Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, and improve your knowledge overall, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

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The last three years have turned the world upside down and has affected us not only personally, our loved ones, our livelihoods, and so many other aspects of our lives.

The COVID pandemic has had some very great losses and losses for us.

And my guest today, Prativa Baral, who is a Ph.D candidate, is a global health professional and researcher, and recently presented at the World Economic Forum regarding her findings on epidemics and pandemics globally.

Please help me welcome my guest today.

Hi Prativa.

Hi Roberta.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for being here, for taking your time to share your research and your findings with us.

And like I said, everybody around the globe has been affected by this.

But before we get into it, please tell us a little bit of your background.

Sure.

So as you said, I'm wrapping up my Ph.D at Johns Hopkins.

I study health systems resilience.

I study pandemic preparedness.

How do we ensure that the systems we have in place are well-adjusted, can respond to crises, whether it's pandemics or other shocks like climate, for example.

I also operate in the social science space.

So trying to understand why and how people behave the way that they do, especially during times of crises.

And I also dabble in a couple of advocacy efforts as a youth representative of Canada, which is where I am right now.

As you said, I got the chance to present at the World Economic Forum's meeting earlier in January.

I was the G7 representative, youth representative for Canada last year.

So I think there is something to be said now of researchers playing a bigger and bigger role in the intersection of policy, of advocacy, because we have the data and we are lucky enough to be skilled to understand the data.

So I try to work in that space between all of these different spaces.

What got you interested in global health matters?

So, I mean, as you very well said, over the last three years, the world has seen that, you know, the borders and the boundaries that we kind of created for ourselves, they're artificial, right?

When you have a virus, it doesn't care whether you are in Canada or in South Africa or in Nepal, it will go where it wants to go.

And so I think that that's what I find the most fascinating part of global health, is really to understand these larger global challenges that transcend borders and boundaries.

And pandemics are certainly one piece of this, but, you know, other challenges like climate change, antimicrobial resistance, all of these things are things that require a global approach, global collaboration, to ensure that we are mitigating some of the harm and the damages that are coming from these challenges.

So that's my interest in global health.

There are a lot of politics and a lot of power dynamics at play, of course, in terms of what it means to practice global health in this day and age.

But to me, what I'm most interested in is these larger challenges and what we can do as researchers, as people, in mitigating some of these challenges.

Certainly, collaboration is what we are all hoping for in order to solve the world's global problems.

But we always ask ourselves, especially since COVID, because there was this debate of is it immunity or is it the vaccine that's going to keep you alive?

Why is it that over the years global authorities hardly push the narrative of eat healthier, take care of your immune system and it can fight stuff and it can fight this and you'll be okay?

Yes, and that's a really good question.

I think what's important to remember is that health is not just a one thing, right?

Like health is not just about your biomedical or physiological ailment.

It's about everything.

It's about what you eat.

It's about where you live.

It's about where you work, your environment, the social support that you have, the social systems that are in place in your countries.

I think health has been really, really misunderstood for a really, really long time.

When it comes to things like pandemics, it's hard because it's an evolving science.

We're getting to know the virus.

We're getting to know the changing science.

And so we have to adapt our recommendations based on the science that's also changing, based on the virus that's also changing.

So I think there's something to be said about making sure that you're healthy, that you're sleeping well, that you're doing all of the things that you would normally do to make sure that you are thriving, that you're really, really healthy.

But when it comes to new viruses and your bodies have not been exposed to those viruses in the past, there are certain individuals, particularly those that are higher risk, like those who are elderly, those who are immunocompromised, where that initial contact with the virus will be a lot more harmful than say if you are healthy.

And so that's why we are recommending, or at least when the pandemic first started, that's why we recommended vaccines.

And that was really our go-to.

Now, as you say, what we should have done and say is, yes, you should absolutely get vaccinated because it's a new virus and we haven't had any immunity to it in the past.

But in addition to that, you should absolutely continue to eat healthy.

You should exercise.

You should sleep well.

Like I said, health is not like a one piece thing.

It's really a combination of all of these different things.

So I think looking at health from a holistic perspective is really the healthier way forward and really the most beneficial way forward.

Yeah, there's certainly so many elements to it.

You know how they say, oh, it's not just eating.

Look at your moisturizer.

Ditch it in coconut oil because it's coconut.

Exactly.

Exactly.

One of the things that I do in my research is understand not just things that the individual can do to improve their health because one person can only do so much depending on the resources and the access that they have, right?

So one of the things that we push for is really or that I push for in my work is to see, OK, are there systems in place that can help people make the right choices?

For example, you mentioned eating healthy.

I think it's easy to say, oh, yes, you should eat leafy greens and you should limit meat consumption and all of those things that we know to be helpful for a healthy diet.

But if you don't have access to a grocery store near you that has leafy greens, then how are you supposed to do that?

If you are working from 7 a.m.

till 7 p.m.

and you don't have the time to go to the grocery store and you're a single mom, let's say, how are you supposed to eat healthy?

And so I think as much as it is important to remind ourselves individually that there are choices that we can make to be healthy, it's just as important, if not even more important, to push the systems that we operate in to allow us to make those choices, right?

Like where are the green spaces, making sure that the grocery stores are near every neighborhood, irrespective of whether that neighborhood is considered to be rich or poor.

Even when we look at how our design our cities, it's very, very obvious that there are certain neighborhoods, those that are healthier, that also have access to the gyms and have access to better grocery stores and have access to green spaces and parks so that they can go out for their runs.

That's not fair.

That's not cool.

We should allow everybody, irrespective of where they are, where they're living, to be able to make those choices and make those choices easy to do, affordable to do.

So, you know, it's easy to blame the individual and say, oh, you should eat healthy.

But I think what we should be doing really is taking a step back and say, okay, how do we generate systems?

How do governments or other, whoever it is, organizations generate systems within their companies, within their cities, within their societies so that people can make healthy choices in a way that's easy and accessible to them?

That's right.

Excess.

I'm 46.

I remember Freddie Mercury when he died of the AIDS pandemic.

That time it was sold as it's a disease only for homosexual people.

And then it transitioned to if you sit on a public toilet at the mall, you're going to get it.

If somebody who had AIDS was there using just these confusing messages for the public.

Can you blame the politicians or the health agencies because they didn't know either?

Or were we being misinformed, which misinformation we'll discuss later?

Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about when there's a big shock, everything shifts, right?

All of our systems, whether it's the medical systems, the scientific systems or school systems, the way that we operate and function in a society, all of that is hit with that shock.

Especially when, as you said, with the AIDS epidemic, when we were first starting to learn what it was, same with COVID too, when we first started to learn what it was, there is a lot of information circulating around.

Some people know what they're talking about because they're actually doing research in it, and other people don't know what they're talking about, but maximize or try to profit from a terrible, terrible tragedy, which is just horrible to think about.

The misinformation movement in the United States, for example, it's a million-dollar industry.

People profit off of spreading misinformation.

People profit off of fear.

And so I think it's terrible, but taking a step back from your initial question, I think there is so much room for improvement for authorities, for public health professionals, for researchers to communicate better.

A lot of researchers have never been trained in communications, and then all of a sudden they were put in front of the microphone, in front of the general public, and say, okay, tell us what you discovered today about this virus that's changing from yesterday to tomorrow.

And so they weren't prepared for it, but they should have been prepared for it.

You should be able to communicate your research.

You should be able to communicate your work in a way that everyone can understand and not just your colleagues.

And so I think there's a lot of lessons that I hope that the authorities, and when I talk about authorities, I really mean the public health authority, the medical authorities and the professionals associated with these authorities.

I really hope that they've learned, and I think a lot of them have.

And we've seen a lot of science communicators come out of the COVID pandemic with better skills, with better capacity to speak to the public and recognize that depending on who you're speaking to, depending on your audience, depending on where they are and the information access that they have, the way that they communicate has to be targeted, has to be tailored to that community.

So, you know, misinformation, I think, is just one of the biggest threats.

It is a global challenge.

And I think depending on where you are, the way that misinformation targets you looks differently.

And part of that is on the ownership of the individual to make sure that when you're reading up on various sources of information to really take a step back and say, OK, where is this coming from?

Is this from an official source or is it coming from a random WhatsApp video or from a random Facebook video?

So there is that responsibility on the individual.

But again, going back to the systems thinking, I think we need to create systems where it's less easy to spread that sort of misinformation.

And I think we're still trying to figure out what that looks like, especially in this digital age where it's so easy to just type something up and send it out and then it's retweeted and retweeted and someone else who has a big following retweets it even if they don't have that background necessary to understand this particular problem.

So I think it's something that we're going to have to constantly grapple with as we deal with new challenges over the next several decades.

Yeah, that's a really big one, this thing of check your source.

Because if mainstream media was credible, if our politicians were credible, they would be the go-to.

But unfortunately, that's not necessarily the case.

And somebody tweeting a random YouTube video and saying, this is what's happening to me or my family member with regards to whether the COVID or the vaccine or whatever it is, just because they don't know them personally and they have no title and they've never been on mainstream media, we've come to a point where we don't know what's even a credible source anymore.

Yeah, it's hard.

And so what I normally tell people is, instead of relying on one person, even for scientists, for example, there are always certain scientists who will have varying views to the majority view.

And so I think particularly when it comes to recognizing your sources in the scientific world is to understand what the majority of scientists are saying.

Now, when you take science out of it, when you talk about looking at sources outside of the scientific world, it's hard to say, right?

Because every drug reacts differently because we're all different individuals.

And so if one person reacted a certain way or a drug didn't react a certain way to an individual, can you extrapolate off of that and apply it to you?

Not necessarily because our backgrounds are different, our health realities are different, our genetics are different.

So I think you have to be really, really careful when you are looking at one person's personal story and trying to assess that and make that comparison to you because you are a different person.

And so for these conversations, I think it's best to speak to your health care provider or if you don't think your health care provider is the best, then find another health care provider, get a second opinion.

But I really think that you have to be careful about making that link between one person's experience to yours because we're so different, right?

And so to me, credible sources, and perhaps I'm biased because I work in the scientific world, is to really go to people who are doing the science because they understand it.

And it is difficult because when we write research papers, for example, it's pages and pages of words and limitations, the limitations of the design, but also the pros and cons of what we've done, we try to be very, very transparent.

But I think oftentimes, let's say someone who doesn't have necessarily a virology background or an immunology background, and they read the headline and they say, oh, my God, bleach will cure COVID or, you know, all of those misinformation that we've heard and they will take that and they won't actually read between the actual paragraphs that saying, well, X, Y and Z was done and the study design was only in a lab and doesn't necessarily reflect real world settings.

Like if you don't actually read the paper, then you are contributing to misinformation, right?

So if you receive some sort of information and you don't know what the source is, it's better to just take a step back and say, OK, who is the source?

And to well, maybe I shouldn't retweet it without actually going to the original source and reading it.

And if I can't understand it, getting some colleagues or some friends who have a background in that particular field to help me understand it before passing on and spreading on that information.

You know, we call this misinformation another pandemic, an invisible pandemic of its own, so quick to spread.

You know, like something will spread tomorrow because or yesterday because a celebrity who has no background or understanding of antimicrobial resistance will say something.

And then that person's very, very large following will just trust them from what we've seen with the way that misinformation has spread.

I don't know if it's trust.

It's more like, oh, this person said it and they have a large following.

So it must be true.

But the reality is, even within the scientific world, like I'm an epidemiologist.

But if you ask me specific questions about immunology, about virology, I'm not going to be able to answer you that I can understand the basics of it, but I can't give you the details of it.

And so it's also recognizing that even within the scientific world, there are lots and lots of different categories and training and experience.

And so if you want specific answers to a specific question, it's best to go and speak to someone with training in that specific field rather than saying, oh, this person is a doctor, oh, this person is a researcher, so they must know everything about everything, you know.

Here's the problem with that.

For instance, let me give you an example.

Do you know Rachel Meadow from MSNBC?

Yeah.

This video keeps going viral where at the beginning of the pandemic, she clearly stated, if I took the vaccine and I stand next to you, it stops with me.

You will never be infected, which obviously we've learned in the last three years, it's a very different scenario altogether.

Would that be called misinformation or at the time they did not know?

Because this is why, as the general public then starts to mistrust the minister of the minister of media.

Absolutely.

And I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the changing science.

So let's go back to vaccines, when the first vaccines did come out, the virus that we had at that time was a lot less transmissible than what we have today.

And so at that time, that vaccine and that virus was a good fit.

However, because we just let the virus spread, because we were so inequitable in terms of how we distributed the vaccines, more and more people got infected.

And the way that viruses work is that the more they infect people, the more they change.

And the more they change, that original formulation of the vaccine became less effective.

And so at that time, if you were vaccinated, the chances of you spreading it to somebody else was very, very, very low.

The chances of you being infected after being vaccinated was low.

But now you can get vaccinated and you can still get infected because the virus has changed in terms of how it is today, because it's infected millions and millions of people.

The vaccines are still effective at reducing the severity of your disease, but will you be able to spread it to somebody else?

Yes, you will.

Will you be able to still get infected?

Yes, you will.

And you're right, that adds so much confusion to everyone because you're like, oh, you told us this two years ago.

Why is that not the case today?

And again, it's because science, when it's operating during a crisis, you know, like when we think about some medicines or some things that we use to maintain our health or to treat a disease, we've never seen the scientific process in front of a spotlight before.

And then all of a sudden, this pandemic came and like every single day we had new news about the pandemic, about new news about the virus.

Oh, the virus is changing this way.

Oh, the virus is affecting people this way.

And so it was a lot and a lot of changes that was happening.

But that is the scientific process, is that you start from the beginning, you understand it, you become more and more knowledgeable about it.

And then at the end, you say, OK, this is what we would recommend to people.

But for the first time, or at least we haven't had a pandemic in centuries.

And so for the very first time, all of a sudden you have this pandemic and the science of the pandemic being played out in front of the public, in front of everybody.

Whereas normally we're kind of working on the back end and people just see the final product, they don't see the ups and downs, they don't see all of the scientific process and the thinking and the trials and errors that go into this.

It's just a matter of because science was operating in the middle of a crisis and it still is, we had to change and we had to adapt.

And it's hard to adapt when there's just so much information just being thrown at us from different ways.

And that goes back to making sure that once again, when you do go for that information to make sure that you find credible sources, which we can talk about for a whole hour.

Oh, yeah, because also the mistrust comes from the fact that they don't tell both sides of the story.

You know, whatever they're pushing, they say, let's all get vaccinated.

They're not going to tell the other side if somebody got affected negatively by the vaccine.

But also when it comes to mistrust, I'm South African and I know a lot of African countries, there's vaccine hesitancy.

Of course, yeah.

I don't know in your findings if you guys did discuss it on the global scale.

And I would like your thoughts on that.

But also taking into account the fact that African countries had some of the lowest COVID deaths or even though the vaccine rates were very low.

I would like your thoughts on that.

Yeah.

Yes, there are a lot of different hypotheses and a lot of thinking behind that.

One is because a lot of African countries or the members of African countries are much, much younger.

So from a from a demographics perspective, I think the average age, I'm not sure what it is in South Africa, but it's around 40, it's around 50.

Whereas in certain Western countries that were affected a lot more severely, they had a lot more people that were much, much older.

They had a lot of older people who had tons of comorbidities, you know, whether it's obesity or high blood pressure, a lot of other conditions that made them a lot more severe to it.

So that's one thing.

The other thing is that a lot of countries, and again, I can't speak to South Africa, but there are certain countries in the continent of Africa that were so prepared because of their experiences with Ebola.

So, you know, they were able to react quickly.

They were able, they had the systems and the structures in place and health systems to be able to say, well, this maybe this is an airborne illness.

Maybe we should wear a mask.

Maybe we should isolate the patients who are infected.

So they were able to react quickly because they learned so much during Ebola.

A lot of the Western countries didn't have that.

You know, we dealt with the H1N1 flu or influenza and whatnot, but there was nothing as terrifying as Ebola in our recent history.

So we were like, oh, you know, we will act slowly.

It'll be fine.

It hasn't reached a country yet.

It'll be OK.

And so that led to making decisions in a much slower pace than some of the African countries.

There's a lot there.

The other thing is, I think when it comes to trusting authorities, that was your question about vaccine hesitancy.

It makes sense that a lot of people don't trust authority.

You know, our relationships with medical systems and public health systems historically has not been the best.

I can talk about the US and Canada.

I mean, we've used racialized bodies for experiments historically in the past.

You're using prisoners for experiments in the name of science.

Like the relationship between science and authorities has been really murky in a lot of places around the world.

So it makes absolute sense that people are like, well, are you actually out to help me out or is this just for a bigger gain for your other priorities?

And that's why I say it's totally understandable that people have a lot of hesitancy.

And so when I talk to people with that sort of hesitancy, I say, OK, you know what?

Forget about authority.

Forget about the medical institutions.

Talk to scientists who are not affiliated with those institutions.

Like, well, I'm not affiliated with Pfizer or Moderna.

I don't work for a vaccine company.

I don't get any money from them.

And so when I go and talk to people or when I go in the media and talk about these things, like, you can trust me because one, I'm brown.

So I understand interesting and the heartbreaking relationship between medical authorities and racialized bodies.

But the other thing is I'm not affiliated with any of these institutions.

All I can do is I can read up on the data.

I can look at the data that we have and say, this is what's been happening in these countries.

This is what's been happening in our country.

This is how the vaccine, for example, is benefiting these people.

These are some of the reactions, the side effects that we are seeing in certain people.

And so I think it's a matter of being transparent and it's a matter of having the right people talking to people, you know, not having people who have all these conflicts of interest, but people who have no conflicts of interest.

My sole purpose with my work is not to make Pfizer and Moderna and the US government richer.

It really is to ensure that people have the right information, that they know how to access that information, that they know how to process that information and make the right choice for them.

Because fundamentally, it is about choice, right?

I shouldn't push you to do anything that you don't want to.

I wish it was about choice.

Sorry to interrupt you.

I wish it was about choice, but then the word mandate kicked in.

I know.

That's when it stopped being about choice.

They did not give us a choice.

If you were to be stopped from working, going to a restaurant, getting into a bus, it stopped being about choice.

No, no, you're absolutely right.

And I wish we had done things differently.

But I think I will remind everyone that when the pandemic first started, we were all scared.

You know, we had grandparents that were getting sick.

Some of the older members of my community, we lost them.

And so it was a time of a lot, a lot of fear.

And I think if it was about choices that only affected you, then it made sense.

I'm not saying that the way that we did this was right, because we made a lot of mistakes.

And when I say we, I don't actually mean me.

I mean, you know, countries and authorities there.

But we did make a lot of mistakes.

And ideally, we would have given all the information to people to make their choices on their own terms.

However, we were dealing with an infectious disease, right?

This wasn't something that if you got it, it stayed with you.

You could pass it on to people who are much more at risk than you were.

You could pass it on to babies who did not have strong immune systems yet because they were just born to newborns.

And so because, yes, your illness could infect other people where for you, because you're healthy, maybe it would have been just a little cough and a sneeze.

But to somebody else, it could be a lot more severe.

I think that's when the questions and mandates came because governments, for various reasons, wanted to protect their citizens as quickly as possible.

I have a feeling it was on some level, sure, it was protection, but on the other level, I think it was also to make sure that our economy didn't completely crash to reduce the number of people who were sick.

So whatever their intent was, I think that's why governments really went with mandates.

It was because we wanted to maximize the number of people who had some protection to a brand new virus that we had never been faced with before.

Then just taking our time, because the more time you waited, it meant more deaths.

It meant more infections.

It meant more illnesses.

So I do understand where the governments are coming from, but I also absolutely understand where people are coming from.

Because like I said, in an ideal world, I just want to give you all of my information, all the information that I know, and then you can make the right choice for yourself.

And ideally, you will make the right choice in the sense that science is not supposed to be biased.

Science is not supposed to have any other mission or agenda.

It's just supposed to say, OK, this is the data.

Do with it what you will.

So yes, I absolutely agree with you.

I think some of the decisions that were made have really, really added a level of mistrust to public health authorities, to public health institutions, to scientific institutions.

And I really hope over the next several years and more, we do more to actually communicate with communities and see how we can make that trust better, not just from a perception perspective, but with actual institutions doing the actual work to protect these communities.

We don't want people to have trust in systems that don't protect them.

We want people to have trust in systems that actually protect them.

That's not going to happen at all.

So three things when it comes to trust.

One, your parents are from Nepal, right?

Yes, I was also born there.

Oh, you were also born there, so you came to Canada at age five.

I'm glad Pfizer and Moderna are not paying you, so you can be the objective.

No pharmaceutical companies are paying me.

I'm not getting paid by any pharmaceutical company.

Am I right to say I think India had an alternative vaccine?

India had one.

I think some African countries used the malaria vaccine and found it to be effective, if I'm being correct.

And in America, some Americans claim that ivermectin was hidden or even sold as horse medicine, meaning it's not good for human consumption.

And yet those who were able to access it found that it was more effective.

I remember there's a doctor in Texas, Dr.

Mary Bowden, who got fired, whereas she used it and 99% of her patients got better.

Isn't that the result you want?

So why do these three cases of alternatives to Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, why are they being pushed back and say don't touch them or just totally being suppressed?

Yeah, so on the vaccine question, again, I don't work for these vaccine companies, so I'm not sure how the contracts or any of that worked.

But I know that India, for example, is able to produce its own vaccines.

I think it's called the Bharat Institute.

So they're able to develop their own vaccines and they did it in collaboration with AstraZeneca, with Oxford, I believe.

So they're able to develop their own vaccines.

Cuba was able to develop their own vaccines.

China was able to develop their own vaccines.

So I think it depends a lot on the country's capacity.

Do they have the manufacturing infrastructure?

Do they have the scientific infrastructure to be able to develop these vaccines?

So I can't really speak to why certain vaccines were pushed more so than others.

I think it comes down, unfortunately, to contracting.

If your country was not so, for example, Canada, we weren't able to develop our own vaccines.

So we purchased them from the US.

We purchased them from Europe.

And so wherever our government negotiated those contracts, that's the vaccine that we got.

Initially, I think our government had wanted to negotiate with China because China had its own vaccines.

The contract fell through.

So we didn't end up getting the Chinese vaccines.

We ended up getting the American and the European vaccines.

So I think it comes down to contracts.

And again, I really wish that we were able to have...

This is, again, never going to happen, but every country being able to have a scientific infrastructure so that when there's a crisis, they're able to take care of their own people.

But unfortunately, that's not the reality.

In terms of ivermectin, there have been a lot of studies that have been done since then.

I don't know the physician that you talked about, but I think, again, it's important to recognize that in a lot of the studies, there have been long-scale, longitudinal studies looking at ivermectin and whether it was beneficial for COVID specifically.

And a lot of the studies have not shown the efficacy of ivermectin, so they haven't shown that it works.

Again, I don't know what type of treatment the physician that you talked about does.

Maybe it's ivermectin in combination with something else that worked.

Maybe it's a placebo effect.

You know, there's lots of other possibilities there.

But in all of the studies that have come out, and there have been several that have come out, where people with no background or conflicts with pharmaceutical industries have actually looked at ivermectin to see, okay, is this helpful?

Because if it's helpful, yes, great.

Why would we not use it?

And they looked at all of the studies, and unfortunately the studies showed that it wasn't helpful.

And listen, I would love to have a treatment that would be like, okay, even if you're infected, here you go, you take it, you're good, you're good to go, you know, kind of like with the ways that we deal with other illnesses.

But unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a miracle cure when it comes to COVID and ivermectin from the papers that I've seen, from the studies that I've seen done, from colleagues who have worked in those studies, that unfortunately hasn't shown to be effective.

The other thing I will tell you is that in science it's all about numbers too, right?

So you can do a small study of 20 people, and then you test something out, you test a medicine and you see that it works for those 20 people, doesn't mean that it will also work for the rest of the world.

Not necessarily, because 20 people it's a very very small sample size.

So what are the characteristics of those 20 people?

What type of diet are they on?

What other medicine are they on?

Are they active?

What is their genetic composition?

What race are they?

Which country are they from?

So there's a lot of things that matter in medicine, right?

All of that to influence your health and the way that you react to certain medicines.

And so what we like to see or what I like to see when we're making these big judgment calls is to not look at one study or one clinic with 20 patients or 300 patients.

We ideally want to see a huge global study with hundreds and thousands of people.

Because then that means that in that group, the likelihood of finding someone who's somewhat representative to you is much much higher.

You know, if there's a study of 100,000 or 200,000 people, the chances of finding someone who is 5'2 and 120 pounds and brown and, you know, has a house case and jeans like myself is much much higher than someone who is doing a 20 person study in DC where maybe nobody's brown or nobody eats the way that I do and nobody has my height and my weight.

So I think when we're talking about these studies, it's really important to look for those large scale studies because those have power, because you're looking at a lot of different people versus smaller studies.

It's hard to make a judgment call then because it could be random.

It could be something else.

It could be where they are.

It could be other treatments that they're getting at the same time.

It could be that the 20 people are from similar backgrounds and similar socio economic status.

Like going back to what I said earlier, health is not just about your genetics and your height and your weight.

It's also about everything else.

So I think it's really, really important to look at those bigger studies because they're a lot more representative than smaller ones.

Okay.

And then when you were presenting at the World Economic Forum, what conclusions did you come to based on your research and what was the response?

Yeah.

So, you know, I never envisioned that I would one day have the opportunity to go to Davos and speak there.

As I'm sure everybody knows, Davos is, you know, catered to a certain type of people.

Those that are wealthier and richer.

Elite, as we say.

Yeah, you know, more men.

So here I was, a short brown woman being like, hi.

So it was a really interesting and really eye-opening experience, to be honest.

And I was one of the youngest people there, right?

Because a lot of billionaires are old white men.

Even South Africans who read my parliament, I think the average age is like 90.

There you go.

Actually, can we have a conversation about that?

How is it possible that these older folks are making all of our decisions?

Whatever retirement we are forced to retire at 60-65, they could be involved in the two-day 90.

It makes no sense.

But yeah, so I think being in Davos is really, really interesting because you're surrounded by those people.

I will say, though, I curated my experience, so I felt like I didn't really have much to say to billionaires, and they probably wouldn't have much say to me because I would probably talk to them about health equities and stop exploiting resources because that's leading to all of this, the repercussions that we're facing every day.

But I spoke to a lot of women leaders, and I spoke to thought leaders and people from around the world, and it was really, really surprisingly positive in that sense because I learned how to navigate these spaces, right?

How can you navigate a space like Davos as a young brown woman scientist?

So that part was really interesting.

In terms of the panel that I was on, again, it was a panel with mostly women, which was amazing, and we talked about science and the value of public-private partnerships.

So I've always worked in the public sector, you know, in universities and nonprofit organizations and some multilaterals.

I've never worked with private institutions or pharmaceutical industries or any of that before, and so it was really, really interesting to talk about the potential of public-private partnerships because whether we like it or not, these for-profit organizations are there.

Whether we like it or not, these for-profit pharmaceutical companies, for example, are creating medicines, are creating vaccines, are creating drugs that a lot of us are consuming.

So how do we maximize and make sure that, you know, they're not just maximizing profit, but are actually thinking about people and thinking about people's health and thinking about communities and centering communities in their decisions?

And I think public-private partnerships is a really interesting model to go forward with that.

And some of my panelists were talking about, you know, managing clinical trials or even with Moderna.

What happened in the United States was the US government funded and provided a lot of money for Moderna to develop the vaccines.

And so there are really interesting models of various degrees of success of public-private partnerships.

So that's what we talked about.

I brought in the social lens to that discussion, you know, saying that communications, questions of trust, how do we ensure that people trust these partnerships when many communities have been harmed by these enterprises in the past?

And so that was my lens is to make sure that any sort of scientific investments we make in the future and in the present, they have to include community voices, they have to include the quote unquote regular people to make sure that these institutions are not making decisions for themselves, but really for us, right?

Because we face whether it's a positive or the negative effects of their decision making.

So it was a really interesting conversation and I learned a lot from it.

And I wish that there were opportunities to bring in a lot more voices to these elite spaces.

But I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of people were willing to listen to me and actually wanted to listen to me, which was a surprise.

I don't know if it was because going into it, my expectations were very, very low.

Thinking they don't care about us regular people.

Yes, exactly.

I'm like, oh, you actually want to hear what I have to say?

Yes, let me tell you about my work and why health is important and why social determinants of health is important.

So I was pleasantly surprised.

But I do think it's because I targeted certain people who shared similar interests to me.

So I knew that we would have good conversations.

You know, I didn't try to have a conversation about health equity with a billionaire from wherever.

So I kind of picked a choice.

As if they can relate.

Exactly.

So I picked and choose who I wanted to talk to.

So I had an overall good experience.

It is a place of contradictions, of course.

You know, we're talking about health equity.

We're talking about climate change.

We're talking about all of these things that matter to the regular people like us.

And then you come out of the room and then there's like a billionaire there and a billionaire there and a billionaire there.

And they're part of the problem.

You know, like there should not be any billionaires.

Why do you need that much wealth?

It is a place of contradictions, but it is also a really neat place to network and meet non-billionaires who are trying to use the systems and navigate the systems to bring in some good.

So I met some really interesting other researchers as well who were doing work at the intersection of climate and health.

I met some really interesting foundations who are trying to bring in more money towards climate funding.

There were a lot of people doing a lot of different things, and I gravitated towards those people who were mission driven rather than profit driven.

That is so wonderful.

And I would like for you to give us one last word of wisdom for us regular people on how best to prepare.

Listen, politicians and all the authorities are going to do what they're going to do, but how best can we prepare ourselves and our communities going forward when it comes to the pandemic?

Yes, I think that goes back to what I said earlier about when it comes to global challenges, it's hard for one individual to do anything, right?

When we're talking about pandemic preparedness, we're trying to put space between close contact between animals and humans to prevent the jump of viruses from animals to humans.

Can me individually or you individually do something to change that?

It's hard because we're talking about animal trade and poultry trading, and we're talking about policies and economic interests that have been put in place to encourage that sort of trading.

So I think from an individual perspective, the best word of wisdom that someone told me and that I'll pass on is to find your communities.

There's a lot of power in having a voice as a community, right?

There's power in numbers.

So if you're not happy about something, if you don't trust something, if you have questions about something, find a community of people and advocate for a better health, for a better community so that you can actually thrive in what you're doing as opposed to just trying to survive.

So that's what I've tried to do is find like-minded people who are mission driven.

I found lots of different communities that I can be with and brainstorm together to advocate for a better today and a better tomorrow.

And I think that's what I would really recommend everybody to do.

It's hard to fight these big battles by yourself, but if you find a community, it's much, much, much easier to do that.

So don't give up, but also don't burn out trying to revolutionize the world by yourself.

I think it's important to find a community to do that with.

So, yeah, that's what I would say.

Find a community.

Words of wisdom from Prativa Baral.

Thank you so much for your research, your work of advocacy.

You're speaking on behalf of the little guy like the rest of us and the work that you do in helping us prepare for a pandemic.

We appreciate you taking your time to be on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for listening to my many, many rants.

I appreciate it.

And yes, thank you again.

Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review and share this episode with anyone who you know will benefit from it and they will be with you next time.

And before you go, Prativa, would you like to share any of your websites where anybody can find you on the interwebs if they want to continue this discussion?

Yes, of course.

So you can reach me on Twitter at TIVABARAL.

You can also reach out to me.

I'm always looking for partners to collaborate with, to chat with, to discuss global health with.

So you can reach out to me directly through Twitter or on my website, www.prativabaral.com.

www.prativabaral.com.

Thank you so much.

I will write that on the show notes.