A clinical pharmacist and public health advocate with hundreds of television appearances, Christina Madison is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Here in Southern Nevada, she has supervised the administration of more than 12,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

A pharmacist whose passion is using her profession to improve the health of the underserved, Christina Madison, Founder and CEO of The Public Health Pharmacists, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Christina Madison) Thank you for having me.

I'm happy to be here.

-Okay.

You were a little upset when-- I want to address this off the top.

When I told you we follow Associated Press style guidelines here at Vegas PBS--and so do many networks and newspapers--and because of that, we can only refer to people as "Doctor" if they have a medical degree, if they are an MD.

And you're saying, What?

-Yes.

-You take issue with that, as do many people.

-Yeah.

Especially for the fact that our healthcare system is changing, and we have more other disciplines that are doing direct patient care.

Like myself, I'm a clinical pharmacist.

I have been a pharmacist for 20 years.

And I think the perception is that, you know, I'm behind the counter and I'm counting pills, but that's not the case.

I directly, I'm part of the interdisciplinary teams that make decisions around patient care and what medications to use, how to optimize their therapies, as well as non-medication interventions that people may need.

And this includes not just myself as a pharmacist, but nurse practitioners that may also have a doctorate or a physician assistant that may have went and gotten their PhD.

And so when we had this conversation, I was like, Okay, this seems a little bit, you know-- -You said "cringy."

-I did say cringy.

I did say cringy.

-It's okay.

-Yeah, but I just feel like we need to evolve, and the media needs to evolve as well because when we think about providing direct patient care, that may include a clinical pharmacist.

It may include your nurse practitioner.

And so I just wanted to make sure that, you know, if this particular instance we're not calling me Dr. Madison, that's something that was for negotiation.

But again, I want to make sure that, you know, we're following the rules but ultimately knowing that those rules maybe need to be updated.

-And perhaps you'll begin advocating for that kind of change.

Because advocacy is a big part of who you are, specifically advocating for the health and wellness of the underserved and the vulnerable.

At what point in your life did that become important to you?

-I would say there's a couple of different times within my life.

So the first would be when I actually was admitted to the hospital as a young child.

So I had an emergency appendectomy after having appendicitis and was admitted to Sunrise Hospital when I was nine years old.

Had a fantastic experience with the healthcare system there.

And they took such good care of me that from that time on, I was like, I want to be a pediatrician.

And so that was kind of the first part.

And then I started volunteering at UMC as a candy striper at age 12.

So I did that up until I went to high school and until I graduated.

And then I went to pharmacy school and really saw the need to help underserved populations.

And then ultimately, more recently, had a birth-related trauma associated with the birth of my second child and was denied care.

And ultimately, even as somebody who has very good health literacy, has a doctorate, was able to advocate for myself, I was still told that my, that my concerns were not valid and that I should go home and that it's probably because I have a new baby at home and I'm just tired.

So unfortunately, I had to go back to the hospital.

By the time I got back, I was in full sepsis and ended up having to be hospitalized for over a week.

That definitely changed my perspective.

And that happened after the birth of my daughter, and that was in 2018.

-Why do you think that happened?

-Systemic racism in our healthcare system.

I ultimately know that even though I have a doctorate, when I walk into a room, they see me as a black woman.

And so that is the first thing that they see.

And unfortunately, because of the way that our medical education system has been created and the fact that obstetrics and gynecology was born on the backs of enslaved women in this country, there's still a lot of that implicit bias that goes on within our system.

-When you talk about that long history, something that stands out to me is there was a belief that black women don't feel pain as much.

-Yes.

Which is why they were experimented on without their permission.

-And you think that kind of belief still exists?

-I think that it seeps within the system.

So if we're not actively talking about, you know, everyone being needed to be treated the same and that darker skin tones feel the same amount of pain and that this is something that is causing a huge crisis in maternal mortality in this country, and black women are dying at a disproportionate rate because they're not being believed.

-Yeah.

Thankfully, you have been blessed with the ability to share your message-- -Yes.

- --and what you know.

And on that note, you gave a talk called The Power of Trusted Health Messengers.

-Yes.

-This was at TEDxReno, which is an independent license of the TED Talks kind of brand, right?

-Absolutely.

-Okay.

That power that you're talking about of health messengers, how did you become aware of that power?

-So it really became very evident during COVID.

Because I was facilitating all of these vaccination clinics and because I was going into these underserved communities, I saw the difference in people's reactions if I looked and sounded like them, of their acceptance of getting the vaccine versus not.

And then also because I was appearing on television a lot, I was like the Dr. Fauci of Las Vegas there for a while, that I would have friends and colleagues come to me and say the reason they got vaccinated was because they saw me talking about it and that they trusted me and they trusted my opinion.

And so even though they were getting other information to the contrary that the vaccine was unsafe or that, you know, that they didn't need it.

At the beginning of COVID, there was this huge rumor on Black Twitter that black people couldn't get COVID.

So it's like all of these things combined, all of these messaging that was coming from the wrong place, but then when it was coming from somebody who represented what they felt like was their lived experience and understood the possibility for, you know, trauma, generational trauma, historical trauma, and still believing that the federal government could give us something that could help us, that I think that was how I was able to kind of sway some hearts and minds of people who were really on the fence about whether or not to get vaccinated.

-In that talk, you mentioned a specific woman named Mildred, and I believe she was an elderly woman who was hesitant about getting the vaccine.

-Yes.

So her granddaughter had brought her to the clinic.

It was in the Historic West Side, and I was the only person of color in that facility.

And seeing all of these people in line, she was like, she's like-- so, you know, the granddaughter came up to me and was like, Do you mind talking to my grandmother?

And she was in her 90s, and I was like, How can I help you?

Even though I was doing coordination and the operations, I asked her if she would like for me to give her her vaccine.

And she said, Can you?

And I said yes.

So I stepped out of my role as coordinator and made a point of making sure that I could be there for her to provide her with that administration so that she felt like she could be with someone she trusted.

-Her name was not Mildred, though.

-No, her name was not Mildred.

-But you use "Mildred" in this storytelling.

Why?

-It's the name of my grandmother, and she unfortunately passed away during COVID.

-From COVID?

-No.

She was in an assisted living facility.

And I do you think that the isolation because we weren't able to go visit her contributed to her passing sooner than she should have.

-What impact did she have on you?

-Oh, my goodness.

She is my everything.

I love my grandmother to death.

And I still say things, I have lots of grandma-isms.

I'm definitely the product of a southern grandmother.

And so I think that, you know, she always taught me to stand up for myself and to believe in myself and that I was capable of big things.

-Can you give us a southern grandma-ism?

-Oh, goodness.

-You're on the spot, right?

-You're giving me on the spot.

Well, when people ask me how I'm doing, I always say I'm peachy, which is something that I think is very southern.

And then my daughter always teases me because I tell her, I was like, How about them apples?

So that's definitely very southern as well.

-Okay.

Throughout your career, you've gotten a lot of accolades.

I want to mention one, because we have a picture of it, when you were the cover girl for Las Vegas Weekly's "Women Influencing Nevada."

That was 2022, and a lot of these accolades came from your work in COVID.

How did COVID impact your life and work?

-Well, I tell people, silver linings of COVID, right?

Like, absolutely, there were so many opportunities that I got because of that.

I feel like my training and all of my expertise really led up to that moment because I had worked for a decade with our public health department and was so familiar with contact investigation and isolation precaution, emergency planning and preparedness.

And so all of that really got me to where I was, because there was so little known about this novel virus.

And then I had the expertise of not only working in communicable disease management, but also HIV and tuberculosis.

And I always tease and say that tuberculosis and HIV had a baby, and that was basically COVID.

[laughter] Because it's respiratorily transmitted, but it's a virus that causes all these problems within your body.

Right?

And so I really think I was at the right place at the right time and had such an amazing platform to be able to provide factual information during a time where there was so much misinformation happening and so many people didn't know where to turn to get the right information.

And unfortunately, a lot of times listening to that misinformation caused people, you know, to get sick and ill and possibly be hospitalized.

-The anti-vaccination movement-- -Yes.

- --is still present.

How would you characterize its strength right now?

-I would say it's extremely powerful, especially because we currently have someone running for President that is endorsing it heavily.

And so I think that we all need to be mindful that we are in a time where we don't know what it's like to have these vaccine-preventable diseases.

And now we're having meningitis outbreaks, measles outbreaks.

There was an outbreak of paralytic polio last year in New York state after someone travelled abroad and came in contact with somebody who was unvaccinated.

-This Presidential candidate did get vaccinated, though.

-I mean, do as I say, not what I do, right?

There's-- I'm not going to debate that.

-Let's get back to you.

What has life been like as an advocate for vaccines in this kind of climate?

-It's difficult.

It's very difficult when you've got people who are telling you that, you know, the vaccines have microchips in them and they're going to, you know, cause you to be infertile and all of these different, you know, mis- and disinformation that has been coming out.

Ultimately, I think we can stand on Public Health Foundation, which is the fact that the reason why we don't have all of these illnesses and premature death, in particular for small children, is because we routinely vaccinate and it is one of the single most effective medical marvels in modern history.

-Strength of Grandma, that's having you stick to your guns?

-Yes, absolutely.

Definitely strength of Grandma Mildred.

-Christina Madison, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you so much for having me.

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