Dr. Jennifer Reich

To be fair, it's not research the way researchers do research, but to gather information, right?

The way we research products and we research restaurants and we gather information to make decisions that feel true to us.

People all want healthcare to feel personalized.

They want to feel seen.

They want to have their lifestyle taken into consideration as they make decisions.

And so parents are increasingly expecting that from health care providers.

And health care providers, I think, are adapting.

But I think it's been slow because for so many decades, they were the experts.

I love that you said you're not really taught how to talk to patients in these ways, because I think patients are not often taught how to talk to healthcare providers either.

Most of us don't know how to be healthcare consumers and advocate for ourselves in ways that are productive and not confrontational.

And it's easy to, I think, have communication breakdown as healthcare providers.

I'm asking questions.

You perceive me as distrustful.

We have conflict.

And there's actually disagreements amongst pediatricians.

of whether they should even continue to see parents who reject vaccines because they don't trust their judgment, they present risk to other patients.

And it's a really, I think it's an area of controversy even amongst pediatrics.

So what I'd say is like, you know, how do we start moving this conversation forward?

I've talked about the ways individualism has really overshadowed the way we think of public health.

I think that was true before COVID.