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[jazzy music] ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "Pathway to Success."

I'm John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey and delighted to be your host.

We have a very special guest today who's part of one of America's great hospital systems.

Hackensack Meridian.

It's the largest health system in the state of New Jersey.

It's the first health system to treat a COVID-19 patient.

It also has its own private medical school.

So without further ado, Dr. David Kountz, Co-Chief Academic Officer.

Hackensack Meridian Health System.

Welcome to "Pathway to Success."

- Great to be with you, John.

Thank you for the invitation.

- Well, we're delighted to have you here, so a little bit about you.

Where are you from?

Big family?

Small family?

And then we'll talk a little bit about, you know, education.

- Sure.

I'm actually from the West Coast, but have been in New Jersey-- New Jersey's been home for 30 years.

Born in San Francisco.

We moved to Long Island in the early '70s where I went to high school.

I'm the oldest of three.

I have a brother who is in television, in the state of Connecticut, and a sister who is in finance, and really a wonderful family.

Don't get to see them as much as I'd like, because we're a little spread apart.

- So tell us a little bit about some of the educational institutions you attended and why you chose those.

- So I went to Princeton University as an undergrad.

I really feel grateful to get in.

It was a very competitive school and close to home in New York.

And I just thought it would open a lot of doors, and then give me a chance to really meet people from very diverse backgrounds, and just get a great education.

So I loved every minute of it.

I went to medical school in Buffalo, New York, at SUNY.

Also a wonderful experience.

Wonderful community.

And then, much later in my career, I earned another degree here, in New Jersey.

An MBA at Georgian Court University.

- And also having an MBA is somewhat unique in the medical profession, you know.

You see the acronyms at the end of many of the medical professionals' names, but rarely do you see an MBA, and I think that's great.

Can you talk a little bit about your professional career leading up to Hackensack Meridian?

- Sure, so first of all, I'm the child of a physician and a teacher, so I was very fortunate to have an environment where I saw two parents who were passionate and had purpose.

And that was something that I'm hoping I can give back and I've tried to do, in my career.

So I knew what a career as a physician would be like.

I knew what a career as a teacher would be like, so I've kind of combined them both, working for Hackensack Meridian Health, and for our new school of medicine.

I chose the field of internal medicine, which combines a lot of different organ systems and diseases, and really found it interesting, and started my career after medical school in Philadelphia.

I practiced at two hospitals in Philadelphia and then came to New Jersey in 1996 to join Robert Wood Johnson and had a wonderful 11-year experience at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and medical school and then was recruited to what was then Meridian Health in 2007 and I've been with the system ever since.

- So just, if you could share with us a little bit about what a typical day is like, at Hackensack Meridian or any health system?

And then talk a little bit about being hit with this COVID-19 pandemic and contrast it too.

- Yeah.

It's a great question, so before the pandemic, I think we didn't-- it just makes everyone appreciate how well we had it.

I mean, we were dealing with diseases we were familiar with.

We were, I think, as health care professionals and all of us on the teams at Hackensack Meridian Health, very focused on providing the highest quality of care to our patients.

We had a routine, and then the pandemic hit, and we really needed to pivot.

We needed to change around units or areas in the hospital to care for COVID patients.

We had to make sure that we were using the best evidence, the best new information to treat patients.

We had to keep our team members safe, so there was a lot of change, obviously, to patient care, to education.

We've had, I think, a great system.

We've come together.

I've never been prouder actually to be a physician and be in health care than thinking about the experience of the last 16 or 17 months.

So at several of our hospitals, we had to turn units that didn't even involve taking care of patients into patient care units.

I think everyone remembers the challenges with collecting personal protective equipment.

And we were learning new information all the time.

We first thought that you might contract COVID-19 from surfaces, so we had a great focus on cleaning surfaces.

That's always important, but we learned that that's not how you would contract the illness.

So there was also this constant learning that we needed to have and we needed to translate to all of our team members.

- But I really don't think that a lot of us, myself included, have a full appreciation of what that environment was like... - Yeah.

- During the height of the pandemic.

Can you just expand on that a little bit?

- Sure, so you know, doctors and nurses get a lot of the visibility around caring for patients in the hospital, and for understandable reasons.

But when we leave the patient's room it is the food and nutrition team.

It's the environmental services team that has to clean the rooms between patients, and as physicians and nurses, we often had a lot of information about the virus.

And our other team members may not have had as much information, so we really--I don't think any of us forgot that there is a huge team of people who came into those hospitals every day and were in patient rooms and interacting with our patients.

And we really needed to ensure that all of them had the information, all of them felt comfortable, all of them had their questions answered.

- So everyone was learning as you go pretty much every day.

Is that correct?

- That's absolutely correct, and you know, one thing I haven't mentioned yet that was a big part of, I think, getting through this was the example of leadership-- leadership being very visible from Bob Garrett on down and a real commitment, which was present already, but I think even enhanced during the worst days of the pandemic, to get our leaders out there on the floors and coming in at night, for the third shift.

Talking with team members.

Talking to groups of team members.

Talking with them privately, to address their concerns.

Communication was so important through multiple channels.

- Robert Garrett is the CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health System.

Leadership matters, and Bob Garrett, as I'm getting to know him better, getting to experience his leadership style--you know, can you share with our viewers what is it like to work for Bob Garret, under the leadership?

Not only Bob, but the whole leadership team.

What is it like to be a part of that?

- It's really pretty amazing.

I think, at the beginning, you used the word innovation, in connection with Bob Garrett, and I think that's one of the traits I most admire.

That it would perhaps be easy to be complacent, not innovate the delivery of care.

Not take the chance of starting a medical school.

Not putting behavioral health at the forefront, because of the importance of mental health problems affecting our communities.

So he's never standing still.

He's allowing our system to continue to grow, but he also is not taking the eye off the ball, and he holds us all very accountable to areas such as the highest quality care, and compassion, and an understanding of what everyone has gone through, over the last 16 months.

- Before we go to our break here shortly, let's touch on the medical school.

The significance of it.

- I'd love to.

Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine is the fifth medical school in the state of New Jersey.

It's the first private medical school.

We have a physician shortage in New Jersey.

It was estimated last year, 2020, that we would be short 3,000 physicians.

If you look at numbers of physicians per 100,000, New Jersey ranks much lower than our two neighboring states, Pennsylvania and New York.

For lots of reasons, physicians tend to migrate out of the state, and so we have a need to create a stronger pipeline of physicians and other health care professionals.

Under the leadership of Bonita Stanton, our dean, it's been an amazing journey, in the last four years, to go from literally whiteboards of, "What should this medical school look like?"

To graduating our first 18 students, so we couldn't be prouder, and it's really been another testament to the leadership of Hackensack Meridian Health.

- You know, it's nothing like, you know, having a dream, having a desire, and then putting forth that vision, and bringing it to fruition.

There's nothing more fulfilling than that.

So we'll take a break and we'll be back in a minute.

announcer: We encourage you to visit our website at www.aaccnj.com.

Or call us at 609-571-1620.

We are your strategic partners for success.

- Welcome back to "Pathway to Success."

I'm here with Dr. David Kountz, Co-chief Academic Officer, Hackensack Meridian Health System.

Before the break, we were talking about the medical school, and I want to pick up where we left off, and just do a deeper dive in this medical school.

Can you talk a little bit about its mission and the significance of this mission, as it relates to the future of health care in our state?

- Absolutely, so one thing, if you ever listen to our dean, Bonnie Stanton, she will talk about, despite all the money that we spend on health care in this country, our outcomes, our life expectancy, our maternal mortality, other measures of the quality of health care are not as high as they need to be.

So our focus is working with and learning from communities, in addition to researchers and doctors.

A centerpiece of our school is a course called human dimension.

And within the first few weeks of students starting in our medical school, we connect them with communities around our school.

In that process, they meet with community leaders.

They tour communities.

They learn what social services are available, what health care facilities are available, what, you know, food markets are available.

We take them through a series of discussions/lectures around topics like health literacy.

Something that perhaps one wouldn't think should be part of a medical school curriculum, but we know that would be so important to ensuring that patients understand instructions and how to get follow-up care.

And then several months later, we assign them to an individual or a family who we've worked with.

And they are certainly not in the position to provide medical advice, but they can provide health advice.

They can function almost like a health coach.

There may be times they go with that individual to a doctor's appointment, to see what it's like to be on the other side, to wait, and take two buses, and arrive ten minutes late, and what that experience is like.

If we're teaching them about the heart and the blood vessels that week, if they're their-- their patient, if you will, they're gonna learn about a health history, about future heart disease, and how to educate that individual about eating in a more healthy fashion.

So we've weaved something very unique into how we teach physicians of tomorrow, by connecting them very closely with communities and with community organizations-- not-for-profits that we work with in the education of our students.

- I kind of compare it to Major League Baseball.

They have their farm system, and they have different-- A, AAA, AA where they get their players early on and then really take them through the paces, to make sure that they fit into their business model.

- That's our goal.

It definitely is.

We're one of a number of schools that will allow a student to finish in three years, if they join one of our own hospitals for their next level of training called residency.

And this is another incentive to keep high-quality physicians in our state, because if they go to school in our state, they spend another few years at one of our hospitals, we think it's much more likely they're gonna serve one of our communities.

- Hackensack Meridian has invested a significant amount of dollars in developing future doctors and programming in the community.

- And I think it's our responsibility to reach out to the community, and first and foremost, be good listeners.

I've worked in communities for much of my career, and sometimes a well-meaning hospital or health system will swoop in with an initiative that's of the health system's design or focus, finish it, and then leave.

And it really wasn't generated by the community.

It may not have been a priority to the community, so we really need to listen.

We need to listen to what our community needs.

We need to engage lots of stakeholders and then be committed to stay for the duration.

So a few examples.

We have various community needs assessments at Hackensack Meridian Health.

Our hospitals do surveys of information, focus groups with communities collecting data from local health departments, county health departments.

And every few years, we have large meetings with our community stakeholders, and we share what we've learned.

And we listen and say, "Where should we put our priority as a hospital or as a health network over the next three years?"

- I'm going to go back a little bit and talk about the pandemic, and how did that impact, you know, the business model of running a hospital?

- We've really had to rethink some aspects of the way we deliver care.

One example is the growth of telemedicine or communicating with your doctor by telephone, or by using an iPad or something.

It looks like many patients like that delivery of care, so that has really accelerated, and we need to make sure that our clinicians, our doctors, our nurses, our other providers are very comfortable, and we have the right technology to keep information secure and private.

But you know, meet them where they want to be, which is perhaps using telemedicine, especially younger patients.

The other thing that comes to mind is many patients have not continued with their preventive care.

They have concerns about coming back to their doctor's office, to the hospital.

This is especially problematic in communities of color, of individuals, African Americans and others, who may have more chronic diseases.

Already, they may not have had some access--had access issues to health care, and so we really need to get the word out that our hospitals are safe, our doctors, hospitals are safe.

It's important to get back and get back on your blood sugar checks, your blood pressure checks, your cancer screening.

- How significant or important is it to have, you know, black and brown doctors, and nurses, and others throughout the system?

- It's really important, and it's not just a Hackensack Meridian issue.

It's a national issue.

A statistic that is a very sobering one to quote is 40 or so years ago, if you look back on the number of African American men starting in medical school, that number has essentially not changed in that period of time.

Despite the growth of medical schools, despite the increase in population, we have no more African American men in medicine today than we did in the late '70s or early '80s.

So our school--and I think most medical schools really is making an effort to start with pipeline or pathway programs, so we can show young students of color, especially men, that there's a place for them in medicine.

We want to expose them to role models in medicine, to talk about their journey, and health care is a wonderful field.

So not everyone is necessarily interested in being a physician, but maybe becoming a nurse, maybe becoming a physician assistant, maybe becoming a-- you know, another really terrific field, and we need to-- and we have initiatives to-- reach out to high school students, to college students.

That's a big part of what I am responsible for at the school of medicine, and we're very committed to growing the pipeline of future minority physicians.

- So, Dr. Kountz, can you speak to the relevance of the African American Chamber of Commerce and its relationship with Hackensack Meridian?

- Well, first of all, John, I think your joining our board was really important.

Your voice already has been and will continue to be important for us to hear.

I was so pleased when I learned that you were joining our board.

I think that, as you know, Bob Garrett and the rest of the team are very serious about taking concrete steps to address increasing diversity-- diversity of suppliers, diversity of search firms, so that we are able to attract top talent that is diverse.

You know, I think there are a lot of lessons that you can bring from your background, to help us continue to grow and get better.

- So let's talk a little bit about the future.

- I think, over the next five years, you're gonna see us much more visible around research.

You know, one of the key missions of medical schools is discovery and innovation and continuing to pave the way.

We've done that with our Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation, and I think our medical school is poised to get more involved in bigger research projects, working with that center, looking at opportunities to do research with our communities, to address needs that they have.

And so I'm really excited about, in addition to growing the number of diverse students in our school, to really growing our research and gaining more and more national reputation in terms of research.

Also, as we think about our mission, there are lots of different types of research.

There's research to study how can we better communicate with patients.

Is there a way to expand technology, maybe for lower income patients or patients who have difficulty coming in to see us, in the hospital or in a doctor's office?

- But one of the simple measures and also complicated measures for many of the low-income communities, is having a primary care physician.

- I completely agree.

I think one thing we know is physicians from underrepresented backgrounds are more likely to care for members of those communities.

It's not to say that they can't or don't care for lots of communities, but a physician of color is more likely to go and care for a community of color.

So when we talk about diversity in medical education it's diversity of thought, which spurns innovation and discovery, but it's also, in a very real sense, producing physicians who are more likely to go back to specific communities and provide care.

This could include even, say, a veteran who would be more likely to help address needs of veterans who are also somewhat underserved.

So when we talk about our commitment to diversity, it's, yes, it's important for so many reasons.

But ultimately, it gets back to the patient.

We want to produce a diverse group of high-quality physicians and other health care professionals so that, as you said, all communities-- all members of all communities receive the highest level of care.

- We're gonna let that be the final word today on "Pathway to Success."

This is John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Thank you for tuning in.

[jazzy music] ♪ ♪ - Today, I want to really call to your attention the importance of taking one of the three COVID-19 vaccines.

Why?

We've lost over 600,000 people in the United States.

Over 41% of Black businesses will not open.

A lot of blood, a lot of treasure-- there's PSAs or public service announcements daily asking men, women, and now even young people to take the shot.

Please.

The vaccines are more readily available at local hospitals.

There are mobile operations.

There are pop-up vaccines being taken throughout communities across the country, and I know here, in our great state of New Jersey, the Delta variant is on the hunt looking for people who have not taken the shot.

We're seeing cases rise.

So in closing, please, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, take the shot today.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ announcer: Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

PSE&G.

JCP&L.

Investors Bank.

Berkeley College.

NJM Insurance Group.

Vandiver.

♪ ♪