Health Across the Lifespan

In this episode, Dr. Susan Madsen explores findings from the newly released 2025 white paper “Home, Health, Community, & Allyship 2025: Utahns’ Awareness, Understanding, and Attitudes.” This conversation focuses specifically on Health Across the Lifespan, examining how perceptions, experiences, and challenges have shifted for Utah women and girls over the past three years. Drawing on data from an 83‑item survey of more than 5,200 Utahns, the discussion examines key trends shaping women’s health and well‑being statewide.

Dr. Madsen is joined by two guests—Amy Anderson and Stephanie Stokes—who offer expert insights into the evolving health needs of Utah women and girls.

Guests

Amy Anderson  
Community Connector, Utah Women & Leadership Project
A Bolder Way Forward Advisor — Health Across the Lifespan Spoke
Amy brings experience from Advocate Health Systems and the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity.

Stephanie Stokes  
Community Health Manager, Primary Children’s Hospital
A Bolder Way Forward Advisor — Health Across the Lifespan Spoke

Download the full 2025 white paper HERE.

Visit the Utah Women & Leadership Project website.

Share this episode with colleagues, community partners, or anyone invested in women’s health and well‑being in Utah.

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Transcript

Susan Madsen 0:02

Welcome to the Utah Women and Leadership Podcast. In this episode, we are going to discuss one of the elements of a recently released white paper titled, it's kind of a big long title, so here's the title: Home, Health, Community and Allyship 2025: Utahn's Awareness, Understanding, and Attitudes. Whew! And today we're going to be talking only about one of those areas, and that is what we're calling health across the lifespan. I'm Dr. Susan Madsen, Professor of Leadership at Utah State University Extension, and I'm the founding director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project. And today I'm welcoming two guests to the podcast. First, Amy Anderson, the community connector for the Utah Women and Leadership Project, and she also supports the Health Across the Lifespan Spoke in A Bolder Way Forward. Amy has also worked with Advocate Health Systems and the American Hospital Association's Institute for Diversity. And also joining us is Stephanie Stokes, community health manager at Primary Children's Hospital, who also serves as a Bolder Way Forward advisor for the Health Across the Lifespan spoke. Thank you to both of you for joining me today. It's good. I think we did it together uh last year. So it's good to have you back and talking about some of these. Let me first ask you a question and then I'll get into describing the study a little bit more. And uh the focus of this session is really to go through some of the survey questions uh that we asked in the fall of 2025. And I'll tell you more about that to you listeners in just a minute. But before I dive in, Stephanie, I'd like to start with you. Um you work in the space. Um, you you work for the Inter mountain system in that system and work in the space. And Stephanie, I've known you for a number of years, and you're so passionate about the work of women's health. Um why? What what does what did it why why did you head in that area and what what connects with you so deeply?

Stephanie Stokes 2:18

Oh, thank you, Susan. And it's it's always a joy to talk about that passion with other passionate people, and honestly, I think that's what continues to keep me here. So I have been with Intermountain Health for over a decade and working in the public health prevention world for even longer than that. And I I started in that world because I saw an opportunity, honestly, to prevent grief. I was working in a grief counseling role and supporting families that were experiencing early loss and perinatal loss for their infants, and there was um, you know, just tremendous opportunity to and beauty, if I can be honest, around how people came together in some of the most delicate and tragic moments of life to do to support each other and to connect with each other. And that set me on a career path and a journey to say, hey, we as a community, we as a country can do better to support women who are trying to start families and support families and then ultimately support themselves as well. So my passion for health and women's health has really grown over my time in education and learning, but it's the opportunity to connect with other people who are just as passionate as I am, and those who are even new to the this this topic and this opportunity to educate them. That is what has kept me going for so long and and continues to drive me.

Susan Madsen 3:43

Well, thank you for that. And what I've always appreciated so much through the years about you, Stephanie, is your love and understanding of data. I love that.

Stephanie Stokes 3:53

That is my love language. You can ask anyone on my team.

Susan Madsen 3:57

I love that. Amy, same question for you. You've worked in the health space for lots of lots of years as well.

Amy Anderson 4:05

From right outside of college, I started working at a hospital just to get some experience at one of the lowest levels you possibly could be. I was a registrar in the outpatient department, checking people in and taking outpatient testing orders from doctors, explaining to people how to prep for a colonoscopy. It was a very humbling uh job in many ways, but really gave me such a great perspective of how important healthcare is for everybody, regardless of their age, regardless of their gender, and just that ability to use some of the business skills that I wanted to utilize, but in a really helping way. And I think that's the beauty of working in healthcare to me, is that it combines those essential business skills, but alongside that you get that opportunity to know that you're lifting up people, as Stephanie said too, through some of the hardest part of times of their lives. And I think the passion for women, though, comes a lot because you know, I don't believe women should just be passive recipients of healthcare. I think they need to be forward-thinking and really play a vital role, talking to their providers, talking to their spouses, talking to their children. You know, we we often say in this space that women are the ones who schedule the appointments. They're the ones that are responsible for the health care of their entire family. And so to me, that's as primary caregivers, is such an essential foundation of society, making sure that women understand what it means to be engaged with your own health care, to take preventive measures, to make sure that women and their families have access to everything that they need is just it's vitally important, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Susan Madsen 5:50

No, thank you so much. And and the spoke in A Bolder Way Forward, we call health across the lifespan. And so uh, you know, that includes even teenagers, young children and teenagers, right? But then, Stephanie, you talked about that uh which is in the 20s and 30s, about you know, having children and so forth. Uh Amy, what what area is your passion along the lifespan?

Amy Anderson 6:19

Oh man, I think for the last few years I worked um in long-term care, helping to care for people at the end stages of their lives. I had the opportunity to work administratively, but also to serve as a spiritual counselor for hospice patients. So being able to walk hand in hand and heart in heart with people, uh, to help people understand that death is just part of life was really important for me. And, you know, kind of harking back to that primarily, women were the caregivers. And so to help them understand their role, to kind of shepherd them through the process of often watching a spouse die or a parent die, um that that's really lately the space that I've been passionate about.

Susan Madsen 7:08

So both both of you in some ways, you know, are are dealing with the grief. And what a gift, what a gift. When my father passed, you know, I had interactions with hospice, and oh my gosh, they were amazing. They were amazing. There's some people that can't deal with that grief, and some people I it's a good thing you too and others can can be in that space and be able to talk. Thank you for that. Um, so for the listeners, we're gonna jump in to talk through some of uh, well, all of the there's five survey items, but let me tell you about the survey. So, first the first time we did it was 2023, and then we did it uh uh, you know, collected data in 2024. So what we're gonna talk about today is 2025. So in the fall, we collected data on an instrument that was 83 questions. So all the spokes in A Bolder Way Forward, each spoke had most of the spokes had four. You know, my special ones like yours, we had five questions, right? Um, and so we collected that data and have been publishing reports right since January of 2026. And so this report was just published maybe a month ago. Um, and over 5,200 people from around the state took the survey. We had two samples. One was a representative sample, Qualtrix. We hired Qualtrix to help us, about 2,000 people in all 29 counties. And then we did a convenience sample, which is important too. And that was my family. I had my kids take it, my neighbors, you know, people around us. It's it's not a perfect representative sample. And that sample ended up being a lot more educated people and people with higher incomes and so forth. But having both has been really powerful for us to look. One more thing before I jump in, and that is this. So all of these survey items were agreement, one through seven, one being strongly disagree, seven being strongly agree, and four being neither one, they're kind of unsure, whatever that might be. So when you hear us talk about numbers, think about that scale. So uh the first survey item was really in the section of what we're calling preventive healthcare. And so here's the item, and then I would love to have Stephanie you start and tell me a few of your aha's. Like, what do are we learning? What does it mean? So here's the question it's likely I will be able to schedule and complete a preventive healthcare visit in the next 12 months. You were part of the team that helped us decide on these questions, Stephanie. So, why is this question important? And and a few thoughts on on what you think it's telling us right now. Where are we at in Utah on our perceptions and understanding of these?

Stephanie Stokes 10:12

Of course. We know that preventive health care, you know, going to your doctor once a year to access those screenings, have conversations, get your high, you know, your cholesterol, blood pressure, and diabetes all checked, those are essential to catching diseases early and having conversations more frequently. Any health outcome, right, is really rooted in that opportunity within a preventative health care visit. And as we looked at this item, what we really wanted to understand was kind of intention, right? How likely are you able to do this to compare it with the reality that we see from our health systems data? And in this particular number, and we've seen this for several years now, there's a really high intention with actually not as many women being able to actually or report saying that they actually made it happen, right? We know this is for a variety of reasons. But for this particular item, as I looked at the results, uh, sometimes in data, simply not declining is actually a win. I mean over the past two years, you know, thinking back to when we started the survey, we know over the past two years that healthcare has only gotten more expensive. And that overall families are having to make decisions, really hard decisions, regarding how they spend their time and money. We know that women are often the consumers of healthcare. And so the fact that they are even considering spending their money and time in healthcare, I actually think is an interesting potential win for the efforts that we've had within Bolder Way Forward to really emphasize that preventative health care is essential. Right? Going to your doctor is important and can actually help you save money and the same time, let alone like the joy of your life, right? Being able to spend time with those you love and doing the things you love for longer. Um, the fact that we have not seen a significant decline where we have in other surveys nationally when we ask similar questions, I think could be a win for Utah.

Susan Madsen 12:15

That is so interesting. One of the reasons I'm passionate about this interest, this topic is that we're seeing still in the data, national data, when they break it out by state, that we're in the bottom chunk in terms of mammographies, that we're usually around 46 of 50 states in terms of women's preventative health care. Um, and and I know that just picks up a piece of it, but still some of the data tell us that that we're not as serious in Utah than other states. And even it's 41, I think, this year, on the difference between men and women, on their concern about the affordability of healthcare. And so women in Utah are we're are there's a gap. Women are much more worried than men about the affordability. Um, and so I just wanted to throw those out that those are really real concerns um and why we need to do more work here. But I love your perspective about it being a win if it's not going downhill. It uh, you know, uh we know with the work in the finance spoke that there's so many families in Utah that don't even have $1,000 in emergency funding. So it's interesting. Amy, thoughts?

Amy Anderson 13:35

Yeah. So in this space, um, as we've worked at the county level and across the state in kind of identifying preventive health care visits, we know that um statewide we're less than 70% of women who should be getting a mammogram are getting it. And there's a statewide goal to get that up to 80%. But there's such a difference from county to county, depending on whether you're in a rural area or whether you have immediate access. And so part of the mission of Bolder Way Forward's Health Across Lifespan has been to help women understand one, the importance, two, to figure out what some of those barriers might be to them going in and getting a mammogram or even a colon cancer screening. Um, and then helping to identify ways that we can break those barriers down. So we've been instrumental in bringing mobile mammography units to areas that are down in the 40 percentage range of women and completing a mammogram. Um, and I think that that just points that earlier about the idea that women are passionate about helping other women. We've seen people from Intermountain and University of Utah and Know Your Lemons and The Boob Bus and from Holy Cross Ministries and other community workers come together to say, where is this a problem and what can we do to help break down those barriers? So I think this type of information of, you know, women have that desire, but they're not getting there. What can we do to help break down the barriers that must exist between desire and completion?

Susan Madsen 15:08

Oh, thank you so much. Good insights there. What I found fascinating when we look at the numbers is there wasn't much difference between men and women in their responses on this. And also Stephanie, you on our intentions, we're actually depending on the sample, at least like over towards agree, and even in the convenience sample, a little bit more than agree. So those are pretty solid numbers that people say, yeah, I I I think I'm going to be able to um look at this. I'm glad, Amy, that you uh brought up the county differences. Of course, um people with more education tend tend to have more income. And both of those areas are more likely to get their uh preventative health care and so forth. Let's shift to the next one. Uh what about uh reproductive health? So here's the survey item. I feel empowered to make informed decisions regarding my reproductive health that fit my needs and or the needs of my family. Amy, I'll start with you. What what uh insights do you have? I mean, first of all, Amy, why is this question even important? And then any insights that you have about that.

Amy Anderson 16:36

Empowerment is always important, Susan! And I think especially in this space of reproductive health, tying it kind of back to the earlier comment about preventive health. One of the unique things about women is understanding who their primary care provider is. Is it their OBGYN? Is it a family medicine doctor? Is it an internal medicine doctor? But but for that reproductive age, women really are tied in to their OBGYN, to that idea of reproduction. And as we've met with people all over the state, I think it's really interesting to see the link in people's perspective on the lack of education starting in in high school and college, with women understanding their bodies, with them understanding maturation, with them understanding some of the very women-specific things like endometriosis and fertility risks. And so, to me, this question of if they feel empowered to make informed decisions, it implies that they're informed. And so I think when we, Susan, you and I and Deborah went around the state and talked to different counties about what was important to them, this often came up in a lot of the counties that the whole idea of education for women around sexual reproduction was really limited and that that needed to be something that communities looked at doing. Because if you don't understand your own body, if you don't understand those things, it puts you at more risk for interpersonal violence and all of those other things. So, to me, this question is more than just talking about getting pregnant. It's about understanding who we are as women and our entire health.

Susan Madsen 18:14

Yeah, thank you so much. And I think often about conversations I've had with women across the state and even the term family planning has but makes people nervous in a lot of ways here in our culture, when in reality, if you look at family planning, we need to plan our families, right? But I love your perspective on it. It is is so much more. Just before I go to you, Stephanie, um, does it mean again one through seven in um the representative sample was a little bit over five, uh, which is somewhat agree. Uh, in the convenience sample, really close to a six of agree. Um, and so it's interesting though to look at the difference. And those are women's, and men's are actually about the same. I bet this is one of the spokes that has some agreement between men and women. A lot of them have significant differences. Stephanie, thoughts on what you saw in the data or other thoughts as well.

Stephanie Stokes 19:15

I mean, I think again, bringing back to that trend and where we've been in this journey with Bolder Way Forward for the past few years, we see that Utah, because we are such a family-friendly state, we want families to be the healthiest they can be. And that does require some family planning, right? We know that women who are feel ready both physically and emotionally and mentally to be a parent and and fathers too, right? Every parenting individual, right? It improves health outcomes for that entire family. This is multi-generational work. And so I I've seen our state also invest in some really grassroots community movements that are bringing conversations in really playful ways around menstruation and making period products available, as well as menopause, as well as um even in, you know, kind of our uh other clinical care within pregnancy. Um if our state is continued to protect those in ways that, you know, nationally sometimes isn't always true. And so it's exciting to see, uh, of course, we want every person to feel empowered. And I think that's where the work needs to continue, right? We want every person at every stage of their journey through their reproductive years to feel empowered. So I don't want to minimize the work that we still need to do, but it's always a celebration, I think, to see in this in a in a time where there's just a lot of curiosity, a lot of confusion, that we do have a community that's continuing to talk about these difficult subjects.

Susan Madsen 20:49

Thank you so much. I was just looking at some of the demographic differences. And one of the things, Amy, I was just thinking of your comment on the last item uh was differences in counties. In this one, there wasn't statistical differences around counties. And so again, the question is you know, I'm empowered to make informed decisions. There there's probably differences within the county, but not across counties. So I thought that was interesting. In terms of race and ethnicity, Asian women were significantly more likely to agree with the statement, and black African American women were the least likely, still over somewhat agree. And so there's other other things. Uh, one other thing that is is interesting, women who selected atheists had significantly less agreement than those who selected Latter day Saints. Those were the biggest differences in the religion. So it's interesting. I I always find demographics really interesting. Um so and any other comments either one of you want to make on that question? Or and I'll pull us right into perimenopause, if if not, which is Amy and I know a lot about perimenopause and menopause. So uh let's move into that, which is interesting because even I would say even three years ago, that was not a topic. When we started this, it was not a topic that a lot of people talked about. And I think because of media and movies and I don't know what else, it's become kind of a hot topic. And so people are more interested. I have been pretty educated about health, my body yet. When I got into started down that path and started hot flashes, I was like, I think you know, it's gonna be an interesting month or two. Both of these two are laughing just if you didn't hear that. Because I'm like, this is not just a month or two, this is a whole life difference. So it's fascinating. Here's the question, or the survey item. I am knowledgeable about perimenopause for women. Stephanie, would you start? And we're using the word perimenopause, menopause. I think a lot of women and men, of course, even more than women. What's the difference with those? Why do we use perimenopause in this survey?

Stephanie Stokes 23:27

Well, and if you Google this, you're probably gonna get a totally different response from what I'm gonna say, which I think actually documents some of the things we see in the data is maybe a little bit of confusion still, right? We've seen these numbers go up a little and down a little bit. Um, but perimenopause is really meant to capture, like you, like you even started saying, actually a multi-year journey, right? Around how our hormones fluctuate and change as we start to leave those reproductive years and then how they settle into our later life. And so menopause is, you know, has very distinct clinical definitions and perimenopause is growing into that space already. And and I want to be clear that I am a health educator, not a clinician, but the ability to talk about all of the things that are occurring in a woman's life during this multi-year journey is why we used this kind of more comprehensive word, right? To really allow us as a community to respond to the variety of experiences that women experience at this time in their life.

Susan Madsen 24:31

Oh, thank you for that. The the results, especially for women, and men of course are lower, um, which which is interesting. It's it's interesting in two ways. One, men often are overconfident about what they know. But in this one, they're saying, no, I'm not confident. And I and I would say their numbers, they're right around uh four, somewhat like neither one. But women are are around a five or even less. That means somewhat agree. Maybe I know a little bit, but not, I mean, there are a chunk of women that say strongly agree, but that's where we're at. Um Stephanie, any thoughts about the numbers? And then we'll go to Amy. Um, is that uh are you of course we're not happy with that number, but but are you we need to definitely uh increase. Um, but any thoughts?

Stephanie Stokes 25:27

I mean, I think this this one's a little bit tricky, and we've really discussed it as a leadership team on how to you know interpret and even create an actionable response to this data because it is one of those things that you don't know what you don't know. And how do we meet consumers where they're at, right? Educating a 21-year-old woman about perimenopause may not really stick, right? Um, and how do we provide and make sure that our systems, right? This is what we keep coming back to. How do our healthcare systems and our education systems for women, right, in that health education space um are prepared, our providers are prepared to provide that care at the right time in that woman's life and empower them in certain ways. Because we do see that in the data, right? Those responses do change based on age and kind of readiness for change, readiness for information.

Susan Madsen 26:21

Yeah, thank you so much. I've seen, Amy, in the data, that the highest agreement came from women who live in Wayne County, Morgan, Garfield, Millard, Tooele, and Washington counties. I thought that was interesting. I won't I won't mention the ones that had the lowest agreement, but but those are interesting. Any other demographics or any thoughts on the data for this question?

Amy Anderson 26:44

Well, I actually found that very interesting too, because I think one would expect that people who live in the Wasatch Front, where they have more access to health care, where women, I think in general, there seems to be a higher education level that we would see higher agreement in those areas as opposed to some of those smaller, uh traditionally more rural or even, you know, anyway. I that that to me was kind of a fascinating thing. And I I love that you brought up the difference between men and and women because I think two years ago they were a little bit closer. And I was kind of it's interesting to me that men in particular feel that they understand perimenopause. Because again, going back to that comment, that I think people understand menopause, but they don't always understand the perimenopause, the changes that lead up to that. And as as we work across the state in this area, I think one of the things is to make sure that women understand what some of those signs and symptoms are, that it's not just hot flashes, so that they talk to their provider. As Stephanie said, to make sure they get the proper care, you need to let your provider know that some of those things are happening to you because they're not routine screening. Questions about insomnia or irritability or hot flashes are not traditionally part of a healthcare screen, typically. So the more women know and understand, the better they can be advocates for themselves and better consumers of medicine.

Susan Madsen 28:10

Thank you so much. I'm looking at our time and we have two more questions. So let's uh let's move it along. I'm saying that to me. Uh Susan, move it along. So our next one is really it's about safety. And so I here's the here's the survey item. I feel physically, mentally, and emotionally safe in healthcare settings. Um, and the results are uh women lower than men, but right around somewhat agree, a little bit higher in the convenience sample. Um you know, I'm curious of why that, if we have to choose only five questions, why that safety? See, I've never felt unsafe, but that question or the the survey item makes me think that maybe there are a lot of people that don't feel safe. And if they don't feel safe in a healthcare setting, they're not gonna go and they're not gonna get all the things we've been talking about. Uh, Amy, jump in first.

Amy Anderson 29:11

I think this kind of ties into the concept of trauma-informed care that we've been advocating for in the healthcare setting to make sure that physicians and other healthcare providers understand how to delve into somebody's past because when somebody's encountered sexual assault or or domestic violence at home, coming into a healthcare space, they carry that trauma with them. And so I think as I look at this question, it's not just the safety in the healthcare setting, but it's maybe feeling emotionally safe to talk about those things in a healthcare setting. That's mentally safe to talk about those things in a healthcare setting. And I think it's often people don't like to ask questions if they don't know what to do with the answer. So I think some of our role in the healthcare system is to educate providers on what to do if somebody does reveal something to them. I think there are issues though, too, like, you know, if you have severe birth trauma, going back into a healthcare setting can kind of raise some of those issues for you. So this is a really interesting question. And I'd love to have Stephanie talk a little bit about why she and the other two healthcare leaders chose this as one of the five questions.

Susan Madsen 30:26

Yeah, I was just thinking about I was at an event this morning at the Capitol called Start by Believing. And um, so I was thinking about violence. And when women have been traumatized by men in their lives, having a male uh physician touch them, I I would think, yeah, I'm starting to understand why we have this uh question. Stephanie.

Stephanie Stokes 30:50

Yeah. I mean, and and regardless of gender, I I really challenge why does anyone feel unsafe in a system in healthcare that has its entire business strategy and ethics focused on safety, right? That is why healthcare exists. And yet we know that within our systems, we've created this opportunity, right? For people to where we don't either always address their safety or create the opportunity to feel safe. I think of all the questions, this is where we see the greatest opportunity for expanded research, right? We want to understand why certain populations feel less safe. We have a lot of great guesses, and I think some really smart educational guesses, but we do see in the data that particularly younger women, women from rural communities, right? Some of those um racial and ethnic groups are they report feeling significantly less safe in our healthcare system. And I think that um for me, it just goes back to the really, really basics of what is healthcare, why does it exist, and why are people feeling unsafe? Because the whole business strategy, again, is around creating safety, right? Around um speaking up and and catching, you know, errors and things like that. And so this is, I think, going to what Amy said around trauma-informed care. This is an essential strategy for for Utah hospitals and healthcare systems because this is this is our business. And if we're not delivering on this business strategy, we we need to think about what that is.

Amy Anderson 32:24

And this is good data. Yeah, when you look at that number, it's 15% of people somewhat disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree about feeling safety in a healthcare setting. That's a pretty high percentage of people who are accessing healthcare that are that have trepidation. Um it's it's it's an interesting number.

Susan Madsen 32:44

Well, and I agree agree, Stephanie, that there's this is just kind of some basic, and I'm glad we have this question. Um, but there's so many for us that are in the research phase, there's so many more questions about deeper, deeper things. Uh last one, real quick. Um, and this one kind of goes with the theme that we're talking about in terms of safety, but in a different way. Here it here it is. It is likely one of my healthcare providers will effectively screen me for intimate partner violence and connect me with resources if needed in the next year. Um that's interesting because we have a domestic violence spoke and so forth, but there's a crossover and an opportunity, right? Um, if and and it's not mandated that healthcare professionals uh have to ask this question, and it hasn't been through the years, but I know you've been involved in and others uh involved in this spoke and in trying to raise awareness uh of this. Talk talk, Stephanie, about this.

Stephanie Stokes 33:49

Well, and I just want to acknowledge again the incredible efforts of Dr. Audrey Jericho, one of my fellow co-leads, and and many other providers in this space, because this comes back to caring for families and the multi-generational impact of intimate partner violence. And so while it's not mandated, um it is it is one of the one of the um highly recommended prevention efforts, right, for women throughout their entire life to understand have they been a victim of violence and how has it you know manifested and how they hold that in their bodies, and then how does that manifest in disease, right? We know our bodies hold that stress, and it can really come out in really um sometimes unusual or surprising ways as we go through and try to help individuals with different care experiences. And so what we see is that this is one of those really upstream opportunities to impact multiple health outcomes across the lifespan. So that's why this was prioritized within our survey, because this is one area that we know we can do better in. We know we should do better in, and we need to understand our community's readiness to respond to these very, very difficult subjects.

Susan Madsen 35:03

Yeah, I've sure heard from physicians that have gone in this direction of asking that question. I get teary-eyed-- some profound you know, conversations with women who had never been asked that question and had been for years in situations of intimate partner violence. And finally, for the first time, being able to in a safe, confidential way actually speak to that violence for the first time in their lives. I've I I would say probably five to ten through the years, women that have told me that and how profound that question was and how life-changing it was. So there you go. I have to have tears at least one time. So there you go. Um we're we've we're out of time, but Amy, any quick thoughts on that? And then any general thoughts to help us conclude, and then Stephanie, I'll come back to you one more time. Sure.

Amy Anderson 36:03

I would say in this space too, I think the the uh population of providers that we don't think about is pediatricians, because moms are the ones who bring those those little ones into their visit. And if if a pediatrician can also help ascertain what the safety of the home is, that's important for the family at large. And if they know what those resources are, if somebody does identify that they're they're a victim of interpersonal violence, that's that's a great place to help prevent those adverse childhood experiences for the for the children, as well as channeling the woman into a place where she can get help and assistance as well. I just am always amazed by how lucky I am to work with Stephanie Stokes and Audrey Jericho and Erica Lindley in this space, and with you, Dr. Madsen, in A Bolder Way Forward, just helping us all think outside of the box a little bit in terms of what we can do to lift girls and women in our state. And healthcare is a really important part of that solution.

Susan Madsen 37:06

Thank you so much. Stephanie, a few final words.

Stephanie Stokes 37:09

I mean, I just I hope that to everyone here and everyone who's listening, right, to remember that health is personal and health is a kind of everything, right? When we don't feel well, it impacts every single other aspect of our life and it impacts that ability to pursue the things we love and be with the people we love. And so I hope this is a reminder to you to pull out your phone and schedule that next preventative health service, right? Schedule what you've been putting off, whether that's dermatology or uh going for a long walk or getting that mammogram. You know, health can happen every day and it needs to happen every day. And we're just excited to be part of conversations that are trying to make that easier for our communities.

Susan Madsen 37:54

Amy and Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today on this podcast episode hosted by the Utah Women and Leadership Project at Utah State University in partnership with Utah Public Radio, USU Extension. And also thanks to Nick Poreth for his technical support. The Utah Women and Leadership Project's core mission is to strengthen the impact of Utah girls and women. To learn more about this topic as well as other research and resources and events that we have, you can visit us at utwomen.org and to become engaged with UWLP's statewide initiative called, and we've referred to this numerous times, A Bolder Way Forward. We invite you to visit a bolderwayforward.org.