Revolutionizing Healthcare: Telehealth Insights and Innovations with Dr. Erkeda DeRouen

Welcome to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast with Dr. Kerry Reller! This week I am joined by Dr. Erkeda De Rouen to discuss the transformative impact of telehealth on healthcare. They explore its benefits for patients, addressing disparities, and the convenience it offers. The conversation touches on AI integration, emphasizing the importance of not solely relying on digital tools. Dr. DeRouen introduces the pacemakers app, an innovative solution providing health resources and community support. The episode concludes with a call to prioritize wellness in the new year.

Specializing in consulting and executive coaching, Dr. De Rouen invites you to set up an introductory call to explore how her expertise can address your specific needs. Beyond her professional commitments, she holds a deep affinity for delivering engaging talks on subjects that enrich the mind and foster positive change.

With a focus on crafting conversations that span a spectrum of topics including healthtech, health equity, diversity in medicine, and other relevant issues, Dr. Erkeda De Rouen brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to every interaction.

00:00 Welcome back! Guest Intro
01:41 What is Telehealth?
06:34 Benefits of Telehealth 
11:22 Perks of Telehealth 
16:56 Patient Perspective 
20:22 Primary Care Provider's Perspective 
25:34 Remote Patient Monitoring 
26:19 Tips for Telehealth Users
31:38 Innovative Solutions and Trends
32:32 Closing Remarks and Advice
34:06 Where to find Dr. Erkeda

Connect with Dr. Erkeda
Website: https://www.drerkeda.com/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/erkedaderouenmd/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctordgram/?hl=en
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drerkeda/_saved/
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2X045U4D555MLBXA3qTiJS?si=b92005bee9b340c2

Connect with Dr. Kerry Reller
My linktree: linktr.ee/kerryrellermd
Podcast website: https://gethealthytbpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClearwaterFamily
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearwaterfamilymedicine/
Clearwater Family Medicine and Allergy Website: https://sites.google.com/view/clearwaterallergy/home

Subscribe to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, iheartradio, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pandora.

#telehealth  #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #Wellness
#healthtech #Telemedicine #HealthEquity #MedicalInnovation #HealthPolicy

Transcript

Kerry: 0:28

All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller. And today we have a very, very, very special guest. We go way back and this is Dr. DeRouen and has many nicknames. So I will let her introduce yourself. But welcome to the podcast.

Erkeda: 0:46

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm Dr. Erkeda. We can just use that for today. But I'm so excited to join your podcast. I love everything that you're doing, especially educating your community about what is going on, healthcare and all of those things. A little bit about me is I am from the Washington D. C. area. I live in Maryland about 10 minutes outside of the city. I am originally from the area. I'm a family physician who's also board certified in family and lifestyle medicine. And I've been working in the digital health space for about the past six or seven years in various forms of leadership. I am currently a digital health consultant and the chief medical officer of EMME, which is a digital health organization that's focused on kind of putting women's health in their own hands. So I'm just really excited to discuss things about those topics with your audience.

Kerry: 1:52

Awesome. And I'm so excited to have you. Now, everybody should know that you basically bossed me around in residency because you were my older resident. I don't think, yeah, no, I'm only one year behind you. So you weren't my chief or anything. But you definitely got to boss me around. So we had a lot of fun as we did residency at University of Maryland together.

Erkeda: 2:10

We had some fun, long nights.

Kerry: 2:13

Yes, absolutely.

Erkeda: 2:14

it was a pleasure.

Kerry: 2:15

Yeah. So yeah, I'm so excited to have you on because you have been doing so many new and innovative things since coming out of residency. So I think it's wonderful that you've had all these different things and everyone should know she also I guess hosted me. My first podcast was being on Dr. Erkeda's podcast remind me the name, cause it is mostly for people going into medicine.

Erkeda: 2:39

Yeah, so you were an amazing guest. I'm gonna have to have you come back and talk about this, or maybe we'll do a crossover event. But my podcast is called The Prospective Doctor, and it's more about talking about hot topics in medicine, as well as the process of getting into med school. So it's geared more towards pre med students and medical students.

Kerry: 2:59

Awesome. Yes. I could not remember the name. I was blanking. But anyway thank you so much for coming on today. And I did not know this was going to be about telemedicine and women's health too. So this is, this is really cool. So basically how did you get into healthcare technology

Erkeda: 3:15

So I don't know if we have enough time, but I'll take you guys through my little journey. I originally went to college in Virginia. It was wonderful. And I learned about a program called the Early Medical School Selection Program that was affiliated with Boston University. I applied to that. So I kind of had a real world experience. And this is very fun to talk about because I'm going to be talking to some of the students tomorrow. But with that experience, it's like they pick 15 strangers and they choose you to live in a house of brownstone together for your summer after your sophomore and junior year of college. And then you spend your entire senior year at another institution. So I did that and then ended up transitioning into their med school. So when I went to medical school, I hadn't had a lot of exposure to primary care in terms of family medicine. I of course had a pediatrician. I had an internist and a lot of the cities That's what they focus on but I kind of fell in love with family medicine and one of my advisors there was like When you find your people, you'll know. So I kind of like found my people there. So that was a very good experience. Going into it, I always thought that I would be working in a community health center for 30 years, kind of like helping my community. So when we went to university of Maryland, we were in a community environment and it was a lovely experience learning. And after that, I transitioned into working at community health centers because I did a program called the national health service corps, where You kind of have to go in underserved communities and serve them. So it was great because 50 percent of my patients were undocumented, uninsured. I had a large LGBT population where there was a lot of HIV and trans care that I was learning and caring for, had patients who unfortunately had to fly to see me from like Georgia and South Carolina because some of their caregivers could not provide the services that they needed. So I really enjoyed the experience, but there was always this thing that was pulling at me because you could kind of know what to do for a patient medically, but they didn't necessarily have the resources to do it. So for instance, there was a patient who was super sweet and he had kidney failure. And typically you would refer them to a kidney doctor and then have them go and get dialysis as needed. But because he couldn't afford that and he didn't have insurance and all of those types of things, they recommended that he go to the emergency room every three days. So that number one is not a good fix, but it also was terrible to have to explain those things to the patients. So I started to look for other alternatives in terms of what kind of care models I wanted to work in. So I found telehealth and this was about 2017, 2018. And I decided to just kind of take the leap. I've been talking about it. I kept looking for it. I was interviewing at other positions and I just didn't find something that was a good fit. And people were like, I don't know if you should do that because it's not real medicine and all of that. And this was before the pandemic. So I was like, we're going to take the leap. I ended up joining an organization. I grew in leadership there, became one of their medical directors, learned a lot about machine learning and AI and helped kind of work with different parts of the organization to help develop things where a lot of telehealth organizations are creating their own EMR. So I learned a lot about that as well as grew in leadership and management. So I started to look for other organizations in which I could help, I started consulting and there were so many different organizations out there that were really cool and just learning about the startup realm interests me. So I decided to take a leap and I ended up becoming the consulting medical officer for an organization that was geared towards women's Health called Alden, and they were working on menopause and telehealth. And one thing about people who may not be familiar with the startup life, especially if you're transitioning from traditional healthcare, brick and mortar offices, is it can be really fast paced, and there are a lot of moving parts. So about four months after I joined Alden, they dissolved. So it's definitely been, been a journey. I've been working at different organizations and helping in different capacities, and in the past six months or so, I decided to go full-time into consulting. So working to help digital health organizations prioritize quality and decrease risk with optimizing their workflows and helping with the business strategy of things has been really great for me because it's definitely shown that number one, there are so many ways we could help people, especially outside of the one to one patient interactions where you're creating these systems to help create opportunities for entire populations. And especially having that focus on underserved communities and rural communities, because all of those communities, when you kind of put a little focus on them can help increased patient outcomes for everyone. So thinking through those processes has been a really fun experience and working with different organizations to help them think through those things has kind of been something that when I went into medicine and went into medical school, I would have never even imagined, but it's really good to just see how things evolve and how things line up.

Kerry: 9:04

That's a, I mean, I know part of this story, but I mean, I think that's really helpful to see how you were working with the underserved community and how you're still trying to focus on that and improve outcomes for them but now using telehealth technology and I knew you were doing consulting work and I think that's really interesting. Of course, I think that the fast paced startup thing, I mean, there's all these companies trying to jump in there and I mean. Wow. Like having them dissolve right after, but I mean, I'm sure you've gained like tons of experience through that, but so basically you have this concept of quadruple aim, and I wanted you to explain that a little more and elaborate on how making these changes in someone's healthcare system can be more efficient and help treat the patient better.

Erkeda: 9:49

Sure. So it's not really my concept. I would love to take the credit for the quadruple aim. But years back the Institute of Medicine came up with something called the triple aim, where they're trying to create like a basically a perfect environment for medicine and making the healthcare system work. And over time, it's evolved into the quadruple aim where they have different focuses. Number one, focusing on the patient experience. So making sure that we have things that where patients are feeling heard, where the outcomes are improved, where there's quality, where there's safety and protecting them in that realm. But in addition to patients, in order to make a system work, you have to have a great provider experience where you're, and I'm going to go back and say clinician experience. They say provider, but I don't like the word provider for clinicians to feel satisfied, feel hard, have that work life balance and optimizing the workflows so they can work at the top of their license then you also want to focus on that population health component. So working to make sure that you are doing things for prevention, that you are focusing on those social determinants of health, and then you're also focusing on what your particular population that you serve and needs are. And then that fourth part is just kind of working through Optimizing costs and reducing them so that you can have that through productivity standards or making sure that certain treatments and things are cost effective, but also hitting those other points. So that's kind of the quadruple aim where you have the best of both worlds for the patients, the clinicians, you're serving the population to improve the outcomes, and it is also cost effective.

Kerry: 11:37

That explains, yeah, a lot. I didn't realize it was from the Institute of Medicine. So how does all this help like make the patient experience better then?

Erkeda: 11:45

I think in terms of making the patient experience better, number one, if you're prioritizing your patients, number one, and not only in terms of satisfaction, because sometimes I think especially as health grows and we're having more corporatization of medicine, they may put a little more focus than we should on the, what we call satisfaction, because it's kind of a measure in terms of did the patient get what they want? Did they like that? But I think it's more important for us to prioritize quality, safety, evidence based medicine, and the outcomes. And if you're having these groups of patients who are having specific conditions, whether or not you're focusing on a specific group, like weight loss, or if you're focusing on something like mental health, just figuring out like, how can you provide them the best experience is important. And that will definitely help benefit them. And then with that component of adding the clinician wellness and satisfaction, if you have a doctor or physician assistant or a nurse practitioner or someone coming to treat you and they're feeling fulfilled and excited to come to work every day, you may get a better experience than having someone who is overwhelmed, depressed, feeling rushed in that kind of thing. So if you have happy workers, you will have happy customers. And then in terms of the population health, obviously that can help in those ways because that's the entire purpose of us treating the patients to make sure that they're safe and that we're addressing the needs that they have. And hopefully, and I think this is the bigger part that a lot of the organizations are trying to figure out is that cost component. Because in America, we spend the most cost per capita on all of the patients. We have a lot of the technology, we have the brightest clinicians, but our life expectancy is still not where it should be. During the pandemic we actually lost about seven years in life expectancy, and it's slowly going up, but if we are a country that does not have some of the other assets that a lot of other industrialized countries have like we're the only country without some form of universal health care. But we're not living longer than these other people and we are spending more money. There's a disconnect. So how can we fix that in order to hit all of those different points?

Kerry: 14:17

Thats a really big undertaking because definitely our healthcare system is kind of a mess. And I know that we need to do a lot of work to fix it, but I mean, you're doing the work. It's just a matter of, what's the plan I think with the country. Right. So I really like that. So you've been in telemedicine like since way before the pandemic, but how has that played a role in like all of this and everything that you're doing now and making things more efficient for patient treatment too.

Erkeda: 14:46

think that we're living in a very interesting time where there are a lot of ideas that have been floating around like for at least a decade. And a lot of people don't even know that telemedicine has been around for a long time way before even this past decade. So there were telephone calls like in the 40s in terms of the first telemedicine visit with the radiologic like thing. And then in the 60s, they started using telehealth in terms of mental health. But it's become more in the front forefront, probably in the 2010s or so. And with that, I think that this is a world of opportunity because with a lot of the policies that are coming into place, like Biden, they released the executive order on like the use of AI. And this is going to push a lot of things forward because as the government moves forward, it's going to trickle down into different systems with that as well. There's going to be a greater kind of magnification glass kind of on the systems, because I think in a lot of times like the startups are being innovative and trying certain things, and now the health care systems are seeing that telehealth is here to stay. So now they're creating systems in place as well. But It's kind of like the wild, wild west. Like people are trying things, they're not working. There is a disconnect in terms of the care team. So we are used to having care teams where we have the clinicians, we have the physicians, nurse practitioners, all of those things in alignment with other medical professionals like social workers and pharmacists and everything like that. And we're working together to kind of push forward initiatives to help patients. But now we have to add in the engineer side. So all of the different engineers and product developers and all of those things. And for those who may not have experience with that, medical people speak an entirely different language than engineers. So now we have to figure out a way to match these languages because we're thinking of the scientific method for medical people. And for engineers, they're kind of thinking of, okay, What's the best V1 we can get through? They're like thinking of product design and those kinds of things. So how do we mesh that together to keep patients safe and to innovate? So I think in during these times, it's really exciting because we can think through things and we can work to optimize workflows that can kind of take some of the stress off of all of the clinicians who are seeing the patients as well as make sure that The standard of care is being upheld.

Kerry: 17:31

Okay, from like a patient perspective though, like, just cause I think a lot of the listeners are patients what do they get out of that? I mean, you know, like I think when I'm thinking of as a patient, they're just liking that they can be at home to do a visit, but like, what else? What else is beneficial for them?

Erkeda: 17:49

There's so many benefits to utilizing telehealth. I think number one, like you said, you can be at home. It's that access. There are a lot of times where people, especially women, may kind of delay getting care because they're caring for everyone else. They have to find a sitter for the kids if they can't bring them all in to get their pack. Or if you're working different hours there, I've definitely had patients who have come in and said like, I work the night shift at Walmart and I haven't been able to go get my physical for years because I'm either at home sleep or at work when it's time to go. So now I have this flexibility because I can go to the 24 hour group. Then there also the access of having more standardized care, especially for the organizations that are prioritizing the quality and the workflows, because where you may have had more limited areas, such as in rural areas and things like that, where there is not a lot of access to care, you have people who are all looking at the same guidelines and who are all kind of held to that standard, especially with there being a closer eye on things because now there are, there's a lot of things going around in terms of making sure that the carrot saved. So, for instance, the administration has a call out to hire 78 new FBI. officers to kind of just focus on telemedicine and making sure that there aren't any fraudulent claims and things like that to keep patients safe. So in terms of that, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for patients as well as making sure that You are able to stay up to date with all of the different checks and things that you need. So you can go online sometimes and even get an order for a colonoscopy or go online and kind of order your basic blood tests. So that when you do go into the doctor, because I don't think that telehealth will completely, and it should not completely replace in person care, but it should be kind of an adjunct or something helpful so that not only is it helping you get your day to day care that you're getting but it's opening up more space for your in person doctor so that when you are really sick, when you do hurt your knee and you need to get a same day appointment, there's an opening. When you do have to go and get your pap smear, there's an opening because we know that there are such long wait times. So using this technology and streamlining the things that way you're calling in and you may have a cold or you may need a refill for your blood pressure medicine and you have a cup at home where you can monitor it and let us know the numbers will save and open up that space for people who need to get inside.

Kerry: 20:22

I have a couple of comments on that. So as a primary care provider, I mean, obviously I don't want to have an empty schedule. But we do want to see our patients as they need to come in, of course. So it is nice to be able to get them in quicker. And some are on certain plans where their insurance provider has them have like a zero copay for a tele visit thing. But then alternatively I'm their primary care provider, and I will do a telemedicine visit for them. But then they are not so happy that they may have a copay to see me. But what I think is that there are plenty of providers that now are offering these appointments, they'll offer telehealth in their own practice, which I think is nice too, if you want to get your colonoscopy order from your own provider, right? So I think that's nice. And it helps people, especially like a mom not to have to get babysitter and things like that. We use it for that. Anyone who you know, was suspicious of having COVID now that they can do home testing, or if they need treatment, because we have a very sick population, our office, sometimes we don't want them to come in with potential COVID symptoms or anything like that. So we can do a quick tele visit. And then if they need to come in, of course, we escalate that service. So Yeah. I think it's really good, but I was happy to hear your explanation about that. You can assure patients that they are getting quality care and safe care, even if it is via telemedicine. So I think that's that's really important. And I'm not referring to by their own primary. I'm sure I mean, with the other sources. So that's really good. There are other ways that I mean, I think our office uses telemedicine too is like the remote patient monitoring, you mentioned someone having their own blood pressure and checking in and let them know the numbers like that's something I do in our practice where we give them a device and then we're monitoring them through that and insurance does often pay, not always, but I think it's helpful too, because I can see that their blood pressure is normal at home, whereas when they come in the office, they have, what we call white coat hypertension, and it's really just elevated every time they're there, but I don't want to over treat them with medicine, that may make them lightheaded or anything, just inappropriate, but it's nice that I can see those numbers at home and know that, okay, there really are controlled blood pressure. So that's another way that we use telemedicine. Yeah. Do you have any more comments on like that kind of telemedicine?

Erkeda: 22:38

I love that you brought up all of those different things because I think that it's so important to let you know that like telemedicine is more than just a video visit. It kind of opens you up to your home. So like you said, for people who may have white coat hypertension, you can kind of track a little more closely and follow and maybe even be able to get off some of your medications because you're communicating with your doctor. I think one thing that you also brought up is that patients aren't always utilizing their personal primary care doctor just because there are different barriers. They may not have a visit, whereas this other organization may be 24 hours. They may Want to try something else out and all of those kinds of things, but I think it's very important, especially as telehealth grows and we get different partnerships to kind of relay that number one, there isn't a universal health record. So be sure to have certain things prepared when you're going to a telehealth visit that is not associated with your doctor. I'll just name a few. Have a list of all of your problems because that can definitely affect your treatment even if you're just going in for acne or something on one of these apps, it's very important to let them know all of the problems that you have that you've confirmed with your doctor. Have a list of your medications, because there can be medication interactions. There are even some kinds of rules with certain medicines where you can't have a certain amount. So it's not a good idea to go and not share those medicines. For instance, I worked at an organization that treated migraines exclusively online. And there is a medication for those who may have migraines. You may have heard of something called imitrax or sumatriptan or one of the triptan families. And we do not recommend that you take more than 10 of those in a month because it can cause certain complications and problems and things like that. Not saying that you shouldn't take it at all, but just there's a limit to it. So there were some patients who may have forgotten that they had 10 in a month or gotten it from somewhere else and things, and they were prescribed it and may have had some poor outcomes and things like that if it hadn't been caught. So being honest with what medications you're in to make sure you're not having any interactions or problems that could come from that. Also, having a list of what allergies you have so that you can make sure that you're not being prescribed something that can cause an allergic reaction. And just being clear with your story and after you do all of these things, if you're seeing an external provider. Definitely always go back when you're following up with your doctor or send them a message in a portal after you do it and say like, Hey, I went to this app. They prescribed me this medicine and told me this thing, just wanted to let you know so that your doctor will be aware that you're seeing other providers and that you may have new medicines or new diagnoses because communication is so important.

Kerry: 25:34

Yeah, those are really good tips. And I think everybody maybe needs to know how to download their after visit summary or whatever it is from whatever provider they're going to, so they can bring those information and have it all in one place for them to see another provider if needed. Although I keep saying the word provider and you hate it, so I'll try to say clinician. Sorry about that.

Erkeda: 25:54

it's a personal thing. But yeah, I think that we should just make sure that we are honoring everyone's training and working to the top of their licenses. So, yes, we're providing care. But you are providing clinical care, number one, and there are different roles on the clinical team. So I just like to highlight those, but providers. Okay,

Kerry: 26:19

So are there any innovative solutions or trends coming down the line that we should be aware of?

Erkeda: 26:25

I think there's so many innovative solutions coming up around in digital care. And I think that number one is very important for people to get involved because they're going to be a lot of ideas coming forward. They're going to be integration of AI into certain things as this evolves with certain startups and things that may pop up. I also want to stress with the users that it's just like Google for the most part. So yes, it may be a little more accurate, but please don't rely on Dr. AI. Talk to your doctor or your provider if you have a question about your health care. I would not rely on a computer. They're just an adjunct, a helpful thing to help you get think through things. We have our training to help kind of tease out what is most likely possible according to the information that you share with us and your medical history and your medications and all of these things. But a lot of times the AI or Google may just share something that's very common or something that's very random like it might have all of you guys walking around thinking that you have cancer. So definitely talk about your concerns with your provider. You can Google if you want. I say that there are some things that may help people work on medication adherence. There are things that may help with patients in controlling their blood pressure. There are things that may help increasing systems and kind of getting involved with other organizations to help with resources. So there are so many things that are coming out in the digital world, I would say, in the next year or so. They're just going to get bigger. I do want to highlight two organizations, for instance, EMME, and you can go to EMME.Com, E M M E. They are an organization that's kind of putting women's health at the forefront. We are starting with talking about birth control and monitoring your period and all of the things that we don't want to talk about, there's an app for it. So if you want to go on there and kind of remember when to take your pills, we have an actual physical product as well that can help with that, a digital case. And then I personally, something that is very dear to my heart. I did a TEDx about a year, almost a year ago, and it's called, for those who may not be familiar with what a TEDx is, it's an experience, a talk where we kind of talk about one topic, one idea, and what we like to do to help with that. So my talk was called, Did Disney Just Save health care. Imagine that and it kind of talked about some of the things we were talking about how the health care system is a little disjointed. It's kind of a system where they're in the haves versus the have nots and that's not necessarily fair. We are in a digital age where we can make so much change and kind of revolutionize things, but we may have to borrow from other ideas like the Disney Imagineering method where they bring people from all walks of life, even if they aren't like artists and things like that to come and contribute to the Disney experience so we can do the same thing with health care and bring people from all walks of life and all kinds of ideas to innovate in health care. So the imaginary group was called pacemakers. So now the pacemakers is live. There's an app for that too. And it has a list of resources that you may utilize. So we didn't get a lot into health equity and things like that, but according to where you live has a big influence on the kind of care you kind of receive. So if you may live in one zip code, your life expectancy may be 85, which is real in certain areas where Dr. Reller and I, we trained in Baltimore. There is one city called Roland Park in Baltimore, which the life expectancy for a white male is 85, whereas in West Baltimore, which is about five miles away, the life expectancy for a black male is I think 56. So it's a big difference just depending on where you live. So these resources kind of dive on those things and kind of give you some help. So it helps you with figuring out where you can get certain health care help, where you can get mental health help, where you can get things if you're having issues with paying for your light bills or where you can find safe exercise opportunities in your neighborhood. It also has some educational videos because education is power. So talking through what is heart failure? What can I do to help improve that? What should I do for my migraines? And then a little chat place where you can talk with other people and kind of communicate your questions. So it's pacemakers at p a c e m a k e r z A P P dot com pacemakers at that console pacemakers with a Z. And if you download that, you might find some information that may be helpful to you or a loved one. I know a lot of people may have loved ones who are aging. It has some information there in terms of how to help them as well.

Kerry: 31:38

I'm so glad that you mentioned that and obviously that you gave the TED talk and I did not know it had developed into the app already. So that's fantastic. It's more than just a website, right? It's an app.

Erkeda: 31:49

Yes, there's an app that's focusing on education, resources, and community building, so it has three tabs, one of them has all the little resources we just chatted about, one has some educational videos, and then the last part is where you can kind of engage in like a Reddit type experience where you can talk amongst yourselves.

Kerry: 32:07

that's awesome. Well, congratulations on that. I'm so glad that has come to fruition. And so it's basically collaborating with all the different type of people, different backgrounds and everything that can create these source resources for patients, right?

Erkeda: 32:22

Yes,

Kerry: 32:22

Okay. I love it. Okay. Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. And also they should check out your TEDx talk, which was very cool. And you wore a little Disney hat. I like that.

Erkeda: 32:32

I did.

Kerry: 32:34

Yeah. Well, anything else that you want to share with the listeners today?

Erkeda: 32:37

I'm just excited to be here. I know that we're going into a new year. So a lot of people may be planning on their like new year new me. I just would suggest that you prioritize wellness and prioritize yourself because you can't give to others unless you are fulfilled. So work on those things like having a healthy body, staying up to date with all of your screenings, like your colonoscopies, your mammograms, check your blood pressure so that we can have a healthy new year.

Kerry: 33:12

I love it. And where can people find you?

Erkeda: 33:16

People can find me on Instagram, if you would like Dr. D Gram, D O C T O R, the letter D G R A M. Or if you want to have other discussions about health, you can definitely check out that app that we just mentioned. And I forgot to mention that I'm also going on a speaking tour. So if you have any organizations that want to talk about overcoming obstacles or any kinds of health things, you can definitely reach out to me on my speaking tour website. The glo up. T-H-E-G-L-O-U-P-T-O-U r.com. Glo up tour.com. No W so if, you want me to come to a city near you and talk about fun things, I'm here for that.

Kerry: 34:06

Well, thank you so much. And thank you for coming on the podcast. It's always a pleasure. I learned so much from you, definitely more about like the policy and things like that, because I'm not as familiar with that as you. So I always get information out of these podcasts. So I mean, I'm lucky to be interviewing all these guests. You guys are awesome. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast and everybody stay tuned for next week. Okay.

Erkeda: 34:31

Thank you for having me.