Cheryl Clark, DrPH is an epidemiologist who has worked in the government for over two decades. We talk about her role now improving maternal and child health programs in state health departments and her commitment to health equity. We also discuss Cheryl's amateur art hobby, drinking salsa, Don Cheadle starring in her mystery novel, and more!
Cheryl Clark, DrPH is an epidemiologist who has worked in the government for over two decades. We talk about her role now improving maternal and child health programs in state health departments and her commitment to health equity. We also discuss Cheryl's amateur art hobby, drinking salsa, Don Cheadle starring in her mystery novel, and more!
Cheryl Clark:
I know, I've listened to some podcasts and they seem like they're just comedians and I was like, I-
Lisa Bodnar:
You know what, Cheryl, it's a lot of good editing.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hello shiny epi friends. I'm Lisa Bodnar, welcome back to the show. A quick note before we get into the conversation. So I had heard about Patreon for a while on the podcasts that I was listening to, and I really had no idea what they were until said to me, "Are you going to do a Patreon for your podcast?" And so I dug into it and learned that oh, it's a way for artists, yes, podcasting is an art, who knew? To receive some financial support for their work. And so I figured I'd make a Patreon for the heck of it, and much to my surprise many of you have supported me with a few dollars a month. I appreciate this so much because as you know, I serve as the producer, writer, host, editor, sound engineer, social media manager, and PR specialist for my show. I'm also a mom and an epidemiologist. The donations that anyone provides if they're a patron go to offset the subscriptions I have for the recording platform, the podcast hosting site, the music library, and the transcript creator.If you would like to be a patron, go to Patreon.com and search for the show.
Lisa Bodnar:
However, if being a patron isn't in the cards right now, if you're not interested in doing it, or you don't have the resources to do it, no big deal. Today I'm sharing a conversation I had with Cheryl Clark. Cheryl got her DrPH in epidemiology and biostatistics from Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University, after getting an MPH at the University of South Florida. Cheryl has worked in public health for two decades. She worked in the Florida Department of Health for about 15 years, and now she is the associate director of Equity, Epidemiology, and Evaluation for the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. I hope you enjoy this chat.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hi, Cheryl!
Cheryl Clark:
Hi, Lisa.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm so happy you're here, this is great. Cheryl, do you want to tell me about the art hobby? Was this only a COVID ... like a newly COVID hobby?
Cheryl Clark:
I love ... I have an appreciation for all things art, and I always wondered, could I be that artistic person? Then I watch all these documentaries and behind the music stuff and I'm like, no, maybe not. I've done two things, one's called a paint and no sip where I take ... on YouTube there's all these videos where it's like ... what's the guy who used to do the painting on PBS?
Lisa Bodnar:
Bob Ross?
Cheryl Clark:
Yeah, but they don't talk.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Cheryl Clark:
And you're speeded up, like in five minutes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
I really got interested in pastel painting, which I discovered is chalk.
Lisa Bodnar:
And don't you like smudge it with your finger or something?
Cheryl Clark:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
And there was dust everywhere and me being Ms. Asmatic, that didn't help. Then I was reading like it can cause what? And so I would just stop it every two seconds and ... so basically I don't think I was creating, I was mimicking, but I can do some cool stuff. And then the other thing, garage band, which started before COVID.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, tell me about that.
Cheryl Clark:
My iPad fried out so I went to the Apple store and I was waiting for someone to talk to me. They started a Garage Band class, it was this older lady. I said well, shoot, she's in it. So I do read music. So I actually pieced together a couple of songs-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah?
Cheryl Clark:
It's a novelty and then do you stick to it? On the art stuff I started and then I do something kind of okay, and then I don't do it anymore. Like I've been writing this chapter for this thriller, I wrote one chapter and it's awesome.
Lisa Bodnar:
You mean a novel? You were writing a novel?
Cheryl Clark:
Yes. Yes, it's dynamic and I visualized it as a movie promo.
Lisa Bodnar:
Really?
Cheryl Clark:
With the soundtrack and everything and who the actor would be.
Lisa Bodnar:
Cheryl, how cool.
Cheryl Clark:
And then I wrote it and then I didn't touch it for five years. But I said Don Cheadle's going to be this costar. And I don't know who's going to play me.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh, you're in it?
Cheryl Clark:
Oh, yeah, we're both detectives in Chicago. I've written about three chapters now. And I thought when COVID happened one of the things that I can do now that I'm home all the time is do that, and I don't think I'm in a different boat than a lot of people thought they would learn a new language-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes.
Cheryl Clark:
And then you really don't.
Lisa Bodnar:
We're living in a pandemic.
Cheryl Clark:
Yep. Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Lowering expectations rather than increasing expectations of yourself.
Cheryl Clark:
Right, and one of the things I do, because my dad was learning how to draw. But I said don't go for the most complicated thing, like don't draw the dog doing the dab or something.
Lisa Bodnar:
I wish that I took the screenshot of you just dabbing.
Cheryl Clark:
Yeah, I should hold it up with my dog.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wait, is that what you did, you drew a dog dabbing?
Cheryl Clark:
Yeah, because that was one of the-
Lisa Bodnar:
Please share this with me. Will you?
Cheryl Clark:
I will.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Cheryl Clark:
Something that actually is a YouTube video for kids.
Lisa Bodnar:
Sure, why not?
Cheryl Clark:
And it was a dog ... And he was excellent, I don't even know if I have it, but I'll send you the-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, will you take a photo of it and send it to me?
Cheryl Clark:
Oh, yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Cheryl Clark:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
I love the idea.
Cheryl Clark:
I'll send you a couple, like the one that I'm most proud of.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, do.
Cheryl Clark:
So yeah, COVID's been ... I know I'm not the only one, I've lost ... not in relative due to COVID, but relative in the COVID season, an uncle that we couldn't go to the funeral. My mom was a little bit ill and she couldn't have any visitors.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow.
Cheryl Clark:
I had asthma in the middle of it and then you were having conversation you thought you would never have, like do I really want to go to ER because people are going to think I have COVID when I know I don't. And then how some providers even treated you when you haven't had your test results come back. So a lot of that stuff is really also can inform epis, you have to understand the contextual.
Lisa Bodnar:
So can you tell me what your job is? What do you do?
Cheryl Clark:
The title of my job is Associate Director of Equity, Epidemiology, and Evaluation. I don't do what people call maybe ... don't do a lot of ... it's not field epi and it's not a lot of what people even think applied epi is. I work for a membership organization, we provide technical assistance and also support and resources, and also facilitation to state maternal and child health departments.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Cheryl Clark:
And so my role within there is helping support the epidemiologists in the field of maternal and child health, namely title five, which is the block grant that funds the majority of the maternal and child health services in our country and in the territories and freely associated states.
Cheryl Clark:
I'm really working with people to help them grow their skills or get to resources that will help them do their jobs in their states. And also we serve as kind of a ... not kind of, we serve as a liaison between the federal government and entities that are funding or supporting either from the CDC as an epi capacity.
Lisa Bodnar:
What does that mean?
Cheryl Clark:
A lot of times we'll have a cooperative agreement to help like a learning collaborative or training, or evaluation, workshop, or something like that. And then also, too, we do support trainings like our national conference. And our partners' national conferences. We help them plan their pre-conference, so we may sponsor trainings. The trainings could be methods, like actually working with particular data sets, like one year was Medicaid, one year it was multilevel modeling, or it could be ... One of the cooperative agreements is a leadership lab, then we are not really talking about methods which is really hard for epis not to do. But talking about how you can develop your leadership using, being an epidemiologist and use those skills to enhance your leadership and to grow your leadership strategic partnerships and things like that, which I think that we are very much not trained to do.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
Number one need and always want is methods training. Number two need is okay, how do I work with people within my program, within our department, across agencies even. There's a big push, and rightly so, to have more representation and inclusiveness with communities. And so how does an epi person fit into that? Not only do we need to know how to measure what we always have measured, which are outcomes and adverse events and whatnot, but also some of the contextual in systems, metrics of that, because when people are working to improve systems, improve representation, and reduce racism and increase equity, how do you measure that?
Lisa Bodnar:
How do you measure it?
Cheryl Clark:
Well, that's the question of the year and I think one of the things is you have to just really think about what kind of almost like working it backwards, and that's results based accountability. What are you aiming for, how do you get there? But always with that constant thread that you need to involve either people with a lived experience, subject matter experts, and then how do you marry that with science and then respectability. You just have to do that. We know that statistics and data could be used in very good ways, they could be used in very kind of shady ways.
Cheryl Clark:
And so you become that, and so if an epidemiologist says, "Oh, I only do data, I don't do evaluation," I think you're missing the point because evaluation is part of the data to me. And it goes back and feeds the programs and lets them know either I'm on the right track or I need to retool something. Or I need to go back and just build something ... a different pathway because this isn't working, or the community is not buying in it because they weren't involved in it in the first place.
Lisa Bodnar:
One of the reasons that I hear people say they're interested in not being in academia is because they really would like to see a positive impact of their work more quickly.
Cheryl Clark:
And to me, there's also a setting your expectations. A lot of things that we're aiming for are kind of these long haul deals. But the intermittent things for me have been ... I ran a state training where they wanted to have a black infant mortality ... they call it Healthy Baby Initiative I think it was called, that was focused on racial disparities in birth outcomes. And what they wanted was all the county health departments to eventually be able to host these town hall meetings with the community. And one of the things that we thought was important that they understood their own data. So we had statewide training webinars and then also I gave them exercises to do where it was almost like a test, like look at your data. If someone were to ask you at the meeting, "Do you have a black ... do you have disparities in black infant mortality?" What would you say? Or what are some of the factors that may influence an adverse or a non adverse event? You would be able to say with knowing your own data, and then you wouldn't be speaking kind of falsehoods about trends that you really ... especially the small counties really can't say.
Lisa Bodnar:
I was wondering if the content of the work that you're doing has changed with COVID. Do health departments want something different from you now?
Cheryl Clark:
What we do know is that COVID has just heightened the disparity scenario in major ways with social determinants of health just being amplified. If you have a job that allows you to work from home and you can afford broadband, you're not struggling as much as someone who may be in the service industry where you may have been laid off or you may have been ... your business may have closed. Or you have to go in and you have children, and who's going to take care of your kids? And so one of the things that ... I mean, we focus on all the time was health disparities and what leads to the health disparities and systems and racism. But now that COVID is really just highlight that, not only our communities of color and poor communities more at risk, but now they have less economic standing because of COVID, and also more exposures to risk because sometimes, most of the time they may have to go in to those jobs. It's kind of not so much of a high end technical, it's about working with people and seeing what the people need and having the people be involved in determining how things are used and how money is spent, how things are distributed.
Lisa Bodnar:
So what do you think, Cheryl, is the best part of your job?
Cheryl Clark:
I like when I can help people know how to use data. That means not just being like a statistical geek ... I love spreadsheets and stuff like that, which I do. I knew a person that would be for fun like, "What's the prime number?" Or whatever, I'm like, "I don't know." And I don't really care, and I can't add in my head, but I think data and information is so powerful because like I said, it helps set the scene on where you need to go. And then also if you're on the right track.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's wonderful. What do you think based on your experience that PhDs and MPH graduates are missing in their training?
Cheryl Clark:
We would get these people in and they would really know their stuff, like SAS macros and I'd have them bring a sample code in. Okay, now explain it, what does this mean? What would this mean to a program? And they couldn't ... odds are this ratio and all that they could do, but how do you translate that? And what we try to teach in leadership lab is communication is so important. I helped write a brief in this series about racial disparities and racism, basically about respectful translation too. I've been at conferences where we just heard this great speaker talk about social justice, and then you go into a major breakout session and people are talking about the risk factors of black maternal race and I'm just like, what? One of the things that we have to be, I think, epis need to hone in and learn is how to use that data and recognize that some data sets are biased. If they are, what's the risk factor here?
Cheryl Clark:
One of the subheadings in the article I co-wrote was "Who are you calling a risk factor?" Because you can't treat that like it's smoking cigarettes. It's not that black people just inherit, or people of color just inherit this thing. And so why I like to use contextual is because there's a historical pathway to this, the history is in medicine, the history is in neighborhoods, the history is in economic structures, the history is in institutions.
Lisa Bodnar:
If there was a student who was coming upon graduation with a degree in epidemiology, how would they know that a job like yours is something that they would like?
Cheryl Clark:
With universities, if they do have a career day or career panel, that they need to have that diversity on there. A lot of folks even if their state epis don't know what other things they can do aside from working in a health department, like in DC area there's all these nonprofit organizations. There are advertisings for epidemiologists all the time.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow, okay.
Cheryl Clark:
And also how epi can work in with policy.
Cheryl Clark:
I used to do film photography and it would be ... out of a roll I'd maybe like two.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
And then one of the things I found out about photography and what made me love taking pictures with digital photography, I could take a million pictures and now I could do selfies all day. I know where to hold the camera, that's why I held the laptop up because I know my angles.
Lisa Bodnar:
You do.
Cheryl Clark:
I watch America's Top Model. And I know the lighting and the golden hour and all that.
Lisa Bodnar:
The golden hour, you need to people what that is because they may not know.
Cheryl Clark:
When the sun is setting you get that golden light spectrum come in and it makes everybody look fabulous. It's like singing in the bathroom, right, when you are ... you sound great when you're in the bathroom but when you get in karaoke, not so much.
Lisa Bodnar:
Cheryl, do you live alone right now?
Cheryl Clark:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
So what would-
Cheryl Clark:
I've had many divorces though. I've never been married, but I've had some whopper divorces though, whew.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wait, you've never been married?
Cheryl Clark:
No.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wait, how do you have divorces if you're not married?
Cheryl Clark:
Exactly. You all think that people have fights over property, have them even worse ... because in marriage the rules defined, right? But if you shack up together, guess what? It's my car but you own the stereo system so what happens?
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you have a celebrity crush?
Cheryl Clark:
You know, I have a couple of I call actor husbands. And then I have some musician ... I think me and my mom would fight over Drake when he first came out. Because my mother had a crush on Drake and Chris Brown. My actor husbands are Don Cheadle.
Lisa Bodnar:
Obviously, you're going to put him in your movie based on your novel.
Cheryl Clark:
Yes, I've got to hurry up and do this so he can star in it. And then Keanu Reeves is another one. I think he's a Virgo. So-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
[crosstalk 00:20:18]
Lisa Bodnar:
Why not?
Cheryl Clark:
I never want to meet celebrities though.
Lisa Bodnar:
No, neither would I. I just have a little oooh.
Cheryl Clark:
Yeah. Yeah, oh, I could put myself in The Matrix just for a minute.
Lisa Bodnar:
You and Neo.
Cheryl Clark:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Cheryl, did you have any nicknames growing up?
Cheryl Clark:
Shoo-Shoo.
Lisa Bodnar:
Shoo-Shoo?
Cheryl Clark:
Because I take my shoes of all the time and I still take my socks off and I can't find them. Cheryl Girl, my grandmother used to call me all the time.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's cute. So if you lived in Pittsburgh, people would pronounce your name Shirl.
Cheryl Clark:
Shirl Girl.
Lisa Bodnar:
I have a couple of aunts or cousins named Shirl. And when I finally got to be, I don't know, like 15 or 16 I was like hold on a second, I saw their names spelled, and I was like ... your name is Cheryl. Cheryl. It's two syllables, I thought it was like Shirl, like short for Shirley. And it's like no-
Cheryl Clark:
Right.
Lisa Bodnar:
Pittsburghers just can't say Cheryl. It's Cheryl.
Cheryl Clark:
My grandmother was in the north Florida panhandle and a lot of my cousins and relatives they never say Cheryl.
Lisa Bodnar:
Really?
Cheryl Clark:
They go Shirl.
Lisa Bodnar:
Shirl.
Cheryl Clark:
Hence Shirl Girl.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yep.
Cheryl Clark:
And I remember I was pronouncing my name and I think some guy was trying to holler at me, thought I was being smart. He thought I was slowing it down on purpose like, no, I said my name is Cheryl. He goes, "All right, Cher-yl."
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you have a go-to COVID quarantine comfort food?
Cheryl Clark:
Last week I was stressed.
Lisa Bodnar:
Me too.
Cheryl Clark:
So I'm trying to do intermittent fasting and I-
Lisa Bodnar:
Wasn't happening last week?
Cheryl Clark:
One week I was drinking salsa practically. Because I was buying these big ole quarts.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Cheryl Clark:
And then the next day I'd be like ... it was like maybe a quarter of a quart left and I'm like what am I doing? I mean, I know it's supposed to be like relatively low cal but not the whole quart. So last week I decided not to buy crackers and not to buy chips and I was fiending. I don't know what it is with me and salsa. It's just so satisfying.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, okay. Would you rather explore outer space or the deep ocean?
Cheryl Clark:
Oh. I think ... oh, god, I'm so claustrophobic. I don't know, I would probably die. I did scuba diving on a coral reef, and I thought they were going to take us out just a little bit and they took us way out.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh, I would be scared.
Cheryl Clark:
I was terrified, but I could not do space.
Lisa Bodnar:
Neither could I.
Cheryl Clark:
I can't. I-
Lisa Bodnar:
I would be scared out of my mind.
Cheryl Clark:
I can't make it through an MRI. I try to be so brave and I'm like, okay, okay, I've got to come out.
Lisa Bodnar:
Me too.
Cheryl Clark:
And then I get embarrassed, like okay, I could do this. And then, "If we take you out one more time we're going to have to start all over again."
Lisa Bodnar:
Cheryl, this was so much fun.
Cheryl Clark:
I had fun.
Cheryl Clark:
This one intern that I sponsored over the summer gave me a great card and a mug that says, "I'm sorry, my expertise in epidemiology doesn't equate to your Google search."