Promising Practices for Health Equity Podcast

Hosted By: Krystal Lee, J. Robin Moon, Cody Cotton, and Mandy LaBreche In this reflective epilogue, the hosts look back on the final season of the podcast and their IRL experience, highlighting the transformative power of storytelling, vulnerability, and community. Through shared memories and insights, they emphasize how trust, authentic leadership, and collective narrative-building can foster dee...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon Guests: Luis Ortega In this Bonus Episode, we share Luis Ortega’s unbelievable storytelling. I hope you will tune in to all three episodes of the entire StoryJAM - Episodes 5, 6 and 7 - and experience life-changing stories. In this StoryJAM, which followed another set of workshops with Luis, fellows and other attendees of IRL at the convening reflect on their...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon Guests: Michelle Chatman, Ivan Hicks, Sandra Echeverria, Je’Wana Grier McEachin Franklin Cosey-Gay, Regina Jackson, and Mandy LaBreche In Episodes 5 and 6, which are released together, we share the IRL StoryJAM, recorded live in September 2025 in Minneapolis, MN. This was our second StoryJAM, after the first one in 2024, after a series of workshops with Luis...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon Guests: Antonio Tovar, Bruce Reilly, Kwame Owusu-Daaku, Jessica Owens-Young, Jonathan Chase, David Craig, Victor Rubin, and Robert Salcido In Episodes 5 and 6, which are released together, we share the IRL StoryJAM, recorded live in September 2025 in Minneapolis, MN. This was our second StoryJAM, after the first one in 2024, after a series of workshops with L...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon In Episode 4, we share a screening of a collection from the Video Interview Project, or VIP. The VIP was conceived, planned, executed, and lovingly edited by the phenomenal Mandy LaBreche, the Associate Director of Operations for IRL of 10 years AND an artist in residence! At the 2024 October Leadership Meeting in Minneapolis, Mandy conducted more than 30 int...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon Guests: Mandy LaBreche, Kristin Rosengren, and Caroline Yang In Episode 3, we share the recording of the opening session of the IRL Annual Leadership Meeting held in September 2025, “Turning a Lens on IRL.” The session starts with the audiovisual presentation of what the National Program Center has documented on film as the IRL experience since the early days...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee & J. Robin Moon Guests: Luis Ortega (Storytellers for Change) and Ashley Ellis (The BREATHE Collective) To kick off our Season 3, which is all about envisioning the future, we brought back Luis Ortega of Storytellers for Change (from Season 1, Episode 2), who has been IRL’s storytelling trainer and advisor for about a year and a half. He was joined by Ashley Ellis of The BRE...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee, J. Robin Moon, Mandy LaBreche & Cody Cotton Welcome to Season 3! This prologue was recorded on September 27, the day after the two-day IRL Leadership Convening with 100+ fellows, alums, and partners to mark the last annual gathering of this ten-year endeavor. Two years ago, we co-created the October meeting for C6 and C7, as a retreat - to be together with our beloved commu...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and J. Robin Moon Krystal and Robin share their deep reflection as we wrap up Season 2 of the Promising Practices in Health Equity. This podcast is one of the RWJF IRL National Program Center’s main dissemination products that culminates its 10 years of experience. In Season 2, the “main entree” of the podcast series, we have featured various experiences and testimonies of o...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee, J. Robin Moon In our final episode of Season 2 we talk with Briana Woods-Jaeger of Team Kansas City of Cohort 2, and two of her current partners, Derrick Townsend and Dawn Townsend of Hopeful Change, LLC . Briana’s IRL project was called “ Building Social Environments that Promote Resilience among Youth Exposed to Violence” . Since then, she has continued with her work in K...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and J. Robin Moon Guests: Ndidi Amutah-Onukagha and Christina Gebel This week, we travel to Massachusetts to talk with Ndidi Amutah-Onukagha and Christina Gebel of Team Massachusetts of Cohort 5. Their project was called “Promoting Maternal Health Equity through Collaborative Community Partnerships: Teaming doulas, providers and families to create birth equity,” from 2020 th...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and J. Robin Moon Guests: KaToya Sumner, Maureen Sanchez, Linda Animashaun, and Erin Bradley This week, we meet with KaToya Sumner, Maureen Sanchez, Linda Animashaun, and Erin Bradley, of Team ATL Grove Park. They are just finishing up their project entitled “Creating Margin for the Marginalized: Evaluation A Multilevel Strategy to Address Effects of Systemic Racism in Housi...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and J. Robin Moon Guests: Bruce Reilly and Ashley Wennerstrom This week, we meet with a power trio: Bruce Reilly and Ashley Wennerstrom of Team Louisiana of Cohort 4. Their project, “Examining the effects of carceral exposure on health services use: Implications for policy and service coordination,” was carried out by their 3-person team, including Andrea Armstrong, 2019-202...

This week, we meet with a power trio: Robin Wright-Jones, Darrell Hudson, and Reggie Tucker-Seeley of Team St. Louis. They are just finishing up their project entitled “Prostate cancer patient, healthcare provider, and healthcare system perspectives on equity in the cancer care delivery system in St. Louis” as part of the final Cohort 7, ending in 2025. A unique combination of folks from varied ba...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and Cody Cotton Guests: Jane Chung-Do, Ilima Ho-Lastimosa, and Ted Radovich This week, we meet with Jane Chung-Do, Ilima Ho-Lastimosa, and Ted Radovich of Team Hawai’i (Waimānalo) of Cohort 3, who carried out their IRL project entitled “MALAMA: Rebuilding Indigenous Food Systems in Rural Native Hawaiian Communities through Backyard Aquaponics” from 2018 to 2021. Not all IRL...

Hosted By: Krystal Lee and J. Robin Moon Guests: Dawn X. Henderson This week, we talk to Dr. Dawn X. Henderson from Cohort 2, a research partner of Team Guilford County, North Carolina, that led the project called ‘Using the Structured Dialogue Model as a Model for Violence Prevention and Health Promotion.” We discuss what Dawn has discovered from her years of work in the community, schools, and f...

Hosted By: J. Robin Moon and Mandy LaBreche Guests: Davine Holness and Shoba Ramanadhan This week, we talk to Team Boston from our last Cohort 7. Our guests are Davine Holness and Shoba Ramanadhan, who led the project called “Identifying practice-based strategies to promote mental health among LGBTQ+ youth of color in the context of structural racism and anti-LGBTQ+ stigma.” We also include their...

To kick off our Season 2, we had a wonderful conversation with Team North Port St. Joe of Florida, from our last Cohort 7. Our guests are Dannie E. Bolden, Dr. Kwame N. Owusu-Daaku, and Dr. Christian Wells, who launched their ambitious and amazing project “Using Transformative Scenario Planning to Address Structural Racism in Health in North Port St. Joe, Florida.” Guests : Dannie E. Bolden is the...

Season 2, which we are calling the “main entree” of the podcast series, features the experiences and testimonies of our diverse fellows and alums. In this episode, co-hosts gather and discuss the themes that Season 2 features, including what it means to acknowledge and amplify unheard voices, understand the importance of process-centered community-engaged research, and redefine what we mean by imp...

Hosts : Cody Cotton, Mandy LaBreche, Krystal Lee, J. Robin Moon Episode Description : After a full Season 1, the hosts gathered to debrief and share their own learnings and reflections. Our podcast is short of a homegrown, in-your-garage DIY production (except for the incredible help by Studio Americana!), done by folks who have never conceived of creating podcasts, much less listening to them. We...

In this episode, you will meet Andriana Abariotes, who was an IRL partner (2016-2018) while at Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Twin Cities, then as IRL Co-Director through the end of 2020, and Bonnie Cluxton, who represented Academy Health also as IRL’s partner from the beginning until she retired in 2022. Both come from non-academic settings - Andriana is a practitioner with a deep c...

Hosts : Cody Cotton, J. Robin Moon Episode Description : Continuing on our reflection, we feature in this episode Kathleen Call, the former, now-retired, associate director of community engagement of IRL until the fall of 2024, and Ms. Bob-e Simpson Epps, a senior advisor of IRL. They have both been with the program from the beginning. In this very open and frank conversation, they discuss with us...

Hosts : Krystal Lee, Mandy LaBreche In this episode, we had a deep conversation with Zinzi Bailey and Cody Cotton, the current Co-Directors of IRL, and Toben Nelson, Senior Advisor and one of the last Co-Directors of IRL. Some of the most critical reflections in the past years that set the program on continuous pivots include intentionality around what “community” means, how to truly engage with t...

Hosts : Krystal Lee, Mandy LaBreche Episode Description : In this episode, we had a conversation with Nancy Fishman, former Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who shepherded IRL from the very beginning through 2020 until she retired. You will hear Nancy’s deep reflection with us on the original inspiration, aspiration, and intention of IRL by the Foundation, how she saw...

Hosts : Krystal Lee Episode Description : In this episode, we share a podcast recording from 2020, the first episode of our original podcast effort, which was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a conversation between the two original co-directors of the IRL program, Dr. J. Michael Oakes, Senior Vice President for Research, Office of Research and Technology Management at the Case Western Rese...