SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All

Dr. Kimbra Bell is a dynamic and accomplished physician with extensive experience in the medical field. She is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Northwestern University Medical school and in 2021 was appointed as medical director of the new Northwestern Bronzeville Outpatient Care Center (open Fall 2025). She is board certified in Internal Medicine and a fellow of the American College...

Wrapping up our celebration of Black History Month (BHM) 2025, we are featuring a conversation with Dr. Paris Thomas, CEO of Equal Hope, as she shares her personal story and Equal Hope's mission to reduce women's healthcare disparities. Equal Hope saves lives by tackling health inequities head-on by providing free breast and reproductive cancer services and resources to uninsured and underinsured...

Join us as we celebrate Black History Month 2025 with our special guest Delores King, Founder/CEO of Livin' Through the Lenz -- a nonprofit that combines photo-based therapy and visual storytelling to aid healing. https://www.livinthruthelenz.org/

In this special episode, our guest co-hosts are Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (ChicagoCHEC) Fellows Program Alumni David Bastos (Northwestern University) and Vanessa Pineda (University of Illinois at Chicago) sit down with Dr. Joe Feinglass, Research Professor at Northwestern University on health services with over 30 years of experience in health policy, quality improvement, health d...

Join us in this special episode featuring the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (CHEC) Fellows Program 2024 cohort. This program brings undergrad and postbac students together in preparation for careers in social, behavioral, and biomedical research and in health care. They share with us their experiences with the CHEC Fellows program including highlights, insightful moments and how it ha...

Join us in this special episode featuring the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (CHEC) Fellows Program 2023 cohort. This program brings undergrad and postbac students together in preparation for careers in social, behavioral, and biomedical research and in health care. They share with us their experiences with the CHEC Fellows program including highlights and “aha” moments and how it has...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with CHET Director/Founder -- Dr. Melissa Simon. Melissa A. Simon, MD, MPH is the George H. Gardner Professor of Clinical Gynecology, Vice Chair of Research in the Department of...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Kelly Davis, MPA who is co-founder and Chief Equity Officer at KINSHIFT. KINSHIFT supports healthcare and public health transformation through evidence-based practices root...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Schubert who is President and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), where she leads the organization’s efforts to promote research on s...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Dr. Carolyn Sufrin who is a medical anthropologist and obstetrician/gynecologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She worked as a physician at the San Francisco jail fr...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Janel Hughes-Jones, a bilingual breastfeeding Peer Counselor (PC), with more than 18 years of experience working with many organizations to facilitate breastfeeding communi...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Dr. Ashish Premkumar, a maternal-fetal medicine clinician/researcher at the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, IL. Topics include Adverse Childhood Ev...

In this limited series of episodes, we have conversations with a variety of experts and community leaders in the field of maternal and child health to discuss how to advance maternal health equity. In this episode we spoke with Dr. Rishi Agrawal, a pediatric hospitalist at La Rabida children's hospital - a partner of Lurie Children's Hospital. His research interests include health services researc...

In this special episode, a ChicagoCHEC Fellows Alumnus -- Maxson Joseph -- talks with two high school students part of the UIC Champions Vaccination Cohort. UIC Champions is a summer program with its goal of empowering Chicago youth to become community leaders, create pathways to health professions careers and advance health equity. More info at https://twitter.com/uic_champions Join us at the upc...

Join us in this special episode featuring the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (CHEC) Fellows Program 2020 cohort. This program brings undergrad and postbac students together in preparation for careers in social, behavioral, and biomedical research and in health care. They share with us their experiences with the CHEC Fellows during a pandemic and ongoing social unrest, program highlight...

This episode was recorded on May 11, 2020. Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing physical distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. This episode features our co-host Araceli Estrada interviewing Greg Trotter, Senior Public Relations Manage...

NOTE: This episode was recorded on January 9th, 2020. Our guest for this special episode during Hispanic Heritage Month is José López – a prominent community leader and Executive Director of The Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, which he co-founded in 1973. He has written extensively on the political and social reality of Puerto Ricans in the United States while serving as an adjunct instru...

NOTE: This episode was recorded in October 2019. The SkinnyTrees podcast team took a field trip to an urban farm on Chicago’s south side. Founded in 2017, the Urban Growers Collective (UGC) aims to address the inequities and structural racism that exist in the food system and in underserved communities. Their vision is to use urban agriculture to cultivate pathways to freedom through food and heal...

This episode was recorded on May 4, 2020. Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. This episode features our co-host, Rabih Dahdouh, interviewing Dr. Garth Walker, MD, MPH who is an emergency m...

Note: This episode was recorded on March 12, 2020, just days before the Governor of Illinois instituted a stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus outbreak. In this episode we connected with Kimberly Soenen (short bio below) to discuss the importance of language in health and her ongoing art exhibit "SOME PEOPLE" (Every)Body. The ongoing project examines the ethics, people, processes, and systems...

This episode was recorded on April 20th, 2020. Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. This episode features our co-host, Ivy Leung, interviewing Grace Chan, a long-time community activist and...

This episode was recorded on April 9th, 2020. Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. This episode features our co-host, Rabih Dahdouh, interviewing Fred Raz, a registered nurse at University...

Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. Each mini episode will focus on a different community in Chicago to find out how they are coping with these difficult times. This episode features our c...

Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. Each mini episode will focus on a different community in Chicago to find out how they are coping with these difficult times. This episode features our c...

Thank you for joining us on SkinnyTrees: Lift Health for All. We like many of our fellow Chicagoans, are staying home and practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. We are here to present a mini-series: COVID-19 in our Chicago communities. Each mini episode will focus on a different community in Chicago to find out how they are coping with these difficult times. This episode features our c...