Lauren Lavin:

Welcome back to Plugged in to Public Health. Today I’m thrilled to have Dr. Tamara Marcus with us. Dr. Marcus is a climate scientist and activist known for her deep commitment to creating sustainable solutions. Her work has taken her many places, but now she’s making a local impact in Cedar Rapids. As the co-founder of Empowered Solutions Collective, she works with nonprofits and local governments to develop accessible, equitable sustainability projects. Dr. Marcus is also passionate about connecting with communities to create social and environmental resilience. Today, we’ll explore her journey, her unique blend of activism and science in the actionable ways she’s helping to address the climate crisis. Dr. Marcus, thank you for joining us. Now, let’s get Plugged in to Public Health.

Thank you, Dr. Marcus. I really appreciate you being on the podcast with me this morning, and I’m excited to learn more about you and your business. To start off, my first question for you is what initially inspired you to become involved in climate activism, and then how has that journey evolved over time to get you to where you are today?

Tamara Marcus:

It’s so hard with these questions to know where is the starting point, right, ’cause so many of these events just build on one another.

Lauren Lavin:

[inaudible 00:01:15] morning, started when you were a child when he lived in China and was eight years old. There’s such a broad spectrum of time.

Tamara Marcus:

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. And I think climate activism to me, I separate from my climate research. I am a climate scientist. I’ve been studying climate change for almost 15 years now, working in the Swedish Arctic most recently for my dissertation research, and then previously in the Indian Himalaya and then the Australian Outback as well. I feel like just spending a lot of time studying ecosystem change, impacts of climate change and the impacts that that is having on people and the here and now, I think that’s where a lot of my climate activism was born. You know what I mean? Because I felt like I had this tool and a skill set that had the potential to incite real change, but as is, and so there needed to be a translation of some of that information into action.

Lauren Lavin:

How did your climate research journey begin?

Tamara Marcus:

I feel like it really did start with my gen chem one class in undergrad, which maybe sounds weird, but I was pre-med and I was pre-med because I wanted to help people, right? When you’re in high school and you think about what you want to do, there’s four professions. I was like, I want to be a doctor because I want to help people. And then I took gen chem one, and it was terrible. I was so bad at it, and so I questioned myself after that, right? If I can’t pass gen chem one, and I did pass barely, if I can’t pass gen chem one, then can I actually finish med school?

Lauren Lavin:

It’s going to be a really long road.

Tamara Marcus:

It’s a bit of an obstacle right out of the gate. But it was good. It was really good because it encouraged me to reevaluate and explore other options. I spent a semester doing just that, and at one point I was a triple major. I was like, I’m going to do anthropology and French and poli-sci, it was chaos. But then I did an internship with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, it’s a US Department of Ag agency. And it was through that work that I realized in part, again, the power of science, research, STEM, solve real problems again in the here and now, things that we are dealing with and facing in this day. And then I went to The Bahamas and did some climate specific work looking at the impacts of humans on ecosystem change and climate change specifically, and it was really dope. I really enjoyed it.

I really liked the field work. I really liked being out in the system, getting to know it directly, not just through a computer or through books or whatever, but being there, doing research, doing that physical aspect of field work, and then the lab stuff was okay too, but you need to know how to do the lab stuff to do the other things, right? After that, I think I was just an awakening of sorts of, okay, cool. I want to help people, maybe not doctor, but this is doing it in a way that checks a lot of boxes and fills my cup in a lot of other ways too.

Lauren Lavin:

I think that experience is something that a lot of students can relate to. Like you said, there’s four careers and I think a lot of students go into that, and then once they [inaudible 00:04:49], there’s actually a lot more paths than maybe we originally anticipated. Can you also just describe your educational journey really quick so that our listeners know that part of it?

Tamara Marcus:

Let’s see. I graduated from Kennedy High School, go Cougs in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And then I did what a lot of high school students tried to do in Iowa. I did everything I could to leave the state. And so I went to the University of Minnesota and I ended up majoring in English and biochem. I did end up taking more chemistry classes even after the-

Lauren Lavin:

A lot more chem.

Tamara Marcus:

Uh-huh, yep. Even after the gen chem debacle. Even took gen chem two. Yeah. Did much better now. And then, so I actually took a year off between my sophomore and junior year of undergrad. That’s when I started my climate research in India. When I say that ’cause I feel like when you think about career paths at any, people go to undergrad at any age, but especially for young folks, there is this very four-year model that is heavily emphasized. I feel like still now, it’s been a minute since I’ve been in high school.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh, no. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tamara Marcus:

That’s still there? Okay. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, I took a year off and it was really smart for me because I wanted to study abroad. It was very expensive to study abroad. I found a fellowship that would support that, and that meant not getting college credit for that year, but I think in other ways it was such a rewarding experience. Did that for a year, came back to Minnesota, finished my undergrad, took another year off before my PhD, went back to India as a Fulbright Scholar, and then started my PhD, and that was a very unique path, I would say.

Lauren Lavin:

Do share.

Tamara Marcus:

There was a whole global pandemic during that. That [inaudible 00:06:53] a little bit.

Lauren Lavin:

Fair. That is totally fair. And where did you get your PhD from?

Tamara Marcus:

University of New Hampshire.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay. Did you move to New Hampshire?

Tamara Marcus:

I did spend a couple of years in New Hampshire, yes. Yes, I did.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay. How does it compare to Iowa?

Tamara Marcus:

Let’s see. The things that I liked about it different than Iowa were the nature. I feel like there’s obviously mountains and hiking and the water is a lot cleaner than our water here. You can actually be in it safely.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s a perk.

Tamara Marcus:

Yep. Got to love being able to get into water. What I didn’t love about it though, it was fairly conservative, and so it felt very polarized, I suppose is maybe the right word.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

I think that was something that was harder for me. I’m from here and it is predominantly white, and not that white is synonymous with conservative, but I guess in that case it was, it was more the politics that I found to be a little bit more challenging.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

Full disclosure, I consider myself an independent, so it’s not even a two-party tension that I was picking up on. It was weird. It was very car-heavy. It was very, very car-heavy, which is not something even more so than Iowa and Cedar Rapids specifically, I would say.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

I found it to be very challenging.

Lauren Lavin:

Interesting. Which leads me right to my next question, which is about some of the challenges that you have faced over your career, especially early on in activism. What are some of those challenges and how have you overcome them or worked through them?

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah, yeah. I actually was thinking about this recently and I feel like the one that is maybe not the most prevalent throughout my activism experience, but is definitely something that I think is really important to speak about is mental health challenges and mental health support services and access to those services. We talk a lot about burnout when we think about activism, and I think those to me are synonymous or they’re connected, right? Oftentimes, activists are people who are working on issues because they care so deeply to the point of over-exhaustion, emotionally, physically, they care that deeply about these causes. I’ve spent almost as long as I’ve been engaged intensely with activism work, activist work, I’ve also been navigating my mental health journey. It’s very transformative to now be in a place where I feel like I understand how to prioritize the physical needs of me and how that then allows me to do this important work longer term in a more sustainable way.

Lauren Lavin:

I think that’s a really good point. That was an answer that I don’t think I was expecting, and I think that’s a great thing for people to remember if that’s a journey that they’re going on themselves or considering as students.

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah, absolutely. I say this often, self-care is community care, right? Because if you are taking care of yourself and you have the things that you need, and I’m not saying being selfish, right? Make sure you’re sleeping, you’re getting nutritious food, you’re drinking water, these very basic things that we see all these memes about, right? How are you building that intentionally into your routine? How are you building checkpoints, mental checkpoints, emotional checkpoints into your day-to-day, into your routine to make sure that you can, again, sustain work because you need to sustain the self for that to be possible?

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. I’m a yoga teacher and one of my favorite sayings that I say a lot during class is you can’t pour from an empty cup.

Tamara Marcus:

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Lavin:

Especially if you’re doing a lot of work that’s in service to others, you have to fill yourself up first.

Tamara Marcus:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

We talked about your educational background, some of your early work in activism, but I would love it if you could tell the audience what you do today.

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah. Okay. Ooh, fun. I’m one of the owners of Empowered Solutions Collective, which is a Cedar Rapids based sustainability consulting group, which we predominantly work mostly with nonprofits and local governments, helping them do mostly sustainability projects as well as social justice work too. You can hear in that description, it’s broad, and that is both a challenge and I think a beauty of my business partner and our work style. Her background, Sarah Blaze, she is more in the art space, community art space, especially using engagement, interactive art installation pieces to do social justice work. I’m more in the STEM research space. We have our areas of focus or expertise, but then we coalesce around the shared interest in social justice and working towards creating more equitable spaces, creating more tolerant spaces, creating more accessible, I said equitable and then accessible spaces. I view it as the culmination of my experience in local government, the nonprofit world. I started in nonprofit in ’20, Advocates for Social Justice. That work definitely has informed our vision for Empowered Solutions, and then just my work in academia, drawing from those skill sets as well. And then of course, the expertise of my business partner too.

Lauren Lavin:

When you say creating more accessible, equitable spaces, are you talking about the culture?

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah. Right? Yes. It’s yes and, right? Because you’re right, these are big words. They can be buzzwords even. And so I think for me and my business partner, I’ll speak for myself because I don’t want to speak for her. I think she shares a lot of these perspectives or experiences too. But let me just speak for myself since that’s where I can actually speak from. I think there’s a lot of interest in doing equity work, and especially when we think about the intersection of equity and sustainability, because what we’re really a lot of times talking about is noticing this disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, right? Communities that have historically been marginalized, communities that include people with disabilities, immigrant and refugee communities. There are many different types of vulnerable communities, but what they share often is again, feeling this disproportionate impact of the effects of climate change.

And an example I used to contextualize that is the derecho, right? That was something that most people in this area and the corridor in eastern Iowa have a story or know someone or have their own story that impacted all of our community, even people who weren’t directly physically impacted by that, because again, the social network that we have in the corridor, but that impact was not felt the same across that area, right? You had some people who owned a home, had damage to their home, but had insurance to fix it. Maybe it took a long time for that repair to happen, maybe more than a year or two, right? But still that level of insurance, that level of assurance rate is very different than some of the apartment complexes that were completely destroyed.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

And maybe people didn’t have renters insurance ’cause that’s not something that people always have, right? It’s not required for you to have that the same way it is for home insurance, right? Then to lose that same event, that shared disaster event feels differently, that impact is different based off of a variety of factors, some of which you have control over, some of which you don’t.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

You ask what does equity work look like? What does accessibility work like in this space? Well, you first have to lay that foundation of knowing that, again, when you’re doing this work it is going to look different depending on the organization and entity that you’re working with, because those needs are going to be different.

Lauren Lavin:

Right.

Tamara Marcus:

That’s what I think is so powerful and valuable about the model that Sarah and I have here is ’cause we live in these communities. We have relationships here, right? We’ve worked with these individuals, these organizations for years at this point, and we also then have these skill sets that are potentially very valuable to some of the solutions to the problems that we’re experiencing, again, in the here and now, right? Things like grant writing, there’s an incredible amount of funding through federal legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, right? That is billions of dollars for these types of projects. It includes healthcare, it includes renewable energy investments, right? It is huge, and there are competitive projects, organizations in these communities in the corridor, but if you are capacity limited in some way, for example, maybe you only have a staff of two and you don’t have time to write a grant. Maybe this is you’re a new nonprofit leader and you don’t have the experience in writing a grant, right? We do more than grant writing, but that’s an example of here’s an opportunity with this federal funding. Here’s a problem that we’re experiencing in our community. How do we match this with local partners and help make these projects not only possible, but do it from a foundation of realizing that again, each organization’s needs, each individual’s needs are going to be dependent because their experience with the impacts of climate change is different.

Lauren Lavin:

It’s really a tailored service and solution that you’re providing.

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah, that’s our hope.

Lauren Lavin:

What do you think sets Empowered Solutions Collective apart from other consulting services that might do something similar?

Tamara Marcus:

Just our network and our track record of working in this community is something that I think is unique. I think that there’s a lot of good entities doing good work, and I don’t think that we’re at saturation at this point. I think that’s evident based off of the types of projects that we’ve been able to work on over just a short time. We’ve really just started doing business this year. It’s exciting to see the diversity of these types of projects happening across different organizations all the way to city, county governments, all the way to small nonprofits that predominantly serve BIPOC individuals.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

And so then I think too, one thing Sarah and I really value in our mission, again, is ensuring that individuals that have historically not been a part of this work, not had access to resources to do this work, it’s very important to our mission for us to prioritize those individuals, those organizations, because they deserve it.

Lauren Lavin:

Do you serve mostly clients in the Iowa area, or is it nationwide?

Tamara Marcus:

It’s just Iowa for now, but who knows?

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Girl can dream, right? How does your organization then ensure that sustainability initiatives that you create are both community informed and inclusive?

Tamara Marcus:

Sarah and I are big talkers. Big conversationalists. Our process is one where we solicit feedback on a regular basis. There’s one fairly exciting project that we have coming, which I can’t say, I wish I could say more about it, but more to come soon. And it’s essentially funding to do a social justice project in the state of Iowa.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

And there’s a lot of flexibility in our ability to design what that project looks like, which then you could just say, here’s all of the ideas that I’ve been piling up and now I finally have the funding to execute them. That’s one approach. What we do using this as an example of our process is think about, okay, what other local organizations is it important for us to talk with?

Lauren Lavin:

Mm-hmm.

Tamara Marcus:

Okay, what are themes that we think are going to be potentially relevant to this type of work locally based off of our shared experience? Okay, where can we get in front of students or young people to get feedback on some of these ideas and hear what direction they want to go for funding to work towards a social justice issue? The reason we start there, the reason we start with soliciting information and feedback from the individuals that we’re hoping to impact is so then we’re better ensuring that as we’re creating something, we’re doing it with the knowledge that it’s actually in need of the target community as opposed to creating something and then saying, here, target community, use this, and then the target community says, we didn’t ask for this. It’s so common in so many of our systems in government and academia for this process to unfold where it’s creating the tool before you’ve asked people if they even want to use it. Using this as an example, our process is more stepping back thinking about, okay, where do we want to go? Where do you as an organization, as organization, you know what I mean? Whatever your audience is, where do you want to go? And then how can we help break down the pieces and provide the structure to get you there? Does that make sense?

Lauren Lavin:

No, that totally makes sense, and that’s something that I think I’ve said about academia before too, is that sometimes I think we’re answering questions no one wants necessarily, or no one needs the answer. You follow the funding or what you think will bring in money, and other times, I just think that a lot of times we don’t do it with the end goal in mind. Sometimes I think we should work backwards.

Tamara Marcus:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

What types of projects do you find most impactful that you’ve been able to work on or I don’t know, most exciting, and then how do you approach project development with sustainability and equity in mind?

Tamara Marcus:

The problems that I love to work on are ones that I feel like are solving a problem, because I feel like sustainability and resiliency encompass so much that it’s really hard not to find a connection to an existing problem and a solution that’s available through a sustainability or resiliency framework, process, whatever.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

Something that we have worked on extensively, or I guess I’ve worked on extensively a little bit before Empowered Solutions at my former role as the Lynn County Sustainability Director and now with Empowered Solutions are resilience hubs. Using derecho or using the tornado in Iowa City as well, these disruptive events, and they don’t have to necessarily be natural disasters, but any disruptive event after we go through that, it’s very apparent what we can work on ahead of the next disaster, right? Unfortunately, we’re living in a time where it’s not a matter of if we’re going to have another disaster. I think all at this point are expecting it, which we should.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Tamara Marcus:

That’s one of the impacts of climate change is that natural disasters are more extreme with greater intensity, and again, the derecho was one of the most costly thunderstorms in US history.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow.

Tamara Marcus:

Thinking about how we’re spending this time before the next disaster to prepare for it is really important and it doesn’t have to be this doomsday Prep thing. We’re storing a bunch of canned goods in our basements vibe, like no, thinking about derecho and the tornado, the first line of response after those events is often your neighbors, the people around you. How do you build social resiliency? How do you build social networks? Then when something like that happens and emergency services can’t get to you for whatever period of time, you have a way to stay safe and you have a way to support one another as a community, right? That’s what I mean where this is a problem that most of us think about at least once a month is our emergency prepared, especially during the summers, are we prepared for a disruptive event, right?

And so being able to use sustainability tools, frameworks to then apply that to something that most of us are thinking about on a regular basis that is solving a problem, that is addressing a struggle, a challenge in the day to day, but then even breaking it down further, like food access. There’s an immense amount of opportunity to use sustainability initiatives to address food deserts, which unfortunately in Cedar Rapids and Lynn County, we have more of, because of the closure of Hy-Vee on first step, right? That is a systemic problem that through systemic solutions is able to actually be addressed. But you have to want to do it.

Lauren Lavin:

You have to want to do it.

Tamara Marcus:

Right. I don’t want to jump around too much. One of the questions you’d asked is about the role of businesses in this work.

Lauren Lavin:

Yep.

Tamara Marcus:

I think this is a good segue because it’s really hard to turn the ships of government and academia and research institutions, right? It’s really hard to do that, and it’s worth spending time and effort to do so. That being said, businesses are able, from at least my very brief experience personally and from my observations from a longer period of time, they’re able to move more swiftly. That’s part of why I wanted to start Empowered Solutions Collective, was to be able to move urgently. And that doesn’t mean sloppy, right? That doesn’t mean building a bunch of EV charging stations, right? I firmly believe that most of what our challenges both climate wise, but also socially wise, it’s not solved by honestly more data at this point. It’s not solved by more infrastructure development. It’s solved by repairing relationships, which is hard work to do, and it doesn’t happen fast, but you can take urgent action to do that, to repair those relationships.

And I know this is where I get all hippie and all that, but I firmly believe that as a person who has spent hours looking at data, has written hundreds of, well, maybe a hundred and some, close to 200 pages, whatever, a lot of pages in my dissertation, right? I’ve looked at a lot of data. I’ve talked to a lot of climate scientists, and this is a personal opinion. I’m sure other people will have their own and maybe disagree with mine, but we’ve known about climate change since the sixties. We’ve been publishing papers about it at least since the sixties. And so do we feel like we’ve gotten further, at least as far as we would expect from knowing about it for so long? I think most people would say no, right? Again, I’m not trying to crap on all of the progress ’cause I do think there has been some, but I really don’t know how much more data we need to move the needle if our neighbors don’t believe in climate change.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. Which-

Tamara Marcus:

I’m sorry. Thanks for my ramble or the space to ramble.

Lauren Lavin:

A follow up to that is then how do you talk to people who maybe don’t think that the climate is changing? That’s what I was thinking as you were finishing that up.

Tamara Marcus:

For where we are now, I think it might not matter. I think that might not be the most important thing for us to be in consensus about now, and that might be an unpopular opinion, but here’s why I say it. Unfortunately, when you talk about climate change, it is very politicized. It is very polarized. And as soon as you say climate change for someone who considers themselves a climate denier, they’re going to turn off, right? And so it depends on what your objective is, sure, right? But assuming your objective is to incite some behavior change, some increased awareness or education, then I think pick something else that you can agree on that is leading in the same direction, right? I think about energy efficiency, for example. It’s not very sexy, right? It’s not an EV charging station or a Tesla or a battery storage, but it’s important and it saves people money.

And would I like us to be further along than having to give that as the reason to act? Yes, personally, I would like that, but also realistically, this is where we are and it’s not going to change unless we’re all… I think those of us who want this type of work to happen, unless we’re all doing that and helping people within our circle and network along that path and being willing to reevaluate our own opinions about these policies too, and understand that we don’t know it all either, that needs to happen, right? When you ask the question, what if someone doesn’t believe in climate change, I still think we can make shared progress along paths that we both agree on, but then again, it’s probably not going to look like this person is going to buy a Tesla or whatever other EV after this one conversation ’cause they’re just not. They’re just not.

Lauren Lavin:

You have to meet people where they’re at in order to move forward.

Tamara Marcus:

And have some humility too. I’ve had a lot of conversations with folks that I think, again, good intentions, but are not willing to consider that they might not know everything about that topic either. And I think that you get that on both sides of every issue, and that energy is not very conducive for consensus building, which is what I think is required for real behavior change and real collective impact.

Lauren Lavin:

How would you describe the current state of climate activism and what progress do you think has been made in the recent years, and what areas do you foresee needing some urgent attention going forward?

Tamara Marcus:

Here’s the thing. I don’t have social media, so sure that there are things that I’m not aware of that are happening. If anyone’s listening to this and they’re like, I can’t believe she didn’t say this, so I’ll speak locally. What I’ve been encouraged by is seeing a lot of the not usual organizations, individuals having conversations about climate action, sustainability, resiliency, and seeing some, I think, exciting partnerships both at the government level, but then also at a local level, again on doing shared work towards shared climate action work. I think to me, it speaks to this education is working at some level. People are feeling like they understand the issue a little bit more and can engage in the topic, I guess, a little bit more, which I think is a win. I think the areas where we could do a little bit more, I think government can be a tool for activism. I think you can have an activist government, and I think locally there’s a lot more we could be doing within our local governments, and there are really good examples in the corridor to point to.

I don’t mean to say that that’s not happening at all, but I think there’s so much power. At the end of the day, if we want there to be a real impact in our emission reduction, we have to take action at a higher level, which includes government and industry.

Lauren Lavin:

You have to have the policy to support that sustained or prolonged change, and help incentivize it for businesses. Absolutely.

Tamara Marcus:

Yeah. And that’s tough work to do that. I don’t want to just say that, yeah, just do that. And it’s an easy thing to do, it’s not. There’s so many jobs wrapped up into the fossil fuel industry. Again, it reminds me of the consensus building, the relationship building, right? It takes time to do this work, which is why we need to be doing the work urgently, right? Not like we expect it to be quick, but we are consistently investing in these solutions. That’s what I think we need to see more of.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, policy change absolutely takes time. Like you mentioned earlier, the government works slow. It can be discouraging, I’m sure, to want to embark on some of these things knowing that the solution may not come for years and years, but if we don’t take action now, the solution will be even farther down the road. As we wrap this up, I have one final question, and that is, what is the most important message that you hope our listeners take away from the conversation today about climate change and activism that we’ve covered?

Tamara Marcus:

Okay. Two things. I have two things. First one, take care of yourself. Just to reinforce that message. Again, doesn’t mean to be selfish, but just don’t forget that you also need things and those things are okay for you to be needing and giving yourself those things helps you give other people the things that they may need. That’s message number one. And then I guess the second one would be, stay encouraged about this work because it’s really hard and no one has figured it out, myself included, and I think the solution lies within… It’s a collective solution, right? You can’t, as an individual, figure it out or do it all. Just do your best. Stay encouraged with the work. Find good people. Again, see message one. Take care of yourself. And yeah, just find the ways that you can make a difference, which could some days just be resting. Stay encouraged.

Lauren Lavin:

I love it. Well, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to chat with us. I hope our listeners have found something to take away from this and were encouraged in this conversation. Otherwise, thank you so much.

Tamara Marcus:

Thank you, Lauren. It was super fun.

Lauren Lavin:

Thank you so much, Dr. Marcus, for sharing your wisdom and dedication. It was inspiring to see how you’re not only driving change in sustainability, but also building community resilience through your work at Empowered Solutions collective. Your message, take care of yourself and stay encouraged, resonated with me, and hopefully our listeners as well. For our listeners, if this conversation has sparked something in you, consider how you can contribute in sustainability within your own community, big or small. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. Let’s stay plugged in to public health. This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health and subscribe on your local podcast channel. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador.uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.