Show notes
“We are affirming to a complete stranger that their voice matters” Dr. Alice Chen is an Internal Medicine physician, the former executive director of Doctors For America, and one of the leaders of Doctors For Biden. She joins us in the stretch run of the 2020 election to discuss the shift in mindset among American doctors around politics. We also discuss the critical impact and sense of satisfaction to be had with phonebanking to help drive change. Please subscribe to and rate Explore The Space on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download podcasts. Email feedback or ideas to mark@explorethespaceshow.com Check out the archive of Explore The Space Podcast as well as our White Papers and much more! Follow on Twitter @ETSshow, Instagram @explorethespaceshow Sponsor: Elevate your expertise with Creighton University’s Healthcare Executive Educational programming. Learn more about Creighton’s Executive MBA and Executive Fellowship programs at www.creighton.edu/CHEE. Key Learnings 1. How Dr. Chen became politically engaged as a physician 2. Signing a letter 3. Differences between physician engagement with politics between 2008 and 2020 4. What is phonebanking? 5. The impact a doctor can have when they share their profession when making calls 6. Orienting and getting started 7. The current state of voter activation and the rise of medical students and early career physicians in this work Links @DoctorsForBiden on Twitter and IG Phonebanking with Doctors For Biden Transcript Mark Shapiro (00:01): Welcome back to Explore The Space Podcast. I’m your host Mark Shapiro. Before we get to today’s episode, a thank you to Laurie Baedke and Creighton University for sponsoring this episode, Creighton University believes in equipping physicians for success in the exam room, the operating room and the boardroom. If you want to increase your business acumen, deepen your leadership knowledge and earn your seat at the table. Creighton’s healthcare executive education is for you. Specifically tailored to busy physicians our hybrid programs blend the richness of on-campus residencies with the flexibility of online learning. Earn a Creighton university executive MBA degree in 18 months, or complete the non-degree executive fellowship in six months, visit www.creighton.edu/CHEE to learn more. My guest in this episode is Dr. Alice Chen. Dr. Chen is an internal medicine physician. Mark Shapiro (00:53): She is former executive director of Doctors for America, and she is now one of the leaders of Doctors for Biden. She joins us in the stretch run of the 2020 election to discuss a really important shift that’s occurring in the mindset of American medical students, doctors, healthcare professionals, all around the country, around this idea of engaging in the political process. And we also discussed the critical impact and the sense of satisfaction to be had with a whole variety of tangible things that you can do to drive towards change the biggest one at this point in the election being phone banking, which is a really interesting topic. It’s a really interesting subject, and she really helps step through some of the barriers that people can come up with to not participate in phone banking, as well as all the great reasons to jump in. If you have some free time leading up to the presidential election, definitely take the opportunity to check out the events page on the Doctors for Biden website. Mark Shapiro (01:47): There are phone banking opportunities every single day. So definitely take advantage of that before we get to our conversation. We’ll want to just invite everyone to please subscribe to and rate and review, explore the space podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you’d like to download your shows. That really helps us out. You can email me any time mark@explorethespaceshow.com. Definitely check out the archive of Explore The Space Podcast at www.explorethespaceshow.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @ETSshow. As I said before, we are coming down the stretch, there are lots of things people can do to engage around activating voters and driving towards change in America. As we come up to election day, it’s just a few weeks away now, Dr. Chen gives us some really tangible, actionable things we can be doing. This was a fantastic conversation. You’re going to really enjoy it. So without further ado, Dr. Alice Chen Alice, welcome to Explore The Space. I’m excited that you’re here Alice Chen (02:47): So excited to be here, Mark. Mark Shapiro (02:50): We are 15 days away and by the time this episode goes up, it’ll be a little closer. We’re 15 days away. It’s funny. I can say that and you can hear, and all of the listeners will hear it and they will know exactly what I’m referring to. Speaker 3 (03:05): Nobody’s here. Mark Shapiro (03:06): Nobody’s got, so obviously we’re, we’re referring to election day and we’re, you know, there there’s a whole host of things I’m in California and there’s a wide variety of, of interesting propositions and ballot measures and such things. And there’s Senate races and down ticket races and all that good stuff. I know it’s the same for you on the East coast, but we’re, we’re here to focus more on the presidential election. Does that sound about right? Absolutely. All right. So you are one of those rare doctors, I would say, and I hope that you don’t stay rare. And I don’t think that you will remain rare, but you are a physician who is as well-trained, as anybody who went through all of the same principles and practices of how we train physicians in America. And at the same time, you are an activated physician. You are engaged from a social aspect and you are engaged from a political aspect. I D I still think that it’s rare, but when I characterize it as rare for an American physician to be as engaged as you are, am I right? Speaker 3 (04:11): You are right. Although it is changing. And I have seen a shifting over the past decade or so. Mark Shapiro (04:17): So then we come to where we are now, and you are doing close work with an organization that I’ve been really fortunate to participate in a number of activities with Doctors for Biden. And I’m really curious to get a sense for you of how you came to the place where you do all the same training that we’ve done. You’ve heard all of the same implicit and explicit messages about doctors and politics. And now you are doing work on behalf of a candidate on behalf of a vice president Biden. What does that progression feel like? Speaker 3 (04:49): You know, it’s funny, I certainly didn’t set out to be a, like a quote unquote political doctor, and it wasn’t anywhere in my training. I was just like any other doctor working in this system and, and just encountering patient after patient, after patient who, you know, I had all of this, like top notch, world-class medical knowledge and equipment and cons consults and everything at my fingertips. And yet I’d have this patient who came in for heart failure again, because his only grocery store is the, is the, is the the gas station down the street and he’s eating canned food. And that’s why he’s back in the hospital with heart failure. They’re just, it was just so frustrating to me that there were so many patients that I couldn’t help either because of the social situation or because they couldn’t get health insurance, or they had had health insurance that didn’t cover the things that they needed. Speaker 3 (05:39): And, you know, I didn’t, I knew that there were forces at play in far away places like Washington, DC that were making it harder for me, for me to take care of my patients, but I really felt like I don’t have any power over those people. I don’t have like muddied interest. I’m not like a billionaire, I’m just a doc trying to put my head down and, and, and do what I can for my patients. But then in 2008, I had just become an attending. And I, and I had more free time than I had it as a resident. And it was a presidential election that I was very inspired by. And I found myself there calling voters and knocking on doors. And the next thing I knew, I ran into this organization that was then called Doctors for Obama. And I discovered there were thousands of doctors and medical students just like me. Speaker 3 (06:23): And they were just like me. They’re also like deans and people who are very accomplished in the field who were suddenly standing up and saying, Hey, we need a better healthcare system. And we’re going to put our names on a letter and say, so, and, and get involved in an election. I thought, wow, that is crazy. But I joined up and that was my first my first taste of, wow, wait as a doctor, we do, we do that. We have the power of doing something and, and, and, and in powerful places that, that I don’t understand. And then from there, it just kind of progressed. I ended up, we ended up creating an organization called doctors for America. And I, you know, went from a sort of a, a low level volunteer to running the whole organization for many years. And then when this year came around and, you know, the presidential election is happening, COVID is happening. It feels like the entire world is resting on this election. It was kind of obvious that we needed to rally doctors, whether they were politically engaged or otherwise doctors who are just mad about what’s going on in the world and channel that energy toward the election. Mark Shapiro (07:27): I remember hearing about Doctors for Obama. I remember hearing about Doctors for America, my whole life I’ve been engaged in the political process. I’ve found it fascinating. I’ve loved to learn from it. I’ve always voted all of those sorts of things. And I’ve always had that barrier that I gathered as a medical student, as a resident that Mark you don’t join things like that as, as, as politically engaged and attached as you are. That’s not where you go. You get in trouble. If you do that, don’t, don’t, don’t I regret it. I’ll be totally honest with you. I wish that I had done things differently, but I know, I know what I know now. And we know we, we just couldn’t, we just kind of commit to trying to get better, but it was just really interesting to hear you name those organizations and that you were able to participate in them. Right. I became an attending in Oh six. So my, my kind of process of evolution as an attending, it’s very similar to yours. And for me, it was, Nope, you don’t do that. You’ll get in trouble that dah, dah, dah. And it’s, it’s just really interesting to reflect back on that as I hear the road that you’ve walked, Speaker 3 (08:26): You know, I was lucky in that I just signed a letter online, right. Like a little bit Mark Shapiro (08:32): For sure. Yeah. Speaker 3 (08:35): But the next thing I knew, I was, I met all these other people who are also like, just feeling like, Ooh, is this something we do? And there were a few people who were like, yeah, I’m putting on my white coat and I’m standing on a street corner. And I was like, what you’re doing? What? But being in that community of people who were all like, okay, we’re going to jump together and suffer the consequences together. That was part of what gave me the, and the permission to do it. Mark Shapiro (08:57): It’s so cool. And I love that you said that there’s that sort of permission to do it because I had to kind of do that, that same mental gymnastics over the last like year, just kind of asking myself permission, which is so strange, right? I’m a, I’m a mid career attending now. Like I finished residency, you know, six, and I’m still having that cognitive dissonance of like, I’m gonna get in trouble, get in trouble, but that’s the problem. Right. And so having that community to sort of land with and, and move through that. And that’s one of the things that I really like and appreciate about doctors for Biden is it’s a very open landscape. And, you know, when, when Joe saccharin, who also helped really build it, he came on the show a few a week or so ago. And we talked about this, even though the names has doctors for Biden, it is really designed to be an open landscape for anyone that just feels like they have something to say or want that sense of community that you described. Speaker 3 (09:44): Exactly. Exactly. Mark Shapiro (09:46): So then in terms of that activation, and in terms of bringing people in, and as we started the conversation with this idea of doctors becoming more activated, are you seeing a change comparing it to Oh eight? What are the, just off the top of your head, the biggest changes that you’ve seen, the biggest differences that you’ve seen? Speaker 3 (10:05): So a few things one is that I think there are many more doctors who are a bit more bold because they’ve seen other people doing this, or they have done political things themselves for, for, for a few years, or maybe it’s a year, maybe it’s a month. But they, they, there’s a little bit more of a community and a track record. And so I’m seeing people who are feeling more emboldened to go out there and write their letters to the editor and their op-eds. I’m seeing that there are there, there’s more savviness of understanding, okay, this is how we move the system. These are the ways that we move the dial. You know, the other pieces is, is, is a product of the, of the year that we’re in is that I am seeing a lot of, for lack of a better word, a sense of desperation. Honestly, Mark Shapiro (10:49): That’s a fair term. I’m perfectly comfortable hearing you use that term. Yeah. Speaker 3 (10:53): That people are. And especially, I mean, you hear from like, you know, the doctor in Wisconsin a week or two ago, who said, we’re out of dialysis, you know, of, of dialysis spots, our ICUs are full. We are shipping people off to another hospital because we don’t have any more space for all of these COVID patients. I mean, there’s, there’s a level of anxiety and like, I will do absolutely anything I need to do to, to make sure the right person wins this election. That feels very different from any prior year that I’ve been involved with. Mark Shapiro (11:23): I remember seeing that, that tweet as well. I thought that’s where I saw it. At least it was on Twitter. And so it’s interesting that that’s been sort of what you are experiencing that draws people in, but then is there a tension where I acknowledging that physicians for the most part, carry a mantle of leadership? Is there a challenge in just sort of getting people to step in and grind and be told, just go here, click there, do this for the next hour, as opposed to being the one to the other people to go and do it. Speaker 3 (11:55): It’s funny because there are some people who want to just like, sort of be, be on top of, for the most part, doctors are really busy, right? Like I have half an hour, like give me something like that’s like going to be effective to do. So there’s an element of that as well. And because of that, like level of desperation, people are like, I will do anything. Like I will, I will like sweep the floors. I like just, just give me something that will be useful to do. And it just put me in. Mark Shapiro (12:23): So then we get to this part, right of somebody has a half an hour. Somebody has a half day, somebody has a chunk of time and they want to do something out, whether it’s out of sense of purpose, sense of desperation, whatever that’s going to feel meaningful. One of the things that you and I spoke about a little bit before we started recording, and then the reason I emailed you in the first place, one of the things that doctors for Biden has done has created a very easy and user friendly space for people to take a small amount of time and do some phone banking. Can you explain first, just so that we make sure everyone has shared understanding what is phone banking? Speaker 3 (12:59): Sure. So phone banking is basically calling up voters and it’s mainly voters in swing States and, and, and helping to get them to vot…
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