Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills
to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.
When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find
that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research
program.
Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.
However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.
For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians
the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
Now introducing your host, Tracey Onwemona.
Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.
I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Today, I'm especially excited because we have a very special guest, Dr. Robert Winn, and
he's got so many, so many wonderful things to share, so many deep insights.
I can't wait for him to share them with you.
I just want to say, Dr. Winn, welcome to the show.
Yo, you know what?
Thank you for having me and appreciate it.
Oh, it's our pleasure.
So, Dr. Nguyen, there's so much I could say about you, but I'd love for you to introduce
yourself, but not just you as the researcher, as the very successful scientist and leader,
but introduce yourself even from your early beginnings in academic medicine and the secret
sauce that brought you to this spot where you are today.
So it's a little bit like, you know, we used to say, you know, I didn't look for thug life,
thug life found me.
Well, I ain't looked for medicine.
It literally found me.
And what I mean by that is that I'm the example of when people see things in you before you
even recognize them within yourself.
And so, you know, I always sort of say to people, they look at me now and they say,
oh my God, you must have been always, you know, focused and, you know, knew you were
going to do this.
And they say, I did not.
But what I was, was curious enough to understand what an opportunity not to say no.
And so the story goes that, you know, as I was growing up, I really wasn't thinking about
becoming a doctor, let alone doing research.
I mean, I literally was focused on trying to, you know, make some cash and, you know,
I was thinking about working at GM and, you know, being the youngest formed over at GM
and luckily that did not work out.
You know, there were other plans and those other plans were that, you know, I'd wind
up going to, you know, University of Notre Dame.
And then I'd run into amazing people who actually, again, got me on a different path because
I was maybe suspect that they saw something in me, but not actually resistant.
It's a common theme for me in the context of, you know, wanting to do research, basic
science.
This was not something that inherently I grew up with or even was exposed to.
But I think when I got my first taste of it and having, you know, people around campus
at that time, University of Michigan, Francis Collins was there, there was a significant
influence on sort of saying, huh, it's interesting that I could actually help out my people and
do research.
And by the way, instead of just helping out the patient in front of me, if I came up with
something, right, I could really help communities times a hundred or a thousand.
And so that really kind of got me into the, you know, the mindset that I could become
a researcher.
And I'm so glad I did.
Not because it was just purpose of just generating paper, because it gave me not only a way of
thinking, but a lifestyle, a lifestyle of not only being curious, but a lifestyle of
being analytical in that kind of sense of being able to be critically minded.
And when I actually think about certain things, which is extended, interesting, all the way
into my work, into this sort of community to bench model where we really put community
first, the scientific principle and the scientific approaches are still really, really relevant
as I run a cancer center or when I'm out doing community based participatory activities.
So it's interesting that in my life, it is not so much that I found it as if the steps
were ordered so that it, in this case, science would find me.
And so, I mean, as usually the best way to put it, you know, I mean, I, you know, I am
the product of what happens when you have federal programs from like Head Start at a
teenage mom to, you know, the minority supplement awards that came with NIH to all of those
things that when you invest in us, the ROI can be great.
And so again, you know, that's my story and I'm straight up sticking to it.
Thank you, Dr. Nguyen.
That was super awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing.
Because what I hear in that is the legacy piece.
Like I can contribute to something greater than myself.
I think many young people and especially underrepresented faculty in the academic medicine want to have
that same kind of impact, but they experience barriers.
And I, you know, I think every generation feels like them barriers are more significant
than the generations that came before them.
But there is a sense that there is less incentive and less investment in clinicians today in
becoming researchers.
Can you speak to that?
What's different today compared to when you came up in research?
I think it's a mindset.
Actually, I started thinking about the money.
And if you look at the money, right, the gross amount, some money that are being spent right
now versus what was being spent, I'm not quite sure that the money's not there.
But what I'm sure is that the mindset and the, and really the focus, right, there was
once upon a time where we really focused on understanding that there were lower numbers
of minorities that were part of our medical school and lower numbers of minorities that
were part of the science field.
And then there was a societal sort of center, we should do something about that.
What's eroded isn't the money.
What's eroded is that ethos of making sure that we included diversity and that it was
good for all of us.
You know, the funny part is I used to talk about, you know, generation, you know, one
of my ex, whatever the hell, you know, but I'm definitely not a millennial.
I know that.
So it was either ex or wherever in that zone, that early ex, whatever that was.
And we, you know, we always dogged out, you know, the millennials and everything that
came after.
I don't even know where you're at.
X, Y, Z, A, I don't know.
But whatever is after us, we have done, I think all of us are dissatisfied by the following
narrative.
You guys are softer.
Here's the reality that I was just talking with Dr. Vivian Penn, who's also a giant in
our field, and without folks like Vivian Penn, I don't have a foundation to then stand on
to take things to the next level.
She and I were talking and she said something that was really just made a light bulb.
She said, now listen, you know, the difference is that our generation, meaning the baby boomers
and the exes, we didn't know what better looked like.
It wasn't there.
We were all struggling to quote get there.
But generations that came after us actually had a taste of what good was.
And in front of your eyes, you're seeing it eroded.
Now when we talk about that, we don't really talk about these generational differences about
what makes it different when I don't expect that anybody's going to give me anything.
When I expect that there's going to be obstacles, because I assume that no one, even in getting
as a 10 year old chocolate from a white store that when I went into a neighborhood and being
able to be like shook, you know, shaking down and like, yo, why you in here buying a snicker
bar?
I'm like, because my daddy gave me a quarter.
You know what I'm saying?
That was an expectation that there was going to be obstacles and that there wasn't anybody
that was going to set up something for me.
I was like, what?
You know, people would say, well, don't you expect that they're going to... No, my expectation
was that there was going to definitely be like, that's not you, you don't belong here.
That was, I mean, it's straight up.
I can't even lie about it.
So I had to change my mental and say, but what if I grew up in generations where the
expectation was that things weren't supposed to be the same and that we, as a result of
the previous generation, had a more of a taste of that, right?
What then happens is if in my lifetime, I'm now seeing things roll back.
That mental allows for a sense of saying that you're seeing loss as opposed to understanding
that we already were in the negative column and people were going to keep you in the negative
column and that was just normalized.
What actually happens in the generations that followed when that wasn't the mindset that
not having was normalized and having was to say, yeah, we're supposed to?
So I'm actually sort of saying to you in a very roundabout way that I think when we come
to obstacles, we have to actually have grace for one another in our cultures and our generational
differences in a sense of younger people recognizing that people from the ex generation, particularly
early ex, I can't speak for them later exes.
The later exes, I can't speak for them.
I'm talking about the ones right in that baby boom to the early ex.
I can tell you for real, for real that that generation was like me sort of saying that
we were being the last generation of forced busing where we were being integrated and
where we actually were in communities where people didn't want us.
It was an assumption that people didn't want you.
It was an assumption that things weren't going to be fair and it was an assumption that there
was always going to be obstacles.
So once that's your normal, you're like, yeah, all right, but what would it be like if I
didn't have that mental where I assumed that there was going to be an obstacle and all
of a sudden in my mind and in my lifetime, we were seeing those things eroded.
That is a different sort of mentality and that is something that I think when we talk
about intergenerational, I hope we in the future are able to start those discussions
so that the younger generations can have a little bit more grace for the older and that
our older sort of generations can have a little bit more grace in understanding what's going
on with the framework and the mental of the millennials and all.
So I think that that's an important thing that in a black community in particular that
we are not doing that I hope to have future conversations on what that looks like because
I think that there goes the rubs because when I think of obstacles, I'm like, yeah, of course
there's obstacles.
I mean, we were like, well, what do you think about the obstacles?
I mean, I don't know where it was.
So, right?
I love it.
I appreciate you talking about that.
I want to, you know, it's interesting.
So I'm going to go back 10 years when I first started as an early career faculty and there
were these obstacles that I wasn't expecting.
And so when you're speaking, it really speaks to me because I'm like, I was not expecting
those obstacles.
And you know why?
Because throughout undergrad, I was supported all the way.
And then in medical school, I was mostly supported.
In fact, I was in residency and even in fellowship.
And then I got to the faculty position.
And that was where it became clear that there are a lot more obstacles than I had ever experienced.
And when I talk to someone-
So that meant that the early work that we put in was working.
That's a great point.
To lead a medical student and to get the residencies and the fellowship supported because my generation,
that was not an easy, like, support of what?
They would be like, man, we hope you go.
We hope you fail.
Right?
It was like, and they were pretty straight up with it.
You don't belong here.
And I was like, you're right, but we're going to finish anyway.
So you are right.
But what happened was, to your point though, that because of work, we made progress.
Then what happens is that we need to actually make more progress.
But in the current age and what you're getting at is that some of the progress being made,
when you see that roll back, that has to actually hurt in a different way.
Okay.
So tell me now, how do we solve this problem?
Because you're tackling this problem at many different levels.
And I'm connected with you because I'm a member of the Wynn Career Development Award.
You can say that again.
I mean, open it up.
You don't know me.
I'm a weirdo.
So I see you just working hard to remove these obstacles, at least give people tools to
scale these obstacles.
But I want you to speak to kind of your general perspective.
And maybe if you want to speak for even your generation to the extent that you can, what
are the things that you're doing to help us from a younger perspective understand the
sacrifices and the investments that you're continuing to make to move us forward?
You know what?
And you just hit the nail on the head, right?
There is a level of mission generated that while I think they use a young folks term,
I'm into myself, there is a danger of being so much into yourself though that you become
a me as opposed to a we.
By the same token, the other philosophy of that there is no me, it's all we, right?
I'm always giving allows for people to be burned out without even knowing.
So there's this wisdom that interestingly that I've been watching about how do we move
the needle forward about balance.
Not balance, lifestyle balance and all this stuff.
So you can say what you want to say, but at some point, you ain't going to always be balanced.
Like keeping balanced diet, that takes a lot of strictness and I ain't that strict, right?
So there's some days I'll be like, you know what?
I know that pound cake ain't right, but I'm going to eat it.
That's what's going to happen.
I'm going to limit it to one, but I'm going to have a slice of that pound cake, right?
So the reality is that's like life.
So as we're talking about how do we move things ahead, it is interesting because the formula
has not changed.
The formula has not changed.
It is making sure that we are not only at the table, but having opportunities to set
the table.
And what I think we need to do better on is how do we take care of our leaders once they're
there and then how do the leaders take care of our younger generations as they're moving
through to open up doors.
You know, we, you're talking frankly, y'all know what's up.
I mean, sometimes you get one brother, one sister there, they're like, listen, I'm the
one.
You know, what's the rest of y'all, right?
But then you actually have folks who sort of say we never get to the tables.
And that's the one thing I think we have to continue to fight.
How do we do that?
I do think that there will become a need over the next several years and probably over the
next six months and certainly over the next year to double down in being deliberate about
being seen, about being at the committees that are making the decisions.
And by the way, I've always, you know, this is straight up hood.
I'm like, if you ain't gonna let me at your table, I'll create a table and we're gonna
actually come with it enough that you're gonna want to be in mine and then we'll figure it
out.
That's right.
I do think that this sense of, you know, I mean, not to get all barby like and all the
rest of that, but we do have to wake up to that we have models and we have frameworks
that have already been shown.
The problem is that most of those we haven't been passed down and we haven't been taught.
And so I have made it a deal to make sure that I stay in contact with people like Charles
Thomas, Theodos Brawley, Lucille Elms-Campbell, Asanya Springfield, the Tom Hage Kings, because
the reality is that there are frameworks that based on their wisdom that they weren't able
to do that they would say, if I had an opportunity, here's a model that I would use and I'm, aha.
So I do think that how we're gonna do it, I think we need to have more intergenerational
conversations than we are having now.
And not the kind that are blaming like, ah, you know, I mean, it's true.
You know, we, our generation, the baby boomers and the Xers were probably much more in line,
I think, with the experience of having to be super adapters to pain.
That is one of the elements that I think as an African American that we have actually
become super or have, for whatever reasons we've had to, right, for survival, have to
become super adapters to pain, which brings about its own pathology.
And so I readily admit that.
However, what I can say is that you can't be crying if somebody ain't letting you in
the door.
They're like, that door wasn't meant for you.
So at some point you like, and then when you get there, you're like, oh, I'm all uncomfortable
with these people.
Of course, but I mean, what the hell?
The dead man's place wasn't made for you.
We have to get there, set the table and say, this is what we're gonna do and this is how
I'm gonna do it.
And to be quite honest with you, the whole concept of black excellence and your authenticity
in doing it is scary, right?
Because to make it in those early years, we do have to be able to adapt, not get assimilated.
You see, I ain't saying get assimilated, because some folks get assimilated so much, you're
like, well, come on back.
I wanted to make sure that they understood at all times that the excellence that they
were seeing is from me.
And this is the way I came with whatever swag, whether they liked it or not.
And in fact, people say, have you always quoted hip hop artists?
I was like, yeah, since the day I was a woman, Tim's and mine was a resident with a bow tie
and a suit.
And people were like, those are construction, but I was like, don't call them construction
boys, they're lieutenants.
And in fact, I got my clinical Tim's and then I got the Tim's that I wear when I make rouse,
so they're playing with me, right?
So that sense of pride of I'm bringing all of me.
And because when you see that at the end of the day, when I was a resident, I became resident
of the year or intern of the year, that they also saw that I could learn and be me.
And there was a sense of liberation in that.
So how do we get there?
More conversations, inter-general conversations, but making sure that we are deliberate in
figuring out what are the committees of impact that when we show up, we not only show out,
but we make room for other people to bring them up.
That's what our grandparents taught us.
The reality is we have had various levels of successes of that because sometimes you
can get intoxicated once you get to the tables and figure you the one.
All of a sudden you have all this praise on you, you're this and you're that.
And then all of a sudden you recognize that you're lonely as hell.
Because we have not done what our ancestors and what our grandparents and parents taught
us is that when we come at those tables, we shouldn't just be sitting there.
We should be setting part of that table up and bringing our folk up with us.
And I think that that is something that needs to be re-looked at how we can do that.
And the pride of just sort of saying, I understand people like we're just all human beings and
I don't see color, but I'm like, well, like Tiger Wood, everybody else sees it except
for you.
But I mean, you can do what you want to do.
But in this state, in this country, people see it.
So why not embrace it and understand that let's lean into it and say, I am this, but
also these other things.
And this level of Andrew's Lord, I think the poet Lord, we talk about all that stuff about
the intersectionality of things.
I am more than just being an African-American, but by and large, I want to make sure that
folk understand that I am that.
I'm not all of that.
I'm much more than that.
I'm the son of people that lived in rural areas and blah, blah, blah.
All these other things come with it too.
But the fact of the matter is that that's my income and that's where I start from.
And so again, you asked me, how do we make this work?
We know how to make it work.
We work hard.
We communicate more.
We need the network better, and we need to make sure that when we're at the tables, we're
now already thinking about not only how long you're going to be there, but who else comes
to follow you.
And so instead of just bringing one, how do you bring three?
You know what I'm saying?
Kanichi was who take you want to meet all day long.
I love it.
I also love the analogy is about grandparents.
Because I think about I'm a parent of young children.
I think about this a lot.
I think about the grandparents and they don't have the stress that they had when they were
parents.
And so I think it's very difficult to teach the younger generation something that perhaps
the parents are too busy right now to teach.
And so I love the idea of the conversations of the older and the younger generation because
this idea of like, you expected to be taught is something that I do wish people had shared
with me early on.
So I wouldn't have been surprised when these obstacles came.
And so I love what you shared.
And I hope that there are so many more of these opportunities that we can take advantage
of in making these connections.
Oh, well, thank you so much.
Well, you know, I do think that they're important conversations.
And I got to tell you what trips me out is when I'm somewhere and everybody's nice to
me, I'm like, what the hell?
Stop it.
I mean, hold on.
I'm like, oh, don't somebody go down.
I'm like, it's so but that I have to laugh at myself because that is my generation of
how I grew up.
Because when you like, yeah, I know that with the exit.
Yeah.
And my sense of the exit, I mean, sometimes I'll be like, literally a case in the room
these days, like, where's the exit?
So these people be too damn nice.
What's up?
And so it's wonderful, though, to see that we can change.
But I think that we have the elephant in the room is that we have to recognize that we
have also live in a generation now where there is a actual push to go backwards.
And part of that is a fear of change, and part of that is a fear that we have not always
as we've risen, made sure that we made sure that we've made sure that everyone is still
visible.
We have invisible communities, which is why I work so hard and making sure that as we're
pushing the science and we're pushing the clinical trials and we're pushing these things,
that we also are not locked in into just pushing it for our communities, but making sure that,
for example, rural underserved communities, which are not just all white, but even those
that are homogeneous white within the eastern parts of Kentucky benefit from our science.
The truth of the matter is that if it only benefits the people that come to my hospital,
then we fail because most people aren't getting to our hospitals.
And so the question becomes, how do we make communities, just like Brother Hampton said,
that Brother Hampton was one of my...
I mean, listen, I know I'm talking Panther.
But if I had to pick a Panther, it was Fred Hampton because Fred Hampton was the first
that sort of said power to the people.
It wasn't just power to black people.
It was power to the people.
And the first Rainbow Coalition before there was a Jesse Jackson was with Fred Hampton,
who understood the power that we all actually have sometimes similar struggles and we should
benefit from those things.
In our case, people should benefit, all people, from our medicines.
And all people should benefit from our research.
And all people should benefit from the molecules that becomes medicines, that become trials,
that become really extension of healthcare to make people's life healthier.
And that philosophy, I think it was not new.
That's not a new 21st century philosophy or post Obama and all the rest of that.
I mean, I never bought it to the post-racial thing anyways, but for sure this wanting to
be that we are the world, we are one is okay.
But understand, we don't have to be all of that and still not be us.
It's my responsibility as a cancer center director to make sure definitely that the
science that I do actually helps hopefully to inspire and hopefully impact African-American
communities.
But if it's not actually hitting Asian communities, Latino communities, rural communities, and
even urban, very rich white communities, then I'm not doing my job.
So this is a wonderful thing of being both, right?
That both can exist at the same time, which I'm really digging.
I think, and you set up the stage perfectly for us to talk now about the Robert Winn Diversity
in Clinical Trials program.
And can you just speak about that program?
How does it fit within all that you've been sharing?
What is this program?
Yeah, I learned from John DeMonte, you know, saying from Maya Angelou, and that is that
to change the system, you just can't do something different.
You have to do a different thing.
So here was the deal.
We know that we have people who are very good people in outreach and engagement, but most
of those folks are not aware of the difficulties and the pain or the knowledge and the expertise
of how do you get a molecule to become a medicine.
So that's a weakness.
Then you have people who are physicians, well-intended clinical trialers who want to make high impact
trials or doing basket trials or pragmatic trials or doing all these things.
But we ain't got no freaking clue about the, I didn't just say outreach and engagement.
I said the science of outreach and engagement.
The program was meant to recognize that there was a big hole since the advent of clinical
trials that we did not develop a quarterback for clinical trials.
And what I mean by that is that someone who had knowledge of both how to design and implement
a high impact trial and also that same person may not have the complete expertise, but was
aware and had some expertise in the science of outreach and engagement.
And why do I say the science of outreach and engagement?
Well the science of outreach and engagement or the science of community-based type approaches
means that it is built on literature, which there's a 40 plus year history on this.
It also is built on frameworks so that when I design and implement my trials, the goal
was to not only have someone design the arm one and arm two and we're going to have these
two arms, but as they're developing their protocols, that at every step of the way,
they're developing also a parallel protocol on how they're going to get more people from
challenged backgrounds onto those studies.
You know, my dream was to actually have one of my scholars, if you will, actually come
up with a protocol that looked like not just here's a protocol of how we get more people
on to clinical trials or say in this case African-American to rural or here's an event
this is my trial, but to imagine a world in which we challenge the entire world of doing
something different.
And we actually meld with those two that as the same time we were actually designing and
implementing a trial for getting rural patients with GLEO, you know, with GBMs, how do we
get them onto trials that we would actually also be solving the problem of, yeah, here's
a wonderful high impact trial for GBMs and other neurocancers, but we were also putting
equal amount of attention to how do we leverage communities to help us get more people on.
How do we connect with primary care doctors?
How by the way, when we communicate, what's the effect of communication?
How do we use asset maps, both functional, which is a new word, functional asset mapping
and asset mapping?
How do we put all of those, so not that it exists in one person, but that they are aware.
For example, a quarterback of a team or a point guard has to know all the other positions,
they don't play all the other positions, but they have to be aware of how things work so
that they can get from point A to point B to make a play.
We did not have that person in any of our clinical training period.
So I said, well, since I don't see it, I ain't asking no questions, let's just do it.
And in fact, people would say, well, that's, wow, that's going to be a lot of work and
it's crazy.
You're like, yeah, it's a lot of work, but every big thing is going to be a lot of work.
So it really is trying to make sure that the first and the second and the third pancakes,
they get better and better with iteration on what does it look like when you have someone
who actually not only understands regulatory and how to get things from a molecule to a
medicine into a trial and all the arms of a trial, but also they're understanding the
difficulty and saying, yep, this is what we'll have to do operationally and from a protocol
wise for this trial to actually have this percentage or to have this many people from
the rural area.
This is what I'm going to have to integrate into my protocol and take into account to
get that outcome.
Now that is a new idea.
Back in the old days, up in the 80s and 90s, we'd be saying like, that's fat, but I'm going
to be like, yo, that's hot.
So that's what we're going for.
Now the reality is, will we get there immediately?
We won't.
But just like everything, to get to the moon or to get to immunotherapy, nobody cries and
we talk about it took 125 years from Cooley to all these other things to get to the checkpoint
inhibitors, nobody cried that it took 125 years and there were some setbacks.
So quit playing with me that this concept of having a group of, for the first time,
first trained people in the country and maybe actually in the world, because I've checked,
who are being taught and tried to train and what happens when you are skilled and you
have two kids and extra teeth in both, what happens?
I think it's going to be a game changer.
That's going to take a while, but that's why, look here, Dr. Ode, this is why I'm so proud
of you.
I'm like, girl, listen, listen, you don't know how, look, I'm smiling ear to ear.
My heart, you know what I'm saying?
It's big, I'm just saying, because y'all will make the difference and be the game changers
and really sort of set it off in a way that I'm just excited about seeing how that's going
to go down.
I'm excited to be part of the program.
I thank you for your vision and building it together, because one of the things that I
see is that there is an expectation that clinicians are going to finish clinical training and
then all of a sudden be experts in research and not even to talk about being the science
of community engagement.
And I love that you emphasize that as well.
It's like, well, clinical training should be about clinical training, but then the next
step of training so that we can build diversity in clinical trials, actually it needs to happen.
And so it's almost like, you know, the program is novel, it's amazing.
And it's also like, but why haven't we been doing this all along?
Why have we assumed that it was just all going to work out?
And so I just want to thank you.
You're a trailblazer in so many ways.
And I mean, thank you.
You know what I want to say?
I want to say you're not just reaching out, you're not just reaching physicians, you're
going further back.
Talk about the CIPP pathway.
Well, you know, it's going to be, you know, the reality is this is all about the phase
game.
So we have it moving forward and moving back.
We actually recognize, and at some point we'll get into the high schools and middle schools,
but you know, right now you got to take a step at a time when you're building this program.
We have a component of taking those young, those young minds, people in medical school
who haven't even thought about careers in oncology or haven't thought about careers
in cardiology or haven't even thought about being clinical trialists.
They just, and being able to expose them to you guys and expose them to the science and
expose them to the importance of having a life of academic relevance.
I say the people that my first half of my life was signatured by just pursuing academic
excellence because that's what I was taught.
But at some point I had to transition from chasing academic excellence and making that
excellence turn into being academically relevant and ultimately looking at just from innovation
to actually having a life of impact.
And when you start putting that in front of these young people, and all of a sudden light
bulbs go on and that's like the most amazing thing to see.
By the way, the wonderful thing about this program is that it's growing in ways, leaps
and bounds that I did not expect, you know, when I came out with this.
I mean, sometimes, you know, some of y'all didn't know that this was supposed to be only
a pilot grant for VCU.
That's how it started.
And then after George Floyd, John DeMonte, who is from Bristol Mines Squibb Foundation,
called me up and said, Dr. Wynn, we need to go big.
And we did.
By the way, that's one of the people you want to talk about a game changer when it comes
in the context of Canton, the context of how foundations can give resources to change the
world.
Before there was a PEPFAR and all the rest of these things, there was a John DeMonte
who got Bristol Mines Squibb Foundation before there was anyone else to actually get into
Africa and give HIV drugs and figure out how to do that.
That was John.
And in fact, there have been several prime ministers who've gotten up and said that John
DeMonte from Bristol Mines Squibb Foundation has saved generations of young Africans because
of his work.
There are men like that that come in your life and people like that, Catherine Grimes,
John DeMonte and others who come into your life who you just sort of say, yo, let's go
do this.
So in addition to having a medical student program, we now have for the Wynn CDA scholars
another three-year program and being part of what we call the cooperative group trials
and cancer cooperative group trials.
Also we have now developing with a group of cardiology within the AHA that there's an
additional three years of additional training.
And we're about to actually play with the concept of we know people are going on a form
of two, how do we give opportunities and exposure to that?
So my job is really just to say we about training the next generation with one caveat that I'm
not just training somebody who just do clinical trials.
We talk in clinical trials plus.
And the plus is how do we get the best, most effective clinical trials and how do we get
the most number of people from diverse backgrounds onto those trials?
And that is a science and that is a skill set.
And that is something that as you guys even perfect, I think that you will be the first
generation of people who will be widely recruited in the context of your ability to do that.
Because you know what?
Turns out the FDA and other people are going to expect big pharma companies and others
to actually have diversity on a clinical trial.
So interesting, it's building the workforce that we are going to need for tomorrow.
That's the best part of this.
That's beautiful.
That's so awesome.
And the innovation of it is awesome.
Actually, as you were talking, I'm like, you're kind of building the bridge as you are like
speeding on it.
But I got y'all.
Y'all make me look good.
Y'all be coming up with these trials.
The other day I saw I was actually one of the scholars was actually doing his work and
he said, and so I automatically had this thing about I wanted to get more African Americans
on it because this trial of prostate cancer until in my head I was doing this protocol.
And so I integrated the protocol with my protocol.
Now I don't show that to you know the drug, but I'm just showing you Dr. Wynn that here's
from the very first step I was like, well, these neighborhoods I've had obstacles and
so this is what I've not needed to do.
And I said, you should write a paper about that.
That is the beauty of what's going down.
Yeah.
Y'all doing it.
You know me, I'm just, you know, I just, you know, I set it up.
I ain't the one, you know, I like Moses.
I ain't going to get to the promised land with y'all.
Y'all gonna get there, but I'm going to be so proud when you do.
And it's, it's what you're speaking to is that just the power of community and all our
different roles, but how important we all are in moving the workforce.
No, it's phenomenal.
I'm telling you it's like Wu-Tang.
It ain't about me.
It's Wu-Tang.
Oh, he talk about all day.
Oh, Dr. Wynn, it's been, it's been such a pleasure talking with you.
We're coming to the end of the show.
And I want to ask you, we've said a lot and then there are things we haven't even talked
about, but you know, just thinking about just wrapping up our conversation.
What is one thing that you feel like is left unsaid that you want to share with our audience?
Drake started from the bottom.
Now we're here.
You know what I'm saying?
He started from the bottom, now the whole crew's here.
Like let's rise.
We turning it up.
Let's make it happen.
And the reality is I ain't worried about a little white noise and all the other stuff
and the distractions.
Let's get focused.
Let's get locked in.
Let's understand that the success that we have is being watched and the success we have
will build on other successes of the future.
And in fact, to do that, one must have courage.
And with courage comes vulnerability and sometimes risk.
But so what?
Because if somebody had to have courage for us to get us this far, somebody had to have
the courage to say something to make sure that our medical schools and our residencies
and our fellowships are better.
Let's continue that courage.
You know what I mean?
Stand up, stand strong, show up.
Let's do it.
Because actually our people in our communities are banking on the fact that we can do this.
So you know, I'm just like, let's get it done.
That's a perfect place to end.
And I feel like you should stand up now and take a bow.
Girl, look, I'm just a little fella trying to do a little something.
So that's all.
Dr. Nguyen, thank you so much for being on the show.
It's been a pleasure to have you.
You know what?
Thank you for having me.
You know, much respect and I'm honored to be on the show and looking forward to the
great things that you're going to do.
Thanks, Dr. Nguyen.
All right, everybody.
We'll see you next time on the Clinician Researcher podcast.
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