This has been years in the making. We're gonna make it happen. Finish strong. It's like, boosh, handing off, yes. In a little room in a hotel. That's what I'm saying, that was the meeting on a sticky note on the bulletin board. Where's the black people gonna be at? Oh, okay, we're gonna be in Sosa's room. That was who, that's who we were for years, man. Back in the day, all the OGs. It was a serious OG, I mean. We're the OGs. There were only about five or six of them when I started going. I know. Look at us now. I know, a little less gray, a little less gray, but it's a beautiful thing. I'm just, I'm just soaking this up, man. You guys don't wanna know, it's just, and it's with me, you know, when you're out here doing this stuff, it's with me. You know, you face it. I mean, I have to face people up. I had to just fire somebody up, just why are they messing me at this stage in the game? I just really don't know, because I really don't care. But you know, you could finally get tested. And it's just wonderful. You don't even have to really almost respond because, you know, the therapy lady wants to know, well, how come you did this, and the medical thing, and I said, listen, this is what I see. This is what happened. This is how it's gonna go as ordered. And then, you know, it's just experience. It's not even having to be right. It's an opportunity to teach people, but they wanna challenge you because you don't look like what they expect somebody with authority is gonna look like. Right. And the best thing though, that we didn't talk about tonight enough, but we'll have to talk about again, is excellence, okay? All of us, the header, the ones way ahead of y'all, et cetera, everybody is so ridiculously excellent because there was no option. Right. There was no leeway. So it's like, you gotta come correctly. If you are correct and thorough, then that makes a whole nother story because we knew each one of us represented all of y'all coming. That's right. Okay. And so there was that, I don't even wanna call it pressure. It was a wonderful challenge. It was an inspiration. You were riding a wave. You knew, you know, it pushed you that much harder. And I'm grateful because it made me do that a little bit more. And then for the patients, you know, when you come in and they come see you and then you're the one, they've seen like five, six other people. And you're like, just listen to the story. And you're like, oh, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna blah, blah, blah. And they're just sitting there like, dang. How'd she know that? Happens a lot. It happens a lot. It happens a lot. And not only with the patients, but with your colleagues. Yes. With your orthopedic surgeons and your cardiologist and your neurologist, you know, your early practitioners. All the time. But you just have to stay strong, know what you know. Patience. You know, and it's all people. Right. You know, it's great. Good morning, doctor. Good morning. How are you, Mr. Smith? I got these demented Trumpian, you know, whatever, but they don't miss a beat when they see me. Good morning, doctor. It's like, yes, good morning. That's when you know it's real, right? Right. That's a good feeling. That's a good feeling. But y'all, this thing tonight is such a good feeling. I just want to thank you again. And the reason our shoulders are so strong is because we expect you to ride our back into places we don't even know exist yet. Right. Thank you. So we're looking for you to just step it up, move it on, keep it going, and go for it. Yep, go far. Go far, man. It's just a great sight, you know. And we got to make sure that the Academy follows through on perhaps creating that registry that we've all tried to do at some point in time with the NMA or this, you know, at the Academy, you know, keeping our list. Let's finalize that. Let's formalize that with the Academy that gives us this kind of venue to continue to discuss. So my hope is that even if the Academy is unable to do so, that there's someone within our group that can continue it and that there's a central location that if you needed to, you could access it. And so that's my biggest goal really moving forward. And so in the email I'll send out tonight, I'll at least tell you the one established thing we have, which is our Facebook group. So if you want high water, everybody can get on Facebook. And it'll be open to contact, I'm hoping. Well, we can't get Duann in trouble. We got to go, y'all. Party's over. It's finished. Get out of the parking lot. Get out of the house. Zoom with all the lights. Put the lights on. So what's those grandma came downstairs in the basement saying, y'all get out now. That's right. Sam's about to sweep us out, y'all. Don't worry about your email. Let's put it that way. You'll have even my email address of the group to reference to, and I could at least be a resource to either connect or help build. I just want there to be a way. And that's why I was just like, by the end of tonight, y'all are going to get something. Because I refuse for there to be another year where we're just like, there was a list. There was a list. We got lots of lists, but now we have a way. We appreciate that. Thank you. And check out the Black Film Festival. I got the vision. I'll send it to Corrie. She can send it to y'all. We'll get a version. We're having a film festival. All right. Good night, everyone. Bye, guys. You're all old lists to me. Please take care. Bye.

virtual session

African American Physiatrists

building and bonding

networking

mentorship

leadership opportunities

disparities

improve patient outcomes

representation

self-care

call to action