Black Excellence: Garth Walker

Welcome to “Black Excellence” at UIC.      

The Office of Student Success and Belonging, with Dr. Aisha El-Amin.       

Recording of Dr. Martin Luther King 00:09      

[Applause] Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.      

Clips from 1995 movie “Panther” 00:17      

His intention is that we study and master a bunch of different things.    
Why are you here?       
Study and master a bunch of different things.   
I’m proud to introduce our new Minister of Information.    

Aisha El-Amin 00:26      

I’m Dr. Aisha El-Amin.      

Tariq El-Amin 00:29      

Welcome to “Black Excellence.”  

Garth Walker 00:36 

What else will bring you happiness, and how can you be part of being able to continue the mission of do no harm and deliver health care in a compassionate and equitable way? 

Aisha El-Amin 00:48 

In this episode of the “Black Excellence” podcast, we speak to Dr. Garth Walker. Dr. Walker is a UIC alum, physician and public health leader whose work sits at the powerful intersection of medicine, equity and justice. From his early days at UIC to his leadership roles in emergency medicine and health policy, his journey is one of purpose, resilience and a relentless drive to help make health care not just accessible but equitable. Dr. Walker begins today’s episode by reflecting on the personal experience that has shaped his path and the vision that continues to guide his work in transforming health care from the inside out. 

Garth Walker 01:39 

As you know, I’m an emergency medicine physician with a background in public health, and I serve as a chief medical officer at Rush, which is more of a health care executive and administrative role. But when I was first coming out, I grew up in Chicago Public Schools, all the way through, in the Hyde Park area, and had a couple of transformative experiences that really influenced the way that I saw the world and how I wanted to pursue the world. The first of which was sports. I was very much into athletics. I went to Winnipeg High School and played basketball all four years, played football. And prior to that, in boarding school, I did track and soccer. So, a lot of my lens has always been from a teamwork aspect, working with others, looking for a larger mission. And at the end of high school, I was a preferred walk-on for Purdue. So, I went to Purdue University, where I walked onto the track and the football team. And compared to other sports, basketball was my love, and I just, frankly, didn’t have a similar passion for it.  

So when people ask me about medicine, I usually say I got concussed into medicine because towards the end of the year, they had us doing the Oklahoma drill, and we were doing two-a-days, and looked to my left and saw a guy by the name of Bernard Pollard who ended up being a pro bowler who was a couple tenths faster than me, jumped higher than me. And I was like, I’m not sure I’m ready to commit. So, I was an athletic transfer to U of I, and in between that time, I started thinking about different majors, and I was watching the news, and they kept talking about economics and GDP. And I was like, that’s a pretty pragmatic, interesting subject. And when I got to U of I, I immediately switched my major to economics, but also from encouragement from a friend, pursued the sciences.  

So, I was majoring in both economics and minoring in chemistry, and frankly, just loved the sciences. And really just started becoming very into school. I became an intense reader. I read as many books as I could around economics and African American history and African American authors and authors that are in the diaspora and really just became very curious about the role of social and economic barriers to different community groups. And luckily, I applied the same amount of energy that I did for sports into medicine, and ended up doing pretty well and during my time at U of I. I was able to teach a lot of students, and I had my own kind of class to teach a lot of students from rural and first-generation backgrounds, and it really made me interested in education and social justice and education.  

So, I ended up doing AmeriCorps while I applied for medical school. So, I moved to D.C. I worked for D.C. public schools with an organization called Turning the Page, and one of the focuses was establishing parent-teacher organizations, parent-teacher leaders and underserved communities, and we will come up with different curriculums. And that’s probably the first time I thought about the type of physician that I wanted to be, because I saw all these issues that affected people’s ability to prioritize their health and think about their health. And was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to UIC, and there was a special program called the Urban Medicine Program that put special curriculum together for those that are interested in kind of the social aspect of health care, and had an incredible experience at UIC med school, and was committed to the research track of exploring social determinants of health, but started to learn even more about business too, as well. And between that and my residency at University of Chicago and my master’s in public health, I started to develop a portfolio of exploring the impact of Medicaid on health care utilization, as well as the impact of social determinants of health and through that process started to become a person that people started to ask questions about related to social determinants of health.  

And when COVID-19 hit, a lot of people started to become familiar with that topic, and I had an opportunity of a lifetime to serve as a deputy director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Honestly, had no admin experience before that, but just went into the role to try to consume as much experience as possible, and then had an incredible opportunity to serve at the White House for the Biden administration. So, I was a White House fellow. I worked for the surgeon general for the year in HHS, and our CEO here at Rush recruited me during that time to lead their value-based care strategy, as well as a few partnerships that he really wanted to build upon. And I was attracted to the mission of closing life expectancy gap in Chicago, which Rush has shown up for boldly, not only during the pandemic, but continues to, and I think that’s a mission worth being part of. And so that was what brings me here today. 

Aisha El-Amin 07:58 

Wow, wow. So many spaces that you have excelled in. Can you talk a little bit about what you learned from your time as a White House fellow working with Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek. What was that experience like? And what are some lessons that you took out of that? 

Garth Walker 08:19 

Yeah, so I think there’s two, three components. The White House Fellowship, in general, is a leadership program where they select 12 to 19 individuals from across the country, and you get exposed to leaders from all different sectors, private sectors, the federal government. You get to meet the president as well, and then and you have closed-door sessions, where you get to have off-the-record discussions around some of the biggest challenges and how to navigate that. So, that’s one component.  

The second component is working in the executive branch, so weekly meetings with the surgeon general, understanding how it’s organized, understanding how Health and Human Services is organized, and what are the largest stakeholders? And CMS being the largest payer in the world, as well as a regular regulating body for many of payers and medical schools across the nation, it was an incredible opportunity to just understand how that functions, and how to think about strategy and institutions and platforms.  

And what I’ve learned is, particularly with the surgeon general’s office, an incredible ability to be able to influence how we think about health. And one of the priorities for the surgeon general was loneliness and how we think about community, and how that can be a treatment for being healthy. And I think we are in a time where there’s so much social media that, although we’re connected to so much information, many people feel more isolated than ever before, particularly with all the distractions that you can. And I think me coming from the Illinois Department of Public Health, figuring out how to center health equity and how to think about how we leverage research to deliver the most impact to the communities that need it the most. That was one of the biggest opportunities and learnings that I had during my time there, in terms of what to bring back to Illinois and how I was going to think about institutions and platforms as a leader. 

Aisha El-Amin 10:49 

Dr. Walker, you have such a deep, unwavering commitment to health equity. You are, you know, a leader in that field, an acclaimed leader, an author. I mean, were there any pivotal personal experiences or moments that led you to really focus on your career, your commitment, your centering of health equity in your work? 

Garth Walker 11:16 

Yeah, I mentioned earlier, I served in AmeriCorps, which is essentially a yearlong civic engagement, mostly for students that are graduating high school, going to college or after college, moving forward. And you get an opportunity to get a lot of accountability, a lot of leadership, a lot of community engagement. And I think the way that I thought about that from a vantage point of someone with foundation in economics, was just how people prioritize their competing responsibilities. It’s hard to tell a mother five to focus on their health when they want to make sure that, you know, the lights are on, that food is on the table to get to their children. And that’s just been a concept that’s persistent with me throughout, and I think as I advance, for COVID-19 really highlighted how all of those kind of staving off taking care of self or others in marginalized communities really came and put a lot of our communities at risk; typically, during COVID-19, when you couldn’t protect yourself, or you couldn’t isolate, or you couldn’t make sure that you had the appropriate coverage. And it was no surprise when that occurred. So as an author that was putting a lot of my emotion on paper and trying to translate that to the public, and luckily, it resonated at the time. But as you know, we still have a lot more challenges moving forward in terms of making sure that we integrate those learnings back into our communities and our country. 

Aisha El-Amin 13:17 

Absolutely so when you talk about your kind of journey, you mentioned U of I, you mentioned incoming to, you know, UIC on the scholarship. Can you talk a little bit about UIC, your experience at the College of Medicine, for folks that are listening, that are considering the spaces and places to go to follow in your pathway. 

Garth Walker 13:42 

Oh, absolutely. UIC medical school educates one of the largest minority populations in the nation, outside of HBCUs, and the mission of health equity is intertwined throughout its curriculum, throughout the needs of what Illinois and Chicago needs. Having those issues as a focus really resonated with trying to make myself and my peers the best physicians that we could be. And I think a lot of times when people get wrong about being an effective doctor that it’s explicitly about grades, which it is — we need people to meet thresholds, be excellent on their grades and the like. But there’s a heavy importance on ability to be able to connect with people and understand where people are coming from, and it’s hard to achieve that if you’re not able to occupy diverse spaces, and whether you have diverse classmates, but you’re being pushed out or working in different environments that are different from you, those are some of the best educational experiences one could have, because you can’t reference… It’s hard to problem solve when you only have explicit science in your background. You need to be able to put yourself in those situations and learn from the diversity of experiences, to be able to innovate and come up and ask different research questions and the like. So, I thought UIC really exemplified that for me, particularly as a state institution that has an incredible research portfolio, but also just a large catchment across our city and as well as across our state. 

Aisha El-Amin 15:35 

I appreciate that. What impact do you hope marks your career? 

Garth Walker 15:42 

That’s a great question. I think when I think about kind of why I pursued medicine and as well as what I’ve been attracted to, it’s always been about a combination of teams’ force and a large mission. And I think my mission and my passion has always been focused on: how do we address social determinants of health, how we address the lived experiences of individuals and make sure that it’s intertwined in a compassionate, ethical way in all stakeholders, private sector, public sector and the like. And what I hope people are able to draw from that is that no matter which venue that I’m at, I’m thinking critically and thinking passionately about how we keep the main thing the main thing, which is patients, those in the community, and ensuring that those that need to be centered the most are centered. And I think that’s what I hope people will be able to draw in terms of the different partnerships that we pursue, the different initiatives that I take on, and the different topics that I’m trying to highlight for to be able to advance our community and be a part of improving our city and our in our state. 

Aisha El-Amin 17:00 

I like to leave our listeners with some words of advice that you would give young or aspiring physicians. 

Garth Walker 17:10 

That’s it. So oftentimes — I tell this to people all the time — oftentimes, in medical school, you focus a lot on the short one, which is what you should do on the test. The scores are absolutely very important, and they should be prioritized. But it is still important to take 30 minutes out of the day to realize that everything becomes mundane, all the all the science, all the topics, the procedures become mundane.  

So, you’re going to have to ask yourself, your family’s obviously number one. But the second part is: What else will bring you happiness, and how can you be part of being able to continue the mission of do no harm and deliver health care in a compassionate and equitable way. That goes for any specialty, and I think what that requires is thinking about the type of community you want to be in, the type of community you want to serve, and what it would be like if once these activities are mundane, what can complement to keep that curiosity and keep that passion moving forward? 

Aisha El-Amin 18:21 

That is great advice. Great advice. I appreciate you joining us, sharing your wisdom, your story, your words of advice. It is an inspiration, and I hope that many, many folks listen to this and are inspired by the work that you continue to do out in the world for health and health equity and the social determinants of health. Thank you for your work, and thank you for joining us today. 

Garth Walker 18:47 

Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Announcer 18:50