KP is joined by Dr. Aletha Maybank, Chief Health Equity Officer and Sr. Vice President of the American Medical Association. The two discuss the intersection at health equity, clinical medicine and public health as well as leading systemic change locally and nationally.
Show Notes
Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH currently serves as the chief health equity officer and senior vice president for the American Medical Association (AMA) where she focuses on embedding health equity across all the work of the AMA and leading its Center for Health Equity.
She joined the AMA in April 2019 as the association's inaugural chief health equity officer to launch AMA’s Center for Health Equity. Prior to this, Dr. Maybank served as the founding deputy commissioner for the Center for Health Equity at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Aimed at strengthening equity efforts and transforming organizational culture, the Center became a model of success recognized by NYC leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. She was instrumental in infusing equity at the neighborhood level and advancing the department’s place-based approach to addressing health inequities. She also set precedence with groundbreaking work at the Office of Minority Health in the Suffolk County Department of Health Services while serving as the founding director.
Main Topics
- Dr. Maybank’s desire to be a doctor from a very young age and her journey to a career in public health (2:42)
- The intersection of media and public health and how she landed a starring role in a commercial with Doc McStuffins (8:12)
- How Dr. Maybank founded Center for Health Equity and how it led to her role at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (15:45)
- The history of health equity and how it’s evolved and the importance of properly defining terms (21:00)
- What is the AMA, Dr. Maybank’s role as the first Chief Health Equity Officer of the AMA, and the history of health equity within the association (27:34)
- The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on her early days at the AMA and how it influenced her strategies (32:42)
- Why Dr. Maybank doesn’t like the term DEI (35:51)
- An overview of key health equity policy documents produced by the AMA (40:07)
- Dr. Maybank’s key priorities, including equity action plans from different departments, working directly with health systems, emphasizing equity and innovation, and reconciling and repairing some of AMA’s harmful past (44:15)
Episode Links
Connect with Aletha:
Connect with KP:
Listen, rate, and subscribe!
What is InOn Health Podcast?
Health equity issues in our country have been around for decades – largely impacting communities of color and rural areas. When it comes to economic and racial disparities in health the evidence is clear. This is more than a hot topic. Covid-19 has exposed the underbelly of how social determinants of health and racial disparities play out in our country. What we need now is to impart lasting change.
Welcome to the InOn Health podcast. I’m your host Kaakpema Yelpaala, and I’m the co-founder and CEO of InOn Health.
In this podcast we’re going to be talking about health equity. We’ll be talking to entrepreneurs, thought leaders, investors, and other industry experts in healthcare and public health. The topics we’ll cover will range from racial disparities in health to digital innovation for diverse populations, and ultimately how we build better policy to more inclusively serve everyone around their healthcare needs.
Join me on this podcast series to not only be inspired by our leaders but also to get insight on how we can all take action.