Bertha Hidalgo, PhD, genetic epidemiologist, discusses how she is using her status as an Instagram influencer to promote public health and what it is like being a Latina in America and in academia. Bertha also talks about working in Dr Anthony Fauci's lab, her closet with 50 handbags, and fountain Diet Coke and baby carrots. I also give her a baseball quiz!
Bertha Hidalgo, PhD, genetic epidemiologist, discusses how she is using her status as an Instagram influencer to promote public health and what it is like being a Latina in America and in academia. Bertha also talks about working in Dr Anthony Fauci's lab, her closet with 50 handbags, and fountain Diet Coke and baby carrots. I also give her a baseball quiz!
Bertha Hidalgo:
We're learning to make mixed drinks so that when we can have people over, we'll be drinks masters.
Lisa Bodnar:
What's your favorite drink that you've learned to master?
Bertha Hidalgo:
So far none, because we tried to make a mojito, so gingery, it was awful.
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you make a killer margarita?
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, but I can make salsa.
Lisa Bodnar:
Bertha, you're useless when it comes to mixed drinks.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I am. I'm terrible.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. All right.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I'm learning, I'm learning.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hey everyone, welcome to Shiny Epi People, I'm Lisa Bodnar. Today's episode, I think is going to bring you a lot of joy. I'm talking to Bertha Hidalgo. Bertha is a genetic epidemiologist with interests in the intersection between health disparities and cardiometabolic diseases. She also does a lot of work on dissemination of science and science communication. Bertha started her academic journey as a first-generation college student at Stanford. And then she worked several years to pay off student loans and to go live with her family in California. After earning her MPH at the University of Southern California, Bertha and her husband moved to Alabama where she received her PhD in epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. That's where Bertha is an associate professor now. I know you're going to enjoy this episode.
Lisa Bodnar:
Bertha. I'm so happy to meet you.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Thank you, likewise. I'm super excited.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, you have this like effervescence even through the computer. And so, seeing it live is wonderful.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Oh, yay. Well, I know you said that your daughter calls the show the Peppy Epi People, I was like, I got to bring my peppy self to this.
Lisa Bodnar:
First of all, your eyes are gorgeous.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Thanks.
Lisa Bodnar:
You're welcome.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I swear by this mascara, it's Dior Show Blackout.
Lisa Bodnar:
I love Dior Show.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes. I don't have to wear fake eyelashes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Would you wear fake eyelashes?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
When do you wear them?
Bertha Hidalgo:
So I've worn them for like local fashion shows.
Lisa Bodnar:
Local fashion shows? What does that mean? You're on the runway?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Well, I was on the cover of Redbook magazine.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh my God. Holy shit dude, that's so cool.
Bertha Hidalgo:
It's kind of crazy. The city that I come from, everyone dresses up. You don't go to the supermarket unless you've got your face on. So I come to Alabama and I start the PhD program and all my classmates are like in sweats, or like they rolled out of bed and showed up at school. I'm coming into class with my dress and my heels. And they were like, you're always so dressed up. Oh, I love that dress. And I'd say, inevitably, oh it's $5 at Ross. Or, it was on clearance at whatever. My friend who worked in a lab said, well, I never dress up but if you wrote a blog about all of your finds, I would read it. So I started this blog called Chic in Academia, and it was all about like how you bargain shop, how you buy like secondhand, super expensive Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and how you figure out which ones are fake and which ones are not.
Bertha Hidalgo:
So all my research skills for science were translated to fashion and all sartorial things. And it was sort of in the infancy of Instagram. It was at a time where if you posted a great post a store would regram you, and you'd gain like 500 followers in a day, in an hour. So I joined at the right time basically, but I've grown this following over time.
Lisa Bodnar:
I looked you up today and I was like, oh, she must have a lot of followers. And I was like, Oh my God, she has 30,000 followers. That's crazy.
Bertha Hidalgo:
It's been a lot of fun. But so in like 2016 maybe, there was this call and someone submitted my pictures. They wanted real women to feature on the cover of Redbook magazine. And someone submitted my photo and I made it through the process. So they flew me to New York and I was in Hearst Tower, and we went through the whole photo shoot experience. I mean, it was wild. And yeah, I was in like magazine stands along with like four or five other women that they selected in the end.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay, and was this after you were a mom?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh my gosh. I love that story 100 times more.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes, I had two kids. So I had my oldest, my first year in the PhD program. I took comps when he was like six months old. I worked also full-time. So something people didn't tell me about PhD programs is that many of them offered stipends. That they would pay your tuition and then on top of that they would pay you a stipend. I didn't know that. I was working full time because our university offers an employee assistance program where they'll pay for 18 credit hours, right? And I was in sort of like this mode where I felt like if they took me they would be doing me a favor. So I applied and they said, you have your own funding? And I said, yes, I can pay through this program. Which meant I was working full time, I had a baby, and I'm trying to do this PhD program.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's bananas. Yeah, I don't know how did this. Go on.
Bertha Hidalgo:
My memory was of sitting basically on the living room floor with my infant who was now crawling, because he started crawling at like four months.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's like my worst nightmare. Yeah, sit there.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Just sit there. Just lay and stare at the tree, I don't know. The door to the basement was open. I must have fallen asleep just briefly because I woke and he was halfway down the stairs to the basement.
Lisa Bodnar:
Face first?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah. I think because I was working all day and then I would take care of him, and then I'd work from like, he'd go to bed at like seven or eight. So I'd work from like seven or eight until two in the morning, and then I'd wake up at six. So I was getting like four or five hours of sleep a night.
Lisa Bodnar:
Where you just like, I'm just going to power through and do this, I can do it? Or were you crying during your sleep?
Bertha Hidalgo:
I think I was just like, well, this is what I have to do. And so I just did it. It's like, well, I'm not going to quit. Finished with him and then I started post-doc. And I had another kid my first year of postdoc. So I was really afraid when I started faculty that was going to have a third kid. Because I was like, this is just a pattern. So we got a dog, but anyway. And so I was a mom by the time that this Instagram fashion influencer, I was on the fashion influencer circuit. Because I was always determined.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wait, what is the circuit? What does that mean?
Bertha Hidalgo:
So the circuit is how brands identify people who are digital influencers. So I had to be invited to all the store openings. I was invited, sort of VIP style to like the fashion shows.
Lisa Bodnar:
And was it the deal that you had to post in your feed about the events that you were going to?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes, and my experience. My husband's favorite saying right now is that it's Christmas for me every day. Because at one point, five to 10 packages would show up at my doorstep of brands sending me stuff that they wanted me to post on my Instagram feed. Like beauty products, jewelry, clothes, shoes. I mean, it was insane. And so for two or three years it was kind of nuts. It did start to get stressful when I started getting more like paid campaigns, and the expectations were a lot bigger, and the landscape of Instagram had changed. So there was just a lot more competition. The brands sort of expected a lot for very little. At the same time I was transitioning to faculty, I really needed to prioritize making it, because I was on the tenure track.
Bertha Hidalgo:
So I took a two year hiatus from Instagram, where I would just very randomly sporadically post. It enabled me to make a transition from fashion influencer to scientist, which is kind of like the front facing brand now. Right? That helped me learn so much about how we communicate through digital platforms, and how you reach audiences, and what things really attract lay audiences, especially. I used what I learned to write a grant to the American Heart Association so that we can use social media and social networks to deliver information about cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease prevention. So that got funded in August.
Lisa Bodnar:
Congratulations.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah, thanks.
Lisa Bodnar:
I love that you're using this past experience to have this intersection between that interest and love, and your research. It's cool.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Thank you, yeah. Well it's like with food, you just don't know sort of where the skills and the things that you're putting in your toolbox will come in handy one day.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. So what about food? Is it an Instagram thing?
Bertha Hidalgo:
I just got meat in the mail.
Lisa Bodnar:
As one does.
Bertha Hidalgo:
As one does. So this box arrived and this one, I don't think I said yes to. I might have, but I don't know. So it was like a cooler with beef in it, and peppers and an onion.
Lisa Bodnar:
So what did they want you to do with it?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Well, I guess post about it. But I was like, I don't even know if I said yes to this.
Lisa Bodnar:
Does that mean they were going to pay you?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Some brands will just send you stuff and hope that you'll try it and love it, and post it. And others will say, we'd love to send you a backpack, or these new bedsheets, would you try them and in exchange post this?
Lisa Bodnar:
And then you get to keep the stuff. Is that like your payment?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Or they pay and you can say, well, this is how much I charge per post. And so then you send them your fee structure and then they say yes or no.
Lisa Bodnar:
Cool. You have a fee structure.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I do.
Lisa Bodnar:
So Bertha, could you ever have made a living doing this?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Oh yeah. Like everyone in my department is basically like, if you ever decided that you wanted to leave academia you can make it and we don't know why you're still here. Because there's so much money.
Lisa Bodnar:
Really.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Oh yeah. Like some of these influencers are making really good money, and it's just fun, right? Because you're traveling, they're sending you free stuff. You can outfit your whole house basically between some of these brand partnerships. But my passion really is in public health. Right? And my passion is in science. Because I come from a family that I think hasn't necessarily been reached to in terms of education and awareness, and all the things that we preach about in public health, I felt like it needed to be me. It needs to be me because if not me then who else?
Bertha Hidalgo:
I mean to this day my mom thinks that if you go outside with wet hair you catch a cold. This is the very first year I was able to get her to get a flu shot. They're all so just busy. They're worried about making the mortgage, and they're worried about putting food on the table. There's not a lot of time to sort of sit and meditate, and be like, well today I'm going to spend all day and go get a flu shot. They're more worried about just making it day-to-day.
Bertha Hidalgo:
We talk about social determinants of health and I've lived them. And for me, it's not just a variable that we stick in an analysis. We did have mold growing up in our house, and no one thought anything of it. So the power of social media, I think, right? If you're able to establish trust with these communities, then you're able to more effectively, I think, disseminate the information that's going to make a difference in their lives. That's honestly what keeps me on social media, is that I feel like I'm able to communicate a message they might not otherwise hear.
Lisa Bodnar:
Aside from the clothes and food stuff?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes. Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay, just wanted to keep the honest there.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Which is also really fun, yeah. It's so crazy, I'll show you.
Lisa Bodnar:
Please.
Bertha Hidalgo:
All these bags up there, a good majority of them were gifted.
Lisa Bodnar:
Dude, this closet is a lot.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's a lot of bags up there.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I know.
Lisa Bodnar:
How many? Count them.
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, I can't. There's like at least 50.
Lisa Bodnar:
What?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah. Between like clutches, totes, satchels.
Lisa Bodnar:
I don't even know what a satchel is.
Bertha Hidalgo:
And so I'm doing a lot less that's sponsored now. The flu shot campaign recently reached out and they were like, will you just help us put the word out about flu vaccines? And I was like, well, I already did, but sure I'll remind people. So I'm doing a lot less that's sponsored now and more just like informational. I write a Science Says Sunday series and so that goes on my blog, and I just cover things like the HPV vaccine. I talk about heart month. So here are ways to be like heart healthy.
Lisa Bodnar:
Do your followers comment that that information is useful?
Bertha Hidalgo:
They have been wildly popular. People say like, I always look forward to your Science Says Sundays and I share them with my friends and family. They're really short snippets of information that you can easily digest. And I run them through a literacy check so that all of the language is fourth to eighth grade reading level.
Bertha Hidalgo:
The most rewarding part has been, because some of these people have been following since the very beginning. And so they'll say, I remember when you got your first grant and I told my daughter, look you can do it too. She likes fashion too and so do you. And so I would hear about these young girls who now wanted to be scientists too because it wasn't this like unreachable position, or profession, where you couldn't also be girly in yourself.
Bertha Hidalgo:
In the beginning, my blog and Instagram are completely anonymous. The advice I got early on was that it was going to possibly be damaging for my academic career because the focus was fashion. But I just felt like, well, that's me.
Lisa Bodnar:
And you want to be you. You're just looking old to not be you.
Bertha Hidalgo:
That's what I said.
Lisa Bodnar:
Not that you're old, you're not old! You know what I mean? You’re not 18. We can be ourselves.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Exactly, yes. And so I kept going and I was like, well, sorry. I mean, what do you want me to say? I'm still doing my science, I'm still succeeding. I got tenure. It's not like I'm like slacking off and prioritizing other things, you can do all of it.
Lisa Bodnar:
You can. This is such a cool story. Oh my gosh, I love this.
Lisa Bodnar:
You mentioned to me that being a Latina in your school of public health had both positive and negative aspects to it. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Bertha Hidalgo:
I want to say that when I got tenure, and got promoted to associate professor, that one of the emeritus faculty said they thought that I might be the first in the history of the school of public health. I was definitely the only Latina for a very long time during my training, and when I was in PhD and postdoc. And then that slowly changed. But even still, I think there are only maybe two of us in the entire school. So I'm in Alabama and we don't have a high proportion of Latinx individuals. I am a transplant from California. When I first got here to Alabama, my husband, who is not Mexican, he's half German, half Polish, from Wisconsin. They would ask him if I spoke English, if I was documented.
Lisa Bodnar:
What?
Bertha Hidalgo:
And my husband would be like, dude, she went to Stanford. But then in 2011, that was right around the time that the anti-immigration movement was really big in Arizona. It sort of trickled into Alabama as well. And so I always tell the story that in one week I got stopped five times. One time a cop came into my car while I was at a red light and asked for license and registration, with my kid in the back. Once I started sort of climbing the ranks in academia, and I would be on a board, or these really important meetings, and people would come up to me afterwards and say, you're so well spoken. And it was like surprise or shock on their face. I mean, what did you expect?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Bertha Hidalgo:
It's really fed my imposter syndrome for a lot of years. And so when I now train people, or mentor people, that experience has helped me, I think, be just more aware of the things that you should and should not say and how they made me feel. And certainly how I don't want to make others feel.
Lisa Bodnar:
I cannot end this conversation without hearing about working for Anthony Fauci.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah. The crazy thing is that, so I was what, like 18, when did I graduate from college? 22, okay 21, whatever. So the way that the program worked was that they flew you out to NIH and you did interviews. So you interviewed with different labs and then the lab, you gave your top three or five or whatever, and then the lab gave their three or five, and then they matched. So I went in and met with Mark Dybul who led the PEPFAR program at one point for Bush. And so it was like the Laboratory of Amino Regulation, which is Fauci's lab. And within Fauci's lab are all of these investigators. At the time, and the place I was in, in my life, yes I cared about the science, but I was also like, oh hey, this new club opened, you want to go?
Lisa Bodnar:
Dude, Bertha, I'm still like that.
Bertha Hidalgo:
It was crazy. I remember getting this, I got a staff award because of the work that I was doing. So I went and met with him and I was so nervous that I could not explain to him what I was doing in the lab. So I said, well, but I'm working really hard. And he said, no, it doesn't matter if you're working really hard, you have to be able to explain the science that you're doing. That was such a turning point in my growth as a scientist, right? I needed to, at the drop of a hat, be able to give that elevator pitch or, eloquently and succinctly describe what it was that I was working on at the time. So that was really useful once I started interviewing for like postdocs and that sort of thing. So I always carried that with me.
Lisa Bodnar:
Favorite food?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Tortillas and chips and a fountain diet Coke. I like Mexican restaurant, thick tortilla chips, that are dipped in the salsa that does not include sugar as an ingredient, because that just sweetens the salsa. I'm not a sweet salsa kind of person. I also don't like pico de gallo, I like, like a chunky salsa along with my chips. Preferably a red salsa.
Lisa Bodnar:
Why fountain diet Coke and not a can of diet Coke?
Bertha Hidalgo:
There's just something about the way that it tastes that is like so delicious.
Lisa Bodnar:
You actually think it's different?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah Lisa.
Lisa Bodnar:
Really?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
I've heard other people say this and I'm like, that's bullshit. Like, what?
Bertha Hidalgo:
No it's totally different.
Lisa Bodnar:
Why do you think it's different? What's different? Is it like a different proportion of syrup to soda water? Like what is it?
Bertha Hidalgo:
If I pour a can of diet Coke, it flattens really quickly. I have no science to back this up. Okay. But there is something special about fountain diet Coke.
Lisa Bodnar:
Baby carrots versus regular carrots?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Baby carrots, for sure.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm completely 100% against that.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Why?
Lisa Bodnar:
Well, why did you say baby carrots?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Because they're edible. You have to chomp on the big gigantic carrot.
Lisa Bodnar:
When is the last time you ate a regular carrot?
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, it's been years.
Lisa Bodnar:
Exactly. So now that you have a more refined palette, you need to peel a regular carrot and eat it, and compare the taste with a baby carrot. They taste way better than a baby carrot. Baby carrots, aren't they made just by like grinding up regular carrots and smushing them together?
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, I don't ask questions. I just know that I can eat a tiny carrot, one scoop of hummus at a time. That's all I know.
Lisa Bodnar:
All right, fine.
Bertha Hidalgo:
And there's no work involved. That's the other key thing.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. But I think if you tried a regular carrot you would notice.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I don't know, I'm not convinced.
Lisa Bodnar:
You can disagree with me, because I'm also going to disagree with you with that stupid diet thing. I'm going to have a canned diet Coke with regular carrots.
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, that's not how you do it.
Lisa Bodnar:
So how old are your kids Bertha?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Oh, they're seven and 11.
Lisa Bodnar:
What do you think each kid would say you nag them about the most?
Bertha Hidalgo:
The toilet seat. I have good hearing and so anytime I'm like, don't make a mess. From whatever corner of the house that I'm in.
Lisa Bodnar:
Is it also putting down the seat?
Bertha Hidalgo:
No, they're really good about that because they think, I can't believe I'm saying this. One day they're going to hate me for this. But they think that if they don't touch the toilet at all, they don't have to wash their hands.
Lisa Bodnar:
Totally.
Bertha Hidalgo:
They don't even bother putting the seat up, right?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Is that a thing? Is that a boy thing? I don't know. I cried when I found out I was having a boy because I was like, I don't know anything about dinosaurs or trucks, or whatever it is that boys do, I don't know. Like sports, oh my gosh. They started doing baseball like really early on. And I didn't know, I mean, I don't know runs from points. Oh yeah, they scored five points in that last inning, no you say runs.
Lisa Bodnar:
Bertha, you knew it was an inning, that's a huge win.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I knew it was an inning, yes. My husband thought it was hilarious that I would study baseball. You know?
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm sorry, hold on. Does he know you at all?
Bertha Hidalgo:
I know. Yeah, he'd be like, don't tell other people that. Because then they started to play basketball and no one tells you these things, they just expect you to know. So I would show up at practice and he would be the one kid that would bring the ball into the group. Right?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Point guard, I didn't know that. I didn't know what all the positions were. And so I was like, I looked up on Wikipedia today and I printed.
Lisa Bodnar:
What did you print? You got to tell me.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I printed the positions that you play on the court and where the three point line is, the foul shot line, and whatever. I mean, I looked it all up so that I would know what I was talking about. And I've done the same for baseball and we haven't gotten into any other sports.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. So I have a few things I want to quiz you on about baseball.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Oh gosh. Okay.
Lisa Bodnar:
They're challenging.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I'm scared.
Lisa Bodnar:
You should be. Do you know what the infield fly rule is?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Like a pop fly?
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes. Yes.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Okay.
Lisa Bodnar:
You're onto it.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Maybe I don't, I don't know.
Lisa Bodnar:
This was very good. The pop fly, that was very close. It's about the batter being out as soon as you hit a pop fly in the infield.
Bertha Hidalgo:
In infield, yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. That's a one out of one. I'll give you credit for that. Do you know what a bulk is?
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yeah. When the pitcher from the mound, once you've sort of gotten into position, you can't get out of position to throw somebody out, for example.
Lisa Bodnar:
You are amazing. I've got one more and it's a hard one. Do you know what a fungo bat is?
Bertha Hidalgo:
That sounds familiar. Maybe I don't.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. It's a hard one. Basically it's a bat that the coaches use during practice to hit ground balls.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Okay.
Lisa Bodnar:
Anyway, not critical for the game, but it's just one of those, one that I keep in my back pocket. Because so many men have assumed that I know nothing about baseball. At like a bar once, we played this game where like you go around the group and give like a topic. Right? And you have to go and name something in the topic area. Then once someone stalls out, then you lose. And they were like baseball things, and so they went around and I was just staying in and stay in. In the last round it was me and this other guy who played baseball. And I said, fungo bat and this guy almost died. He jumps like, yeah motherfucker, I know what a fungo bat is.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I love that.
Lisa Bodnar:
But listen, you know so much about baseball. I can tell you researched it and I can also tell that you have a PhD. No one else would do that. No one.
Bertha Hidalgo:
But you have to, right? If you want to know what's going on.
Lisa Bodnar:
I could talk to you for 400 years.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I know me too.
Lisa Bodnar:
This is so much fun.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I have enjoyed this so much.
Lisa Bodnar:
I hope that you end up getting thousands of followers just from people listening to this podcast.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Only the nice people.
Lisa Bodnar:
All my listeners are nice.
Bertha Hidalgo:
I know they are, that's true.
Lisa Bodnar:
They must be. If you're not nice and you're listening, buzz off.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Or, listen and learn to be nice.
Bertha Hidalgo:
Yes, agree. Yes. We could all use more nice people in our lives.