Real Talk Real Impact
Real Talk, Real Impact is about honest, down-to-earth conversations that unpack the messy, real-life truths about health, equity, and community. We connect everyday experiences and stories to public health in ways that feel like a kiki with your friends. This is where fun, unfiltered and enlightening can all be one. Each episode aims to spark curiosity, highlight new careers and opportunities in the public health space, to leave listeners with actionable insights they can carry into their own lives or communities.
Real Talk Real Impact
Is Canada's Healthcare System Actually Better Than America's? with Alexandra Piatkowski, MPH
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Does public health have a trust problem?
In this episode, Dr. Marissa Robinson sits down with Alexandra Piatkowski, epidemiologist, public health consultant, and founder of Piet Public Health, to discuss community engagement, public health careers, health equity, epidemiology, and the differences between the U.S. and Canadian healthcare systems.
Many public health professionals are trained to collect data, conduct community health needs assessments, and distribute surveys. But are we truly listening to communities, or are we checking a box?
Alexandra shares her perspective on authentic community engagement, why good intentions aren't enough, and how public health organizations can move from performative outreach to meaningful impact. She also breaks down common misconceptions about universal healthcare in Canada, compares public health systems in the United States and Canada, and offers practical career advice for students and professionals navigating the evolving public health workforce.
If you're interested in public health careers, epidemiology, health equity, community health, healthcare systems, public health consulting, social determinants of health, community-based research, health policy, or public health leadership, this episode is for you.
🎙️ In this episode:
• Public health careers and career development
• Epidemiology and population health
• Health equity and social determinants of health
• Public health consulting and entrepreneurship
• U.S. vs Canada healthcare systems
• Nontraditional public health career paths
Chapters
@0:00 Introduction
@2:31 How did you end up doing the work you do today?
@7:14 Biggest differences in how USA and Canada approaches public health and healthcare
@7:18 Biggest breakdown between listening to communities and making real change
@19:14 Moving from “good intentions” to real-world impact.
@27:15 How did you learn to trust that your path didn’t have to look linear?
@38:52 Where does public health show up in your work, even behind the scenes?
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And for me, I'm a big proponent of universal health care. I would say it is far from perfect in Canada and there are a lot of gaps. For instance, like I said, it pretty much just includes like your basic medical and emergency services. It doesn't really include things like mental health, dental care, pharmacare, you know, allied health services, like physiotherapy. Those are things that generally you're also gonna have to have private insurance to cover, or you're gonna have to pay out of pocket. So a lot of people in Canada do have private insurance on top of the public insurance that covers the basic things.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the Real Talk Real Impact Podcast. This is the podcast where we center the voices and lived experiences and bold ideas shaping the future of public health. I'm your host, Dr. Marissa Robinson, and I'm joined here by my girl, Allie Pietkowski. Let's get into it. Allie, how you doing today? I'm doing great. Hi, Marissa. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for being on the show. Of course. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. And I'm gonna go ahead and get into your bio to let the people know a little bit about you because if folks don't know who you are, you're moving and shaking across the North Atlantic. Okay. She's up and down. All right. She's in the U.S. and she's in Canada shaking things up. So Allie Pietkowski is the founder and CEO of Piet Public Health, a woman-owned public health and social impact consultancy focused on turning community insight into practical action. An epidemiologist and project management professional, she partners with public health, healthcare, and social impact organizations to lead equity-centered community needs assessments and engagement, strategic planning and evaluation. She is passionate about helping organizations move from good intentions to real world investment. Y'all, please give her a virtual and your best round of applause ever. Woo. Claps for everyone. Right, claps for everyone. You get a clap, you get a clap, you get a clap. Everyone gets a clap. Everyone gets a clap. So as a familiar public health girly and fellow epidemiologist, that's why I was saying, ow, ow, ow. Can you start with your story? And can you tell our audience that uh a little bit about not only how did you end up doing this work today, but what inspired you to really start your story?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And again, thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here and always love to talk with fellow public health girlies, fellow Eppies, um Eppies represent. So my story in public health starts off from a pretty young age. I would say, you know, as cheesy as it may sound, I was always one of those people who wanted to make a difference in the world in some way. And for me, health was a way that I wanted to do that. I just always had this strong interest from health in a very young age. I was fascinated by it. When I was in kindergarten, when they asked you, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I want to be a scientist who writes books about her science. So I did go the science route. Haven't written any books yet, but hopefully at some point. On the bucket list, yes. Exactly. That would be pretty cool to do. So yeah, I had this fascination with science. And then I remember when I was in high school, I started watching TV shows like Dr. G, Medical Examiner, and Mystery Diagnosis. I don't know if anyone's watched those. Very interesting shows. And I was kind of fascinated by um the mystery and evidence side of things, and you know, what makes people healthy, what makes people less healthy, what leads to diseases, and kind of doing the detective work to figure that out, and just realizing, you know, health is a huge issue in our society, and so many people are unfortunately struggling with poor health, and it's often, you know, through no fault of their own. And what can we do about that? And I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I didn't know all the different paths that were out there. So I think a very common story in public health is that often we start out by wanting to do something more clinical, and we're like, oh, I'll be, you know, a doctor or nurse or something like that. Because those are just the career paths that you hear about in the health field more. So I decided to do like general health sciences studies, university for my undergrad. And that was actually a really good choice because it kind of laid the foundation. I got the science exposure, but also learning about the healthcare system and health policy and social sciences, and especially all of the different determinants of health. And I definitely knew that on some level, but just to talk about it more explicitly and hear it called out like, you know, it's not just genetics, it's not just your biology, it's not just access to the healthcare system, it's the conditions that we're all living and breathing every day. And those have the biggest impact on your health. And I realize I'm more of a big picture person. I want to try to address things at a population and community level, and that's where we can have a really big impact on people's health in a more proactive way. So that's kind of what got me started in public health in the first place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I love that. And so many folks stumble upon public health. So it's wonderful to know that even though you knew you wanted to be a type of scientist, you still technically are a scientist of sorts, right? Because you're studying people and infections and how all of these things kind of coincide. But from a traditional standpoint, so many of us that are that start in public health do start in the medical field or do start as a bio or a chemistry major or health sciences major, and like I'm going to med school and I'm gonna be a physician, and then you get in them classes like I did, and you say, you know what, this is just not my ministry. Love the science, hate the math. So how can we still thrive and still save people's lives? And instead of having a handful of patients that you can make an impact on their life, what about making population health impacts? And I love that we have that in common. And from the epidemiological standpoint, knowing that all these systems play a role in persons where they live, worship, play, work, and just live, all of those things impact people's health and their health outcomes. So that's a great segue into our first question for you. So I said a little bit briefly in your intro that you are a global girly. Um and we do have some other synergy just for those who don't know that we are also both mentors at the PH Spot, which is a global consulting career club. So if you are a public health person and you don't know where to start, go on over to PH Spot and you can meet up with one of us to talk about your career and talk about the things that we know as experts and can help you and guide you. And it's a wonderful membership that we're both a part of. Agreed. Check it out.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I think we're both passionate about mentorship in general.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it's so important, right? And so many people don't realize that it's who you know in those relationships that you build. And I think 10 years ago you could say, okay, I know the I know the field, I know the science, I'm doing the research, I'm doing the work, so I can get to where I need to go. But now, if you don't also build relationships and build rapport and establish those things as you climb, it it what's the point, right? Um, but getting back to your experiences, so you've worked in both remotely in the US and in Canada. So I would love to talk about when you zoom out, what are some big differences that you see and how each country kind of approaches public health and healthcare? And then what do you think these systems get right and maybe get very wrong?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Great question. So just to give a little bit of context, I'm Canadian. I live in Canada, live in Toronto, born and raised a couple hours away, and lived here for the past 11 years. And like Marissa said, I've had the pleasure of working across both countries and both systems, and it's really, really interesting. Like I always love to work in different systems and just different places and understand all the local and contextual factors is really interesting to me. Um, so I'll give my perspective on the Canadian versus US system. I feel like there's there's a lot of different perspectives, and yeah, you know, I've never lived in the US myself, I've never experienced the health system there really myself, so I can't necessarily give that perspective, but I can give like the epi and consulting perspective of both systems. Okay. So Canada, of course, we have what's referred to as universal health care, which is great. You know, everyone gets something for free or through their tax dollars, you know, in terms of basic emergency and primary care medical services without having to pay for it out of pocket. And then of course the US has a price. Um so that is the main difference between our two countries. And for me, I am a big proponent of universal health care. I would say it is far from perfect in Canada, and there are a lot of gaps. For instance, like I said, it pretty much just includes like your basic medical and emergency services. It doesn't really include things like mental health, dental care, pharmacare, you know, allied health services, like physiotherapy. Those are things that generally you're also gonna have to have private insurance to cover, or you're gonna have to pay out of pocket. So a lot of people in Canada do have private insurance on top of the public insurance that covers the basic things. So in some ways, the universal is kind of a misnomer. And we definitely do have issues with things like wait times, particularly in the emergency department and for specialist care, which of course are an issue in the US as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of in a different way. Our the reasoning behind the issues is a little bit different. Different. Yeah, just because we can't necessarily afford to provide um, you know, more and better quality services like for everyone out of our tax dollars. So that is um an issue. But overall, I think a big strength of our system is that at the very least, everyone is getting something. And you know, no one has to worry about going to the emergency department or being hospitalized and having to pay for that out of pocket, which I think is a wonderful thing and does really help to promote equity, although there are inequities in terms of access and reliability of services. When you have a healthcare system that's a certain way, like the US being more privatized, it's very hard to switch from that. So I'm not saying um unfortunately it's probably gonna switch from that overnight. But I do think ideally that would be something um that the US could learn from Canada and just you know, providing more equitable services for people without them having to pay out of pocket or needing to have insurance, which obviously disadvantages millions of people.
SPEAKER_04Millions of people. And some of the specific modalities that we have here in the US are constantly being underfunded or will be cut or are under attack right now as we speak. So it is really a uncomfortable time to have those, some of those conversations. Because if somebody has had care their whole life, it's a lot to pay out of pocket for things. When you just need a uh you know, dental cleaning and you don't have insurance. Oh, I see why people just get root canals. I see. Because it's it's it's it's a whole nother gamut of of payment that you have to have. Or if you use Novocaine or if you use anything to help numb the pain, that's a whole nother list of things, let alone fluoride and all this other stuff. Anyway, going down a rabbit hole here, but but you get the point. It's like everything is itemized and is just tacking on to a bigger issue. Yeah and to think about universal health care. I think from a global standpoint, a lot of people say that, oh, well, if you have universal health care, it solves a lot of problems. Well, here you are saying that yes, it solves some key word there and operative word there, some, but not all. And it's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution until we can figure out how to address the social determinants of health and incorporate all of these systems so that dental vision, health insurance, you know, mental health are all of one thing, and not, oh, we gotta do the head, and then we're doing the heart and the cardiovascular, and then we're doing yeah. Seeing if you have the specialists, yes, you can't you can it's like we're one body, yeah, but yet we dissect it based on uh uh the body part or the specialty. So that can be very frustrating. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01And there's so many countries that have you know supposed universal healthcare, but it varies so much from country to country, and you know, Canada has a lot to learn from other countries as well. Um so yeah, it's all in how it's actually applied in practice. Applied.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01But I do think some things on a more positive note for the US, um, you know, kind of starting my consulting career in the US and really focusing on things like needs assessments and strategic plans, I do think that is actually a strength of the US, just the fact that, you know, hospitals have to do needs assessments and strategic plans every few years, health departments do them for accreditation. It kind of varies in terms of people using them as a more check the box approach versus actually being in board. Right, right, right. Using the findings, but I do think it's a positive thing that they are mandated and you know that the community has to be engaged and um this data is collected and incorporated, and these plans have to be made. It's very much done in Canada as well, it's just not mandated to the same degree, and I would like to see that more mandated in Canada. Um, I also think the US is a lot farther ahead of us in terms of technology and digital health, um, and just data being a bit more connected from an Epi perspective. I found it a lot easier to do needs assessments in the US because data was a lot more publicly available. It's not as publicly available in Canada. I feel like the data that we collect often isn't as strong. Uh, we don't do as well collecting like sociodemographic and race-based data, which is really important. So important. Yeah. Yeah. I think those are some strengths of the US that we can learn from.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that's so nice of you. You didn't have to, but for our audience to just know that there is improvement areas for everybody. Nobody has a perfect unilateral system. And that's the beauty of public health. Like we're here to make sense of some of the things that have been historical traumas, that have been historical issues, and uh hopefully as we continue to find new frameworks and new ways to address these problems and unpack intersectionality, we can actually make a difference. So thank you for sharing that. Um, moving to the next question, a lot of organizations say they value community voice, but you focus on actually turning that into action, which is so important. So, where do you see the biggest breakdown between listening to communities and making real change?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think going back to what we were saying before about the needs assessments, I think often they're seen as a check the box exercise and like community engagement in general is sometimes seen as that. Like that's the end goal, that's the deliverable. Okay, we engage the community and now we're done. But we need to put more focus on what happens after that. Yes, we engage the community, that's great. But how are we actually gonna make sure that we truly listen to what they had to say and incorporated that into our strategic planning, our operations moving forward? And how is it something that's more ongoing and sustainable and not just a one-time thing? One time. Okay, we held one consultation. Well, who is actually able to participate in that consultation? Um, do they know what happened with the data and information that they shared and where's it going? How can they follow up in a more ongoing basis? Yeah, I think that's where the breakdown often is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's that's very real. And so many communities need to make action, right? To turn the things into action because they have funders, because it's because they have deliverables they have to meet, and especially depending on who your funders are, there is a lot of paperwork that goes into that for the monitoring and evaluation, for reporting, all of that stuff. And a needs assessment is just like the tip of the iceberg when we talk about community voices. And so thank you for sharing that. And from moving through some of the work that you do at Piet Public Health, you talk a lot about good intentions to real world impact. And what does that actually look like in practice? Because we have some folks who may be brand new to public health, who have never learned about consulting, or have never learned about a needs assessment, and maybe thinking about coming into public health as a career and thinking about all of the different ways that they can make a difference. So, can you talk about what does it mean by doing more than just checking a box and being having and being good intentioned?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's a great segue from our last question, like talking about the community engagement, often being checking the box, and how do we move beyond that? Um, and I think, you know, often we do have really good intentions in public health, and we want to make an impact, but how do we bridge between those intentions and actually having the impact? I think a good example of that is basically what happens after the needs assessment. So more formally with hospitals doing implementation strategies and health departments doing their community health improvement plans or really any strategic plan that an organization is doing, you know, trying to collect the data and hear from the community and relevant stakeholders. But we can't just stop at writing the strategic plan. We need to make sure to actually implement that strategic plan. And I think the barriers around that are often that we don't necessarily think about how it's actually gonna be operationalized when we're making it. Like, oh, these strategies sound great, but often they're at a little bit too high of a level. Like, we're gonna improve healthy eating in the community. We need to break that down a little bit more. Right. Like, what does that mean? You know, who's gonna be involved, who's gonna take the lead on this? What are the barriers that people are experiencing to healthy eating in the community? You know, do people even have access to healthy food in the first place? Can they afford it? Do they have grocery stores nearby? Do they have transportation? You know, what's knowledge around healthy eating? How are we making sure to incorporate different cultural practices and cultural foods? So that's just one example of you know a particular strategy that we might. Have and breaking it down into some more specific goals and looking at those barriers, thinking about all the stakeholders who need to be involved. You know, often organizations tend to operate in silos, like the health departments doing this and the hospitals doing this, and you know, different nonprofits and community health centers are kind of doing their own thing, but we often have the same goals or similar goals. So if we come together to figure out what those are and what we have in common, what we can collaborate on, then we can make a bigger impact. And if that's something that's done in a more sustainable way, like I've seen so many great examples of like different collaboratives of people and organizations coming together in communities to try to improve health, um, beyond just doing a needs assessment and a strategic plan. But how is that done in a more ongoing way for communities? I feel like those are the ones who really have a lot of success. And then ensuring that communities are engaged in those collaboratives in an ongoing way and that it's you know transparent and people can see what's going on and have feedback into it on an ongoing basis.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And for those who are interested in what epidemiology is, this is this is it, right? We're taking individuals in their environment and trying to understand all the things that impact them on a daily basis and helps us understand what are the barriers, what are the challenges, and how can we close and address those disparities and those injustices sometimes and the inequities as well. And a needs assessment is one example of the many tools that we have in public health. So if this interests you in any way, shape, or form as something of, oh, I've seen things in my community where I want to make a difference. You could be doing epidemiology and just not even know it. You are doing public health every single day, and you may not even know it. I tell people all the time, do you brush your teeth? Do you wear a seatbelt? There are so many little things you do every day that you don't even realize are public health. You wash your hands. These are standard practices that we've instituted through public health initiatives and public health practice with behavior change and modeling.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I I love it. I think it's a great way to show all the different things that public health and epi can be. Like for Epi, I think there's often a misconception that is just about infectious diseases, which are all like obviously extremely important to focus on, but chronic diseases and other health conditions as well, and really anything that makes people unhealthy, less healthy or healthy, and what we can do about it.
SPEAKER_04Right. And that goes for communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, neglected tropical diseases, hospital-associated infections. Like the list goes on, y'all. So it's not just even though I am an infectious disease researcher, epidemiologist, that's not the only type of epidemiologist out there. And just because you have an epidemiology background does not mean that you can only go into epidemiology as or being an epidemiologist as a career. You can have that background and that expertise and still help so many different divisions across healthcare, science, public health, but even business, even lawyers, even education. Like there's so many different sectors that you can go into. So it really does open a lot of doors. And I do think as a public health pillar, epidemiology is one of those things that if you want to be in public health, you have to understand it and you have to be able to speak it and walk it like you talk it. Because if you don't, how are people going to be able to understand the complex things that are going on if you can't even explain the basic things that are going on? And I feel like a lot of us have that skill set, but when you go into other spaces, like into tech spaces or into sometimes medical and science places, it is stale over there. And sometimes they get so in the weeds with the clinical terminology and the nomenclature you want to go to sleep.
SPEAKER_02No, we're here to wake people up.
SPEAKER_04Right, we're here to wake people up. Like, wake it up. Public health is here, we're not going anywhere, and we are in every and anything that you do. And as a fellow epidemiologist, I know you can definitely attest to how we're constantly having to explain to people that no, we we we do a lot more than you think we do. And a lot of times you don't know what we do until there's an emergency, there's an outbreak, there's something broken, something's not working, and we are the invisible workforce that when things are going well, you have no idea.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_04And we keep it that way.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but please still fund us when things are going well.
SPEAKER_04Okay, hello, thank you. If you are a funder, um, reach out to us. We both have websites. Thank you so much. But moving right along for the people who feel like their interests are a little all over the place because we just talked about epidemiology, but for those who may not know what they want to do, how they want to do it, maybe they want to go to med school, maybe they want to go to law school, maybe they don't want to go to school at all, maybe they want to start a podcast or a YouTube channel and say, I don't want to do school or I want to do a trade or I want to be a beautician, whatever it is. Can you talk a little bit about what an example is from your career path that can actually be a strength? One, and then two, how did you learn to trust the path that it didn't have to look linear? Because in these highlight reels of social media, sometimes it can seem like, oh, you just knew from diapers you were just gonna be in public health. It's like, well, no, life happened, and then we figured out what we were passionate about. But yeah, so can you tell our audience a little bit about what can be a strength of an example of your career path? And then how did you learn to trust that your path didn't have to be linear?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally. I love this question because this is the advice I give everyone. Like, it's okay to have a lot of interests, and you should explore them and try different things. And it's just as important to figure out what you don't like is what you like, and the more things you try to do.
SPEAKER_04Amen. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Not gonna like most things, and that's okay, and then that goes. And that's okay. Figuring out what you do like. So yeah, this is very much me. I mean, I know I said, yes, I knew I wanted to do something health-related, but I had no idea what within that I wanted to do. And even when I decided to do my MPH in Epi, I kind of knew from the beginning I didn't really want to be a traditional epidemiologist. Right. Like you said, you know, you need to know Epi and public health. It's a really core skill set. So that's why I was interested in developing it. I'm like, you know, this is a great thing to focus on. I'll get that core skill set, and then I can kind of go from there. And I did love data and kind of like trends and just understanding things at a population level. So that felt like a really good fit, but my interests were always all over the place. Like, I never had a particular area of public health that I wanted to focus on. I was never like, oh, I want to study this infectious disease or this type of cancer or like maternal health or something. I'm like, it's it's all interesting, and I love public health, and I'm just interested in all of it. So it was more about the type of work that I was doing than the topic I was focused on. So I was always kind of exploring different areas, like in my practicums during my masters, my first one was all about vaccine safety and analyzing like adverse events following immunization, which was super interesting. And then I wanted to do something completely different for my second one. So I went and did a program evaluation role related to digital health in primary care. And then I ended up working there for a few years after I graduated my master's, and I absolutely love that because it was kind of like not really a public health role, but it was very much still using my public health and Epi skill set and yeah, background and and bringing that perspective. So I would also say that like even if you you know you want to do public health or whatever you want to do, um, a role doesn't have to be public health specific or that field specifically for it to be relevant. Like there's still a lot you can learn and you can bring your perspective to other fields, like you were saying, Marissa, about like bring your perspective to the business world or the tech world. Like there's a lot that those sectors can learn from us. So I would say, yeah, you know, don't limit yourself because something's like traditionally or not traditionally a public health role and think that you can't do that. You you definitely can. Um, and it's really all in how you frame your skills and experience. Um, so yeah, that's kind of what I would say about my journey personally. And you know, I've always kind of brought in like project management, uh evaluation, community and stakeholder engagement. My background's more the quantitative numbers side of things with the Epi, but I love qualitative data as well and really combining mixed methods, data together, because I think we should always have both types of data whenever possible. Um so yeah, just don't limit yourself in that way. And what was the second question again? I was gonna make sure.
SPEAKER_04The second question was about learning to trust that you didn't your path didn't have to look linear.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I mean, I think I always kind of trusted myself on that. Like, yeah, I don't know. I think because I had so many different interests, I it felt unnatural not to pursue all of them because I didn't know what I wanted to focus on. And I just felt this drive to try different things, and that's what I wanted to do, and I kind of trusted myself in that way. Um, but I did, I have always felt pressure kind of to pick a particular interest or pick a particular niche. Um I've kind of just tried to ignore that to be honest. I'm like, I'm just I'm gonna do my own thing and I'm going to short my own path. And even if my classmates are all doing like more traditional epi roles, or they always have these like particular areas of interest, or everyone's doing a PhD. Like I always knew a PhD wasn't for me because I couldn't imagine picking something that specific to focus on for four years. Um, I was always just a more applied person and wanted to get out there. Um, so I think that really helped, and just like finding low-stakes ways to try things, whether it's you know, through student placements, I think that's great. Um volunteer work, um, just finding ways that don't have to be like formally going out and getting a position to get experience and talking to as many people as possible on the field too and hearing about different career journeys, I think is great. And with LinkedIn, you know, just blowing up so much, I feel like that's a great way to do that. Like just follow as many public health people as possible and see all the different ways that a public health career can look because it doesn't just have to look one way.
SPEAKER_04Yep. And the I really want to lean into something that you shared because for many of the folks on social media, on places like LinkedIn, it can seem like people have just gotten opportunity after opportunity, and everything has just been picture perfect. And unfortunately, in this current environment with social media, it makes people's lives seem like they are just that. These perfect linear kind of products where you start here and there's like microwave success. You have the followers, you have the engagement, you have the ambassadorship, you have the brands, you have the support, you have the people who love your content. But that's that takes years to build, it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of patience, it takes knowing your audience and figuring out what is your niche, and those things don't happen overnight. And for some people, they've gone viral, and so they've just built a platform off of that. But to build a community, to build some of the things that we're trying to do, it's gonna take a little bit more than just a flashy headline or a successful project for things to really reach the audiences we need. Because unfortunately, a lot of our work is difficult because if everybody wanted to do this work, they would. And if it was easy, everybody would do it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. It very much does not happen overnight, and yeah, it's not linear, even like once you feel like you've gone to more of a place of so-called success, and you feel like you've reached some of your goals, is often gonna be one step forward and two steps back, two steps back, yeah. Going around in circles a little bit. Um, and you know, I feel like unfortunately, people have experienced a lot of hardships, especially in public health lately, with you know, obviously so everything, yeah, everything and all the layoffs. I do think that's kind of made people a little bit more vulnerable and honest. A lot of people have been pretty open about that, like when they've experienced layoffs and the challenges that they've experienced. And in some ways, even though it's not a good reason for it, it's kind of brought public health and people closer together, like together, right? Empathized, yeah, solidarity in those experiences. Yeah, how can we support? Unfortunately, yeah, and you know, promote collaboration over competition as well. Like a lot of people are turning to consulting and entrepreneurship because there aren't as many of the traditional roles and yeah, consultants coming together to support each other. Um, yeah, people just doing a lot of mentorship and steering roles and trying to help each other out. So that's um kind of a positive thing.
SPEAKER_04That's kind of a bit of a turn it around. But it's okay, and it's important that we talk about these things because we're in the work, we see it every day. I think um also from this space of burnout, perfectionism, like all of those things play a role in sometimes what we see on social media and can make it seem like, oh, it's just this perfect place to work and you're making an impact, and everybody loves you and the work you do, and quite candidly, behavior change is hard to get people to buy into what you're doing is hard when there are people purposefully and strategically putting dis and misinformation out there. Misinformation is oops, you're wearing a green top, but I thought you were wearing purple. That was a mistake. Whereas disinformation is I am dishonestly putting things and being a troll and saying things that are dishonest and not true to cause panic, to cause whatever my outcome is. And there are people doing that consistently across different algorithms, across different platforms, especially against public health, science, and medicine. And it's disgusting, honestly, to see. And it's infuriating when we spent our whole careers doing research, putting out publications, having scientifically sound data that is peer-reviewed, and you have somebody who just claims that they did their own research and looked up an article, and it happens to be quote-unquote fake news. Hmm.
SPEAKER_01Just happens to be. Yeah, yeah. Wonder how that happens.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, wonder how that happens. So, uh, but as we get ready to close, I always ask my guests, where does public health show up in your work even behind the scenes?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I I think it shows up in my life every day, in my work. Um, literally everything I do is public health. It's my love, um, it's all my work that I do with my clients. Um, and then I feel like it it kind of shows up in what we're talking about, like just in the public health community as well, and like the community I want to be a part of in public health, community of public health workers, also other public health consultants and entrepreneurs. You know, we're all doing the work, and I think the more that we come together and make community and support each other, the bigger an impact we can have than just by ourselves. And I feel like that is really a form of public health as well, like just that collaboration and even collaboration across borders back to absolutely at the beginning, just working across both Canada and the US. That's very interesting and huge learning experience in terms of public health. And I hope we can learn from each other and support each other. We're trying to up here in Canada, we're trying to support our American friends from afar.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and we appreciate y'all. Of course, because it's not easy, it's not easy, but having relationships and building trust and having those friendships across borders, it it's so important because public health knows no borders, and just because you're in another country doesn't mean that you are immune to some of the systemic and systematic issues that we see across public health. So thank you for sharing that. And before we close, do you have a place where people can find you? Because Piet, public health, y'all need to tap it in, okay? Y'all need to tap in, get you a mentor, okay? You're looking at her, you're listening to her. Um, so go ahead and shout out whatever socials that you have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally. So the best place to find me is on LinkedIn, so Alexandra Pietowski, also our Piet Public Health page, so P-I-A-T public health. Um, we're also on Facebook, Instagram, and X. And then our website is www.pyotpublichealth.ca. You can subscribe to our newsletter. We also have a very cool insight to impact tool that you can download from there. So yeah, hope to touch with people in one of those areas.
SPEAKER_04All right. Well, Allie, thank you. Thank you, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation on real talk, real impact. Keep showing up, keep asking questions, and keep pushing for better. And until next time, we'll see you later. Bye. Bye.