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Dr. Paulette O'Gilvie | Casino & Gambling Researcher

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Dr. Paulette O'Gilvie is a casino and gambling researcher whose 2023 study examined the effect of casino proximity on poverty levels in New York City over five years. In this episode of Evive Live!, Adam and Christina sit down with Dr. O'Gilvie — Faculty Chair, prevention specialist, and member of the Evive Scientific Advisory Board — for a conversation that moves beyond the individual gambler and into the communities surrounding them. She walks through the "Three A's" framework of why urban casino gambling has exploded, what exposure and adaptation theory predicted would happen versus what her data actually showed, and why the sustainability of casino-driven economic development deserves far more scrutiny than it gets. 

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Evive Live is produced by Evive, a digital health platform dedicated to gambling behavior change. Views expressed by guests are their own.

SPEAKER_02

Hi everyone, welcome back to Vive Live. I'm Christina Cook.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm Adam Lyons.

SPEAKER_02

And we just finished up an amazing conversation with Dr. Paulette Ogilvy. Yeah, we do. She is a professor, she's a prevention specialist, a mental health advocate, and a casino and gambling researcher. And so it was really, really great to have her come on. She is also a person on our scientific advisory panel. And so she gives eVive a lot of insight, which helps us kind of curate a lot of the lessons and support that we offer on our app. And so I was just absolutely fascinated by what she brought to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, you know, the only gambling researcher I had ever met was Nate. Shout out to Dr. Nate Smith. And um, you know, just to to to to talk to another one and just all the stuff, all the work that she's done, and specifically like throughout like New York, like New York City, and and you know, some of the papers that she's written, and we get to kind of dive into that a little bit, and it brought me back to my years in New York. And yeah, it's just fascinating. And it's like, you know, we always ask people like, what gives you hope? Like, people like Dr. Ogilvie give me hope because you know, we always say that there's no there's no money for funding or research, yet she is doing all this amazing research that hopefully is going to shine a light on some of the issues that you know we've been talking about for the last X amount of years, you way longer than me, but absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

And I love that she was focusing on research around like urban communities where there are casinos and things like that. And because there is so much focus on the online presence of gambling, whether it's sports betting or just online um gambling games, you know, to have her talk about the impacts that brick and mortar casinos create in the good and the bad, like it just felt really good to hear somebody talking about that because in-person casinos aren't going anywhere. They're continuing to grow, they're continuing to show up in our backyards. And so it was really kind of great to have that perspective, but not only the the good things that the gambling revenue can do, but also the harmful impacts of of gambling in our communities. Yeah, and it's a really, really great conversation and just talking about all those different layers.

SPEAKER_01

No, and and it's like, you know, you and I, we are we were brick and mortar people, and and you know, like you mentioned in the interview, it feels like all we're talking about now is online, but it's like if you walk into any casino in this country right now, there that it'll be full. There'll be plenty of people in there, and plenty of people that are just staring at the screen, just like we were, you know. So yeah, I I uh I love the fact that you know she continues to to do a lot of research around those those establishments as far as gambling.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01

Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of EVIV Live. My name is Adam Lyons. I'm the host of the Modern Meeting Podcast. I'm here with Christina Cook of the Broke Girl Society, and today's guest, she is a casino and gambling research expert. She is a member of the eVive advisory panel. Dr. Paulette Ogilvie, welcome to eVive live.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much, Adam. Thank you so much, Christina, for this opportunity. I am so excited to be here and to share with you today.

SPEAKER_01

We are excited to have you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's get into kind of a little bit more about you. You wear a lot of hats, and I've been in this space, you know, almost five years, and and I've seen your name quite a few places, even though this is the first time we're actually like connecting. Um, so re you know, research, prevention, like so many different things. How was it that you came to work in the gambling space?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness. So um, that's a great question. Thank you for those, you know, those those points. So I started out um helping folks, helping master students just kind of work on their thesis, um and just really just doing work. And one one student had a study on gambling in older adults, and she wanted to know why were these older adults going to the casinos? And we started looking into that. And I started working with her, and we noticed that as a social work uh student, I think she was at the time, she was seeing that the the nursing homes were taking them once a week or once a month, they were spending on their little stipends. Back at that time, the casinos were given a lot of perks. You could get a buffet for five dollars and all these types of things. So I basically just started from there, and then I had an unfortunate turn of events in my family. My mom suffered a stroke, and my both my parents, you know, well, my family doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. We gamble. That's it. Let me let me start off by saying that. My dad, though, was um an avid gambler, so he gambled on the horses. He thought it was more skillful to look at the books, to read the stats. He would say to me, Do you know how to read odds? Do you know what to do with this? I don't know these things. I'm not looking at the horses. In any event, so my mom had a you know had a turn and she ended up in um you know having a stroke. So I basically um took her to the casino as an out in one day. You know, she wanted to go. I took her and I was, you know, be there with her. And then I saw someone commit suicide at the casino. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is at first I thought I was in a movie. No, this is not how happening. But anyway, never made headline news. Um and then from working with all these sort of grad students and then PhD candidates, my colleagues all said, What are you doing? Why don't you just go back and do your your own PhDs, as it were? So I did. So, you know, my background is corporate, um, philanthropy. And then I've always played in the space of like taking care of people. I've always done community work, it's always been part of my sort of my platform. And so I wanted to do something different from just going back into business. So then decided I would do this multidisciplinary human services PhD. And uh, one of the courses was called program management. Coming out of corporate, I know how to run a program, but I couldn't figure out what I would do. So, in between the time of the scene that that's casino suicide and doing this program management course, I actually created a program called Problem Gambling Awareness Prevention Program. Had no idea I was gonna end up in prevention, had no idea none of this was gonna happen. But I did 50 pages of what I thought was really good, solid work. The professor liked it, and I said, I'm not gonna let this go to work. This is gonna become my dissertation topic. And that's how I actually got into sort of the casino and started really researching. One of the things I found out earlier in the game was that there wasn't a lot of research out there, and there were the same names you saw all the time. Now remember, I'm in New York, and New York had just gotten the Resorts World casino right alongside Aqueduct Racetrack. And so that was just this new phenomenon. And as a theory person, you know, when I started to do my sort of like my framing out my dissertation, so one of the things I did, and I maybe would just give this as a pointer for all those who want to do PhDs, is use whatever you're gonna use as your topic for all your courses. I did that when I was in grad school at Fordham University and when I was in my MBA. I used one company and ran it right through, and I found that it was very successful. So I said, let me use the same model. And I did that. So I kept using this topic in every one of my courses, and I just built upon it. And so here it here I am in New York, and I'm like, I don't see anything. And then the researcher out of CUNY had just put out a study on urban casinos. And I said, okay, I'm in an urban city, I want to see what's going on, but how am I gonna put this in with problem gambling or um older adults? And so I ended up writing two dissertations, one on older adults and problem gambling, which I could not use, and the other one in casino proximity and poverty levels, looking at social, which is the study I I did. So I went all around that, but that's how I ended up in that. And I can tell you later on how I pivoted to prevention with that.

SPEAKER_01

No, for sure. And and trust me, we have plenty of questions on that 2023 study. Um, and so you know, you're you're you're getting near and dear to my heart because so I lived in New York City and um, you know, while I was in the throes of my addiction, and if I wasn't going to Atlantic City on the Greyhound bus, I was going up to Resorts World right next to the aqueduct. I was taking the hour and a half A train from Brooklyn all the way up to the edge of Queens. So when you were getting all of um when you were doing all this, what year was this?

SPEAKER_00

2014, I started this work, but prior to that, I had accumulated a lot of casino proximity and um, you know, psychological effects of how you know older adults were going. Remember, I was working with the students. I literally said, let me formalize this and make this my thing. I want to say one thing to you though. When I started my casino and my proximity study, an ecological study, no less, um, for my dissertation, I actually got challenged by some folks. One person said to me, Why don't you do a serious study? And I said, What are you talking about? This is serious. Do you see the money that's coming into New York? And subsequently, even recently, when I was doing some research for another study that I'm working on, you see the literature says no serious doctorate or PhD student will do something in gambling. Can you imagine that? But so that's why there's no research out there in the field per se.

SPEAKER_01

Now, from 2014, before we jump into the to the research, from 2014 until now, what are how from your perspective as a researcher, how has the landscape changed, not just specifically in New York, but just in general?

SPEAKER_00

Well, Adam, I'm glad you asked that because I'm currently writing a new stuff, uh uh, you know, a conceptual paper, but I'll tell you what has happened. What I've seen happen, and I'm gonna just take it again. My area of expertise is in proximity and urban studies, although I look at casinos right across the country and across the world. So I'm mostly a casino expert. Um, what I've seen is that despite even COVID coming in, casinos are here to stay. And that's not my phrase. I think someone else coined that, but they're here to stay. In as much as we have online betting, sports betting, eye gaming, and every lotteries, the casinos are not going anywhere. And although I thought we were gonna have like a downslide in in sort of like urban casinos, it's not happening. New York just got approved. Two more casinos are coming in in five years. There you have it. So it's it's it's increasing.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm I'm glad that you that you say that because my whole experience with with gambling and my 15-year addiction with gambling was in a brick and mortar casino. And I'm in a state where we have almost 150 casinos. They're they're going up everywhere. Matter of fact, we got a new one in my city, and I'm like, when did this happen? Like, just because it's like they're coming up so quick. And and I've said that a lot. Like in a lot of the the talks and things I do, everyone's, you know, it it feels like it's sports betting focused or online gambling focused, which is an issue, right? We know this. But brick and mortar casinos aren't going anywhere and they're expanding at rapid rates. So it's like sometimes I feel like they're like, oh, that's old news. This is the new focus. But really, you know, because accessibility makes um gambling easier through like the online, but in a state like Oklahoma or in other states where there's more and more casinos going up, that access is still expanding. It's just, it looks a little different because we've got to get in the car. And for me, I always made sure I had like full clothes on, I didn't go in my PJs. But you know what I mean? So there's there's some steps, a little few more steps. Um, that certainly wasn't the case for a lot of people, but for me, you know, there were steps that I had to get dressed, I had to get in the car, I had to drive to the the actual casino. Um, and it so I'm I'm really glad that you that you're making that point and and you're talking about that.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Christine. If I'm gonna interject, so you used a very important word, you use accessible. So this was not my work, but I did bring it together. So we talk about the three A's. We talk about the acceptability. As you know, casinos and gambling were not acceptable up until legalization started to spread them all out over the country. And then we talk about availability. Of course, legalization paved the way for more available casinos and modes of gambling, hence sports bedding, and et cetera. And then we talk about accessibility, which is where I focused on in my study. That's the proximity. The closer you are to Resorts World or any casino, the more accessible it is. And there you have it, that's when the harm can become, you know, you can see the problem gambling harms, or you can see things happening to folks, you know, and the neighborhood as well. So what I'm currently working on is, you know, I'm fusing the three A's, and that's usually what we use as we I call an ecological constructs of urban casinos. You need the three A's. So where casinos and gambling is now normalized. Let's just say it's accept it's acceptable. Back in the day, it was not. So casinos are not going anywhere, to your point. They're also more available. They're coming up every day. But there's also a school of thought that comes out that says once government or a state, um, and casinos are state regulated, and I'm focusing on casinos, and I apologize for that. Um, they're accustomed to getting that money. They don't want to not get that money. So there are gonna be more casinos. You get it? So that was something I just read in somebody's book, and I don't remember the person's name right now, actually this week. So that was very important. And of course, we have the accessibility. The more accessible it is, as Adam would say, driving to Atlantic City from New York is 122 miles. Who wants to do that? But you could just jump on the train, you know, get on the bus, ride your bike, walk in, or drive.

SPEAKER_02

There you have it, urban casinos. Absolutely. And I just want to kind of, as we transition into the research, I want to kind of go back to that traumatic experience of of witnessing um somebody take their own life in a casino, right? And then as you, as you navigated into the research part of this field, what were your thoughts when you when you saw research or the actual research that says, you know, suicide rates in gamblers, you know, what were your thoughts when you saw that? And then you have that your own lived experience to that witness.

SPEAKER_00

That's great. But that's a great question, Christy. So, you know, at first, like everything else, 9-11 to me was a movie. That was a movie. This, I did not just see this. This is something I'm witnessing in the movie, but it was real. It never made headline news. Um and, you know, there were some talks about what might have happened, what might not have happened, what the person was experiencing. We never, we will never know. I never dealt, you know, got deep into that. But I will say when I started in my pre prevention work and started looking at, you know, ATODs, alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, and then I was like, wait a minute here. We've got substances here, but we've got the the so-called hidden addiction over here. But it's the hidden addiction that's producing more suicides than the alcohol, for example, because you don't know if it's the actual take drinking or taking the alcohol or if it's um if it was intentional or not. With a casino suicide, it's usually intentional. That's what I think. Because the person is feeling so bad, badly, and they're like, I can't do this anymore. And they're like, this is my last hope. I'm gonna do it. Um, with alcohol and tobacco and other drugs, you are impaired. So we never know, did they mean to do this, or was it a function of just taking too much substance? So that's what I came up with, the realization for me. That was my realization.

SPEAKER_02

That's a really that's a I mean, that's a really hard re that's really hard to think about in that context, right? That that with suicide and gambling, that intention that's behind it and and just experiencing myself, I'm sure Adam can can say the same, those, those really hard thoughts, those really dark thoughts of like why, especially something that's so stigmatized when it comes to uh the help space, you know, you feel so alone and just the feelings around the disorder, the addiction, and you know the intentions behind those thoughts. I mean, I just remember those were some of the scariest moments of my life towards the end of my my own struggle with gambling and and the thoughts of not wanting to be here anymore. So I can completely relate to it's not something I'm ingesting, it's not something that's impairing my thinking. It's it's my mental health around my behaviors with gambling. And and we certainly need more and more research to better understand, you know, that whole thought process, how we can we can create interventions and those types of things.

SPEAKER_01

Real real quick too, like as you're talking, you know, when I answer the 20 questions of GA, I usually always say no to number 20, which is have you ever considered self-destruction or suicide as a result of your gambling? And you know, I often hear people in the room say, Well, I say yes to that because even though I never considered taking my own life, what I was doing was essentially self-destructing, right? And I and I kind of, you know, the as as the years go on in recovery, I I identify with that even more because there were moments where I made decisions that absolutely blew my life up at the time, and and I just had zero, you know, just zero remorse uh after the fact. So I I maybe I do answer yes to that at this point, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's one. Yeah, and I think it's always interesting with those 20 questions, like the further you get into recovery, the more like the ones you might have said no on, right, um, start to be a yes. And I think that that's more of our own understanding of what we went through as we get further away from from the harm. But yeah, interesting. Yeah, stages of change, stages of change. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Which we love, we love talking about the stages of change. Dr. Ogil knows what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01

That's why she's the doctor. So let's get into this study. I am so fascinated by it because, like I said, I I was living in New York as you were doing this. Uh, I was in New York from like 2011 to 20 end of 2015. So correct me if I'm wrong. So, you know, essentially the research in 2023, it was the effects of casino proximity on poverty levels in New York City over like a five-year span. Can you walk us through what you found in that initial study and like what surprised you the most?

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, that's that that is true. So that was not my original title. So that was so my whole dissertation was casino proximity and ecologic study, dah dah, dah, dah, dah. So, you know, 177 page pay uh 77 pages of a dissertation is a lot of work. 18 tables later, and um, you know, I talked to some folks and I said, you know what, I don't want to be the dissertation person who tries to use their dissertation to get 10 studies out of it, but I want to get two solid pieces. So I did a lit review first, setting up the stage, as I was taught by some folks at Columbia University, and then I did the main study. So I took out a piece of it, basically ran some huge statistical models. So I had like a two-hand over, and I'm not gonna get too technical on this. And then I said, let's look at what the effects would be on poverty levels. So as a human services faculty chair and professor, we always want to look at, you know, what's happening in our society, and we always look at socioeconomic factors. Those are less like things we look at. And so I picked one, which is poverty levels, because we could actually measure that um or look at that, examine that with zip code data from the census, measuring the distance to and from the casino. So there have been proximity studies done in the past. Um, so I'll just go back a little bit. One study, this is going back some years. Would say 50 miles from a casino, you know, could create um problem gambling for participants, participating in the casino. As we get closer to my study, we saw shorter distances. And some studies talked about high and low. Um, and I just, you know, pulled it all together, synthesized it, and said, look, we're gonna create a high um casino proximity and a low casino proximity. High would be one to 30 miles from the location. And 31 to 50 would be low, meaning you're going way out into Long Island, Westchester, et cetera, et cetera. And so the study actually showed, uh, using these two theories, by the way, exposure theory. So when a new casino comes into the environment, according to our favorite Dr. Schaefer and Dr. Laplant, um, there are original exposure models, uh, you know, when they use that with the exposure theory, a casin is considered an environmental toxin. Um, so if you want to, yeah, if you want to go back in now and look at, and I usually use the parallel of COVID. When COVID came in, it was an environmental toxin, it just infected everybody. Now then you have, so that's the exposure part of it. But over time, excuse me, as you go and you we get the the vaccines and everyone starts to develop a resistance, that we adapt to this. So it's the same thing with the casino. The theory is in year one, when the exposure is highest, we're supposed to see a lot of ramp up in the casino. But by year five, you know, everyone should have almost been adapting. It's now a normal, a normal structure in the environment. It's no longer the environmental toxin. So that was what I was looking at. Year one, year five. When the casino first came in at year one, would poverty levels be higher based on these measurements and distances? Year five, would poverty levels uh, you know, re you know, be reduced. Um, it really was negligible. What I saw within high casino proximity was from which is from one mile to 30 miles, um, nothing changed between year one and year five. Basically saying the closer you are to a casino, the more you're gonna go and gamble, which could create pro poverty levels, etc., and problems in the society. That's essentially the crux of the study.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I always bring it back, I bring it back to Oklahoma because we have so many casinos. Like where I'm at, there are huge, like eight huge casinos within a 30-minute drive. And these are like Vegas style casinos, they're not like little deli casinos or which is still extremely problem problematic, right? When you're in like Chicago, for instance, right? All these little delis that did that have casinos in there or little skill machines or or things in there. It's just it makes a lot of sense, but I don't think I've ever thought about the impact to the economy and and on the other side of it, right? We always look at what casinos bring to the state, the huge tax revenues and things that that casinos bring to the state, that the state really focus on, right? So I think in 2024, Oklahoma made 3.4 billion in gambling revenue. The state, for instance, gets 170 million of that, right? Um, and so that's what what they love about having and and a lot of good goes back into the communities, you know, through some of that. But I don't think anybody has ever focused on what it does to poverty rates and and things like that. It's it's very, very interesting to hear you talk about this side, the other side of the study. Well, what is it actually doing for our communities? Like it's doing a lot of good in certain communities, right? Especially if they're um in native areas, but in just your general everyday city that maybe isn't tribal, um, what is it actually doing to the community? So it's a very, very interesting kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Whoops, you want me to piggyback a little bit on that? So I work in Tennessee. Um, I work in Nashville at the American Baptist College. You know, I am right now running a gambling project in one of our courses. And I'll tell you, I'm in zip code 37207, and right next to the school is 37208, the highest incarcerated zip code according to Brooklyn's institution in the United States. However, as you know, Tennessee has no BRIC. It's strictly sports vetting and lottery. But look, if you look at the numbers, Tennessee's in the top 10. So with but you look at the gateway cities, you got Kentucky, you can go right over. They're not casinos, they're gaming halls in the racetrack. But then you've got Arkansas, you got Oklahoma, you've got Alabama. So we the numbers are how true are the numbers? But one of the things you I wanted to go back to is socioeconomics. Yes, casinos do bring revenue. Yes, casinos do bring jobs. And I'm speaking with my researcher hat now. And yes, casinos will bring some community improvements. But the question that all researchers and I ask is how sustainable are these things? They're not sustainable. That is the piece that no one talks about. Yes, the resorts world put up a nice rate um subway station. You know that, Adam. When you drive past, you see it, or that's what they've done. So that's a new thing for the the um the environment and also for the community. But where are the jobs? Who's getting the jobs? What kind of jobs are they getting? And if you're giving the lower-end jobs such as cleaning the casinos to the locals around that the casino, you're now exposing them also to the element. They may be walking through and cleaning the casino and they see, oh my goodness, this guy just won 10,000. They may want to think about it. In New York, if you work at the casinos, you cannot play at the casinos in New York. You have to go to another state. So there comes Atlantic City or Connecticut. But the sustainability of this, of all the perks that they're given, has been in question for some time. And that's something that I think requires further research.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I don't know if you knew Dr. Ogilvie, but I also worked in the casinos, not in New York, but I worked in the Connecticut casinos when I was younger, and then I worked for MGM Resorts for four years. And, you know, you're talking about sustainability. You know, I don't know what the standard turnover rate is for like any given job, but I'll tell you right now, like, you know, it's a high turnover rate, especially for the lower level positions like dealers and chip runners, and you know, so even though it's bringing in a lot of jobs, to your point, I can't tell you how many of my coworkers maybe weren't in the same boat as me as far as the far end of the spectrum with problem gambling, but to your point, once you're exposed to it, absolutely, you know. Um, so so we're talking we keep talking about communities. I I have to ask you this question. So the conversation in America right now with gambling, it's it's all about the individual gambler, right? And all of your work centers on communities, from what we can tell. So, why is that distinction important and what does the field lose when we only look at the individual?

SPEAKER_00

That's a really good question and a loaded question.

SPEAKER_01

So um We got time. Take your time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's just so many places to go with this. So let me go back to um the models of how gambling, and I'm gonna use, you know, the casino model again. We know that the house has a built-in edge, we know all of these things. Um, we know the true cost of gambling is never told, never even seen. We don't, we can't even see it actually. The player doesn't see it. Maybe they don't even understand it. The mathematics behind it, the technology behind it, so it's all about psychology. It does have some psychological components to it. You can win $10,000 betting 50 cents. Let's put that out there. So you're gonna sit there betting 50 cents, hoping to win $10,000. Before you know it, you're you're in $1,000. Because the perception is so off. So that's the one thing. I think one of the things we have to educate individuals, and that's where my prevention work comes in. We are not educating and giving enough awareness to this. Um, we're sitting here saying, I'm gonna bet 50 cents with the hopes of winning $10,000. But does it ever really happen? What's the odds on that? Um, the community also needs to step in. The community, and I mean I say community, I'm talking everyone, legislators, community folks, human services workers, educators, myself, researchers, and say, look, take it off the individual, put it back on the industry, put it back on the community, because that's where it is. We're just individuals. A person, we don't know what what their struggles are, we don't know what their traumas have been, we don't know what the where they're coming from. And maybe it's an outlet, maybe I've had a bad day, maybe I need to not go home because I have an abusive spouse, and it could be any number of factors. And um, how is this person gonna get the help? And particularly in black and brown communities and um indigenous communities, people don't talk about these things. They just don't. So, how are you gonna know until you hear, oh, John Brown jumped all over the fence or drove his car off the highway because, and then you go and you do the back study and you realize, oh my goodness, this person had it, a problem with gambling. And that's how you do it. So I think it the the end in order to get to the individual, we have to get to the community and then push it up the stream. That's how I see it.

SPEAKER_02

I know I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, I think I think it becomes more of a community effort. Like the like there's so much we can do within the community, right? We can um knowledge is the is one of the biggest pieces, right? Being able to talk about it, being able to be informed when let's say they want to build a casino in in our community. Like, what is this really gonna look like? What are the conversations that we need to have? What are the prevention methods we need to use within the community, within our schools, within all these things to make sure that there's a real understanding of what it actually means to have a casino in our backyard and really kind of lay out like these are the harms that people can experience. So let's make sure that we have programs and things in place. And I think that's one of the bigger issues that maybe you can speak to, Paulette, is like how behind we are oftentimes when we bring gambling into the state. Oftentimes we we, you know, there's some states that have really gotten this right where they've written in funding to support the communities if harm is experienced, right? Um, you know, states like Louisiana, Minnesota, like they they really have have stepped up and taken care of their community in that way. But there's a lot of states who are bringing in like sports betting and online gambling, and even if they don't have brick and mortar casinos, and they're not really thinking ahead to any harm that could be experienced, right? Even though we know there's a preval high prevalence rate, there's all these things out there. But I feel like we're so far behind sometimes in in that regard. And now we're just trying to play catch up and we're trying to figure out how do we get this in place now? What do you feel as somebody on the prevention side working within communities? Like, what's your biggest kind of frustration around that?

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for that question. So, you know, I'm gonna take myself out of New York and go down to Tennessee now. So when I looked at the numbers for sports vetting, so I'm moving now from the casinos into sports betting. New York is number one in sports betting. We just you know, this is just it's out of control. But Tennessee is in, and I some some some research shows me the top 10, some say the top 20. But whatever is it, it is top 20, top 10, and I'm gonna try to do this from memory. Tennessee went from like 27 million or billion in uh I think it's million in 20 um four to 527. And it's million or billion, and you know, I want to say, but anyway, 24 to 572 or some number in that 500 plus is still a high number in 2024 for sports betting. That's pretty, pretty high. So um and but but no one knows about anything. If I were, I'd asked my students to do a scope and review in Nashville and in Memphis. What do we have in Nashville? Nothing. Do we even have any GAs, which you know, I think there's two like outside of Nashville, and of course, we know about the gambling clinic in Memphis, which is at the University of Memphis. So we know about that. So I went and I asked around Nashville what's happening in terms of, you know, like community work. We have everything. We are strong on substances, we are strong on mental health, we are very strong on cannabis, tobacco, you know, all the other substances, but we're not strong in gambling. Yet the Tennessee numbers for sports betting is off the chain. How is this possible? So I brought the question up. I've been talking to, and as a gambling researcher and, you know, educator, one of the things I did in my research, my prevention course, I just included two modules of gambling. And I've been doing that since 2024. So the students that I have working with me now, I mean, I get things like, you know, Dr. Ogilvie, I'm not looking at the billboard signs when I'm driving, and I never noticed it said, you know, BetNGM or DraftKings. And so so just that little bit of work that I've done has brought this level of awareness. I had another student said, you know, I play Candy Crush on my phone, and um, I buy these lives for 99 cents. Next thing I know, I'm buying more lives, and before you know it, I would have bought $100 worth of lives. And I explained to her, that's part of gambling. Oh, I didn't know buying 99 cents live. You're waiting you're, you know, you're betting money, you're purchasing something to use for something else. You're trying to get more lives to play a game. You're not winning actual currency, but you're winning something else. So you're wagering and winning. So I explained, you know, the whole definition of gambling and all that. And these are just some of the little changes that I have done. So I think in the prevention space, where and I think it's now come into Tennessee and it's probably come into Nashville, is we're integrating gambling into it. So start small. I'm at a faith-based institution. So whenever I present on like mental health or stigma, I always use a little bit of gambling. So I interjected it everything in small doses because remember, I'm in the Bible belt, I have to be careful. I'm at a Baptist college and all of these other things, and I just don't know with the stigma and and the just the southern framing of gambling how it would be received. So that's what I do on my end.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So this question, you don't have to answer it, but I think it's important. And I'm not trying to point the finger at anybody, but you know, I I think these are the types of conversations that we need to have. So, you know, you've worked with legislators, community workers, industry clinicians. In your experience, which of those groups is most resistant to hearing what the research actually says, and how how do we get through to them?

SPEAKER_00

Wow, that is a question. Um, you know, I don't I don't I wouldn't say no one is resistant. I think sometimes it's how it's framed. So, you know, language is everything. So when I do prevention work, is language matters, you know, how you say things, how you frame it. Um it's a different type of conversation for each um entity or for each audience, I would say. So if you're talking to legislators, they want to hear about money. How can we, how can we bring more money in? So you you now and then you have to frame it differently. If you're talking to researchers, and although as a researcher, we are we're supposed to be unbiased, we all have our biases. I'm neither foreign or against gambling, but I do have my positions that I take outside of my research hat. And sometimes that could just spill over into my research, you know, based on how I'm writing and putting things out there. So that's another thing. And also it depends. Is a researcher more um concerned with getting funding to prove a point or getting funding from a particular entity to write about a particular topic or investigate a particular topic? Those are some questions that we always ask. You know, we take the Hippocratic oath of what we're gonna do as researchers, and this is what where we, you know, and I leave it at that. In terms of practitioners, um, it depends. So if you have a practitioner who's a little bit more open-minded, who doesn't have a faith and or some kind of cultural identity, it could be problematic. For example, if um I were to go to a faith-based social worker and they're telling you prayer is everything, they're not gonna want to hear what I'm saying. So it's it's just how it's all framed. But I think that all these institutions are important, and it's a question of what are we gonna do? How are we gonna get to the leadership in those institutions? You know, and I always use the base, the baseline. So I use my students in all of my prevention work, and I have non-traditional students, which is great. So they have lived experiences, they've been around, they've done things, and many of them are ministers, many of them are pastors, and they're like, I want to take this back to my community, I want to take this back to my church. That's the kind of stuff. So I think it's just getting to the granular level and then just increasingly increasing it up and filter. How are we gonna filter? If we just try to start at the top, we probably are not gonna get because it's gonna stay at the top. But if we start at the top, the bottom and try to move it up and let the folks at the bottom say, look, listen to me, hear me. This is what we need, this is what's happening. We are in the trenches, then I think it works.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Make sense.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, just as we're kind of winding this conversation down, I just want to say how grateful we are that you are on the eVive scientific advisory panel, and that you're you're bringing this insight and expertise to the work that we're trying to do to help those like myself and and Adam overcome their gambling harm and you know, better understand their behaviors around gambling and all the work that that we try and do here at eBuy. So just a big shout out for the amazing conversation and for what you bring to the the work we're all trying to do in this space. Um, so we have one last question, and this is what we like to kind of end our episodes on. And it will, it's what gives you hope in the field, in the space, and and you know, we like to leave it with that, a hopeful message.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness, that is a great message. You know, so um the the other side of my hat that I never told you about was that I am a social justice advocate. You know, I am the person who's always advocating for everything and everyone. Um, I believe in equity, you know, I believe in transparency, and I believe in taking care of our communities. Um, just from meeting all the folks that I have met and just integrating my thoughts, and I have forged some really good um relationships this last year into this year, both here in New York and down in Tennessee. And um just seeing how open folks have been and welcoming, that that gives me hope. Um, my ideas are respected, you know, my work is grounded in research. So, you know, I get that level of respect, and that gives me hope. What gives me hope also, you know, is the students to see how wow they are taken onto this. They see and they really want to go out and do good work. At American Baptist College, you know, or lexicon is social justice, equity, advocacy, and leadership with a Christian framework. So while we don't, I won't say shove Christianity, we are faith informed. And I think that faith gives us hope in general, overall, in everything we do.

SPEAKER_02

Lovely, like, lovely way to put that. Thank you so much. That was beautifully said. And again, we appreciate your time, we appreciate this amazing conversation. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Take care now.