Creating the Next Generation of Health Leaders Through Youth Volunteerism with Dr. Sandy Chung

What if the future of public health doesn’t depending on more programs, but on empowering more young people who believe in them?

In this episode, we explore how one person’s lived experience and a spark of encouragement led to the creation of a movement to build a pipeline of change for the next generation of health leaders.

Take a listen and learn how youth volunteerism is becoming a powerful tool to close gaps, expand opportunity, and help young people from underserved communities see themselves as part of the solution.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey everyone, before we jump into today's episode, I want to let you know that registration has officially opened for the upcoming Champions for Youth Summit, May 4th through 6th in Reston, Virginia. Join me and hundreds of other professionals from across the country to learn more about incredible and innovative things that you all are doing to tackle the most pressing health issues our youth are facing today. To register and to learn more, visit vfhy.org, and I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to a new type of conversation. With each episode, we'll meet with inspiring people sharing best practices at the forefront of creating change for our young people. We'll talk motivations that make a difference and how their lived experience can help empower us to take action and make a difference in the lives of young people where we live. My name is CJ Stermer, and this is the Champions for Youth Podcast. We talk a lot on this show about closing gaps in youth health disparities, whether it's access to specific needs or programs, maybe it's mental health resources, or simple things to improve the lives of young people across the country. But today we're zooming out just a bit to look at how we grow the very people that will lead that change in the future, especially in communities that need them most. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Sandy Chung, a pediatrician, national advocate, and the founder of the Trusted Care Foundation. Her organization is doing something very powerful. They're using volunteerism as a launch pad to help young people explore careers in healthcare and in public health, many of them from the underrepresented and rural backgrounds where we need them. Today, we're learning how small acts of encouragement can change a life and why meeting students where they are can create ripple effects across generations. This one's all about hope. It's about access and about building leadership from the ground up. So let's get into it. Hi, Sandy. Thanks so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49

Oh, thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

So Sandy, we talk a lot about how we can help bridge gaps in nutrition education, physical activity, and helping to educate our young people about ways that we can connect them with more resources. And something that you and I talked about that I thought was really interesting was this idea of volunteerism and how that can actually do a lot to bridge so many different types of gaps. And then to that point, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and sort of how you got to this idea of the Trusted Care Foundation.

SPEAKER_01: 2:20

Yeah, thank you so much. When I really think about why I formed and founded Trusted Care Foundation, it goes way back. And so maybe I can tell you a little bit about my background. My parents were Chinese and they came to this country as immigrants. And when they came to this country, despite having master's degrees and college education, they couldn't get professional jobs because they didn't speak English very well. So And my mom ended up sewing clothes in a factory and my dad was a waiter in a restaurant. And then I was born. And so when I was born, we were quite poor. We lived in a trailer park. I remember being on Medicaid and counting food stamps and all of that. And then eventually they saved up enough money and they opened up a Chinese restaurant. And so I grew up, my brothers and I, we grew up working in a Chinese restaurant and we helped in all the different parts. And what I didn't realize is that while I was doing that, I was learning a lot about business. I was learning about customer service. How do you manage inventory? How do you work with employees? All of that. But I didn't know that at the time. I thought my parents were just telling me to do stuff I didn't want to do. And then as I think about how did I... go into health care. So I'm a pediatrician and CEO of a large practice. We have now over 300 pediatric clinicians, a really big group, but it didn't start that way. And I think about, you know, how did I get to this point where not only am I now running a large pediatric group, I was our state chapter president for the Virginia chapter of the AAP with the American Academy of Pediatrics. I, in 23, became national president for the American Academy of Pediatrics and just really had so many amazing opportunities I was chair of the board at Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. You know, I had done all these amazing things that I was privileged to given the opportunity to do. And I think, how did that happen? When I think about how did I go into medicine to start with, you know, I had to do a project when I was in the fourth grade and what you wanted to be when you grew up. And I didn't know at the time, you know, I was growing up working in a Chinese restaurant. We had no interaction with healthcare really, other than maybe going to the health department to get our shots that we needed to get. And so I remember standing at the bus stop And one of my classmates, his mother was standing there and I was talking aloud, I guess, about this project. And she said, you know, Sandy, you should become a doctor. And I thought, OK, you know, I didn't know much about what that meant. And but she was it turned out she was a nurse. She was an operating room nurse. And she gave me the supplies to wear to school. So like the little head covering to cover your hair, the little booties you put on your shoes. She gave me a tongue depressor. She gave me all these supplies. And I just thought it was cool. Yeah, you're so excited. And so I wore these things to school for my project. And of course, when you say you're going to be a doctor, there's lots of positive affirmation that happens. So luckily, it worked out. I was good at math and science and did go into healthcare. And had that interaction not happened, I don't know, you know, what would have happened. And so as I think about what the current healthcare landscape looks like today, we have a tremendous workforce shortage happening now. And that's going to get worse. You know, there's a crisis situation. where just not enough people are going into health care, and especially in pediatric health care. Sadly, pediatric health care is undervalued. And so, and also in behavioral health, we know that there's a workforce crisis there. So how do we think about inspiring younger people, people who are earlier in their career paths, maybe not all the way down to the fourth grade, although you certainly could do that too. But we, you know, at Trusted Care Foundation decided we were going to focus on the young adults who are in college or college age and thinking about what they want to become and what they want to do when their career paths. And if only we could help so many students understand that there's so many opportunities in healthcare. Certainly, you could become a physician, you could become a clinician. There's so many different kinds of clinicians available today. You could go into, you know, the insurance industry, you could go into business administration in healthcare, you could go into public health, you could go into health law. There's so much around healthcare that's not just perhaps sort of your typical doctor role. I think for young people to understand there's so many parts to health care and so many ways to impact where you can help others. And so with Trusted Care Foundation, what we do is we identify students who are just thinking about health care, you know, or just curious, or behavioral health, you know, so it could be physical or behavioral health. And then we find opportunities for them to volunteer to help families and help children so that they can see, first of all, you know, is helping something I want to do? You know, most of us do. And I think it brings us And then if they're actually interested in healthcare, this gives them an opportunity to see what's out there, what's available, what are some things you could do, and which path might be most interesting to you, regardless of what your interests are. So using volunteerism as a way to provide those opportunities. And at the same time, there's so many of us who are in the profession of healthcare who are looking for ways to give back and to find ways to help others. find joy and meaning in the work that we do. And so this is really that best match that I can think of to help.

SPEAKER_00: 7:40

That's such a unique perspective. And something you said I think is really interesting too is we think of healthcare as like sort of this one note, right? Like doctors or nurses. But to your point, it's such a wide range that can really kind of be such a multitude of things. So it really widens the scope of what those types of opportunities could be. Do you find that some of those gaps that you mentioned in terms of where we're sort of missing some of those folks. Do you find that they're affecting marginalized or low-income communities disproportionately? 100%.

SPEAKER_01: 8:13

Yeah, when I think about my own past, the neighbor nurse, if you will, had not said anything to me. I might be running a Chinese restaurant today. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think that that was the path I saw before me. There wasn't a particular person healthcare role or bent in my family and my experiences. So once someone planted that seed to say, you could go into healthcare, then I realized, sure, I could do that. And then how do I learn more about this? And then I started to look more into it and started to become more interested in it and then realized, yes, it is a fit for me. And I love it. I love it very much. And I think if those of us who are in healthcare in any capacity, you know, if you're in public health, if you're in clinical care, you're if you're in administrative parts of health care. And we think back in our careers, maybe to high school, maybe to undergrad. Did you know that you were going to end up in your current career back then?

SPEAKER_00: 9:15

Yeah, and that's not common. I mean, I would never have guessed I would have been sitting here with you talking about these really important topics at that

SPEAKER_01: 9:22

age. Exactly. And so just realizing how much power we each have as individuals to influence potentially the career course of an individual Just by saying, you know, that you can do this or that it's an option for you or even better, here's an opportunity for you to experience it. I think just is so powerful and it has been powerful for so many people. I

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

love that. You guys are striving to through volunteerism to create these opportunities for inspiration so that little young Sandys can then go into a similar field that they've had the opportunity to experience and get excited about that. How are you all able to fill the gaps with this idea of volunteerism? Yeah, it's on

SPEAKER_01: 10:06

two sides. So one is from the students themselves. So we do intentionally recruit students who may represent either underrepresented in medicine, races or ethnicities, those who may come from rural communities, first generation immigrants, LGBTQIA, you know, so and I think really just individuals who may not have opportunities on their own. And then on the other side, the actual opportunities that So I think if you do come from a place where maybe you have the opportunity to get exposed to things, you still may not have the opportunity to particularly work on food insecurity, for example, where you really get to see populations who are in need. We do a lot of work in youth mental health, and there are stigmas that still exist in mental health and that are often culturally sensitive. So being able to work with populations where mental health in the Asian community, for example, we don't talk about that. about mental health, typically. I think that's starting to change, but it's still, you know, there's a stigma attached to that. In some other populations, it's a similar. And so how do you learn about that? You know, when you go into anything for the first time, your perspective is only the information that you may have received to that point. And so part of the point of Trusted Care Foundation is to provide opportunities to broaden that perspective for young people so that regardless of what they go into, they remember that they saw that family where the grandmother had three of the kids that are now hers, that she had to go to the food bank for, collect the food from the food bank and then catch the bus with these bags of things and take the three little kids on the bus to get home. You've lived that or been around that. It's so much more impactful to see it and also to be a part of the solution and to help that grandmother, you know, to get her needs fulfilled and help that family to eat that night. So it's just really amazing to see that and be a part of it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:07

Right. We talk a lot about you have to be very specific the way you approach certain communities in terms of campaigns or talking about specific issues like substance or nutrition or tobacco prevention, that kind of thing. But even talking about things so simple as mental health or something that may be so simple or normalized already in my community, you can't do that with every community. So it's really cool to see that even something so simple, you all are even understanding and approaching these communities, knowing that you have to be very specific to those communities to normalize these specific conversations. That's really, really fascinating. How do you go about targeting those communities? Do you go to specific places to

SPEAKER_01: 12:47

get these students? They've already identified some young people who are already in that cohort, if you will. But then often people come to us. And so we are open to all students. I just want to make that clear. We are open to all students. But we are excited to help provide opportunities for those who may not have been able to find them in other ways. For example, I had this young lady who was from rural Alabama who was first generation college and nobody in health care in her family. And she just thought, you know, I want to help people like that. I'm going to go into healthcare because I want to help people. But she didn't necessarily have role models or specific ideas about what exactly in healthcare she wanted to do. And so I was able to take her to some conferences with me to be able to see all the different parts of healthcare, introduce her to some amazing individuals who are doing incredible work in healthcare. And with that, you know, she could just see her eyes light up and she was exchanging cards with people and numbers and contact information. So I hope with that you know that young lady now has resources and and mentors perhaps to help her go forward in whatever career she chooses and i certainly hope it's in health care hopefully in pediatrics but we never know and so yeah just being able to do that for young people is incredible

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

so we don't have to reinvent the wheel i feel like i say that so much because so many folks out there are trying to create things or go find different people in different parts of the community but they exist right don't reinvent the wheel and you all have found a way to meet them where they are on both sides. So that's fantastic. And you talk about this lovely young lady in Alabama. Are there other moments or cool examples you can think of where in just a short time you all have been around and you realize, wow, okay, this is working. This is actually making a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01: 14:47

Yeah, Trusted Care Foundation is just a year, a little over a year old at this point. And we have almost 200 students that we've engaged in over 22 states. And so it's been really wonderful, exciting growth. One of the areas that I mentioned we focus on is in youth mental health. And that's tied so much to all other behaviors. If we think about obesity, if we think about ability to function and be productive in the workforce, all of those things, mental health is important. It's our, you know, one body, right? The brain is part of the body. So it's one human. And so how do we help our young people really address youth mental health? Well, instead of us figuring that out, we thought, well, why don't we ask the students? And so we had the students come up with an idea to convene a youth mental health summit. And at this summit, we had about 60 college students from all over our state. We had college leaders, so representatives like student health leaders. We had deans. We had university presidents. So university college leaders in the room. We had state agency leaders. We had government leaders. So many people all convening together. So all together, about 100 people came together to brainstorm about what can we do And during that day, I mean, just the energy in the room was amazing. But I will tell you, before I tell you about the summit, that planning the summit was actually done by the students. So they made the hotel reservations. They figured out how to, you know, coordinate registration. They figured out the materials that were needed, the agenda, the speakers, the whole day, you know. So they learned a lot themselves by doing that. And now that they've done that, they can put on a conference, you know. wherever they are. And so those were just hugely important skills to learn in college, you know, and they were incredible. And so there were students there who learned that they really love this. You know, they're like, we really love this. This was amazing. I want to do more of it. We had young people share their experiences, personal experiences with mental health or substance use. And the incredible thing is they were in a room of people who understood, supported, allies, you know, all of those different things, or lived experience. You know, they were in a room of their peers, which was incredibly powerful. And they just came up with some incredible ideas. One of the ideas that they came up with, which I thought was super creative, we don't know what will happen with it. But so we're talking about normalizing mental health and reducing the stigma. And one idea was to give college credit for getting mental health care. So that way, everybody had to do it. And what a fascinating way to think about how to normalize this. That was out of the box thinking.

SPEAKER_00: 17:29

Yeah, it's such a good motivation. So you get college credit for doing something so important that impacts so many people and then normalizing it. You can bring so many communities together. And something else that you said that we like to talk about here is the power of giving young people a seat at the table, not creating something for them, right? They helped to come up with that idea. They helped to create this summit so that they were able to create something that they actually wanted to do. So the motivation to even do that was there. And then I think another thing that we don't always think about is the power of the transferable skills. They now know how to do this. There's a lot of logistics involved with that and critical thinking and making sure that the planning is there and the inclusivity of it and how to accommodate people. There's just so many skills that you need to have those kind of skills and jobs. That's so important that not a lot of people get to just be able to actually practice. When you brought those incredible leaders from all over doing all sorts of things, did you find that they were really, really receptive to actually hear and to take action on

SPEAKER_01: 18:28

what the youth wanted to do? I think they were thrilled. The ones who came were basically wondering why they created you know for example one shared at her university they have these amazing wellness programs and amazing all these different resources but they weren't being utilized by the students they had built all these incredible tools and they were incredible and another leader at a different university was like We built this space. You know, we didn't create a bunch of programs. We built a space that was beautiful and relaxing and calming. And students are just there all the time. And the students were there who had experienced it. They're like, yes, I love going there to study. It's a place where I don't have to be bothered by all the noise and the chaos. And I just go there to escape. While they're there, they get exposed to programs and opportunities and things. But it was a fascinating perspective to think about. You know, it's not just building the programming that we think they need, but rather building something that meets a need first, and then providing the programming around that almost. It was really interesting to hear from the students why they did or did not use an activity. And that, again, that just shows the importance of having the student, the young person there to provide that input to you.

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

And then to actually listen, like not just have them at the seat of the table, because I've seen that before. It's like, okay, great. I had a seat at the table just so they feel included, but then they don't actually take action and a lot of times people just want to oh we'll just create something that we think people need and they'll come and they'll do it but it's let's create an environment and then we can do the programming based on what we're learning those are great steps to actually take to be able to create progress something else we really take seriously here is how we empower other people in our audience and and that work now and different aspects of health care public health you created such an amazing program and opportunities how do we empower others to To take a similar approach and to think in that mindset, what do we do to empower people to be able to replicate what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01: 20:26

Yeah, you know, I think I would love to say there's a magic solution and follow this formula and it will work. I think it's a little bit more than that. I do think that when you're trying to build something, making sure that the need that you think you're trying to fill is actually a need that your end user or the audience that you're trying to serve actually needs. In pediatrics, for example, we're constantly Yeah, absolutely. kids. So I'm just not thinking about this right now. Or for example, my mother, she's a diabetic and she always goes to her endocrinologist and she gets amazing instructions from them, but she barely speaks English. And so she will nod vigorously in that she understands everything. And I'm sure they have amazing instructions and things for her. But what she actually needs is someone who speaks Chinese and somebody who understands her diet and what she's willing to eat or not eat or the food she understands. Somebody gave her a squash once and And she was like, what is this? I don't know what this is. And I'm going to throw it away unless you want it. And so I think understanding your audience is really important and getting them in a room. And I know a lot of people do this in focus groups in various ways. One thing that worked really well at our summit was that the students actually outnumbered the adults in the room, the professionals. Because sometimes when we bring in the youth voice, there are a lot of us and two students. And unless those two students are amazing, and often they are, and vocal, they don't represent the entire population as you know. So making sure that there are enough of them around to provide that voice. So I think that's important. And involving them in the planning. They're so brilliant, these young people. We were so amazed. They're so smart. And they're so much faster than we are. And they also are brilliantly talented individuals with lots of passion and energy. And so take advantage of that. So find some young folks around you, if that's your audience. Get them engaged early. Tell them they do need to understand expectations I think we learned early that for young people, they're amazing individuals, great energy, but do need some guidance. So it's sort of this, when do you guide and when do you handhold? And I think try to guide and handhold less. And so figuring that out.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Right. And we often hear we're building it, but they're not coming and folks are getting kind of burned out and just feel like they're just constantly trying and trying and trying. And what it sounds like to me is that it really hasn't been that large of an effort for you all. It It's been relatively easy to find students because there's this big desire for people to want to volunteer.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

Yeah, I think that's it actually surprised me how much energy and interest there is. This generation in particular, I hate to generalize, but they're very interested in social justice. They're very interested in advocacy. They're interested in making an impact and making a difference. And so what they're looking for is an outlet, though, a place to do that with. So if you've got a nonprofit or you've got a project or you've got something that's meaningful there, likely a student or two or a hundred who would like to help. And so Trusted Care Foundation, we're happy to help you find the students. If you just don't know how to do that, you can just go to our website and just say you have an opportunity and it's free and there's no charge for any of this. I think it's important if you're not sure how to do it and you want to figure it out, just reaching out to your local institution and talking to their student affairs office. Often they have like an office of pre-health professional, you know, type of like an advice office and they're Those individuals who help these students find opportunities at the school level are also always looking for places for their students to be successful. And so, like I said, I think there's a lot of interest out there from the young people.

SPEAKER_00: 24:31

And you all have experience in that, right? You have hundreds of volunteers. You're now in 22 states. So you have the experience of finding the schools. You know where to go. So the level of effort even for the folks listening and other organizations out there could be even less. Where can folks find you? Where is the specific location that they can get a hold of? TrustedCareFoundation.

SPEAKER_01: 24:50

Yeah, TrustedCareFoundation.org. It's pretty straightforward. TrustedCareFoundation.org. If you have an opportunity, if you're a student and you'd like to participate in something, you can also sign up there. Or if you just have questions and just want advice, we're happy to provide that to you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:05

Very low level of effort. Again, another indication of if you just ask for help, the resources are there, the volunteers are there, we can help close some of these gaps and provide things for young people that will then benefit older generation that will then benefit more younger people. So it's just this cycle of volunteerism to help bridge some of these gaps. It's absolutely incredible and such a unique perspective. Sandy, I really appreciate you joining me today and just what you've done for the community and your approach to help improve the lives of people on many different levels and ages. So thank you. Well, thank you so much

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 25:39

It's

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

been

SPEAKER_00: 25:39

a pleasure. What a great reminder about the power of mentorship and that when we all invest in our young people, especially through service, we're not just helping them grow, we're helping to Thank you, everyone, for listening today. I really appreciate it. Now go out there and go do good. We'll see you next time.