Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. You can always find us at thegiftedlife.org. We're your host, I'm Kirsten Heint. Hey Kirsten, welcome back.
I'm Joey Boudreau. And I'm Sarah Blegmour. In today's episode we'll be talking to our friends at the Gift of Life Michigan about their multicultural outreach program. And we'll be talking about how to manage your workplace stress.
Let's get to it. In this episode we're excited to have a colleague of ours from the Gift of Life Michigan. Ms. Ramona Chapman is the Community Outreach Manager and MoTEP Director.
And Ms. Ramona, how you doing? I am doing well. How are you?
So, I have to tell you, I got excited. I was on Facebook one night and something popped up, a live feed that you guys are doing. And it looked like you were conducting town hall meetings and that you have some program called Let's Talk. And I was talking to my colleagues that said, this looks interesting.
I want to find out more about this. We like to talk, so... Well, that's great. We certainly got to get to the cab over here.
The great thing about it, you probably saw live feeds from a couple of things. We had dialogue circles with our Let's Talk because again, that's the whole purpose of it, is to really create an opportunity for conversation and exchange about such an important critical issue in our community, such as Organ and Tissue Donation. And so those particular dialogue circles were very unique to certain ethnic communities because we wanted people to really get into and have a deep dive conversation about what they had heard about Organ and Tissue Donation, how we could get them more engaged and become ambassadors for Organ and Tissue Donation and to have recipients and donor family members share their stories. And so we just kind of wanted to, again, engage and say, you know, let's talk about this and let's continue to save lives and honor the Life Through Donation as we do it.
That's incredible. So what did you guys find out from some of these because this is a real in-person grassroots getting to the... It sounds like you really can get to some of the deeper issues that maybe we don't get on the surface when we're just kind of at a health fair talking to people. Yes, yes.
Well, one of the things that people... We kept hearing in every community and we really focused on the African-American, the Arab-American and the Latino communities. And one of the things people kept saying is that we want to understand the process. We want you to take us behind the scenes of the gift of Life Michigan.
What happens behind those walls? What happens when you know you will first get the call when you first sign up on the Oregon-Daunnet registry at the Secretary of State's office? Tell us what is going on. And so as a result of that, that's what we did.
We were able to do a video entitled The Donation Process that starts right again when people sign up to become an organist, you know, and to take them and bring them into our house and to gift of Life Michigan. Take them behind the scenes and have them talk with every part within our organization. We wanted to be represented to let them know that there are a lot of people that you don't see that are behind the scenes and that are really making this thing happen. So that was one of the things that people really wanted to say is show us the process.
Once again, they want, again, let's demystify it. What happens? The process, that's great. And then they wanted to say, you know, we want to hear things in our own languages.
We want people that are talking to us, for instance, in Arabic and in Spanish. We want people that look like us to become, that are just sharing messages. So then once again, those questions that people might feel uncomfortable asking at a health fair. You know, when you come home and you sit down and you're sitting across the table from somebody or you're sitting in a mosque or you're sitting in a temple or in a church, you can have those intimate conversations that you might feel uncomfortable like you say having at a health fair.
Yeah. I think that we've noticed that in our community as well. We've been trying to do more outreach in the Latino community. And on a certain, you've been working to try to get better translation.
Right. Yeah. You know, it just, it sounds like what the, what the community really wants is more transparency, which will lead to trust. So they want someone, like you said, who looks like them, who speaks like them, who uses their language so they can trust you and that they understand what or because I think everybody thinks organ donation is a good thing.
But I think a lot of people don't know what goes into it. And so I think that's amazing. I always do. And that it sounds like you're meeting the community where they're asking you to meet them.
And I think that's so important. And, you know, and for instance, like after we, you know, did our first year of the campaign and we're going into the second year of the campaign now, we did like a breakfast because we wanted to also report back out to people that came to our launch exactly what we were doing and what we had done last year because we wanted them to understand, we heard what you said, we have responded to the request that you've made. And now we need you to help us that this is a way for all of us to get together and to make an impact that we as an organ procurement organization, yes, we are here to analyze through donation, we serve as the stewards, but we need you to help us do it those particular gifts because you're the best messengers out there in the community and talking to people. And even we start even doing two more tours within our organization.
So people could once again come in and find out what really happens in these walls. And so what happens is people are just amazed of the love and the care and the reverence that goes into organ and tissue donation. And so, you know, they become our best folks persons. What is what we really want and we wanted people to to hit people at all different types of levels.
And so finally, let's talk, you know, not only do we have a launch where we had, you know, musicians and influences within the city, but we also wanted to make it, you know, very interactive for people on social media. So we did a My Donor story on social media, but we asked people, you know, just do a one-minute video and post it on your social media page and have your friends to like it and have those persons to share it. Let's just have this message just continue to become, you know, just to reach out and have a ripple effect because what we know is that as that message gets out and people are able to respond to some of their friends on Facebook and say, well, hey, I didn't know this or I didn't know this or I had this question. Then it just kind of takes, you know, some of the layers, you just peel some of the layers back and really continues to have a dialogue, which is what we really wanted.
And you know, let's talk. So what you said, a one-minute video of My Donor, or those recipients talking about their donors or what did you call it that? We call it because it was recipients sharing about their donor story. It could be recipients.
It could be donor family. We even had some people that say, you know, hey, my story is that I'm waiting. And this is how it feels to wait. And this is the impact that it has on my family.
This is the impact it has on my life as I wait. And so what we wanted to share and also I think we had something where people share as caregivers. So we wanted to say everybody's involved in this particular process. Everybody has a story.
Everybody has a story, you know, if you're a child and your parents haven't been able to play with you because, you know, they have to go to dialysis or, you know, they're short winded because they need to transplant a heart transplant or a lung transplant. And they can't participate in those day-to-day activities. And now they get a transplant and they're able to do something. What happens to a young person who is waiting for a transplant?
And they can't participate in sports and they can't do all of the other things that sometimes are associated with kids just growing up. So what we wanted to do was to see and continue to do is to see that we can bring in every aspect of life through this whole story of let's talk about organ tissue donation. And we talked about organ really putting a face in it and even talking more and more about tissue donation and saying, okay, you know, what happens when a person, I guess, a cornea transplant and they can, you know, see their loved ones completely different or see a sunrise or sunset. So we have just been really trying to, you know, make this message as inclusive as possible.
So it sounds like just an incredible program. I love all the aspects, all the facets of it. So if I can take me back to the beginning, I guess, so you talked about a lack of trust. You talk about, you know, the transparency that you guys were able to provide and just to echo a couple of things, even that Kirsten and Sarah spoke about, you know, at health care, of course, you know, it's a lot more surface level type questions that we get.
How did you guys spark the interest of those that had the least trust to be able to build the trust enough to have these difficult conversations, ask these tough questions of you guys as opposed to the ones that are just kind of easier. So I'll follow questions. Well, we really, we partnered with a group called Legacy Communications and we basically advertised to do focus groups. And what we wanted to do was, you know, do focus groups in various communities.
We didn't want people coming to us. We wanted to go into their community and we wanted it to do around fellowship and food. And so we got media personalities involved and we did these focus groups. And as a result of the focus groups, that really became the roadmap to what our next steps were going to do.
And that's when we would say we would do these dialogue circles once again in the community. I think trust is, I'm sorry. I like the idea of fellowship and food. I know down here.
I think we just figured out the secret to your success. There you go. There you go. Food works every time.
Food works every time. But you know, really again, because what we wanted to do was really create a very informal atmosphere and to have people to just really tell us what was on their minds, what was on their hearts. And so I think that also realizing that trust is something that is constantly evolving. And so as many aspects that we needed to bring in, we needed to bring in the faith aspect.
We wanted to bring that in. If we needed to bring in, you know, a transplant surgeon, we brought that aspect in. If we needed to bring in a community spokesperson or advocate or someone else, we brought that particular aspect in. We needed to bring in a donor families.
And we had people that were really just, you know, and we haven't been able to get everybody in. But what we know is that is, you know, the more that we cast our net wider, more people will come in. And, you know, really saying that she knows, you know, we talked about something called influencers. And, you know, not only are these people that are high profile people, you know, sometimes the greatest influencer is going to be somebody's grandmother, because whatever she says or her father, whatever they say, that is going to be it.
And so really just trying to say that we want to have as many touch points as possible. And even having, you know, again, having our CEO talk about the whole gift of life Michigan team and family and how we are here to work in concert with each other to make sure that we honor life and donation. That's our core purpose here. And to see how we're living that out daily.
And so I think it's just an ongoing process because every sometimes, every layer you pull back, you discover there are three others? That's actually what my next question was going to be in doing these focus groups, you know, in the donation community, we seem to have the same myths that come up over and over again. Did you get any new insights or did the priority of, you know, some of the mis-misconceptions change from your time? You know, because you've been in the donation community quite a while.
I've been here for a while. I think the only one that I think that kept rising to the top was the process that people just were sometimes in that understanding process. And sometimes because of the different myths and misinformation that gets out here, you know, every once in a while, while you're in the midst of a campaign, an urban myth will pop up and you'll have to address it. And what we've learned is that not to back away from those opportunities because what people want to make sure of is that we're willing to exhaust any question and any concern that they have to the maximum.
And if we're not able to, you know, get that particular answer, you know, to have a donor family member talk about it. Like for instance, a lot of times people have said and still say, you know, people won't try as hard to save my life as long as I've been in the industry. But for 20 years, I've heard that. But to have a donor mother to also come and share her experience and talk about how the hospital and really try to save her son's life, to talk about all of the things that were done in that particular process.
And when that process itself had exhausted, how gift of life was able to come in and also, you know, have a very caring and concern and reverence for her son, that makes a difference because now it's just not us giving information. But it's us partnering with those persons that have had the experience and they are eyewitnesses to what has gone on. So I think that has been, you know, continues to be. Yeah, I'm actually one of the components I'm really impressed about that y'all do is not only are you getting out there and you're informing and you're giving real life stories and like you said, an eyewitness account, but you're turning those people into community allies.
Yes. It's hard, you know, in any kind of business to meet every ethnic group or every language barrier and just one company. So turning those community allies into your, you know, your advocates for donation and having people, it's just trust. And I'm very impressed with that.
And can you tell us a little bit about how you were able to do that? Well, interesting one enough. One of our advocates I'm going to really lift up is Dr. Tara DeFoe Griffin.
She just got married over the weekends. I have to kind of remember that new name to Anne. But here's a person that I had probably met 10 years ago prior to her getting involved in this, just saying that she believed that organization was a great thing to do, encourage her son to sign up on the organ on the registry. I should have told her son to sign up on the organ on the registry.
That's your influence. There you go. That's your influence, you know, motherly thing, you know, you will do this. Never ever, you know, dreaming in a hundred years that six years later, her son would become an organ donor.
And how she has taken that particular tragic situation and transformed it into a platform to engage, not only talking about grief and pushing through and finding hope in situations, but by really becoming a strong advocate for organization. She has single-handedly done so many different things on, you know, professional education with our nurses and physicians in community engagement because she participates with us every year. We do a life walk and run here. She's a runner.
And so therefore she uses that platform to talk about it. She also is involved with the city of Detroit. And so she has engaged the city of Detroit to do a lot of different things. And I'm sure we would not have been able to get done had it not been from her for her.
Yeah, those are so powerful. And they opened doors because like you said, but I think again, it's that constantly building that trust. And like I said, it's a process that's constantly evolving. And again, at first she was kind of all the outskirts of just talking about the message.
And then she became an active participant talking about the message. Then we brought her to the organization and led her to the organization so she could see everything that's done. And we were able to answer any questions and concerns that she might have. You know, and again, that's one of the things that we constantly do in this let's talk.
And what we think about even we have done something with our funeral home directors of having them to come in and say that, you know, we need you as a part of this process as well. We need you because family members trust you. And so just as you're in end of life care, so are we. And we work as a partnership in making sure that we take care of families the best way that we can.
So we have tried to just engage any and everyone as a part of this. Let's talk campaign. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that. Now you said that there was a video that you guys did that shows the process.
Can you tell us where we can find that? Yes, you can find that on the gift of life Michigan website is www.dew.com.com. And it's on our website because once again, it was such a well, we love it about that particular video is that, like I said, it showcases the entire organization from our CCEO all the way down. And I think it was just it's just a great way for people to kind of come in and say, you know, what exactly what is the donation coordinator?
What is a family service coordinator? What is this call center that people keep telling me about? And so we're able to kind of let you kind of come in and see. You are the components, right?
The faces and the faces. What's happening behind the scenes? Yes. Well, Ramona, I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing that.
I'm looking forward to it. I did not see that particular video, so I can't wait to check that out. And we'd love to hear how things go as you continue to spread this program. Okay, okay.
We'll be excited about sharing with you. And now we'd like to take a moment for mental health. Yes, Sarah, you want to talk about workplace stress. I'm curious because I hear your bosses sometimes stress you out.
Yeah, you know, I'm in the room with two bosses of mine. And so I just wanted y'all to really, really listen to what I'm about to say. All right, here's what I'm about. All right.
So what we're going to talk about is how to manage really your workplace stress. So first thing to know is that stress and stressors are different. So stressors can cause stress if you let them. So the first thing to manage your workplace stress is to identify your stressors at work.
That could be several things. Maybe you have a very demanding job that demands a lot of your time away from your family. Maybe your work is monotonous. So maybe you work more in clerical work and that can be a stressor.
Maybe you're conflicting with someone at work. There's so many different things. But the first thing to do is identify it and to know that it can be different for each person. So monotonous work might be a stressor for one person or it might be great for another person.
So know that your stressors aren't everyone's stressors as well. Yeah. I just clicked on my email number and it's 172 just from being in this room here for the last couple hours. That's a stressor for me.
I'll recognize it. Yeah. And so you identified that as your workplace stressor. Kirsten, do you have any workplace stressors?
I got a TV interview tomorrow. Oh, that's always an extra stressor. Yeah, because that's important and that's, you know, most of them are live. So that can be a pretty stressor for you.
Do you want to say you're amazing at those? So don't stress too much. Absolutely. I appreciate it.
And once you identify it, the next thing you need to do is understand that everybody, everybody has different needs at work. So for the most part, there's three basic needs. We need to feel competent. So we need to feel like we're good at what we do.
That definitely helps. I know even though I don't like being on that side of the camera, knowing the material and knowing my subject matter makes it easier. And you've helped me with those things even with, you know, being in the front of a camera. Right.
Helping reassure me about my competence, about the information that I'm giving it. It really does make a big difference. Yeah. Another thing is to know that you matter or the work you do matters.
Whether it's you work for a nonprofit like we do that obviously matters what we do or, you know, you're providing and you're caring for your family from your work. It matters. So being able to recognize what I do matters can really be some stress. And the last thing is that we at work need to feel connected.
Whether that's at home, we need to feel connected when we get home from work or we need to have something to connect to or someone to connect to you at work can really meet those basic needs and really be stress for us. Kind of have that peer support or peer support mentors are huge. If you aren't a mentor or if you don't have a mentor, I would definitely recommend finding someone that you work with that can help you and you can help them because it really alleviates when those stressors like that, that was an email pop up. It can really, you know, bring you back down to what you're doing.
I can relate in that, you know, I've been traveling quite a bit more than usual over the last three or four months and you mentioned the connectivity. That's one of the things that actually stresses me the most is that I feel, you know, because of the travel, I feel less connected and then it's there's just this extra level of stress because I haven't been connecting with you two or with some of the staff or, you know, with the different employees at LOPA or some of our, you know, colleagues that we work with outside of LOPA. So just having that lack of limited connectivity stresses me so when I get back and I get settled in and I can find myself connecting with everyone again, it's funny how, you know, stress level drops them. Yeah.
So once you recognize that those are your needs for work, the next thing you do, like you said, is you adapt to that stressor. So you learn how to cope with it and that can be meeting your needs or that can be different things like taking a five minute break every day to not check your email or taking a 15 minute break to check your email and to catch up on those emails. You do adapt. The second one is definitely mine.
That's the answer to this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that in the 60. Please don't ignore my email.
I really need you to answer. So so you adapt to it and then you either limit your time that you do the stressors or you find a task that will help you answer those stressors will help you really be that stress. So I mean, we all have stress. We all have work stressors.
So really, this is about figuring out what it is, identify it, adapt to it and remember what your basic needs are at work and meet those as much as you can. Sounds good. If you have a topic from a Sarah, please contact us at info at thegiftedlife.org. In every episode of the gifted life podcast, we honor a hero.
Today we honor Emilio DeFoe. When Tara DeFoe encouraged her then 18 year old son Emilio to sign up at the Secretary of States office to become an organ donor and place a red heart on his driver's license. She told him it was a good thing to do and explained it was a reason his grandmother had mismatched eyes. She didn't think that six years later, when a 10 hour surgery could not alleviate the bleeding in Emilio's brain after he had had a heart aneurysm, someone would come talk to her about donation.
Now, six people carry a part of him and she has been involved in outreach ever since her son's death in 2014. It's a continued work. It's truly a love story that will continue on because it continues going through someone else. With the major health challenges that take place in our city, organ donation is a form of that selfless act, that person's last selfless act.
And now we pause and say thank you to Emilio for the gift of life. All right, Joey, we've got a question for you. Is race important in matching organs to recipients? Okay, so it's a complicated answer because it is a yes and a no, but I'll explain real quickly on what I mean.
It kind of depends on the organ type with heart, lungs, liver. You don't have such a specificity to match up as you do a kidney. Kidney matches run with not only the blood type and the size and things, but they also use what we've mentioned in other podcasts, an antigen matching, HLA antigen matching where you it's a lot more specific. And of course, people with the similar ethnicities often carry these same antigens.
So in those situations, yes, there will be a little closer match. Often times it's not always the case, but I'm just going in probabilities here. Often times there will be a little closer match, whereas it's not as important in the, like I said, in the liver, lungs, heart, you know, all the other organs, because it's really for them a lot more about blood type size, you know, height, weight and things like that. So Joey, is that kind of like I've heard that with bone marrow?
Don't they need that HLA typing for bone marrow? Right. We worked with BMATCH earlier. And yes, they do the same type of specific antigen HLA typing so that you'll see again a little more similarities in ethnicities with the certain HLA types.
And they're using that. That's when they talk about the perfect match. They're trying to get all those antigens to match up. Right.
As much as possible. Sometimes it is a better match when it's people from the same ethnicity. Right. And of course, when that happens and there is a better match, in general, you'll see oftentimes less at least a little bit less of the immunosuppressants on the back end for the recipients.
Gotcha. All right. Great question. If you have a question for us, go ahead and email us at info at thegiftedlife.org.
And you can also give us a call at 504-648-3477. Well, guys, I think that's a wrap for episode 130. Yeah. Thanks to Ramona Chapman and the whole gift of life Michigan team for their Let's Talk program and really digging further into some of the issues to provide transparency like they did.
It was that was very innovative. Yeah. And I encourage anyone to go to their website, www.gov.org because they've got a lot of video content on there. Definitely visit that.
And if we have inspired you to register to be an organ tissue or eye donor, please go to registerme.org. You can listen to our podcast on our website or anywhere you listen to your podcast, whether it's iHeartRadio, Spotify or Apple. If you do listen on Apple, please leave us a five star rating and subscribe because it really helps others find us. And if you're on social media, like our page on Facebook, the Gifted Life podcast, and follow us on both Twitter and Instagram at Gifted LifePod.
We hope this inspired you to do something you wouldn't normally do to help make life happen. This is a production of Loba for the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency. The Gifted Life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Boudreau and Sarah Blake Moore. Our executive producer is Kirsten Heis, producer Isha Long Caraway.
Intern is Rebecca Rannam and we are recorded, engineered and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.