Pooja Kumar

How has COVID changed your thinking and what concerns you most about extended periods of physical distancing and isolation and its impact on society, if at all?

I love the way you spoke about being intentional and actually calling ourselves to account about what we want versus how we're acting.

Are there other ways individuals can take steps to maintain their connections?

I think there's a real idea in that virtual babysitting that would be fully on board with that as well.

So it's been great to focus on what you see as individual things we could be doing.

I'd love to kind of shift focus a little bit now and talk about the system's response.

I'd love to start by actually talking a little bit about frontline workers, of which you are one and your wife is one as well, and likely a huge proportion of your colleagues and friends.

Paint us a picture of how things are for frontline workers.

What types of solutions do you think we need to be thinking about to ensure that they are protected and treated effectively?

Yeah, I think there is some real fear about what it means to go into an acute care setting in particular.

And as you mentioned, a lot of thought being put into what does that mean going forward?

When will people regain that trust of being able to be safe when they go back to a health care setting?

You know, tangential but related question, right, is around safety.

vulnerable populations.

You obviously issued a call to action in the first ever Surgeon General's report on alcohol, drugs, and health to end the public crisis of addiction.

I'd love for you to just talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, certainly in my work over the last few months in the response phase of this, I have never seen as many band-aid solutions, right?

Manual data collection, Excel tracking, as I have before.

And some of it is great because we're finally asking for it.

and asking for this information to be looked at in a way that allows us to make better decisions.