The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
How do we create a future where every family is safe, supported, and filled with hope? The Shift explores bold, upstream solutions to the public health challenges facing children and families today.
Hosted by Prevent Child Abuse America, each episode features transformative conversations with experts, changemakers, and people with lived experience. Together, we dive into prevention strategies, policy breakthroughs, and the systemic shifts that have the power to change lives.
Part of PCA America’s movement to make family well-being the new normal, The Shift amplifies the voices and ideas shaping a brighter, more hopeful future for all families.
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Guest ideas or feedback? Email us at theshift@preventchildabuse.org
The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Ep. 9: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha | PCA America 2023 National Conference Podcast
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Welcome to the official broadcast of PCAA America's National Conference. I'm Nathan Fink, and I'll be your host for the next four days as we embark on this transformative journey and hear from experts in prevention, and together discover innovative family-focused policies, cutting-edge research programs, and practices that help drive the field toward upstream thinking so every child has the opportunity to grow up safe and nurtured. As Prevent Child Abuse America's first in-person meeting of state chapters and home visiting networks, policy and community partners, and other collaborators since 2019, the 2023 conference offers nearly 90 sessions, three keynote speakers, workshops, symposia, and presentations focusing on effective prevention strategies with nationally recognized experts and leaders. So tune in to hear from professionals, advocates, and innovators in child abuse and neglect prevention, because each day is an opportunity to build foundations for our future. Hello, and welcome to the PCA America National Conference Podcast. I'm excited to be here with pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate Dr. Mona Hannah Aticia, also keynote speaker at PCA America's 2023 Together for Prevention Conference. Dr. Mona, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01:Nathan, it's wonderful to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, and author, I should mention your book, What the Eyes Don't See, a riveting and deeply personal account of the Flintwater Crisis and in many ways a tale of hope. But to get to hope, no matter what crisis, we need to know what we're dealing with. Our time is brief, but I think it's also critical because we have a way of forgetting, either willfully or otherwise, our recent past. So, can you give me, will you give me a thumbnail sketch? How did we get here? How did lead get in the water?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, Nathan, that's a great question. And I'll only spend about two hours on this response. So, um, you know, history is so important, and you're spot on. We we close our eyes to history, we forget quickly, and then we tend to repeat the same mistakes. So, one of the reasons that I wrote this book and that I'm here with you today is to kind of keep sharing history. Uh, without that history, um, we can't move forward. And I and you are all about moving forward, especially on behalf of our kiddos. So, Flint's story is a long story, but I'm gonna try to make it brief. But you know, Flint was the birthplace of cars, the auto industry once the birthplace of prosperity and the middle class, but for decades has been in crisis because of disinvestment, unemployment, plants closing, loss of manufacturing, automation, globalization. The list goes on of why Flint has kind of lost population and has become one of the poorest cities in our state. Because we were so poor, we were near bankrupt, and the state took over the city. We became under the control of financial emergency management, which is this anti-democratic law that was pushed through by our gerrymandered legislature and became law in our state. And fairly quickly, many cities in Michigan, predominantly majority and minority cities, lost democracy. Like this is bizarre. 50% of our African American population in Michigan became under the control of an emergency manager, unelected, unaccountable. So folks were already scratching their head like, wait a minute, this is not how America runs its cities. We have democracy. We elect people, we hold them accountable. So an emergency manager came in in 2011 and it was all about cutting costs. It was all about austerity. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And they decided that the water that Flint had been getting for half a century from the Great Lakes. So I'm holding up my hand and you can't see it. But for all those folks out there, I'm holding up my hand because Michigan is the mitten state. We are surrounded by the largest source of fresh water in the world. 21% of the fresh water in the world is around Michigan. And that's where we used to get our drinking water in Flint. But the emergency managers decided, hey, that's now too expensive for this predominantly poor, near bankrupt minority city. And in April of 2014, changed our drinking water from the Great Lakes, high quality, pre-treated, to the local Flint River without proper treatment. Uh so that happened for about it was for a year and a half. We were on Flint River water, lots of problems. It was corroding car parts at the GM plant, color, odor, skin issues, like the list went on of the problems with this water. But throughout, everybody in government was reassuring, saying everything was okay and in compliance. And I um heard about the possibility of lead being in the water, and that's and this was a year and a half after our water switch. And that's the moment my life changed when I heard that lead was in the box.
SPEAKER_00:What is it about lead then that changes the discussion where you say, Oh, I'm getting involved here?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, um, you know, lead is probably the oldest and most well-studied neurotoxins. Um, we're actually here in Baltimore where so much of the pivotal research was done on lead poisoning, but it's also an environmental injustice community. Um, we now know that there's no safe level of lead. We thought decades ago, um, especially pushed by industry that it was safe for folks. Dervomotors in the 1920s called lead a gift from God when they put lead in gasoline, even though we even we even knew then over a century ago it was a poison. Um, so incredible science has taught us that there's no safe level, that it can impact the cognition of children, how kids think. It can impact their behavior, it can alter impulsivity and attention and focusing, and it can lead to lifelong consequences, including adult conditions like high blood pressure, um chronic diseases, gout, uh early dementia. So there's these life, potentially life-altering consequences. But we've done a good job as a nation in decreasing children's exposure because of amazing moms and dads and activists and scientists. We finally got let out of paint and got let out of plumbing and restricted its use in um in gasoline. But even though we stopped using new lead, we continue to live with the legacy of lead. Um, in older communities, especially in the Northeast and the Midwest, you know, under layers of dirt, underneath layers of paint, delivering our drinking water continues to be lead and it continues to impact our most vulnerable children. Lead is a form of environmental racism. The burden does not fall equally of who's exposed.
SPEAKER_00:Now, I want to pick up on that because whether it's forever chemicals, these are crises of access, justice, equity, and family. So, how did then this become the crux of access and environmental justice and equity?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you know, this is one example in a long list of examples of inequity. And I think the pandemic is another example of how not everybody bore the same burden to this public health crisis. And to me, the lessons are the same. It's about who we value and how we value people and really the role of prevention. Uh, this conference is all about prevention. What can we do to do primary prevention, which means you know, making sure kids uh that we protect kids as much as possible before they're exposed to abuse or neglect or lead or whatever. Um, so you know, as a nation, we're we are we are very reactive and we do a lot of band-aiding, and we don't often get at the crux of the issue and to prevent those issues. Um, I mentioned at the conference um one of my favorite quotes uh by Frederick Douglass, um, abolitionists over a century ago said, It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. I love that quote because it is so true. It is so much easier to invest and protect children than to spend so much money and so much time on the consequences of our inaction uh because we fail to protect children.
SPEAKER_00:It's cheaper too.
SPEAKER_01:It's it is cheaper. We also um I just published a paper in health affairs about the cost savings of lead pipe replacements. So I, you know, I would sp I spoke if testified before Congress and policymakers are like, we cannot dig up lead pipes across the country. That's too expensive. I'm like, no, it's actually not. Um there is a cost to our inaction when we add up the health care and special education, the criminal justice, and the economic productivity. There is a cost, not just the you know, what costs the child and their life, but it's there's actually an economic cost to um not acting and protecting children.
SPEAKER_00:Now, this whole conversation, you know, your keynote, uh all of it does ring, it rings of hope because you're finding these opportunities, right? You're you're finding ways uh in which we can look upstream. Yes. So when you look upstream, what is it that we're seeing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Nathan, that's a great question. And that's kind of what um how I get to spend my day and how I've been able to um, you know, since exposing the water crisis, my my work has been on recovery and making sure that we don't repeat history and making sure that we can proactively protect kids and families by addressing upstream upstream issues. So I mentioned testifying before Congress um about replacing pipes all over the country. And that passed the Infrastructure Act is a law, and we are replacing lead pipes across the country. That's primary prevention. That is what it means to invest in prevention. Um, another project I am leading right now is called RX Kids. We are giving pregnant moms and babies in the entire city of Flynn universal unconditional cash allowances. Amazing. Like this has never been done before in the country, and we are addressing an upstream issue, poverty. Like poverty makes people sick. If you are born into and you grow up in poverty, it can alter your entire life course, especially when it happens in this critical prenatal to infancy window. So I I was sick of not being able to prescribe something to treat poverty. Um, I'm sick of band-aiding, all the consequences of poverty. So we're like, we're gonna do something. We, we, I am an optimist. I have I am in a city with a village of amazing, you know, collaborators, moms and kids, and nonprofit partners and government. And we're like, we're gonna prescribe away poverty. So this is launching in January. We've already raised about 40 million dollars. It's a public-private partnership. We still have a little more to raise. So if any listeners out there want to donate, flintrxkids.com. So, uh, but we are every, every starting in January, every pregnant mom and every baby is going to get universal cash allowances. And it's it's not just about money and economic stability, it's also about telling people we love you and we see you and we hear you, and we know it is hard to be a parent. And there's a village walking alongside you.
SPEAKER_00:My goodness. If if these are your days, what do your nights look like?
SPEAKER_01:I'm a I'm a mom. I'm a mom, and I go to soccer meetings.
SPEAKER_00:And stay tuned for more interviews from PCA America's National Conference Podcast.