What can you do with your love of science? We'll tell you!
Fatu Badiane Markey 1:12
Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. We Love Science. My name is Fatu
Shekerah Primus 1:18
and I'm Shekerah; and today we're learning about mentoring with the founder of Cohort Sistas.
Fatu Badiane Markey 1:25
Yes, we are. Joining us today is Ijeoma Kola, who is a historian of public health with a special interest in the history of 20th century urban black health and medicine. That's a mouthful, but very important. Who has also founded an online community to support black women and non binary people pursuing doctorates. Ijeoma we're so excited to have you on the show. Welcome, welcome!
Ijeoma Kola 1:51
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to get into a discussion about mentoring and I'm really excited to talk to you all about it.
Fatu Badiane Markey 2:00
Good, good.
We are really excited to hear your story and I'm sure our listeners are as well. Before we get started, let's do a little bit of warm up. So we're going to talk about one of our favorite topics which is food and for today's favorite food topic, because it's like summery and warm. Let's talk about one of our favorite sort of warm weather foods to eat. What do you like to eat? I guess you know when it's kind of hot out. Ijeoma you can get started.
Ijeoma Kola 2:35
Yeah, I'm gonna have to do two things. One is mangos, I love mangos. So so yummy, but I also really like eating avocados in the summer time. I love a good just kind of avocado, cut in half, with salt on it. Like that replaces my vegetable serving for the day although it doesn't. But in my mind I'm like it's green and I'm eating a veggi, so it does.
Fatu Badiane Markey 3:05
Very nice.
Shekerah Primus 3:08
I also love mangos. What's your favorite mango Ijeoma?
Ijeoma Kola 3:11
Oh I don't know if I have a mango favorite. I am not picky to be honest. All the mangos!
Shekerah Primus 3:23
Do you get good mangos in Kenya?
Ijeoma Kola 3:29
Yeah, they have really good mangos in Kenya
Shekerah Primus 3:34
I don't get great mangos in New Jersey. I have to admit, most of the time they are quite sour. I do love mangos as well, so I won't argue with that, but they tend to disappoint sometimes.
Fatu Badiane Markey 3:49
I feel like I only eat mangos overseas. I almost never eat them in the US. Because it's so hard to find good ones. I'm just like, let me just go to the country of origin. Where I know they're like rolling on the ground, and they literally picked them from the tree. I will just enjoy it. Now what about you Shekerah, what's your favorite warm weather food.
Shekerah Primus 4:08
Warm weather food. Oh my gosh. So I'm going to I'm going to follow Ijeoma's example and pick 2. And these are technically not foods. Ice cream. I'm sorry, I just I gotta always say the ice cream. Ice cream in the summer. There's nothing better. And ice coffee at Starbucks. I'm having some iced coffee right now. Nitro Cold Brew with caramel drizzle.
Fatu Badiane Markey 4:34
I am feeling that iced coffee that is definitely like that. For me. It's like my official indicator that it's like summer time. Iced coffee season and I am here for it. I also like how you picked ice cream. I will consider that a food; so I think that is fine. I would have to say oh my gosh, I don't even know if you know what I really like actually barbecue. I would say that's probably my favorite like warm weather food you know like you're outside the grill is going and you know you got some booming music in the background, everyone is just chillin having a good time. It's like the whole vibe. Like that goes with the meal is it's really good. So I think that's my favorite.
Let's go ahead and get started. So Ijeoma, we're we're so happy to have you on the show today and learn a little bit more about your background. So you are a historian of public health. And you primarily focus on 20th century urban black health and medicine. And your current project examines the evolution of the medical institutional and cultural understanding of asthma in black urban America throughout the 20th century, which sounds very interesting. So I can't wait to hear more about it. You received your bachelor's degree from Harvard in history and science, and then your masters and PhD from Columbia University. So let's get started. What does a historian of public health do?
Ijeoma Kola 6:23
Great question. I also didn't know this for a really long time until I became one. So essentially, a historian of medicine or public health and I consider myself both tells the narrative history of the development of different medical technologies, the evolution of diseases, the rise and fall of hospital care, midwifery care, health care. And if you think about like a political historian that kind of talks about the, like different political ideas from presidents to local political movements; a medical historian or public health historian does the same work, just telling the history of medical and health innovation. Part of the work I do, though, is really focused on how do patients and community members themselves understand and articulate their health. So a lot of other historians of medicine, essentially, the traditional historians of medicine, do a lot of top down history. So they'll write about, you know, these different medical developments, eye doctors or like these different technologies, that now change how we think about different illnesses and diseases. But I'm, I care a little bit about that. But I care a lot about people themselves and how they view their health, and how that changes over time, and how they understand their relationship between the kind of like medical complex or the public health institutions and their communities.
Fatu Badiane Markey 7:26
Excellent. I love that. And I feel like that work is also so important, especially when you look at, you know, countries like the United States where you know, you're dealing with people who just haven't been served very well by the health care system, because of a lot of historical oppression, racism, you know, and all of that. So, I guess, overall, if we want to get into a space where we can also be healthier as a country as a whole, it's important to understand right the past experiences and what impacts that has. Right?
Ijeoma Kola 8:26
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that I think we're gonna talk about my career journey and academic journey and a little bit, but, you know, for me, it didn't make sense for us to continue carrying out all of these different public health interventions without having a foundational knowledge of the root causes of some of the biggest diseases and illnesses, especially the ones that plague Black communities and other historically marginalized communities. I thought that it was really important for us to go back in time and see what used to work what what was already tried before what are the different ways in which the medical system and the public health systems have both helped and harmed people of color and what can we learn from that as we continue to develop strategies, programs, etc, to improve our different health?
Fatu Badiane Markey 9:16
Great Excellent. So can you speak a little bit more about your research and what that focuses on?
Ijeoma Kola 9:23
Yes, so it's curious because I've been working on this for such a long time.
Fatu Badiane Markey 9:28
That's not a bad thing, that's how you get expert status.
Ijeoma Kola 9:34
The journey is coming to a close, I'm now working on a book based on my research from my dissertation, which started off as my like, senior year thesis in college. But essentially, I have written a history of the rise of asthma in Black urban America. And so I kind of chronicle how asthma went from being thought of as a White disease, which a lot of people don't know about. But originally in the early 20th century, doctors most of them white doctors thought that asthma was a disease that other doctors had. And so they conceptualize it as an elite disease, a disease that was caused by being stressed and you know, working in urban neighborhoods, you need to go to your country home in New Hampshire in order to be cured of asthma. They thought that Black folks couldn't have asthma and so I start with that story. And, then move through the, like 2010s and kind of talk about how asthma has, over time really been now understood to be a disease that overwhelmingly and predominantly impacts Black folks and Black folks living in urban settings. And so, what does it mean when, why are there even diseases . . . like, why do we even think that some diseases even impact one type of person, or one type of community over another. Like, what is it mean that we racialized the disease in that way, and then as I mentioned before, I'm really interested in how Black people have understood their relationship between race and asthma alongside the changing medical definitions and understandings of that relationship too. So kind of talk starting with the 20s, early 20th century history and kind of end with the Human Genome Project, this kind of present day fascination with genetics as the explanation for the racial aspect. And I have lots of thoughts on that.
Fatu Badiane Markey 11:30
Wow, that's so impressive, and I'm so excited to hear that you're also writing a book. Oh my gosh.
Ijeoma Kola 11:36
I'm in the history field. So yes, I am technically a historian with an affiliation like a science affiliation, but we're in a book field, right. And so the expectation even as I was doing my dissertation, like whenever my advisors would be talking to me, they'd be like, Okay, so like, this is what you have to do for the dissertation. But this is what you have to do for the book because it's gonna be a book. So that's how it was kind of always presented to me as this is a book project and you're just doing a dissertation to graduate but like, it needs to be a whole book.
Fatu Badiane Markey 12:13
Well, yeah, that's amazing. I love that and I I really also just love like, I personally have never really been into history, and I think it's just like not my kind of thing, but I do love, like niche history like the history of public health or like the history of science because I think that just again, feeds into my background which I enjoy, which is research right? Specifically like biomedical research and so sometimes just understanding that aspect of it and like all people are involved and you know, over like critical events that take us where we are now. I find really interesting. So I'm super excited. I was telling Shekerah on our last episode, I personally am not a big reader, but as long as it's not like too dense, I'll see if I can put that on my reading list Ijeoma.
Ijeoma Kola 13:05
Definitely not going to be to dense. I am like a plain words writer oftentimes. I feel like this is actually like too colloquial English, not academic and I'm not an academic writer. It's it is not verbose. It is not dense because I also wanted to write a book that could be understood and used by academic audiences, but it's it's the community it's it's Black people themselves who are dealing with asthma or dealing with the impact of it on their lives and are coming up with innovative ways and alternative ways to heal and address and move forward from medical racism. And so I really wanted regular folks with asthma to be able to access the book and read it and to take scholarly things from it. So I definitely wrote it with a general audience in mind.
Fatu Badiane Markey 13:53
Excellent, I really love that. So somewhere in all of this when you have been doing your dissertation, preparing for a book, doing your research, you also started a mentoring organization called Cohort Sistas. Can you tell us a little bit more about the organization, what it does and how people can join?
Ijeoma Kola 6:23
So Cohort Sistas is a nonprofit organization that supports Black women and non binary doctoral students and applicants and the entire goal the entire vision is to be able to provide folks with the resources that mentorship and the community that I wish I had when I was getting my PhD. It's really that simple. So there are very few Black women who pursue doctoral degrees, complete doctoral degrees, the kind of attrition rate is pretty bad. A lot of people will drop out after their first or second years. I think it's like a 40 percent completion rate from when people start their degree to when they finish; there are tons of barriers to even getting to the place where you're starting a doctoral degree. There are so few faculty who look like us. So for me there was, I was fortunate, I guess, to have one Black woman faculty in my department. And her research had nothing to do with mine like no synergy. So she couldn't be an advisor, she couldn't be a mentor for me. And so I really struggled with having people who look like me, who understood the trials and struggles of being a Black woman. I didn't have peers, I didn't have faculty members. I had my family and they held me down.
The goal for Cohort Sistas is to be able to bring that sense of community and that mentorship to Black women to help them get to and through their doctoral degree and through it like with joy. There's so many of us and I was one of those people who I finished my degree Yes, but like I was so miserable. It was so traumatized. I go whole year off, right. And when I think about my research, and if I hadn't kind of got back into the postdoc and done some other things like research would have just died like no one would know the important work that I did. Like the book would have never gotten written that there's so much potential like life changing the potential that is lost when we don't invest in the support and scholarship of Black women who are pursuing doctoral degrees. So that's the work Cohort Sistas is doing and it's my pride and joy.
Fatu Badiane Markey 16:27
Excellent, excellent. All right. So I think that's pretty amazing work that you do with Cohort Sistas Ijeoma. How can people join if they're interested?
Ijeoma Kola 16:37
Absolutely. So they can go to community dot cohort sistas dot org to join and that's S I S T A S, A little pizzaz there
Fatu Badiane Markey 16:52
I love that, we'll also have that in the show notes, so if anyone is interested in it, we'll have a link ready for you to click on. And what do you love about what you do as the founder of an organization? I don't even know how you have time for all this, it's incredible.
Ijeoma Kola 17:09
Well, I mean, I think it started before I started. It started a year after I finished my PhD but before I like entered re entered academia so now I'm an assistant professor, but before like when I first started it, I wasn't really doing anything. I was on maternity, I had just had a baby a couple of months prior and I was trying to figure out like, what was the what was the reason like why did I do this whole PhD and really felt called to be able to just support other people who are in the journeys, my favorite part of being a founder of this is anytime I can hear from someone anytime I get to talk to someone one on one, and they say, oh my gosh, like I was able to find an accountability partner and Cohort Sistas or like someone shared this research, resource, someone shared this fellowship that I had no idea about or I was paired with a mentor and like now I actually have someone who can read over my dissertation materials and provide me with feedback and I can also talk to them about how my actual advisor is not really supportive. That really warms my heart so being able to hear those personal stories of individual stories. It helps me keep going. It helps me find the time.
Fatu Badiane Markey 18:27
That's like so fantastic. Yeah, I definitely did not have something like that available to me when I was a grad student. But I feel like I had amazing people who were around me like Shekerah, that's how we met when she was a postdoc and I was a grad student, and it does make a difference you know, to have that supportive community when you're going through such a rigorous you know, like I feel like academic social personal time like for your PhD
What challenges have you faced and with regards to like creating Cohort Sistas and like, you know, getting them off the ground?
Ijeoma Kola 19:03
Yeah. I think the biggest two big challenges one is the funding is the constant challenge because actually when I first started Cohort Sistas, I didn't intend for it to be a nonprofit. I was just like, oh, I have this idea. And so like, I need to throw together an LLC because like, that's what you do when you have a business idea. So that's what I thought you do. And you have this ideas. And I was familiar with the LLC model. I already had other businesses. But then maybe like three months into doing it, I was like, Wait, like, we shouldn't be paying for this. That's ridiculous. It's not our fault that these institutions aren't set up in ways that serve us. So I picked the nonprofit model; it's kind of like having to constantly fundraise is very challenging and taxing and I don't have formal nonprofit experience. I worked in nonprofits actually, while I was in grad school. And so I know, I knew some but I have to do a lot of learning on the fly. And so wondering, that is probably my biggest personal challenge. And then the other thing that's really challenging is I kind of feel like when we first started in 2020, you know, had we been a nonprofit in the summer of 2020, I feel like we would have gotten so much money. Everyone was throwing money at anything racial equity. Especially in education, and now.
Like where is the money but also I feel like there's changing public sentiment about, public and political sentiment, about racial equity about DEI. And so even just this summer has been really frustrating because you've been talking to universities prepared for this full year and things were fine and not until the Supreme Court decision about affirmative action. And now, no matter they're like, Oh, well, you know, we don't want to bring scrutiny and legal is advising us not to do. It's a little bit of frusterating because we are a nonprofit, we're kind of sometimes subject to the whims of donor priorities. And I think that that has been a little bit challenging, but I am confident and hopeful that there are people you know, despite the very aggressive agenda to stifle all elements of Black women's progress. I'm still really much committed to making sure that we're able to continue doing this work and you know, just figuring out who the right partners are, who are not afraid of potentially having a lawsuit brought against them. If a program that only focuses on one particular group of people, because that group of people has historically been ignored, right. It's yeah.
Fatu Badiane Markey 21:58
My goodness, yeah.
I feel like it's like it's really finding. Yeah, you know, just like not letting the current environment like stifle your work, right. It's important and it needs to be done. It's just a matter of like, how can we get the right people? Yeah. So I think that's a really, really admirable. What is your ultimate goal with Cohort Sistas and how can people like us who are just part of the general community help with that goal?
Ijeoma Kola 22:26
Yes. So we would love to grow to a community of 10,000 scholars there are about 100 Black women who get a doctoral degree in the US each year. So we're trying to capture like, everyone who is currently in a program, whether they're at a PWI or HBCU, or they're doing it online because they're different kinds of support that people need based on where they are. So they think, okay, you're at a PWI. Maybe you would have full funding, but you probably aren't the only one who looks like you in your program. If you're at an HBCU you probably aren't the only look looks like you but there might be some funding issues. So people like need different kinds of supports. We're trying to kind of capture as much of the market as possible to be able to provide essential mentorship and resources to folks, and how can people support you can always give us donation at Cohorts Sistas. And we're actually gearing up to run a crowdfunding campaign in a couple of weeks, I think in like end of October so folks can look out for that. You can also just kind of sign up for our newsletter or mailing list or we can share our different updates and what's going on and different volunteer opportunities. We are not sure when this episode will air but we're currently recruiting mentors for our mentorship program. So if anyone is a Black woman or non binary person who has a doctoral degree, who wants to mentor like three to four scholars in their academic discipline, we have that opportunity as well so I can share all that info with yall.
Fatu Badiane Markey 23:55
Yes, please. And we'll definitely post that's like so fantastic question; I had one more question then it just like flew out of my head. Shekerah, do you have any other questions.
Shekerah Primus 24:11
So it's really, really great to hear about Cohort Sistas, you know, the great work that you're doing supporting us sisters, you know, as we try to navigate, you know, our careers. So thank you for sharing that. Awesome, awesome.
Fatu Badiane Markey 24:29
Thanks again for talking with us today. I mean, it was such a pleasure to hear about your work and about Cohort Sistas and you know, what is in store for you in the near future?
How can people reach out to you and your team, especially if they're interested in getting involved?
Ijeoma Kola 24:46
Yes, they can again, sign up for our mailing list at Cohort sistas.org. It'll be at the bottom of the page of the homepage, or you can send us the email at info at cohort sistas.org. Those are the best ways to get in touch with us. We're also on social media, all things Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter slash X or whatever it will be tick tock on all the platforms.
Fatu Badiane Markey 25:14
Excellent. Didn't you guys launch something recently also a new platform? Is that correct?
Ijeoma Kola 25:19
Yes, we relaunch our mobile app. All of our work is digital. So we're gonna base on this idea that there is no critical mass of us in any one place. So in order for us to find and build that community and to do it at scale, we can't rely on a single institution or even a single city. So all of our work is is digital. So we have a mobile app, really cool a Cohort Sistas app, so you can just download the Cohort Sistas app and be able to get plugged into the community that way as well.
Fatu Badiane Markey 25:49
I love it. Oh my gosh, so about it. That's that's amazing. And I love that idea where it's just like, having access right, like all the time because like we use our phones for everything else. So that makes perfect, perfect sense. So we're going to end this segment with a little game where Ijeoma you get to turn the tables on us and ask us some really quick questions about your field and the work that you're doing. So, you know, just simple one to two questions, multiple choice or true false. So what do you have for us that Shekerah and I can try and guess correctly.
Ijeoma Kola 26:32
The first question is, which of these options which of these choices have doctors historically used to explain why Black bodies are more susceptible to asthma? A, because of their genetic makeup? B because their houses have cockroaches? C, because they are protesting in the streets or D all of these.
Fatu Badiane Markey 27:06
Oh my gosh. Shekerah wanna go first?
Shekerah Primus 27:12
I would hope that doctors would think A like the only one that make any sense. Right, genetic makeup one, right.
Fatu Badiane Markey 27:22
I honestly feel like it's, it's at that. I mean, for me, like I can kind of understand that also, even though I feel like there's a lot of like fallacy of that. But I feel like the answer is probably all of the above
Ijeoma Kola 27:35
The answers all the above.
Fatu Badiane Markey 27:44
Oh my gosh. Melting in my chair; it's unbelievable. It's like I can not believe that.
Ijeoma Kola 27:55
Are you actually shocked?
Fatu Badiane Markey 27:58
I'm shocked because I don't want it to be true. And it is. I think that's the shock.
Ijeoma Kola 28:07
Okay, so that one question, next question. So, true or false. Less than 2% of doctoral degrees in the US each year are awarded to black woman.
Fatu Badiane Markey 28:21
True. Shekerah.
Shekerah Primus 28:26
False
Ijeoma Kola 28:26
Shekerah is right it's it's not much more than two, it's 3%
It's still a very paltry number, but it is yeah, just three %. And we make up six and a half percent of the population. So yeah.
Fatu Badiane Markey 28:46
That's intense. And how do those numbers compare to like, White people, I guess or like overall?
Ijeoma Kola 28:52
Yeah. So they're the two groups that you ratio ethnic groups that are over represented in doctoral education based on their in a population presentation, our White folks and Asian people so those two demographics are, especially Asian. They are over highly over represented in doctoral education. So there was a much larger proportion of Asians and have doctorate degrees compared to the proportion of Asians in the US population.
Fatu Badiane Markey 29:23
Wow, that's really interesting.
Shekerah Primus 29:26
Okay, so we'd like to say thank you to our listeners for supporting the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe, like and share. To learn more about our guest. Be sure to listen to the next journey episode and you can reach out to us by email. Love science podcast@gmail.com. Please send any questions or comments about the show, or suggestions for this that you'd like to hear. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time,
Transcribed by https://otter.ai