Pooja Kumar

But I do wonder sometimes how easy will it be to slip back into what we used to have and the ways in which we used to work versus take the real lessons from this and invest to build something greater from a systems level that will allow us to be more resilient and more prepared.

Yeah, I love that point.

How do we take so many of the weaknesses that COVID has exposed that are not sexy to talk about, right?

Supply chain, IT systems, and actually make them the big areas where we can double down our focus.

As we think about a reimagined future for public health, what role do you think private entities can play in interacting with the government to prepare and potentially prevent another pandemic?

Well, Vivek, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been a pleasure to hear your lessons learned and reflect a bit on what you've seen in this journey, but also in our broader quest to address some of the biggest issues of health care in our time.

So I appreciate your time.

So first of all, Kathy and Tom, thank you so much for joining us.

We were actually supposed to record this as a podcast, but we're just going to do it live instead.

And today, we're really hoping to focus this on the role of academic medical centers and academic-based health systems in our broader healthcare ecosystem.

This is a topic that I'm personally passionate about, and I know that these two leaders are as well.

So I'd love to just start this off by asking each of you, tell us what brought you into the academic space.

Was it something you always wanted to do?

Very different path.

What would you say is the hardest part of your job right now?

Maybe just to follow on that thread, Kathy, I'd love to understand what are tactical things that you've done when you've tried to start to shift some of that culture or at least even shift priorities?

How do you as leaders think about investments that you're making or how you spend your time when you think about the academic, clinical and research missions?

And how do you see that changing, let's say 10 years from today?

One of the other themes that I think has come up in several of the discussions is entrepreneurialism that exists in the broader ecosystem towards parts of the healthcare continuum that AMCs traditionally have not focused on.