Care Without Borders: Neonatal Innovation and Humanitarian Health in Crisis Settings

What does it take to deliver healthcare to the children who are hardest to reach, in conflict zones, refugee settlements, and communities where the health system has collapsed entirely? In this episode, recorded in the context of the Clinton Global Initiative, two innovators share how they are working to close some of the world's most urgent gaps in care for children and families.

James Roberts, co-founder and CEO of mOm Incubators, shares how a collapsible, inflatable neonatal incubator (born from a design engineering student's final degree project and the personal story of his own premature mother) is now reaching babies in conflict zones, refugee settings, and healthcare deserts across seven countries. With CE mark and FDA clearance, mOm's incubators are being used in NHS hospitals in the UK, in air raid shelters in Ukraine, and in field hospitals in Gaza and Sudan.

Shadi Martini, CEO of Multifaith Alliance, describes his journey from hospital manager in Aleppo to refugee to humanitarian leader, and the work his organization is doing to deliver primary healthcare, nutrition services, reproductive health, and free medication to displaced communities across Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond. In a year, MFA has reached nearly 80,000 people through its programs.

Together, they offer a powerful reminder that optimism and action are possible even in the most difficult circumstances

Episode Resources:

Clinton Global Initiative

JENS - Congress of joint European Neonatal Societies

Liverpool Women's University Hospital

Dr. Georgette F. Bennett 

Connect with James Roberts:

James Roberts LinkedIn

mOm Incubators Website

mOm Incubators LinkedIn

mOm Incubators Instagram

Connect with Shadi Martini:

Shadi Martini LinkedIn

Multifaith Alliance Website

Multifaith Alliance LinkedIn

Multifaith Alliance Instagram

Connect with us:

KidsX Website

KidsX LinkedIn

Children's Hospital L.A. Website

Children's Hospital L.A. Instagram

Children's Hospital L.A. LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Clinton Global Initiative was developed in 2005 by President Clinton to turn good ideas into action. It was designed to bring leaders across business, philanthropy, government, academia, and civil society together to move beyond dialogue and identify new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. CGI's model is specifically centered around first, convening leaders. Through our annual meeting every September and year-round programming, we bring leaders together to address the world's most pressing challenges. Second, to connect across sectors. This is where CGI fosters unlikely partnerships and collaborations that bridge gaps that no single sector can fill alone. And third, through our commitment to action model, where CGI partners with organizations publicly to drive real solutions across critical issue areas, one of which is health. It's really the fact that too many people still face barriers to good health here in the US and around the world. It often boils down to issues of access, availability, affordability, and the quality of care that communities receive. And we are especially seeing this in maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health, and know that this is such a critical time when the care received or not received has lifelong implications for the health of individuals, their families, and communities. And so, in response to this challenge, our work is focused on how to make quality health care more available, accessible, and not only affordable, but equitable. And as part of that, we have a major focus on how to get high-quality products and services to the widest population possible, smarter, faster, and more effectively.

SPEAKER_04 2:09

Welcome to the Dose of Optimism, where I talk to the optimists in healthcare. My name is Omkar Kulkarni, and I work at one of the world's best children's hospitals where I lead innovation. I started KidsX, which is a premier international startup accelerator for pediatric innovation. And over the years, I've met thousands of startups, investors, and innovators. Every one of them has a story, and every one of them is optimistic about the problems they're solving. On this podcast, you'll meet amazing people who will share their stories and what makes them optimistic about the future of healthcare. A little note before we get into this episode. Our first guest is James from Mom Incubator. Tell me more about them and what excites you about them.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Sure. So, Mom Incubators, they launched a commitment to action to supply over 50 of their incubators along with consumables and spare parts to high-need hospitals that will serve over 2,500 infants in Gaza and Sudan every year. As context, we see that preterm birth rates they spike in humanitarian settings. And at the same time, hospitals in these settings have equipment and human resource shortages, as well as disruptions in electricity. So this incubator that James Roberts and his team have developed was designed to overcome these really unique challenges. They have rigorous monitoring and locally guided implementation. And so, with this, the commitment is not only addressing the urgent needs, but also building this foundation for significant scale in other high-need settings around the world. I think what really stands out about mom incubators is that they are adapting newborn health solutions for conflict settings, figuring out how to reach families even when health systems are really under extreme strain. So it's not just the incubators themselves that are so unique, but also their ability to navigate logistics and rapid training and support when the local context is so quickly changing. And then just one more thing that I'll note about this commitment is that we're really seeing that when you design for these challenging environments, these incubators can also more effectively meet the needs of hospitals in more stable environments as well.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

James, tell me about mom incubator. How did it get started and what's the problem you're looking to solve?

SPEAKER_03 5:03

So I'm a design engineer by background. I grew up playing with cars, Lego, motorbikes, the kind of things that broke people like me. And when you research more into the problem, you find out that 10% of people have been affected by premature birth, either having on themselves or being a premature baby. More than a million children die every single year because of it. I believe being born preterm is now the largest killer of children under five globally. And small changes make massive differences. So for every one degree C, you lose in terms of body temperature, you increase the chance mortality by 28%. So small changes make massive differences. And there are problems all around the world from Sub-Saharan Africa, but also in parts of the US where the turn to healthcare deserts, parts of the UK where they can't get access to this type of system where they really need it, in what I call a more flexible health world. I then spoke to my mum what I was doing, and then it got personal because she said, Oh, that's strange. I was born pre-term in the 1960s, and she sent me one of the a picture of her and one of the very first incubators in London. So suddenly it became a personal thing to try and develop this. Without one, I literally wouldn't be here speaking to you today. So then I took that on as my final degree project, came up with the idea for a platable, inflatable neonatal incubator, and it made sense in terms of cost effectiveness, maintenance, sound deading, everything. And it meant that an incubator could be accessible anywhere because you can almost fold it down to a small space, send it anywhere you need to go, and then bring it up when it's required. Showed it off my final degree show, got approached by James Dyson's team. He'll be known for creating background cleaners in the US. They run an award each year, which they asked me to enter, asked if I did, or said yes, and went through it and was lucky enough to win the entire thing. So that got us a lot of attention early on, and that allowed us to build the company from seed stage to Series A, where we are now, with a product that's been certified both with a CMDR mark and an FDA clearance. And we believe we've impacted around 15,000 patients across seven countries now. And those countries range from places like the UK where they're being used in the NHS, but also in places like the Ukraine, where they're being used for flexible healthcare to take babies to all be used to care for babies in different parts of the hospital or in air raid shelters.

SPEAKER_04 7:20

Amazing, James. It's so rare to find an entrepreneur who's built something that scales so quickly. And the other piece of what you just shared that I find to be unique is many entrepreneurs build a product for a single market. And it seems like you built something that can scale globally with different markets in mind. What is the thought process around how you build a product with a global reach? And how is that different than perhaps a product that just is built for a specific market or set of markets?

SPEAKER_03 7:51

When you're taught initially, you you always get told that you need to create products for one single market. And I always questioned that when I was a student. I always thought if you, especially in healthcare, if you create systems that are robust enough and can be used by anyone, then theoretically that's the best way to do it. But in terms of creating a device that is applicable anywhere, it takes a lot of thought and a lot of getting in front of the right people. So we've had input from uh hundreds, if not thousands, of clinicians over the years for design changes and little things like labeling, making sure that people can use things properly, all of those go into making a really robust product. Also, when you design things with difficult crisis zones in mind, you also inherently make them more robust, which is what clinicians want all over the world. They want to make sure that what they are getting in terms of a device will work and continue to work because ultimately it's a tool for their patients. They're the ones really saving lives. They need to depend on it. Medical is kind of unique in that way. And so if you do build it for that kind of in that kind of mindset, it's universally renowned.

SPEAKER_04 8:57

And then did you simultaneously then decide to go for FDA and CE?

SPEAKER_03 9:01

So we went for C marking first. We got European Regroval under new MDR marks, where it allowed us to scale throughout parts of Europe. That's what we're doing at the moment. And then after that, get FDA. So C and FDI are actually brilliant for the entire world almost. If you have those two, you can pretty much go anywhere you want, except for places like Japan or China or Brazil. It's universal renowned. They are the best kind of regtry marks you can get. But also, if you're looking into a difficult context, they all look if you've been used in places like the NHS, places like the US, as a sign of quality. So we've built our system to have a really high quality to it. It just so happens it can be used anywhere. So those are actually going in our favor when we're looking at difficult regions as well.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

How do you measure impact?

SPEAKER_03 9:48

We've been collecting data for the past three, four years on the use of our device, and you can pretty reliably tell how many babies you're going to impact. So it's about one to two a week per system, depending on where they are. So places that some of them have them, they use them for between four and six hours for babies, they just churn them through. Others will have babies in there for weeks, maybe in a month at a time. So Kenya, for example, we've had as low as 28 weekers in there. Uh so really quite young babies who survived. More challenging regions, they've been in there a lot shorter because they're just trying to get babies up to normal thermia and then bring more in. But on average, it's about one to two, two per week. These places just don't typically have any kind of incubator they can afford. So if you imagine our system, so a normal incubator is about 150 kilos, ours is 20 kilos. You can get it anywhere. It's incredibly easy to use. So a clinician by yourself, it's literally one button on, done, don't need to worry about it. Really robust, works all the time. Other systems break down. And then if you're looking at, let's say, LA children's, right, you've got these massive systems in NICU. They're very difficult to get to. I actually don't know how exactly set up. If you're in a maternity unit or ward, mother's just given birth, then it's very difficult to bring those systems to actually where the mother is. So think about us bringing just incubation systems to where they are. You can put it over a mother's bed, keep them close to her baby, promote the bonding, and increase the footprint of your NICU in a lot of ways. Level ones and level twos, we're starting to see them wanting to use it to stop transfers to larger sites with our system because they've got access to this technology.

SPEAKER_04 11:24

And it's lighter, is it also cheaper?

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Is it more economical?

SPEAKER_04 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Much more. I mean, if you look at a conventional incubator in the UK is what,£25,000,£50,000? It's probably double that in the US, or about a third of that. But a lot of our models, we're moving towards more of an operational expense model. So instead of buying them as a piece of capital, it's rental with unlimited warranty and consumables. The point is we will work and always work. And if we don't, we don't get paid. That's interesting. That's an interesting business model, too. Also, can we partner with companies that use cameras to take heartbeats, those kind of things? Say there's something to detect sepsis. Those kind of partnerships I'm really interested in. And incubator is kind of like the heart of everything, and pieces can be added to it, but we want to be that heart. One thing I notice that clinicians also hate is everyone's got this new sensor, right? Everyone's got this new amazing thing that can do all these wonderful sensing, whatever. But each one comes with its own tablet, its own charging station, all these types of things that you need to remember. So if it can just be the one thing that everything connects to and we send it to one data portal, then it makes everyone's life easier. We're all about giving the clinician as little to do with the device as possible so they can care for the child or spend the time doing that.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

You'd want to make sure all integrates seamlessly, though. So the original value proposition you had was it's easy. You don't need a whole team to set it up. You can move it around. As long as you can still do that with the cameras and the sensors and the data, and it's all interoperable with your system and your software, I think that's going to be the key so that you can keep that original value proposition around ease and convenience. Because for a place in Kenya or some other place where they don't have a massive team of neonatologists and nurses and whatever, you still want that ease. So if you can do all of that, I think that allows you to keep the ease and convenience, keep the cost down, the weight down. The new business model is interesting where it's rental versus capital expense. But then you're able to optimize on things like cameras, sensors, AI, prediction. Now you create a whole new care model within an incubator.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

In the UK, we um just published some data. We did a big kind of pilot study here. Our kind of jewel in the crown who work with Liverpool women's. So they're like our Boston children's, so big maternity unit. They, of the work we did with them, they presented a poster of Gen's, which is the largest pediatric conference. And it basically showed that one in the NHS, you're trying to give the same or better care and save money. So we gave as good, if not better, care and saved them 65,000 pounds per year per system. But what it really did was allowing the mothers to stay in maternity, because our kind of systems like a triangle at the bottom edge. So baby born in maternity, you go up to NICU, that's a problem. You come down at transitional care. Incubate has always been a NICU. Whether clinicians were showing most value was in maternity and transitional care, but keeping them there, those lower risk babies, when there was more capacity to care for sicker children in NICU, but it also promoted bonding and it showed a reduction for them in RDS. We're really efficient in getting them to that thermal neutral zone. They're less likely to get respiratory distress syndrome and potentially hyperbysemia, all those kind of things. So that's what we're doing. The US healthcare system, there's more kind of actors, payers, providers.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

You're now enabling some NICU care in the room where the mom is for the low acuity NICU, the babies that are born a few weeks early, not the ones that are born weeks and weeks early, but just maybe a few weeks early, they need to continue to grow. You can think about how you could put that in a different environment or place, perhaps with the mom, which improves clinical outcomes. The sicker babies are the ones that require a longer length of stay, more intense, complex supervision. They could remain in the NICU, but now you can increase your NICU footprint. Generally, hospitals, at least the way they're paid for in the United States, neonatology and NICU is often compensated properly and well. So hospitals are always interested in figuring out ways to maximize the ability to do NICU care. And then from a clinical model, it's also efficient, right? So if you have hospitals that are more invested in neonatology in general, because they've had now they have more incubators and more patients being served, you can have more neonatologists and you can think about a different care model where you've got physicians and nurses and advanced practitioners and others. It's a really interesting idea around how you can grow the footprint of a NICU without physically growing real estate in terms of the floor.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Some of the biggest problems we have in the UK is the education piece. People hear incubators and they think big, complicated, difficult bit of kit. I probably didn't do a good enough job of explaining it in that podcast, actually, but they think of a really challenge, huge bit of challenging kit that's only used by highly trained nurses or neonatologists. Ours can be used by theoretically lower-trained or skilled practitioners. But the word incubator still gives that sense of difficulty. So people in the UK have just started calling it a mom. So it's almost like building its own category.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Multi-faith Alliance is a great example of what it looks like to meet families where they are, especially in crisis settings. Multi-faith Alliance made a commitment to establish a healthcare center that specializes in women's health care in Northeast Syria, where we've seen one of the greatest displacement crises of our time. So Multi-Faith Alliance is bringing together nutrition, reproductive health, and protection services all in one place. So women and girls can access that full spectrum of care that they need to stay healthy and supported. And what I really love about this work is that Multi-Faith Alliance, they have the ability to quickly pivot to reach the areas with the most need. Oftentimes when there are no other health providers. So while they're working in coordination with local authorities, they are oftentimes the first ones to pivot and reach those who need these services most.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

So I'm originally from Syria. I was born and raised in Syria, and I was running a family hospital in Aleppo, Syria. And when the Arab Spring started happening around the Middle East in 2010, and then in 2011, demonstrations started happening more and more in Syria. The hospital I was managing was very close to the University of Aleppo, which was a main hub for demonstrations. And we would see more and more the effects of people being beaten or shot at, and they would try to flee, sometimes using our hospital as one entrance, as escaping from the authority, like the policemen that were following them, or militia members that were haunting them. And that's how I got involved in the humanitarian field and in a way human rights as well.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

And so tell me more about what you then created with Multiface Alliance.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

So before I started with Multiface Alliance, I started an organic homegrown network of physicians and people that were trying to help people who are getting wounded or that had health issues. And we started creating like these secret clinics, and we started sending medical equipment, medical supplies, medication to areas that needed them and they didn't have access to them. And we were using the cover of our me, myself, I had a hospital, so it was very easy to buy products and send it to people who couldn't afford it. So that's how it started, and that put me at odd with the government. Our network was discovered in 2012, and I had to flee Syria, but I continued working and helping the population that was affected, and mainly in the medical field, and also refugees who were trying to escape and getting into areas like Turkey, the Balkans, and Europe in general. And that's where I started connecting with multiplace lies.

SPEAKER_04 19:46

At that time, before you had to flee, was it just really difficult to get access to health care for people in Syria because of all of the demonstrations and then essentially the violence and the war?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

So at the beginning, it was because of if you're shot or beaten, you're considered an opposition person. So the government would come and pick you up from the hospital and start you in jail without getting your treatment. And we were seeing people avoiding hospitals. So we had to go and try to help them. And I would give you one example since you're the children's hospital. And I remember one incident that happened to us. I was in the emergency room, and there was a like a four-year-old kid who was shot from one side and the bullet went out from the other side. And I was seeing his parents teaching him what to say. You can't say that the government forces shot you because that will endanger your life and endanger our life. So they were teaching him what to say. So there was a guy who was interrogating him. Oh, who shot you? And he said, The terrorists shot me. These terrorists shot us. And he said, Oh, okay, okay. Then after that, he went to surgery. And the surgeon who did the surgery came back to my office and he was smiling. And he said, You remember the kid who was in the emergency room? I said, Yes. And he said, You need to know that he told me that I asked him which terrorists, and he's well, the terrorists were on the on a tank and they shot me. And we all know that was the government because only the garment had tanks at that moment. So his family taught him, but they couldn't give him the the whole concept that you can't say a tank and everything. So we all knew what was going on and why he had to say what he had to say.

SPEAKER_04 21:28

Wow. Okay, so at that moment you fled, you came to New York, or no, I actually went to the Balkans.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

I'm a triple citizen. Like I have a Syrian, Bulgarian, and US citizenship. So I went to the closest country to Syria and with Bulgaria because it borders Turkey and Greece, and a lot of people were trying to go through to Europe and that tried to flee Syria and go there. And it's close to Syria. So I could organize aid and I could help refugees that were fleeing. There are so many like the Route they took was very long. They used to walk most of the time on foot. So they had a lot of problems. And a lot of countries didn't want them. So they didn't have enough centers to house these refugees. And most of the people like were uh mainly were women and children, because a lot of people just wanted their family to be safe. That's what I did. Like the first thing I thought about in 2011, even though I stayed in Syria, was to try to find my kids. Like my son was three years old, my daughter was 11. So I wanted them to go to safety, but I can handle like it the war and all these problems.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

Wow. That's unbelievable. So tell me more about how you got involved with Multifaith Alliance. Tell us more about what that is and what the organization does.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Multi-face alliance is a new organization because the founder of the organization, her name is Dr. Georgia Bennett. She came into the United States as a stateless person. So she's a child of Holocaust survivors. And she came to the United States, I think it was one or two, two years old, and she had no state in her passport. So she had a passion about refugee issues and people who are displaced. She's a religious person. And I said, What are the Jewish community doing for the Syrian crisis? And of course, that's not a very traditional place for Jewish organizations to go and help. So she saw that, but there is an obligation, like not only as Jews, but as Muslims, as Christians, to help out. So she galvanized this Jewish community and other community, and this is where we met because I'm Muslim and I'm Syrian. So it was a very interesting combination between the two of us and trying to bring everyone together to try to help as much Syrian who were heavily affected. Like just to share numbers, Syria was around 21 million. Like throughout the conflict in the early three, four years, 14 million had to flee their homes. So 7 million had to flee to neighboring countries and Europe, about a million and a half, Turkey, 4 million, Jordan, a million something, Lebanon a million, and 7 million were displaced inside the country. So imagine the huge magnitude of having two-thirds of the country, one third outside and one-third inside being displaced. What is the organization do now? And what is your focus? We do a lot of work throughout the Middle East and also in other countries, for instance, like Ukraine, Guatemala, and Iraq and Lebanon, other things. But one major projects we have now right now is in actually in Gaza and in Syria. But since we're talking about Syria specifically, we are very much focused on primary health care and outpatient clinics. And especially with remote areas where there is no access to it, because a lot of organizations follow where funding is. And we try to find these air gap areas where there's no funding for, because it's a more dangerous area, more remote area. So we try to implement something like modular clinics that we bring and put in certain areas, fully equipped. We have our own outpatient clinics in former hospitals, and we focus a lot on women and children. And because we feel like this is the most important aspect of healthcare, like giving the ability to people to come to you early on and identify what their issue is. And we have a big program with the free medication also for the patients. It's not only we offer the health care, but we also offer them free medication, and we also help other organizations and facilities with the free medication and the medical equipment and consumables as well. So do you operate the clinical sites? We do operate them. We employ the doctor, the nurses, midwives, and every everyone else, and we provide them with the salaries and we provide the in Syria or well. In Syria. And because we are also an interface group, we also try to see if there is a religious community, an ethnic community that is vulnerable in a certain area and needs attention. So we would also go there and help them as well.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

See, here you've helped almost 80,000 people in a year through some of these nutrition health programs that you've built. It's nutrition services, reproductive health services, family planning. Yes. Quite a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah, we have a big program that covers all of Syria for prenatal vitamins. We distribute them to all the whole country. And it's a specific formula of design, and also it's the halal formula, which is very important for uh communities in the Middle East that we distribute throughout Syria.

SPEAKER_04 26:35

So as we think about a world where there are people, unfortunately, because of conflict and war are displaced. But what have you learned about the power of the models that you have where you bring together communities of different faiths, different ethnicities?

SPEAKER_02 26:47

That's very sad because the Middle East like conflicts after conflict. And of course, sometimes people lose hope. And I think this is the most important aspect that we bring to people hope. People somehow they don't from different faith groups and their bigger group is fighting each other. So I think this is the enemy, this is the enemy because of their religion or affiliation. So we try to break this stereotype and show that there are people on the other side, even though you might consider an enemy, but they care about you and they don't want you to get hurt and they want to help you, and vice versa. So we try to show the humanity in both sides. Personally, I grew up in a society that is very polarized, looks at the world and the region in a certain way. So I understand where people are coming from, but people reaching out to me and trying to help change my whole way of thinking and start thinking about people in a different way. I look at this individual, how they behave, how they interact with me. And I've seen so much humanity with individuals I've never thought that they cared. This is the, I think, the good thing because, and even when you when we learned, like donors want to see we're achieving something better, like we're having a better outcome. So this is what we're trying to do, and this is what we're trying to show. And I think we're successful because I've seen so many people interact with other communities from different faiths differently after what they have witnessed, after what they have seen of compassion, reaching out to them and trying to help them.

SPEAKER_04 28:15

What about displaced populations? So you mentioned the 14, 20 million people just in Syria that have been displaced. From a health standpoint, if we think about girls and children, what are things that you're doing or that you're seeing others do as we think about making sure that these communities, wherever they're displaced, have the access to healthcare that they need?

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Yeah. So I became a refugee. I lost everything I had. I consider myself lucky because I have other nationalities that I could travel. The other people lost everything and they couldn't travel. So they got stuck or they had to go illegally to places. So it's terrible. In Syria, we have a program that we try to bring back displaced people to their own houses. A lot of the houses they don't have a roof, they only have a walls. So what we try to do is we try to establish a hygiene environment. We try to refurbish their bathrooms, their kitchens, some living rooms, something that will take them away from the tent. That is a very terrible situation. You can't take a shower. If you want to use the bathroom, it's dangerous sometimes because it's if it's in the night, it's you have to go somewhere. If a predator is there, it's hard for you as a child. This is why we give them whistles all the time. So when they go, if there's danger. So we want to take them out of this environment and take them to a normal environment. I think this is very important for the health of the children, not only like physically, but mentally as well. Give them a place that they can call home, that is clean, that is swarm, and they don't need luxury. Like people don't want 60-inch TVs and everything, they just want these walls, their windows, heatings, their bathrooms, basic things. That's so this is what we try to do. And we think that's very important. And as well, it's trying to have access once they are in these small towns and these cities. Access to medical care is closer, it's easier. And even if you want to get uh treatment at home, you have a clean, safe environment.

SPEAKER_04 30:14

Are these people connected through digital means? Do they have smartphones? Are they able to access information digitally if it was medical advice or health care? They are there thoughts around how you can use technology to help close some gaps too?

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Yes, they do have smartphones and people do communicate. I mean, it's not an optimal situation, but more and more people are thinking about using apps or using other means to try to provide health service. And even though we're talking about Syria, but like I mentioned, we have a lot of work doing in Gaza, and unfortunately, it's a similar situation. Like the amount of destruction is similar to what is Syria. We're trying to replicate what we're doing there in Gaza as well, and trying to fortunately take advantage of the knowledge that we had of 10 years of working there because it was never like this in Gaza before. The last two years was totally different. So we're trying to take whatever knowledge we learned in one field and trying to implement it in another field and anticipate what the challenges that we're gonna have six months a year.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

What makes you optimistic and hopeful? I mean, you talk about hope despite the journey you've been on and the journey of the people that you serve, but you're hopeful, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

People tell me I'm in denial or something, but I believe that people generally are good, they really want to live life, normal life, raise their children. And not everyone wants war. So the more we have engagement between different people that never engaged before, I think the more we have. We call it sometimes humanitarian diplomacy. When people see others that they never expected to help them or expected anything from them to come to their aid, that perspectives change. So it takes a lot of efforts, a lot of people, but always hopeful. I always uh look at the results that we have done and the attitude that we have changed. And I'm seeing tremendous change in attitude and how people look at each other. So I'm really hopeful. And I think uh once things died down, like conflicts and everything, people have a different mentality, a different way of approaching conflicts.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. All right, thank you for joining us for your dose of optimism. Make sure to check out our show notes to get more information about our guests and the work they're doing. Visit our podcast page on the Kids X website to join our podcast community and to learn more about pediatric innovation. Thank you to our sponsors and to our presenting partner, Kids X. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, it takes a village to make sure our kids grow into healthy adults. So volunteer at your local library, help out at the community center, and if you're so inspired, donate to your local children's hospital. Alright, see you next time. The content views, opinions, and information presented on this podcast do not reflect the views of Children's Hospital Los Angeles or of the sponsors of the podcast.