#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Happens When Hospitals Stop Assuming and Start Listening?

Kimberly Novod, community health advocate, founder of Sol's Light, and fierce voice for health equity, joins Ben for a conversation about what it actually means to build trust between hospitals and the communities they serve. Drawing on her experience in New Orleans — where the prematurity rate sits at 14% and environmental factors like air, water, and soil quality in areas like Cancer Alley drive devastating birth outcomes — she makes the case that health equity cannot be achieved within hospital walls alone. She calls on institutions to stop designing solutions without asking the people they're meant to serve, to share research findings back with the communities that participated in them, and to invest meaningfully in family partners who reflect the full spectrum of lived experience — not just the ones with the rosiest stories to tell.