- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Keep getting better.

Kean University.

Where Cougars climb higher.

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And by PSE&G.

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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We're joined once again by Dr. Richard Besser, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a longtime underwriter of our health education program, and also the former Head of the CDC, acting Head of the CDC.

Dr. Besser, thank you again for joining us.

- Thanks, Steve, it's great to be here.

- Put this in perspective, in a previous segment we did with you, at the end, I mentioned that you have, in a previous time in your career, while you were a practicing pediatrician, were also a health and medical editor over at "ABC News."

The role of media, us, those of us in the media, when it comes to providing accurate, important, credible information about public health is.

- Well, I think, you know, one of the things I liked about being on ABC was the opportunity to develop a trusted relationship with the audience.

You know, similar to the relationship I would try to develop with my patients and their parents.

And you do that by being factual, by being credible, by telling people the truth, telling 'em what you know, what you don't know, so that they could establish that relationship with you and could come back as you learn more.

It's really important, the voice of media during health crises.

And I would say we are in a health crisis in America right now, one that has been constructed by the current administration.

It's very important that people have trusted voices that they can go to.

The media tends not to be high on the trust list.

It's become more and more fragmented where people are going to the sites with people they agree with.

And so- - Thank God for algorithms, huh?

- Yeah, yeah, I mean, you get the echo chamber, you know, which is why public media is so critically important.

And I think part of the reason why public media is so under attack right now, you know, having sources of information that are not polarized and politicized is very, very important.

In times like this.

finding voices who are telling you as it is and aren't simply repeating political messages is really important.

- And again, for us, and I'm not gonna get on my soapbox, our job is, again, I'm a PhD in communication, not in public health, not a "Doctor" Doctor, as my kids remind me all the time.

As Dr. Besser is a pediatrician, I wanna be clear, our job is to bring on people who don't have a political ideological point of view, but are providing valuable peer reviewed, scientific relevant, important information.

In that spirit, Dr. Besser, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation engaged in a whole range of grant making to organizations committed to public health.

One of them is, and this is important as we're doing this program on the 18th of June, it'll be seen later, it was just announced that the Center for Health Equity and Wellbeing has been named as the State of New Jersey's Public Health Institute.

And the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation underwrites is one of the major underwriters of this initiative.

What the heck is it and why should people be aware of it and why does it matter?

- Yeah, I mean, this is really exciting news.

Public health institutes exist not in every state, but in a large portion of states.

And they're a way for resources to come into a state, through donors, through the federal government to direct at public health issues that are important to the residents of that state.

New Jersey never had a public health institute, and so there were all kinds of federal dollars that the state missed out on because it didn't have a body that could receive funds, receive them quickly, do the kind of contracting and get the work going.

So this has been a many year effort.

We participated in this with other funders within the state and with the state government to establish a public health institute.

And what's really exciting about this one is it's the first public health institute that has a focus on health equity.

And by health equity and wellbeing, what we mean is we believe in a future where health should not be a privilege, but a right.

And for that to be the case, everyone has to have the opportunity to lead their healthiest life.

And that's what equity is about, looking to see where are the barriers to health, what can you do to remove those barriers?

And this should allow more dollars to come into New Jersey to address the health issues that we face in this great state.

- By the way, team, make sure we have the website up of the Center for Health Equity and Wellbeing so people can find out more.

And I also believe they're working together with obviously the Department of Health.

Correct, Dr. Besser?

- Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

It's not based within the Department of Health, which makes it- - It's a separate non-profit.

- Exactly.

But it is designated as the Public Health Institute for New Jersey, which allows it to work with the government and a not-for-profit organizations.

- This is a Pandora's box.

I'll do it anyway.

We have a couple minutes left.

There's always been a degree of politics or the politics of public health, but not like this.

Explain to folks from your perspective, Dr. Besser, why politicizing public health?

I am with them.

I'm with the Ds, you're with the Rs.

I'm MAGA, you're progressive.

And so we have different views on vaccines, on whatever, on government mandates.

Have you, it's a long-winded way of getting to this.

What is the danger of public health being determined, vetted, and interpreted by our political ideologies versus- - Yeah.

Yeah.

- Science.

- It's huge.

Absolutely huge.

I worked at the Center for Disease Control for 13 years under Republican and Democratic administrations.

I ran emergency preparedness and response at CDC for four years during the George W. Bush administration.

And during that time, there were many public health crises, and I would go to Congress for resources.

And there was never an inch of daylight between Democrats and Republicans on the importance of funding public health and the role it plays in terms of ensuring the health of people in our nation and around the globe.

Once it's politicized, the ability to come together, in particular during times of crisis is gone.

And, you know, I led the CDC at the beginning of the swine flu pandemic in 2009.

And the nation came together in a huge way across political parties to get the job done.

During COVID, we saw that breakdown.

We saw the major politicization of public health and public health being lifted up as the enemy by many people for political purposes.

And how we regain that trust and get away from that.

I don't know the answer to that, but it's gonna take a long time.

- We'll continue doing our part and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation does their part every day.

Dr. Richard Besser, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, former acting Head of the CDC and a Pediatrician.

Dr. Besser, thank you so much for providing perspective, insight, and important information to our audience.

Thank you, Doctor.

- Thanks for having me on again.

I really appreciate it.

- You got it.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) - We're here with the leader of the New Jersey Sharing Network, Carolyn Welsh, President and CEO of the Sharing Network.

How you doing, my friend?

- Awesome.

- All right, so you were just saying, 15th year, 15th anniversary of the Sharing Network.

Celebration of Life, the weather, the sun is coming out, that's not usually the case when we're here.

What's it usually like?

- Cold, wet, and dewy in the morning.

So this year, 15 years, sun is here, it's beautiful.

- You don't think it's an accident, do you?

- Not an accident... (Steve laughs) No coincidences in organ donation.

- Yeah, speak about where we are today and let me disclose that Carolyn is a trustee of our production company, the Caucus Educational Corporation.

And we have a long history of working to advocate for organ and tissue donation and create greater public awareness.

Where are we today in 2025?

- 15 Years, 5K Celebration of Life.

Amazing.

More people here than ever before, and 15 years for the Sharing Network.

We are transplanting and saving more people's lives than ever before.

- 2024 was a record year when it comes to what?

- Organ donation and organs transplanted, so lives saved.

And right now, we're tracking more than any other year that we did before.

So we will save more lives in 2025 than ever before.

- Why do you think that is?

- People.

Our staff is just topnotch, making sure that we really hire people that believe in organ and tissue donation and want to save people's lives.

And they get up every day to do something that's pretty hard.

- You know, for those who haven't seen our past interviews with Carolyn.

PS check out our website, SteveAdubato.org.

It's on there right now.

We've had so many conversations over the years.

If you haven't heard the story of how Carolyn got connected to the Sharing Network.

Share it.

- (chuckles) Back in the day, I answered an ad in the Asbury Park Press, a newspaper.

I just wanted to save people's lives or help people.

I didn't know much about organ and tissue donation and 26 years later never looked back.

- What's it done for you in your life?

Not just professionally, but personally?

- Purpose, wake up every day, still wanna come here.

It's not a day that I don't want to come and do this work.

Has made my family stronger.

No coincidences, so everything happens for a reason.

It's just amazing.

Be able to do something to help other people.

- And you know, the message about the celebration of life, the gift, if you will, for people who, and I asked Dr. Buddle this, who you know, and that's an interesting connection, but check out our interview with Dr. Buddle.

For people who don't really understand how it works, how does it work?

If you want to do it?

- Sure, you can proactively, you know, say, "Yes", on your driver's license.

You can go to our website and check "Yes".

And you can also tell your family that this is something that you would wanna do.

It all starts with the "Yes".

The generosity of someone saying, "When I pass away, I would like to give life to someone else."

- And your team, when it comes to it, and we've talked about this before, there are a lot of misconceptions.

I mean, for every year we talk about misconceptions, people, how they don't really understand it, which is understandable why they don't understand it.

Describe for folks how empathetic, caring, and compassionate your team is at the most vulnerable, critical, and sometimes painful time in people's lives.

- Yeah, one of our core values to even hiring people and people to stay working here is compassionate.

You have to be compassionate to each other.

You know, coworkers, you have to take care of each other, really knowing when they have a hard case or something that's happening that they really need to talk through.

And then compassion for the people that we serve, which is everyone in New Jersey.

When we walk into those doors, we have to let everything that happened in our life be at the door.

Because everything we do is about that person we're about to talk to.

- Carolyn, where does New Jersey, I don't wanna say rank because we're talking about people's lives, it's not about numbers, but where is New Jersey compared to the rest of the country when it comes to organ and tissue donation?

- Yeah, New Jersey Sharing Network is a high-performing organ procurement organization in the United States.

Always in top tier rankings of what our CMS data says.

- CMS are the feds who check this stuff out.

- Yes, yes, to make sure that we're doing what we need to do and what we're supposed to be doing.

More importantly, the barometer is, is that we're continuing to save more people than any year prior.

- So, and then in the time we have, describe what this day is like for you.

15 years in, it's the 15th anniversary of the 5K here at the Sharing Network in beautiful new Providence, New Jersey.

What's it like?

You have this big smile on, but you have it every year, even when the weather's not great.

(Carolyn chuckles) What's it like for you today?

- Yeah, I mean, wake up 5:00 AM quick, jump outta bed, and know that it's gonna be the most inspiring day, giving hope to so many people.

There are many people still waiting for this lifesaving gift, so our work's not done, as well as we're doing.

It's just amazing to be able to see donor families, recipients, advocates, hospital partners come together all for one common cause and something that really means the world to those that are waiting.

- So when people see the name, everyone's T-shirt has a name, they're all different names for all different reasons, for all kinds of people.

What does that mean to those folks on those teams?

- So for a lot of new people that work at the Sharing Network, and we start, I talk a lot about how we see the best of the world and the worst of the world, but we serve everyone.

So there's just no barriers here, right?

It's just getting to know every human on a human level of what we do.

It doesn't matter where you come from, what you have, or what you don't have.

Any one of us could be faced with the decision of donation or the need for a transplant.

- 1 to 10, I ask you this all the time.

The level of, not just satisfaction, that's not the right word, the level of gratitude that you feel to be able to do what you do for the people you do it for, as painful as it is in so many ways, 1 to 10?

- Still 10 plus, - 10 plus?

- 10 plus.

- Because?

- It's just, I wouldn't wanna be doing anything else.

- Thank you my friend.

- Thank you.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Enrique Lavin, who's editor of Star Ledger Online.

Enrique, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- All right, let's get down to it.

Every morning, for years, I was one of the last people to open up my front door, walk out, grab my Star Ledger, get my coffee, and I was ready for the day.

What is the biggest difference between what thousands and thousands of us did for so many years?

Star Ledger is such a big part of our life and the Star Ledger Online, please.

- Sure, sure.

Well, you nailed it on the head.

You, it's habits.

You, we've changed your habits on how to read the newspaper, and it's a conversation I have frequently with subscribers like yourself about that habit.

It's something that people really were attached to that ritual in the morning with coffee and paging through the paper, sharing it with a spouse or a partner in the house, clipping recipes out, or a comic or putting it on the fridge.

We understand all that is different, and you can still clip out things from the online newspaper, but it's not the same, of course.

And so part of what we've been doing for the last year through my work as the editor, is holding our subscribers' hands to enter the digital age.

It's much like what I did 12 years ago with the Star Ledger staff.

I was part of the team that helped train our entire staff to be digital first reporters and editors.

And it's really no different.

It's helping readers understand that you're gonna get a little bit better experience, news experience digitally than what you had with the paper.

- Enrique, let me follow up on this.

This is part of our series on media leadership.

- Yep.

- And so I'm curious, in bringing into, bringing people, professionals into the field of media and the world you're living in, versus the world so many of us came into, media journalism the way we did.

You're talking about digital skills and tools.

Are the basic skills and tools of being a journalist different and you've added to them on the digital side?

Or is the entire profession totally different?

- That's a fantastic question.

I get it all the time.

And is it totally different?

It's a lot different.

I would say 30, I would say 25% of it is what we remember as newspaper journalists, as legacy media journalists, in that we still have the same principles.

We're gonna go get the heartbreaking news.

We're gonna ask the tough questions.

We're gonna stay ethical.

We're gonna maintain those high standards.

The difference is the distribution, right?

Is where we had TV, radio, and newspapers.

-Right.

- Now you have a galaxy of places where our content is going.

And that's where the change is, that's where the drastic change is and finding the journalists who can do that work?

Yes, we actually go looking for experts, say in social media, in newsletter reporting and distribution, in podcasting.

All these are skills that are now almost required in the newsroom.

- Erique, go back.

Connect podcasting to Star Ledger Online.

- Sure.

- What, if it's, if I get my, again, as a subscriber to the online version as well, I see it there.

I take my phone, I blow it up a little bit, and I go, "Oh, now I can read this."

I put my glasses and I can read that article.

Where the heck does podcasting come into Star Ledger Online?

- Right, well, Steve, that's been my job, is really to help you understand that with your Star Ledger subscription, you also have a subscription to nj.com and you are missing out.

- Connect nj.com to Star Ledger Online, go ahead.

- Well, so I mentioned that 12 years ago, I trained the Star Ledger staff to become digital first.

Around that same time, NJ Advanced Media, the newsroom.

- The parent, the parent company.

- That formed.

It was basically a marriage between nj.com and the Star Ledger, where nj.com was already a digital first news operation, news and information entertainment operation.

And the Star Ledger was printed in ink and paper.

And so today, the NJ Advanced Media newsroom for the last decade, 12 years, has been providing content to both, to nj.com and to the Star Ledger.

The Star Ledger readers still, like yourself, enjoyed reading the newspaper and having it all in one place.

The difference with nj.com is whereas the Star Ledger focused on five core counties, Ledger lands is what we've traditionally called it, nj.com has to cover the entire state.

So we are all over the state now, as opposed to just concentrating on those five, six counties with bureaus, with covering local, really things on those hyper-local level that we are striving to return today after 12 years.

But covering the entire state is a different prospect.

And what it comes down to is finding that audience.

And we were trying to do that before the, say, the industry collapse or the industry reinvention is where is that new audience?

And we thought it was a, we gotta find that young audience where they are.

We were building a website to, for college students.

All that thinking was going ahead until this thing came around, Facebook, Google, Twitter.

That came around and that changed everything.

- Yeah.

Enrique, you know, I'm curious about this, media economics.

So for our production company, our media production company, we spend a significant amount of our time bringing in the dollars, bringing in sponsors, underwriters, and keeping a very lean operation, as you do as well.

But for some of us on this side of the equation, we're involved in both sides of the business, the business of the business and the journalism and the content of the business.

And historically, as you well know, there was always this discussion of separation of church and state, metaphorically speaking.

And in media, that meant the market, the business people, the sponsorship people, the money people, they're over there.

The journalists are over there.

In our world, we're both.

What are you?

- Correct.

I am part of the publisher-minded set of journalists.

And it was something that was instilled in us during the revolution of our news media industry, that we should be thinking as publishers.

We lost around two.

- Business people, hold on one second.

When Enrique says publishers, I think he means business people.

- Correct, the people who think about how our journalism can be monetized, how it can bring in revenue to pay for the journalism that we do.

And so back then we, you're right, it was a clear separation.

Church and state, we called it the same thing.

We don't talk to the business side.

Some of us editors did.

I was in features, so I would create products that they could sell, a parenting publication, go find some ads, let's do something in ticket where we cover the towns, and maybe the towns can advertise in that special section.

So I was already thinking in those terms back then.

But moving over to the digital first stage of things, we have metrics, so we know what our customers, our readers are reading, and if something hits, if there's something that readers like, because we know there's a high number of, say, clicks on that particular piece of that story, then we know we should probably do a follow up or something more because there's interest in that.

Other pieces that flop, we think, well, maybe they don't want that and we shouldn't, let's not invest our time in doing those things.

The other aspect, Steve, is I was for five years a publisher and editor of NJ Cannabis Insider.

And that was a product that the newsroom created, not under the business side, but the newsroom decided that we should create a business side to bring in, say, the smaller dollars that perhaps the business side wouldn't consider.

And in that way, there was a small team on the editorial side where we think in those terms, how can we monetize the content that we have to support the journalism that we're doing?

- You know, this is complex stuff.

And in the spirit of, you know, the separation between church and state, editorial and business, the line is there, but it's not the same.

And so in that spirit, let me disclose that nj.com is a media partner of ours.

We distribute some of our content on nj.com.

We promote and market our content on nj.com.

We're partners.

So in my view, if you disclose and people know and people can decide for themselves about the content, whether it's independent enough or objective enough or substantial enough.

But if you don't disclose it and you hide and still act like church and state and there's this cement wall between you, that's disingenuous.

- Yes.

- To be clear, Enrique is trying to work this out every day with his team at a Star Ledger Online.

He's the editor there and he's had an extensive experience, has extensive experience in leadership in media.

Enrique, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

We'll talk soon.

- Thank you, Steve, for having me.

Great seeing you.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, thanks for watching.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Kean University.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

New Jersey's Clean Energy program.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by NJBIA.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- You are your child's best advocate.

No one cares more about your child's health, safety, development, and wellbeing more than you.

Empower yourself with the vaccination information you need to make the best decisions for your child.

Hackensack Meridian Health can help.

Learn more about fact-based information at hackensackmeridianhealth.org/ vaccine-facts and always talk to your child's pediatrician.