Archive for category: Podcast Transcripts

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  00:02

On the menu for dinner tonight at Bruin play at UCLA is a kale hummus, winter greens and red quinoa flatbread. You can’t help but salivate as you read through the menus posted daily online for the dining halls at UCLA. But this is just another typical day at UCLA. Dining colourful, vibrant, delicious, and well balanced meals. How does UCLA dining sir performing meals every day to its residents living on campus? Well, Pete Angeles, the Assistant Vice Chancellor of UCLA housing, hospitality will tell you, it’s all made possible through the care for and care from his remarkable team. What I’d like to start out with is not just how we first got to know each other, and how you really have been an inspiration to Semel healthy campus initiative for so many years, over seven years. I think it’s been from beginning Yeah, from the very beginning. And I think I’ve been reflecting on when you first came to these monthly EatWell, pod meetings that you now lead yourself. And I was reflecting on how you dove into the scientific literature that was brought to these meetings initially and read all the papers. What brought you to do that as a food operator and a person who’s in business? Like what made you decide to do that?

Pete Angelis  01:36

I love reading at the topic of health and wellness fascinates me. And the first study, I think you’ve mentioned is the one from the Netherlands where they did a vending study. So I always thought that, you know, I’ve been to Amsterdam, and I’ve seen kind of a Dutch viewpoint in their culture. And I thought that’s interesting that how would the Dutch handle this vending initiative to have people choose healthier vending options. And when I read through, it’s just it’s not wasn’t an extremely long study. But it was a meaty study done me that we have at that time was about a $2 million vending operation. And why couldn’t we try to replicate that study here. So I think we’re just that we have a vending business. And it’s a vending study. And I thought the perspective would be interesting on that study. And I enjoy it. Part of the thing I enjoy the Healthy Campus Initiative is getting connected to the academic side of campus. I’m an operator, my team, we do operations, some development, with our capital programs, partners. But it’s basically a big operation. That’s what we focus on and healthy campus gives me an opportunity to take a step back, look at things maybe from an academic perspective, or learn things from the academic side of campus, that gives me the opportunity to bring that back to my team and see what we can implement. So I think that’s just the motivation, the way that played out

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  02:58

How you ended up reading and actually even asking if you could do a similar kind of, you know, the healthier items with lower price at eye level and drop, the less healthy items lower and

Pete Angelis  03:10

And product placement and pricing. That’s right, moving. Yeah, through items at the top and promotion to marketing the machine with labeling that we made.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:20

Healthy, healthier choice

Pete Angelis  03:22

Pricing, the healthier

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:23

Not the healthiest choice, but the healthier choice.

Pete Angelis  03:25

And there’s still a choice. Yes, exactly.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:29

Not hurting the bottom line.

Pete Angelis  03:31

And we almost I think we’ve pretty close to replicated the Dutch study.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:34

That’s right.

Pete Angelis  03:35

That was fascinating to me that yes, that that is transferable. That was

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:40

That’s true science, actually, isn’t it?

Pete Angelis  03:42

And the other part was really fun was getting introduced to Joe. Yeah, the grad student was working on it and seeing how good the bright mind he brought to the table and how he was working with the data from the vending sales. That was fun, because I don’t do that. In my normal day. We take care of students. I’m surrounded by students all the time in my job, but I don’t get to engage with them.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:04

Yea you really mentored, yea you mentored him

Pete Angelis  04:08

I learned a lot about how grad study student goes about a project published paper. That was fascinating in and of itself.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:17

Did that give you a little more respect to publish papers? How much work it takes to get what you’re out?

Pete Angelis  04:22

Yes, definitely not my line of expertise. Very fast. Yeah.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:27

Well, I know it Joe used to talk talk to me about how was a real eye opener was to go into the warehouse where all the products for the vending were in place and try to categorize them in terms of what was healthy and not healthy. And he obviously landed on a criteria that was used by our public health department here in Los Angeles, but really, even categorizing snack foods as what are healthy and not healthiest is a challenge.

Pete Angelis  04:55

Yeah, but it was kind of interesting in hindsight, looking at that whole experience is That’s the magic of academic campus at UCLA. Is that really an academic solution? Police, my perception of it is, from my experience when I was an undergrad is that it’s where ideas or hypotheses are put out there vetted, the vetting process is rather intense. It’s for the sake of moving knowledge. And it was fun to really be involved with that project, because I saw that whole thing, the vetting of what was a healthy item, and what was not how rigorous that debate was, and how those.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:30

That’sr ight. You had all your nutritionists and yes, same time,

Pete Angelis  05:34

And campus nutritionists. It was like it was across campus bedding. And went on after we tried to get it and successfully moved it towards UCOP. President to have included in there was further vetting in that dialogue and discussion. So that’s the beauty of it. I think it was really a marvel for me to see that aspect of working at a university. And how that plays out with so many things I get to work with is this vetting it’s so natural for a university. And unfortunately, thE great people I get to work with here, a lot of the vetting. It’s like you’re having big discussions, and no one gets defensive on it. There’s like, No, I love that. That’s kind of that’s kind of like how I’m wired. I like to have debate. But however it works out. There’s no emotional attachment to the argument. It’s just make sure we argue this out, make sure that you get the right truth from it from the process.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  06:30

Wow, I never thought of it from that point of view. Yeah.

Pete Angelis  06:33

Yeah, seeing so much of that on this campus. And he has kind of an unselfish

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  06:37

Pursuit of knowledge.

Pete Angelis  06:38

Exactly I love it. I can see the team loves that. So yeah, definitely exciting project. And we’re really glad to be involved with it.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  06:47

Would you say from your perspective, having spent a lot of time in business, that that is a different kind of way of, of having a discussion?

Pete Angelis  06:56

Oh, I think my experience, absolutely, I mean, I think in business world, my experiences, you can have debates and hopefully you have the skill set to argue a point or debate a point in a way that’s not defensive or is not received defensively. But just the openness and how that whole process is embraced in the university world, and how transparent that all has to be, it’s definitely a different level, I find that one of the things I really enjoy, about being working at a college campus.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  07:25

You know, it’s what that perspective, I mean, you’ve opened my eyes to a lot of different viewpoints that I would never have considered based on your perspective, from a business, operating kind of way and my scientific perspective and having you describe just what you said to me about being able to disrupt, discuss something in a, in an open manner to then accept what is considered to be a better, you know, practice or investigate an idea that could be something that promotes health or well being in this case, makes me think how important it is for not just a university to do research for the sake of research, but especially in this area of health and well being where a lot of businesses have co opted, co opted the the narrative, even even around healthy food and healthier food. But having a university be defining these kinds of theories or identifying points of practice that really are based on true science and not based on profit or other motivations that would then promote that particular idea. I mean, to me, what you’re saying to me is, this is something that really is behooves universities to be working on, for the health of individuals and the community.

Pete Angelis  08:51

I think you were interesting business because we’re an auxilary. We don’t take any state funding. And we have to pay our own bills and cover the payroll and I’ll put money aside to develop and renovate as necessary to keep on our mission of continuing UCLA to transition from a commuter campus to a residential campus.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  09:11

It is news to me as well like that. I never knew that about your operation until you explain that to me, which is interesting. Being part of the umbrella, UCLA,

Pete Angelis  09:20

Right, but also part of the umbrella and I see this every day, when I see students arrive to the hill or residential community on campus. I realized these are because I’ve went through this myself as a parent, you send your, your kids, your young adults off to college, and they become formulating themselves as adults and really growing to a different level. Real developments are real. And you see I get to see that all the time. And with that you recognize the responsibility that you have, and the opportunity that if you can nudge or steer students at that point of their life into healthier decision making healthier behaviors healthier living You know, you overtime, year after year as the classes come in the classes graduate year over year, you can make a difference. And I think everyone on our team really recognize that they see that because all of our staff working with students, I think they appreciate that. And they understand that that’s a really unique opportunity. So are a lot of our decisions just not dollars and cents. You know, a lot of the times we’re making decisions on what’s, what’s the right thing to do big picture for these students as they grow and mature. And that’s what I love, again, by the healthy campus initiative, it’s just requires us to put that lens on for a while and really think about things. And then we get to see how that plays out on on the Hill. Not only do we see it now we hear it one meeting, and have Jeremy tell about the these pianos that might be available on campus. And what about a great idea of dropping a piano out in just a public space, and letting whoever wants to walk by play on the piano. I’ve watched that we’ve put the two pianos on the hill, the hill where most of us live and eat these pianos, we have to put a we have to lock them up at night during when students really want to study and go to sleep. But the day that they’re open, they’re constantly being played. And I am just amazed by how many students have such great talent and musical skills. And I never knew it before those pianos showed up. And then you watch the dynamic of it. And you can see maybe a student, you might come across kind of shy, and they’re playing incredibly well on a piano and people that I know have not talked with him because we have 14,000 plus 14,000 living on the hill. They’re they’re meeting people they would not have now without these interactions taking place around the piano. Ah, and it just changed the whole environment of the place where it’s just you can feel there’s a relaxing, you know, sound, the melodies the vibe, that just a couple of pianos made just kind of miraculous to me. That’s it’s been how many years? We’ve never had that. And it would have been how many more years?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:24

Right

Pete Angelis  10:50

Without the Health Campus, meeting that steering committee meeting and getting exposed or noise worrying about it. I never would have heard about Yeah, go for some you don’t know. That’s

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  12:10

Right. That’s right. It’s the connectivity. It’s really is. Yeah,

Pete Angelis  12:13

Awareness is a big part of unleashing potential. That was another perfect example. Yeah,

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  12:22

I hadn’t imagined where they were. And then last week, I saw that once at the entrance of Bruin play, you’re standing there and you’re listening to someone on the piano. And then tell me what happens when you walk into that incredible dining hall, which you’ve now had accolades nationally as being one of the top the top dining hall for undergraduate dining. We are very proud of BruinPlate. Yeah. And, you know, I think the entire team was such a team effort. Yeah, the culinary side, the marketing team, the design group. It was so much effort into that concept. And like all our dining concepts we looked at, we look out at the private sector and see what’s taking off in the LA food scene in LA has become a great food city. I don’t know if you recall la from the 80s?  Not really.

Pete Angelis  13:09

I do. Yeah. I don’t think it was a fluke city. Yeah, I would say in the last 15 years, this place has really been put on the map with great chefs, great culinary talent, and people recognize it as a Food City. Our students come with a very mature palette. They’ve eaten in a lot. A lot of our students have eaten a lot of these restaurants and Los Angeles. And so we look at the private sector. And at that point in time, some of the healthy concepts were coming out of Lemonade, Seasons 52. At the time Tender Greens are these healthy concepts were starting to percolate. So we saw that that’s something that’s on the horizon. But what really put one one together as the Chancellor’s announcement of making UCLA, the healthiest campus in the country. So when we heard that proclamation, we said this is like perfect fit, perfect timing. Now, how could we have timed this any better?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:01

Let’s do it well, in our own backyard, and others will be inspired.

Pete Angelis  14:04

Yeah and what was really great about that project is we were able to build it from the ground up. So it’s not just the food. And we were able to design the architecture, in a way broke with the architects to have sky lighting, lots of curtain walls of natural daylighting surrounded by trees, plants, the artwork from our Southern Regional Library, medicinal plants that are indigenous to the campus landscape, incorporating all those things, the music, we worked with our students to have all the music tracks picked out. So you go there in the morning, it’s classical music. And throughout the rest of the day, it’s really kind of just a meditative, nice, relaxing, musical experience there. And so it’s not just food, it’s this whole

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:51

That’s right, which I think is what you’re breaking. You’re really breaking ground in terms of health and well being because it’s not about just food,

Pete Angelis  14:59

Right? And what I really love about the project too, is it didn’t open as a success. And I think that part, I think, is also something amazing about UCLA. So when it opened, you know, it seats close to 900, we need to turn those three times at least we had this thing, or the concept had to produce at least 25-2700, almost 3000 covers in the meal period, for the day. To be able to see, to expand to that number, at least do a minimum of half that on a meal period. And when we first open, I don’t think we were getting more than 350 people through there. And it was a long time. It wasn’t a week one week two, it took till about week 10 for it to hit its full

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:43

That means the last week of

Pete Angelis  15:44

of fall quarter. Wow. And we were nervous the whole time because a significant investment. Do we miss it? Students don’t like the spoon. When it first opened, it was a women athletes that were pretty much only people going there.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:58

Why do you think they –

Pete Angelis  15:59

I think they I think they knew they’re a women athlete. They knew you know, diet is important health, this alphas nutrition is important for athletic performance. And maybe they were on the cutting edge of realizing you can eat healthy food and it can taste good. Because I think they were the leaders of convincing their peers or their colleagues, other students that this is something that you should embrace and try. And it was fun to watch. It’s since it opened, it’s continued to be our top dining comments. And it’s healthy, nutritious and

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  16:31

No commercial soda,

Pete Angelis  16:33

No commercial soda.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  16:34

That was another area that was really brave.

Pete Angelis  16:37

Yeah, the whole thing. desserts are very small. They’re bite sized. A lot of fresh fruit Greek yogurt, small play well plate portion sizes, it’s so plant forwar, meats are condiment, not the center of the plate.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  16:51

Trays are hard to find.

Pete Angelis  16:52

No one uses trays there that we make trays available for our students, but they’re so conscientious of sustainability. We have locally sourced products there

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  17:00

Your vertical towers up stair towers.

Pete Angelis  17:03

Aeroponic towers, not 50 of them on the roof. And we leveraged what we produce up there into our salad bars. And it’s just a great overall concept. And, you know, again, what I really love about that is it didn’t open up successfully, we had to get traction to watch it and make it work. It was a hypothesis we took Yeah, and a gamble and never wants all the way up from the administrative vice chancellors office to the Chancellor’s Office. Did we ever get a concern that you know, you know, it’s a failure? It’s and I think that’s another great thing about campus, it’s okay to to make it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to have an experiment that doesn’t play up. Fortunately, it played out. Yeah, but you know, when we look back in hindsight, I don’t think we’re ever really afraid of political repercussions or something, we would have to change the concept map and make it work. But it was not ever this feeling of you didn’t pick the right. Never none of that. So we were allowed to let it play out and see how it worked. And definitely a tremendous success story. I’m glad now we have the cookbook out. Yeah. And the net proceeds go to address student food insecurity. So

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  18:15

I think you know, what you’re describing is this very organic way of change. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Rome wasn’t built in the day. Right. And he there was UCLA. And yeah, and you know, also changing somebodies sense of where they go and eat a dining hall with dining hall you just described is very typical of dining halls in college. And so it takes time for people to accept new ways of experiencing their dining experience at college and didn’t take that long if you really think about it 10 weeks, which shows I think the receptiveness of this age group, this developmental stage of students to accept new ideas and new ways. And that was what you were describing earlier. I am not sure if I share this with you but I had a student described to me she didn’t realize how much I knew about BruinPlate and how much I have admired your work Pete frowns and others in your team. And she described to me how her life was transformed by Bruyne plate. The food was so delicious to her and she just ate as much as she felt, you know, she listened to her hunger cues which were very well satiated and, and she also became a lover of healthier food of sorts, and she has brought it all home to her family, including the cookbook. She brought the cookbook for Christmas for her parents. And she was so excited to bring this knowledge and these experiences in this ability to share with her her parents at her next vacation time with them.

Pete Angelis  19:49

Yeah, I’m involved. I’m involved that menus have changed. Yeah, university research collaborative or other universities are trying to embrace more plant forward dining and talking to my colleague at Stanford. pouring some numbers in just very quick on a napkin. If you look at the 1000s of students that graduate, all these universities just that are members of MCRC, you’ve got 58 of them now, just all the numbers of meals that they will produce consume, once they’ve graduated over the lifetime, you’re in a billion, you’re past the billion. So if you look at trying to make a difference, or find some way of making a contribution to the planet, I mean, I think that’s what I think the team really gets is that this is something we’ll do every year.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:38

That’s right, and you can vote with your fork. Right?

Pete Angelis  20:42

And the student you just mentioned, as we look at it, it’s going to be on any given year of almost 6000, right that come through every year. 5700, I think is the exact Yeah, so it’s, it’s fun to see when they graduate, what we hear is that they want to maintain friendships with undergraduates are still residing on the Hill, so they can get swiped in and join them for a meal at BruinPlate. So yeah, we’re very proud of that. That project. And, you know, I think over time, it will make help move the needle.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  21:13

Yeah. You described the one of the reasons that you were particularly drawn to Healthy Camps Initiative and reading the research papers and so forth, was your longtime interest in health and well being where did that originate? And then also, how did you get here from the private sector

Pete Angelis  21:31

Coming to UCLA was the greatest professional thing that ever happened and probably happened in a period of my life that for my family is I can go into great story about that. It’s just It was a miracle how he ended up here and start with the setup but like arrowhead that’s after working 20 years plus, with Hyatt and Hilton through a variety of mergers and acquisitions. And so hotels and hospitality was my background.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  21:56

And why did you get into that in the first place? You know, you were a Berkeley boy.

Pete Angelis  22:00

Yeah, I went to Cal, I went in wanting to be pre-med. I think I read a book called paying for the party. And I think I look back at those days in these The danger with, with our big public universities, you can kind of fall through the cracks. I met my wife as a freshman in a calculus class. And in my mind wasn’t 100% on my studies where it should have been at that point in time. And it kind of steered me away from after you have one or two bad quarters there. And you got to say, well, you know, now I’m not going to go pre-med now. What else am I gonna do? And so what economics instead, and then I worked my way through there, we got married after we graduated, it was a recession. And you I worked my way through college in a hotel that was near the campus, the Claremont resort there. And so when there’s a recession, you’re looking for any kind of work, you’re looking at, what can you show on a resume, and I had some hotel background. So fortunately, we were out in Hawaii, and I found a job with Hyatt and I kind of worked my way up in the hotel business and, you know, I loved it. You know, hospitalities, kind of where I grew up with my father money. My family when we immigrated from Greece, my father worked his way up from a dishwasher, the Palmer House and ultimately became a restaurant manager that became a general manager with holiday ends. And he did a great, you know, he had a great successful career with them. So I kind of saw it, I kind of grew up in the industry. So that’s where I went through a career. But coming to UCLA, even though I started in the hospitality side here with Lake Arrowhead conference center, or Bruin Woods family resort for Bruin Woods, alumni, it started different, like I could see there’s so much more potential UCLA is just an amazing place. And when I interviewed here, I remember the person I interview with at the end, I said, you know, in a hotel business, you typically move every as a general manager I moved every two years is promotion my whole time to the different towns different moved all over so many different cities. And then a GM usually moves every five or six years, I would say, as my experience from what I saw colleagues doing. And when I study what happens at UCLA only have like arrowhead, the conference center here. I don’t know what, five, six years from now. And he said, Pete, at that time, there are 20,000 jobs at UCLA. I’m sure we’ll find something happened a lot faster than I thought. But it’s been a great ride. I’ve really enjoyed making that transition from not just hospitality, but also to learn, you know, kind of the university business environment. Let’s say that the scale is amazing. It’s mind boggling the scale that a university does. And the other thing that amazes me about the university is having that come in with a lot of experience in development and renovation work to the degree that we’re hiring architects, designers going through all that work. The university has so many great people that to help guide you and educate you and work with you and so much experience at the University that’s here already. that, you know, it could never happen, I could never have done this journey elsewhere. Just, it’s just a miraculous place. And it’s like a treasure hunt here a treasure hunt. Yeah, and if you look at our operation is something I talk to people very often about. It’s so complex, like the BruinPlate concept to do that number of covers with the execution that they do the technical execution that they do. If we were a typical hotel, you’re going to turn over about a 30 year staff every year. And at Bruin play in any university, we tend to have staff stay longer. And because we have staff stay, make careers with us stay with us, we can do things that are very complex that a typical, like place couldn’t do at that scale, because of the complexity of the whole chain host, supply chain production chain, to get to BruinPlate into any of our dining commons, everything, not just dining, but everything is really complex. Because we don’t have a lot of turnover, we can be complex. Yeah. Have you ever watched move in and move out? Here at the Oh, yeah. That’s a military operation. military operation? And the team does it. Like with no problems that are becoming less seamlessly? Yes, experience. There’s knowledge, continual training of the new people that do come on board.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  26:16

You can trust each other

Pete Angelis  26:17

And there’s a lot of trust. Yeah, that’s great. So it’s really unique or just a miraculous situation. I pinch myself every day coming to work, because so many ways I look at this place and marvel.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  26:29

You know, it’s really, I think, amazing about the way you operate Pete is that your ability to be a businessman but also to value parts of people’s lives that aren’t necessarily related to the bottom line with the knowledge that this is the right thing to do. And I mean, you you do that also, when you build building, tell me about the Luskin conference center because to me that epitomizes your vision of blending, health and well being and the environment and then a building that comes from the bottom up

Pete Angelis  27:06

On the Luskin conference center is the result of a generous gift from visionary people Meyer and Rini Laskin to make that project happen. And you know how fitting that that conference center is built at the very center of the very heart of campus. And one of the moves we made early on was we wanted to have this at least LEED Gold. And we succeeded in having a property that’s LEED Platinum. You know, 95% of the construction debris from the project was diverted from landfill. Over half of all the wood in that facilities sustainably harvest. Every meeting room has natural lighting. The lighting systems are highly energy efficient, are no tubs in the room, we have these beautiful showers, low water but high pressure. And there’s just so many different elements of making it a LEED project. So that I thought was fitting is that UCLA would welcome having a LEED building had it’s very hard, but it’s

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  28:09

And then the art.

Semel HCI  28:10

It was a miracle how all the art got gathered and installed. And every piece is Vicki Stealer. Past librarian here for the campus described that every piece had a destiny to be where it is in the facility. If anyone gets the opportunity to walk, just come into the campus walk through the lesson conference center. Look at the artwork. It’s all from faculty on the first floor. It’s all artwork, faculty that either currently teach at UCLA or have taught in the past. Many of them are in the Brode Museum at the LACMA we have an incredibly rich history of talented faculty that are artists. And you can see that all in one space on that ground level of the Alaskan. When you go above the ground level. There’s over 440 historic images of UCLA and walking the corridors up on the floors, walking the upstairs meeting space. You’re basically seeing the history of UCLA unfold visually through the archive of prints we’ve been able to assemble from the project. But it was it the amazing, probably most exciting project I’ve been able to be a part of in my career. And being a hotel person from the start. You don’t get those opportunities to get involved. From the moment the architect is brought on board and providing a program, seeing it constructed and opened and seeing the donor who made it happy with Mr. Meyer and Rainy Alaskan, be there at the opening with the chancellor and provost and do the ribbon cutting and see the joy of having them be able to see in his own lifetime that that property development. I’ll say this one I love this part of the story is that we had to go to all the different departments at UCLA to pitch this conference center and tell them why it’s important for UCLA. I always like to start with two images in the presentation one was a blimp photo and black and white of the original campus with the are the original four buildings of campus, right? You Powell library Royce Hall and the quad there and taken from a black, black and white. And the second image I show is the Google satellite image and color of the campus today with a huge medical enterprise, all the academic buildings, athletics, the residential part of campus, just how much that has all happened in the span of one lifetime. And when I told my Alaskan about these presentations, he said to me, Pete, he goes when I was a freshman at UCLA, it was just those four buildings. Whoa, that’s amazing to me. Wow. So it sounds like a big project. But this is like UCLA does this a breeze this it? That campus is continually transforming. And, you know, just great to be part of that one aspect of that one project and always the important place, at least that for me, when I look back in time at that property,

Pete Angelis  28:34

That just gets right back to like, how did you decide or what drives you to emphasize health and well being and also these other parts of your job that are, some people might consider ancillary or mission drift. I have to look at my upbringing, you know, my dad being Greek, or lived in Greece young. And I remember him, I used to always, like, want to study hard, and he was the one who always told me up, you know, it’s important, just be well balanced, maybe it is a great thing, or shows many cultures that share that. But you know, this importance of being balanced. So I like to work out hard, whether it’s lifting weights, or running, or eating healthy. But there’s this part, I work hard, and I never see one competing with the other because I just tried to, it’s just like, I’m just wired from my childhood, to just try to keep it as a balance, and just be happy. And I have confidence that everybody I work with is just, like really talented, very capable, and that we’re working on the right things, you’re focused on the right things. And we just keep focused, being focused on the right things and giving our best effort on it. And every year, our operation will continue to grow and be better and better.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:18

You know, I’ve heard you say a lot about your, you know, in the hospitality business, you expect people to go the extra mile or whatever. And it just What is your secret sauce? Pete? Because I see it? I mean, I see. And there’s not let not that much turnover with what you do. And hospitality traditionally has a bit of that stress or pressure?

Pete Angelis  32:40

Absolutely. And coming from the private sector. I didn’t know what the secret sauce of that thought I knew what the secret sauce is, I still talk to people in the private sector. I think they think they know what the secret sauce is. I learned secret sauce at UCLA. And what it is, to me, is the whole difference between a great hospitality operation average one or a good one is how readily people will go the extra mile. Right? And

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  33:08

So how do you get them to do that

Pete Angelis  33:10

That’s the magical question and the revelation that came to me at UCLA is hospital is all about caring, right? You at the very we’re looking at the personality traits, the branding traits of your organization, if you’re in hospitality, what’s the most important thing you have to have? And that is that the team members, all of them have to care. And if they don’t care, they’re never gonna go the extra mile? Well, how do you make them care? You have to interview and hire for that personality trait? For sure, that’s very important. But I think you can, you can make it happen by showing them that you care. I mean, you got to constantly talk to them about how they need to care for our students, how do we take care of our guests, but you need to show them to that you care about that about that? Yeah. And you know, perfect example, we’ll talk a moment about the Diabetes Prevention Program, our mentorship program, our many professional development programs that we do for them. So we provide him with so many different ways that they can grow personally and professionally, and constantly encourage them and help them along that way. And that is probably like the big connection I have to have with healthy campuses. What can I bring back to the team, right, that we can install that lets them know that we care about them. And what I’ve seen from this is, the more they sense that you care, the more engaged they will be. Right? And that’s the secret sauce is engagement and this diabetes prevention program where we learn from healthy campus initiative meeting, a steering committee meeting where we heard a presentation that the CDC saying that we’re on a global tsunami of type two diabetes, the financial impact on the health system, the economy that when added to a product Becker, diabetics, the human pain and loss and costs involved with it, it’s mind blowing. And then they hear from that presentation at that meeting, that if a person goes through 22 training sessions in a one year period, and these training sessions are not over an hour there, I think over the course that or maybe average close up 45 minutes, ballpark, they go through 22 training sessions, they reduce their proclivity for type two diabetes by over 50%, or 53,

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:30

or 58 58%, to be exact. But yeah, so

Pete Angelis  35:33

I did the quick math, we got 3000 team members, a third of them, according to the statistics, or the CDC statistics, we’ll be getting Type Two Diabetes, we put 1000 them through this program, we can get 500 from getting type two, we had our first group go will graduate here,

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:50

Huge retention rate of like 85 percept

Pete Angelis  35:53

Yeah amazing.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:53

And a lot of males, which is uncommon, actually for wellness programs.

Pete Angelis  35:57

And the results of what we’re seeing with them is either replicating or exceeding the results from the study the CDC, my study

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  36:04

I think so.

Pete Angelis  36:05

But to me, that was showing our team that we care about you that we’re going to provide you these training sessions over the course of a year.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  36:12

And then you’re doing it on paid time

Pete Angelis  36:14

And doing it – We’re paying for that time. I think it’s probably one of my goal on this. My hope is that over time, we will show that this is a great business investment. And we should be scaling this Yes. To not only just easily housing group, it should be scaled up to you. You see, yeah. Universities countrywide worldwide. Yes. And it’s, you know, I see the benefit and the kind of the unique thing, the, the secret sauce we got from that program, is I’m watching these groups going through the training. And it’s not just dining staff, we have dining people working with, with maintenance people, with some managers with a marketing person or two. And you have like a broad range of people, all in the same meeting, getting the same training, helping each other out as cohorts, and tear down barriers that brings people together and that you see engagement happen at that meeting. And I you know, I see this and I, it’s the same thing we were talking about with you get a freshmen class comes through, they go through the system they graduate. We’re gonna do this year after year after year, and over time, these team members, they’ll have a healthier life, we can prevent over half of them getting from type two diabetes, and I look back to my career that’d be the thing I’m most proud of most happy of being affiliated with any project is that

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:35

It gives me that makes me feel so good just to hear you

Pete Angelis  37:38

It gives me the goose Yeah, talk to him I you know, I have I talked to one person he’s a manager or mains group dropped 40 pounds is a one C level drops so far that he stopped taking insulin. And I didn’t even think that was possible for a type two diabetic. Wow. And just so inspiring. And I tell me, one of our personality traits we do branding on is we want to be pioneers are innovative. And they’re being our pioneers. They’re that first group to go through.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  38:07

They took the dive, their eyes closed.

Pete Angelis  38:11

They sure did. And so proud of what they’ve done and, and when you talk to them, and you see him the smile they give you when they’re in that meeting, I’ll work in the gather. I mean, that doesn’t get your juices flowing to go to work. I don’t know what it is and, and I That’s the secret sauce. And I think you’ll feel that when you go into Luskin conference center. You’ll feel that as a parent, when you come to UCLA, I’m Bruin Day and you come up on the hill and you go to any of the dining commons, you see our housekeeping staff, you see our culinary team, you see our grounds crew, just look at that. I think being hospitality. First thing, I look for smiles and eye contact. And I invite anybody on the Hill, anybody in the lesson conversation, you can’t take two steps into that building without getting smiles and eye contact. And we’ve got the secret sauce. And we learned here at UCLA.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  38:59

And doing that it’s really innovative for a business to take it on and pay for people’s time to do it. I mean, I that’s one thing that wellness programs or well being programs have often been offered. But you know, time off, or lunchtime or having it during work time actually respects their time as well there.

Pete Angelis  39:21

It’s more than just time, you know, we got to care about the people we work with. I have a son who’s a type one diabetic, he had no choice in the matter and I see how much the disease impacts his life, you know, on what he can do what it can all these impacts, and he’s gonna have it for his entire life. And you realize that a third of our population is on that track. And, you know, people don’t deal with the problem. It’s just gonna get worse, that’s for

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  39:53

sure. And what’s really good, it’s almost a full circle conversation because but you’ve also with this particular further program have invited our researchers on campus to look at the social well being impact of this program on your staff and or team members. That to me is I, I picked up a couple of things, your nomenclature is so respectful. So you don’t use the word staff use team don’t use always dining hall instead of cafeteria.

Pete Angelis  40:23

Yeah, I don’t like the word employee. Yeah, just by saying it, you’re, you’re casting a person in a like in a different light than you’re calling them as they are. They’re a team member or in it. Yeah. And I hate the word customer. I mean, a customer is very transactional, saying, Who buys a soda beverage gives you cash and just maybe at a gas station goes. I mean, there’s, you’re not looking for a guest experience in the hotel? Well, it’s an experience. It’s a deeper level. I mean, we’re responsible for their health, their well being their safety. Yeah, it’s a deeper obligation. So we always refer to them as, our guests or residents, our students. Definitely not customers,

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  41:03

Right, and team members. So I noticed those sort of details, which are all all add up to some message subliminal message of carrying,

Pete Angelis  41:13

The message has to be every day that’s really, we can’t do announce something once a year or twice a year. It’s not gonna it’s got to be a drumbeat that happens every day. And, and hopefully, we’re all singing that same message and believing and it’s more important, and I definitely believe in. You know, that’s another thing with healthy campus that just the Healthy Campus Institute HCI constantly gives me this reinforced belief that there’s something we can do. And it’s, why are we doing it and I go back to that point, a lot of the stuff we don’t do is because we’re not aware, right. And I think that’s the beauty of what you do for UCLA, and what the potential of this institute over time, is increasing awareness outside of just those who at UCLA will participate with this group, and bringing more people together that are focused on wellness, right, so they can share the message and make people aware, when I talked to that DPP group, that diabetes prevention group, our team members, one person told me lost 10 pounds in the first month. So what was what was the worst and he said, I had a refrigerator full of sugary beverages. And I didn’t realize how many ounces of a sugary beverage I would drink every day. So DPP, we just switched it, and I lost weight. My kids have lost weight, my wife, my family is like we’re like just that one move, total awareness that they weren’t aware of what they were consuming in terms of calories, and sugar. So that perfect example just raising the level of awareness.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  42:51

Like, just to me what’s really cool about our experience here and working with you, Pete and the university is this researchers and academics and also physicians, often they have challenges to translate their knowledge and their research and communicate it to the broader population or, or influence the influencers. And having people like you be exposed to the researchers in nanoseconds, you can translate Yes, what is happening, which is like, I mean, it’s like heaven for everybody. I mean, it’s heaven for the, you know, researchers and the, and the scientists and the practitioners definitely operator AND operator. I mean, it’s like, this is like a magical. And here we are at a university where all this is happening. We’re a little mini city. And we’ve got the experts, the experts didn’t have the opportunity to share it with our own people in our own backyard, which is what’s happening. Yes. And you translate. Yeah. And you translated your experience to UC San Diego, thanks to you, they’re going to have a DPP program because their dining, their dining group, were afraid to do it. But because your dining group did, they felt Oh, well, we could probably do it.

Pete Angelis  44:13

Well, we’re all the UCs. I mean, we’re here to help move the needle right from now on in so many different areas and HCI the network that over the campus network, yeah, how that how that network builds over the years, that’s gonna get stronger and stronger. And I love that the thought that the chancellor made this proclamation, the Semels made a commitment to make this happen. And, and he can just see it’s just not a short term short lived.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  44:44

Right? Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? I mean, they, again, it gets back to this sense of patience and understanding that things don’t you know, you don’t have immediate change or you got to take risks.

Pete Angelis  44:57

We talked earlier about the whole thing about them. Adding the university’s vetting. And what I what I love about if I can see in the future with HCN is the vetting over time is going to show that this is a real positive thing for each of these campuses to not only embrace but to really be active in implementing as many things that university can that touch people make their work experience while at campus or their study their student experience a campus healthier and better, you can see it’s just not something that’s been a one year program to your program. This is something that will evolve over years and years and years. And I think you said it’d be a different place 10 years from now than it is today and a healthier place, a far healthier place.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  45:42

That’s right. And we can then also learn, I mean, I think you and I learned a lot from UC San Francisco, and their removal of sugar sweetened beverages and how they handled that and how it can be an evolution not a revolution, how we can enhance our own healthy beverage.

Pete Angelis  46:00

There’s another example. I mean, we talked earlier about private sector, my private sector experience, you don’t share your business secrets and the private sectors, you guard them. That’s your intellectual property rights. That’s your that’s your competitive advantage. Right? You don’t share that. In our world, we are so eager to share everything. That’s right. That’s the beauty of another thing about the academic world is like, we’re here to share knowledge, right? Or experiences, things that happen well, and things that maybe we’ve got to redo a different way. And that’s really been fun to watch this HCM, I can see how that’s gonna grow just by how knowledge gets shared from campus to campus. Yeah. And then the fun thing, going back to scalability, it’s not just the UC’s, I mean, we have this right. So a lot of college campuses,

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  46:44

Cal States and community colleges. Yeah.

Pete Angelis  46:46

Then you see how, like the evolution of how sustainability happened, and was really grassroots driven? Was students really pushing that?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  46:53

That’s right.Oh, well, it’s really related to health and well, exactly. I mean, we can’t be healthy without a healthy planet.

Pete Angelis  47:00

Yeah, it’s a joy to be involved.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  47:03

You’re right. Well, you know, I guess I’d love you to leave all our listeners like what would be your vision for the future, like what would be your ideal scenario that you’d like to see happening here at UCLA or on a college campus and then percolate out to the community?

Pete Angelis  47:20

First and foremost, our primary mission is to complete the CLAS transition from a commuter campus to a residential campus. And I grew up seeing UCLA many, many years ago, or everybody drove a car into the 405. To get to campus, get, in my opinion, can’t be premier world class, academic institution, unless you have a residential campus, I firmly believe it because I see with my own eyes, students learn so much, not only in the classroom, but outside of the classroom, in a residential environment. So I think, why do you think they learn, I think they learn a lot of life skills, they make lifelong friends, they, they learn interpersonal skills, that opens the doors to so much because we can make impacts to their environment. And that’s our secondary mission. So our secondary mission is to create environments that empower people to reach their fullest potential. And when we say people, it’s not just our students, or our guests or residents, it’s also our staff. And this is where I think we’ve come perfectly in line with HCI is what elements that we can learn that we can employ in the hill in terms of design in terms of services, in terms of programs that really make everybody involved with that area thrive. And so that’s what I’m, you know, I’m looking for that Eudaimonia living a life of purpose and meaning. Exactly, exactly. And having that fostered through the environment that students live in. I think that’s the that’s your goal. That’s my goal. Yeah. I’m sticking to it. Yes.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  49:01

Well, I think that we are turning out the future parents and leaders of our community in our country, and our world. I’m UCLA. So a world that needs great leaders, that’s for sure. And really are pursuing a life of meaning and purpose. So thank you, Pete. Is there anything else you want to share?

Pete Angelis  49:19

Thank you for your leadership, your vision, the assembles vision for healthy campus and just thinking you thinking UCLA for the opportunity, a part of the team that tries to move the needle? Yeah. Thank you all.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  49:33

Thanks, Pete. Because you know, with your vision, your partnership and your ability to take ideas and translate them into action and nanoseconds to me is what is brought Semel HCI to where we are today and it continues to just amaze me how you can translate and see how programs and work that is being researched or published from our great scientists here. How it can really be applied to practical, you know, settings like where the work you do.

Pete Angelis  50:06

Some may have a great team or talent. They inspire me great too. So yeah, they’re they’re the ones who

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  50:13

Oh, right on team.

Semel HCI  50:16

Thank you again for joining us. For more information about today’s episode, visit our website@healthy.ucla.edu backslash live well podcasts. today’s podcast was brought to you by the Seminole healthy campus initiative Center at UCLA. To stay up to date with our episodes, subscribe to UCLA live well on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave us a rating to tell us how we’re doing. And if you think you know the perfect person for us to interview next, please tweet your idea to us at healthy UCLA. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And we hope you join us for our next episode as we explore new perspectives on health and well being

SPEAKERS

Dr.  Wendy Slusser, Dr. Peter Katona

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  00:03

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we all gained a heightened awareness of the role of public health. Terminology like incubation period and comorbidities became more commonplace, and people across the world were made more aware of the importance of public health and ensuring the delivery of equitable healthcare and protection from diseases. Dr. Peter Katona joins us today to talk about lessons learned from our country’s response to the pandemic. He is a clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine, adjunct professor at the Fielding School of Public Health, and chair of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Task Force Infection Control Working Group. Keep listening to learn about what our greatest public health challenges will be moving forward, and how the COVID-19 pandemic fits in with the larger historical narrative of public health.  Thank you, Dr. Peter Katona for coming today. It’s such a pleasure to have you on so many levels. Firstly, it was a real honor to be on the COVID Response and Recovery Task Force where I first heard you talk about your impressions and your feedback and updates regularly. So you were so precise, and gave such a great picture to me and everyone on the state of COVID here in Los Angeles, but also across the country and in the world. And that was a really, I thought, very helpful for all of us to get a understanding of what is not just happening with us here in Los Angeles, but everywhere else. Also, you’ve been able to leave us with some questions at the end of our closing or winding down of this task force that I feel are really valuable and I’d love to talk about those with you as we move forward in this podcast. But before we get to that, which will be at the end, I’d like to ask you something about what you’ve shared with many of us about public health as being an art and a science. And I’d really like to understand what you mean by that.

Dr. Peter Katona  02:12

First, thank you for having me. I feel it’s very important to distinguish art from science. And that goes back to my work as a physician, because much of what we do as physicians has to do with the art of medicine, as well as the science of medicine. Science is what we learn from studies and looking into our textbooks. But the art of medicine has to do with how we deal with people, how we incorporate the science into the well-being of the person, how we deal with a reluctant patient and how we deal with a patient we don’t particularly like. We have to deal with all patients. And sometimes the art of it is something that we don’t really get trained in, like we do training in the science of medicine.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:00

And so if you were to apply that to public health, what does that mean?

Dr. Peter Katona  03:05

Well, I think it means exactly the same thing. You know, public health is a science, but there’s a tremendous amount of art to it. Studies in public health are done. A very small subset of those are good studies that we really can rely on consistently. But a lot of things are difficult to consistently bring out in a way that pleases everybody. There are things that change our knowledge, changes our political engagement, and what we’re doing changes. The economics of what we can do and get away with or not get away with enters into it. So it becomes more and more problematic to convince people that public health knows what it’s doing, rather than constantly changing its mind, being wishy-washy about masks or distancing or value of vaccines. And so that, to me, is how I look at both medicine and public health in terms of art and science.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:07

It’s very interesting, because when you think about it, it’s even more challenging, the art side for public health, compared to when you talk about an individual because there’s such diversity within a community and with public health, you’re working with populations and communities and not just on an individual basis. So it’s probably even more challenging as an artist or through the lens of art to effect change or to improve a situation.

Dr. Peter Katona  04:38

That’s very true. I look at medicine, dealing one-on-one with a patient and their medical concerns and public health deals with the masses. What do you do to vaccinate 10,000 people, or what do you do to clean up water supplies or sanitation deals with masses of people. And so the individual sometimes gets lost in that and sometimes you do something for the masses at the expense of an individual. And how do you rectify that? So it becomes rather complicated.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:11

It actually reminds me of something that I read recently from a neuroscientist who looked at the art of storytelling and its impact on people’s behaviors, not just individuals, but also they can actually impact social movements and actually engage people in being empathetic for others, through storytelling versus being told what to do.

Dr. Peter Katona  05:37

I would strongly agree with that. And when I speak, I like to do things in terms of storytelling as much as I can, because I think it has a greater impact than reciting a series of studies or looking at guidelines from public health committees. So I think that’s very true and people underutilized storytelling to make a point.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  06:00

Well, actually, that’s one of the things that struck me when you presented to the task force on a regular basis, you engaged people with a story or a concept that really drew you into something. You definitely utilize it in an effective way. Thank you, yeah. So getting to what we’re sort of probably all wondering about is, from a public health perspective, what will be our greatest challenges as we rebuild and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?

Dr. Peter Katona  06:32

Again, very complicated and many, many factors here. You can’t discount the economics. Public health has been a very, very impoverished entity compared to healthcare. You know, we spend 18, 19% of our GDP on healthcare. We spend a pittance of that on public health. We have thousands of public health departments around the country, many of them are starving for funding. So the economics is I think the first thing that I would talk about. And an outbreak generally gets worse and worse and worse there, then it starts to kind of get better and better. And that’s what’s happening here now, at least to some degree, but at the same time, it’s not affecting every population the same, you know. The impoverished lower end of the spectrum have not done particularly well. But the people at other ends have done very well. And so the economics is the first thing that I would think is a great challenge to public health. Political discord has been immensely important. It’s hard to get things done when you don’t have uniformity of opinion by political entities in our country, and really hard for them to get to a point of agreeing on something. So I think that’s a huge challenge. I’ve given a number of talks on propagation of misinformation. This can be done intentionally, it can be done unintentionally, it can be done inadvertently. But we have a whole large amount of information that is just wrong. That gets disseminated and there’s always a buyer for information, whether it’s right or wrong. And that, to me is a huge, huge problem that I don’t see a solution to coming anytime soon. Social media is partly to blame, because the business model of social media basically says, let’s drive people to look at us, but we have to give them an extreme view for them to keep coming back. So we kind of take a moderate view, and we make it more and more extreme on both directions because of the business model and the algorithms that are generated by entities like Facebook and Twitter. So that to me is a huge issue. I think it’s sometimes lost in the shuffle when you talk about acting quickly. To understand how to fight an outbreak, you have to act quickly because if you don’t act quickly, cases get ahead of you. You know, in LA County, for example, there was a time we had maybe 17,000 new cases a day, you cannot get a handle on 17,000 new cases a day in a population of 10 million people. So that’s a problem. We’ve come down to about 150 at its lowest point recently. That you can handle, you can do contact tracing, you can handle it. And as long as you can keep things in a way that you get to them quickly, you can beat it. But if you let it get out of hand, then you’re back to square one and then you got to start all over again and hope the thing kind of works its way out on its own because you haven’t done what you need to do to get rid of it. And we’ve done that over and over again. Our testing capability for COVID was way too late in getting started for all kinds of reasons, which merits an entire discussion on itself. We were way behind looking at viral loads amongst testing, we were way behind at sequencing of testing.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:06

And just to sort of understand the importance of sequencing, Dr. Carrie Byington, I heard her speak and she said those unvaccinated who are getting COVID, even if they aren’t symptomatic, are a factory for variance. Their bodies can be a factory.

Dr. Peter Katona  10:22

Yes.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:23

And that’s why it’s important to do the sequencing, right? Because you might pick up something.

Dr. Peter Katona  10:27

The sequencing tells you where you are and where you’re headed, so you can fight it off before it gets there. So it’s very important to do testing, it’s very important to do sequencing. The sequencing will tell you, where you stand. Do we have a lot of the Delta variant, or do we not have a lot of Delta variant in our particular geographic area? That’s why sequencing is rather important. When they reformulate the vaccines in a year to kind of fight off all the variants better, you want to know what you’re dealing with. And so that’s why it’s very important to sequence.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  11:05

So you’ve already listed some lessons learned that were from this pandemic, which as I understand, one of them is really, this being on top and ready to identify an outbreak and work towards containing it. That’s a big epidemiologic approach in general, right? It’s to maintain or reduce outbreaks.

Dr. Peter Katona  11:32

Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, we’ve reached the point where there have been so many surprises with this outbreak, that for us to assume things often gets us into more trouble than actually learning anything. So it’s important in terms of lessons learned to understand that don’t assume anything. You know, the old Donald Rumsfeld quote, which is way, way too often quoted, “There are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” And it’s those unknowns, those unknown unknowns that are most important to getting ahead of.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  12:09

So that’s the second lesson, don’t assume it.

Dr. Peter Katona  12:12

That’s correct. You know, don’t assume anything. We’ve talked about acting quickly. It’s, you know, the analogy might be a fire where the embers kind of go away. And if you can get ahold of those embers before they start another fire, you can do some good, but if you don’t, then you’re way behind now in terms of a big fire instead of just controlling an ember.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  12:35

That’s another real public health problem in our state, that’s for sure, are fires. And that’s a good analogy, because a lot of people have experienced that across our state now, across the country, very much so. That leads me to wanting to sort of pick your brain about, there’s an article in Lancet that was published many years ago now that liked to describe public health and its interrelationship with how they’ve improved the health of populations over time historically. And the first way of being this classic public health interventions of clean water, sewers, drainage. And then the second way being responding and learning about how to combat infectious disease through antibiotics and vaccines. All the way through to the lifestyle-related issues that have caused illness that doctors work on one-on-one, and then more population-based, which is the social determinants of health. And then finally, a fifth wave of a culture of health. So I feel like right now, we’re almost having to get back to the basics of public health, which is combating this pandemic through vaccination. That was really the turning point to controlling it across the globe, certainly here in the United States. And I’d like to hear your perspective.

Dr. Peter Katona  14:01

Yeah, vaccination is certainly extremely important if there’s a vaccine available in a timely way. But one shouldn’t discount the other things that we need to do to kind of cut down the ability of an infected person to transmit it to an uninfected person. And that includes masking which has gotten a lot of publicity, both positive and negative over the last year. Keeping your distance from people, keeping yourself away from crowds. Less so the disinfection and the hand washing and the surface transmission. But all of those things have to be added on. You know, they’ve reevaluated some of these things from the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak. And they actually did find that some of those things really helped. We did not have vaccination a hundred years ago for the flu, and they found that those places that did it well had a lot less cases and a lot less deaths, for example, than those that didn’t. Philadelphia, for example, probably did everything wrong at that time, and they had a very high fatality rate, infection rate. So yeah, vaccine is what we want to strive for, but takes time to develop a vaccine. It’s no guarantee that it’ll work. You know, it’s never going to work 100%. So you have to make do with what you can, but you also have to do these, what we call these NPIs, these non-pharmaceutical interventions, as well as vaccine.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:36

You know, one of the things that you mentioned, which is something that’s top-of-mind for so many of us is that we can’t not forget these non-pharmaceutical interventions like mask-wearing. And I’d love to hear your opinion about how maybe you as just an individual are going to go forward related to mask-wearing and if you were to give advice to, I don’t know, your sister or your child, what would you say in terms of mask-wearing?

Dr. Peter Katona  16:08

Mask-wearing is very complicated. We started off with fit-tested, domestically produced N95 masks, which physicians wore in contaminated rooms, which do better than anything else. But then you kind of go to surgical masks, KN95 masks, cloth masks, scarves, turtlenecks, pulling your T-shirt up over your nose and your mouth. You know, and all of these things to some degree give you some protection. The problem is to quantify what that protection is very difficult. Even doing cloth masks and whether they have two layers or three layers and what those layers are, is there an electrostatic layer? All those things make it very complicated to understand how much good you’re doing by putting that particular kind of mask on that you happen to have in your pocket. So I don’t really know where we’re going to go with this, I think it’s going to generate more research in terms of what we do with it. And just the fact that aerosol transmission is so complex. I mean, we have droplet transmission as well as aerosol transmission. The droplet transmission is more large particles, masks a lot better for those. The aerosol transmission of the small particles, masks aren’t quite as good. And there’s some debate about how those two things enter in and how much of a percent one gives an infection and how much of a percent the other gives an infection. So the final rule on masking is not been written yet. We know that it probably cut down on flu transmission this past fall, although flu is so erratic and so unpredictable, it’s hard to justify that and know that that really, really did happen. You know, people in Asian countries wear masks a lot more than we do. But they do it for other reasons, not pandemic, transmission, prevention reasons, they do it because of smog and pollution, and having a cold and not wanting to give it to somebody else. So it’s going to depend also on how much disease is out there.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  18:16

Right.

Dr. Peter Katona  18:16

If there’s not a whole lot of disease out there in your particular setting, locale, that’s one thing. But if all of a sudden we’ve got 17,000 new cases a day in the county you’re in, you’re going be a lot more careful.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  18:29

And there’ll be probably a different recommendation from the public health department at that point. And I’m sure that also the equation is also related to vaccination rates as well.

Dr. Peter Katona  18:43

Vaccination rates are very important, but we’ve had a lot of trouble incorporating those into rules. You know, there’s a huge debate about vaccine certificates and whether or not they are allowable under our system of government and whether they can be mandated or not. Just mandating vaccination becomes an issue because it’s an emergency use authorization and not a full authorization. So it becomes more complicated.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  19:12

Once it is approved by the FDA, it could be potentially required for work sites and other places?

Dr. Peter Katona  19:21

It opens up a lot of opportunities but it also opens up the anti-vaxxer people to say, hey, you’re really infringing on our civil liberties, we’re going to take this to court. So iit’s a two-sided issue, but I think I would like to have it fully authorized. I have non-vaxxer people that I know that say, it’s not approved. And I correct them to say it’s got a conditional use authorization. But that doesn’t mean that it’s authorized. And then it’s a conversation that’s not winnable.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  19:57

Yeah. Well, one thing that It struck me in one of your early presentations was your definitive reflection on the fact that surfaces, they cause 3% transmission.

Dr. Peter Katona  20:10

I would say even much less than 3%. I’d say it’s more than one in 10,000 cases category, if I could give you a number off the top of my head.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:21

And so when you were talking about aerosol versus non, is that just because when the droplets go on something, they’re not going to necessarily transmit?

Dr. Peter Katona  20:33

Well, think about it this way. You have somebody who’s infected. They’re infected in certain parts of their body and not in other parts of their body. Their hands may be infected, they may not be infected. They have to touch a surface. Okay, time goes by the virus decays over time. Somebody else touches that surface. That somebody else has to touch part of their body that would be susceptible to the virus, their face, their nose, whatever like that. So you have a whole lot of steps here, for it to actually be transmissible by surface contact. I just think if you look at it that way, plus the studies that have been done, you can see that there are fragments of virus, we think, that still remain on surface, because you can do PCR testing on surfaces and find whether or not there’s virus there and how long it lasts on steel and brass and paper and whatever. That’s all been looked at. But the problem is that what does that mean, we don’t have consistent technology to tell us live virus from dead fragment of virus, although there are new technologies coming out that will be able to tell us that but right now it’s not available. And also how much virus is important, it takes a certain amount of virus to infect you. I can give you a little bit of virus, it won’t do you any harm, and I give you more and more and more and I get to a critical point where I will make you sick, or at least infect you, if you’re not symptomatic. It takes a certain amount of effort to do that. And we haven’t really measured how much virus there is on these surfaces. That’s called a cycle threshold where you have to figure out how many cycles it took for the PCR test to actually give you a positive result. PCR test keeps amplifying and amplifying and amplifying cycle after cycle to get to the point of detection. And we haven’t done that with surfaces, we don’t have CT values, viral load values for how much actually contaminates the surface. Let alone sequencing, which we certainly haven’t done for surfaces.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:33

That’s really helpful to understand the rationale behind that number of less than 3%. That makes a lot of sense to me. And it reminds me a lot of, and I know you’ve done a lot of research on HIV and how so many people are so concerned about HIV transmission in all sorts of different ways. And that was one of them, a surface?

Dr. Peter Katona  22:52

That’s right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:53

Yeah, you’ve just suggested one step that’s happening where people are actually innovating and researching more and more about this virus in terms of its potential transmissibility on surfaces. For the general audience listening, what would you say are your top priorities that we should be moving forward, in terms of dealing with the current recovery part of this pandemic, but also, preparing for what we probably will have, will be others?

Dr. Peter Katona  23:24

Well, I started off making that list for UCLA. But it does have application to public health in general and the country in general. And there are a number of things that I think are very important here. One is that we need to have an assessment of what we’re doing, what we did, when we did it, and what was going on around us at that particular time with COVID. As well as the reaction to whatever was done or not done medically, economically, politically, at that specific time. So I mentioned for example, that we were way behind in PCR testing, we were way behind in viral load measurements, we were way behind in sequencing, how that played out over time and what the ramifications of that were, to do kind of a retrospective assessment timeline of what we did right and what we did wrong. I think it’s important for every institution to do. My suggestion was for UCLA, but every health department needs to do that. Government at all levels needs to do that. So I think that that’s the first thing that I would say. In emergency preparedness, some call that a hot wash. Next, there are stockpiles. Now there’s a national stockpile called the National Strategic Stockpile that has been used and maintained over the years. The problem was that COVID completely stripped it and it was way inadequate for COVID. And there was very little effort made to restock it in a timely way when things got out of hand last year, so we need to stockpile PPE, ventilator. We also need to stockpile people, we need to have trained people to do the things that need to be done. Equipment requires reagents, it has to be money allocated to be able to do that. The Strategic National Stockpile, for example, add 50% of its expenses for anthrax vaccine, which was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, by a company that eventually got into trouble with COVID afterwards because of its production facilities. So we have to think out of the box in terms of what are we going to need in the future that we really didn’t do now? You know, we completely messed up testing technology from the very start. Maybe we can do something to kind of get that ready to go faster when it’s needed in the future.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  25:38

One of the things too in this, which is what you were talking about, in terms of retrospective, is also thinking about how people receive the information, or how they accepted the guidance or information in terms of how we should prepare our population in the future. What do you think about it?

Dr. Peter Katona  25:56

Well, there’s different components to that. You know, obviously, different sectors of the economy are going to be dealt with differently. To get information to that rural communities, urban communities are different. Different socioeconomic classes of people are different. A clever way of using technology will help. You know, everybody pretty much has a cell phone. I did a project in Vietnam many years ago, and virtually everybody in Vietnam had a cell phone. My surveillance system there used people’s cell phones to be able to get disease surveillance information. So people have cell phones. You know, for example, there was a Google-Apple initiative to kind of contact trace people. You registered with it, and then if you were positive, you could register that and then anybody who was within six feet of you would all of a sudden get dinged if they registered. And those kinds of ideas are good, but there was such a backlash about that with privacy issues. We have to get beyond that and understand that sometimes you got to give up a little bit of privacy, to be able to get safety. It’s not a blanket, I’m not giving up any of my privacy, forget it, no way. As opposed to maybe giving up a little tiny bit of it, carefully controlled, to be able to get a huge amount of information to act quickly on an outbreak.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:17

Well, every time we buy something, our information is being shared usually online.

Dr. Peter Katona  27:21

That doesn’t count.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:22

Exactly. I know some people have toyed or suggested that there should be some sort of public health education in the K-12. What do you think of that?

Dr. Peter Katona  27:34

Well, I would start with public health education in medical school. There isn’t a whole lot of public health education in medical school to begin with, and so that’s where I would start. You can’t overteach public health. So if you start in the K-12, that’s great. How much of it will sink through I don’t know. But my concern has been medical school, that we don’t teach public health in medical school.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:56

That is low hanging fruit, that’s for sure.

Dr. Peter Katona  27:59

And you know, you look at who goes into public health and who goes into medicine. There’s a lot more money to be made as a doctor than public health official. And as Michael Lewis shows, in his book, if you’re a public health official in a county like Santa Barbara, you’re going to be hated. Because you have all this authority to do things that nobody likes. Shutting down a clinic, you know, or making a decision about moving people, that doesn’t end up being of value, but you had to make a decision. So you know, I think of Singapore, because Singapore made a decision many years ago that their officials were going to get paid as well as the people in private industry. So they were able to attract a lot of big-time people that wouldn’t have done it if they were going to get the low salaries that those people normally get. And Singapore, by all accounts has done pretty well, without having a whole lot of natural resources.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  28:50

That’s right.

Dr. Peter Katona  28:51

Now they do have more of a dogmatic regime, but I’ll discount that for a minute. So public health is underpaid. I mean, people don’t get paid very much in public health. You know, it’s much more attractive for them to do other things.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  29:05

Right.

Dr. Peter Katona  29:06

So I’d like to at least change that to some degree and make it more attractive.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  29:10

Yeah, that definitely would. I think you’re right about that. Any other recommendations?

Dr. Peter Katona  29:16

Well, we haven’t talked about surveillance systems, you know, to be able to get a early handle on an outbreak, you need to have a good surveillance system in place that tells you something is amiss and that you should do something about it. You may not know what it is that’s amiss, you may not know what to do about it, but it gets you thinking. You’re not going to go to a shelf and pick out the plan for this in this volume. You’re going to start thinking that, you know, maybe I need to mobilize certain resources, maybe I need to call my old professor who I trust that maybe might be able to help me. You know, you start to kind of think about things. So it’s important to have early detection surveillance systems in place, and it’s also important to amalgamate different surveillance systems. There’s an agricultural surveillance system, there’s a veterinary surveillance system, there’s a human surveillance system, there’s a satellite surveillance system. You know, it’s important to coordinate those, have them all talk to each other. Sounds really simple. I’ve been interested in this since the 1990s and it just doesn’t happen very easily. It’s complicated to integrate surveillance systems. It requires a lot of programming skills, and it requires a lot of money to be able to do the things for these systems that they need to have done. So it’s expensive, it’s technologically very cumbersome. So I think that’s important and I’ve actually interested the National Academy of Sciences, which I’m a member of, one of their committees in doing that, that this is something that really needs to be done. And we haven’t really approached it worldwide. And they’re interested, which I’m very happy about.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  30:48

That’s terrific to hear that. Because when you think that the potential origin of this particular pandemic would have maybe been detected in the veterinarian surveillance system, but not necessarily the human surveillance system, am I correct?

Dr. Peter Katona  31:06

Well, that gets us to the beginnings of COVID. And there’s a lot of unknowns there.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  31:10

Right.

Dr. Peter Katona  31:10

You know, so we do know that December 31, first case was actually recognized internationally. The Chinese were aware of cases prior to that. What the Chinese did right or wrong to contain it early on is critical. And we don’t know what that is because they’re not giving us their information about what they did or what they didn’t. And I’m talking about those months in October, November, December 2019. Yeah, not in 2020 when all of a sudden all hell broke loose. Because by that time, the cat was out of the bag.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  31:43

Right, right. All across the globe, pretty much. I have so many more questions, but we’re running out of time so I thought, I’d like to ask you one of my standard questions, which is what keeps you up at night?

Dr. Peter Katona  31:55

That’s a question I’ve been asked before. And my first answer is the thousand-year pandemic. This was the hundred-year pandemic.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:05

What’s the difference?

Dr. Peter Katona  32:07

More intense, more deadly, more rapidly transmissible, more ill-preparedness. I mean, look at smallpox, it killed 15, 20, 30% of the population at a time. Look at plague in the Middle Ages, killed 50% of the population. We haven’t gone anywhere near approaching those numbers yet with COVID. So we haven’t even come near approaching the number for Spanish Flu. Spanish Flu had 675,000 Americans killed in a population about a third of what our current population is. We’re about at that number, but with three times as many people.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:46

Well, I think what you’re saying too, is I recently read that someone in an article said how lucky we were because it wasn’t transmitted by vectors. Like a mosquito, for instance.

Dr. Peter Katona  32:59

Well, that can work both ways. Because if you can identify the vector, you have another possible methodology that might help you. You know, if it’s a mosquito, maybe you can put in some kind of mosquito eradication program or have them breed with sterile partners or some such thing to be able to contain it. So having a vector doesn’t necessarily cause you to be more concerned, it may actually help you.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  33:22

Actually, speaking of which, I don’t know if you could comment, but I heard that the mRNA vaccine might actually help people who might get malaria or prevent them from getting malaria. Do you know much about that, or?

Dr. Peter Katona  33:36

Yes, I mean, malaria has been talked about, a malaria vaccine. The beauty of mRNA vaccines is once you have the genetic code of whatever you’re trying to attack, you stick that code into a supercomputer and it will come out with a vaccine candidate. And it may be a cancer vaccine, it may be a malaria vaccine, and it may be a coronavirus vaccine. This technology, which I have to put a plug in was initially worked on by a Hungarian, is a phenomenal technology. I mean that the downside of it is so minimal. And it can be targeted to do exactly what you want to do, exactly what you want to attack. I mean, look at the fact that these mRNA vaccines have withstood variant, alpha, beta, gamma, delta. They still work, you know. So it’s a marvelous tool that has huge broad implications and is probably at the forefront of all the technological advances that are a great byproduct of this outbreak.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  34:40

That’s for sure. What else would you say, is a positive outcome that you could say?

Dr. Peter Katona  34:45

Well, we’re going to reconfigure a number of things. We’re going to, for example, reconfigure our economy, we’re going to do things in the economy. We’re going to take office space and we’re going to do different things with it. People are going to work at home more than they have ever worked at home in a very productive way. Think of all the meetings you can do on Zoom, as opposed to actually physically going from one to the other. So those things are important. You know, we have this huge information revolution, we have all this information, all this data. And we’re still trying to figure out how to handle it properly, how to use it properly, as opposed to the misinformation universe that I mentioned before. So I think all of those things are going to happen. And I just hope that we get to a point where we prepare faster and more efficiently, apolitically for the next one in a much better way than we did for this one.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:37

Peter, to wrap up, is there anything we haven’t covered that you would be wanting us to know? Any words of wisdom?

Dr. Peter Katona  35:44

Well, I think I’ve covered the main issues of what I think is important. The allocation of appropriate resources in public health, and I mean, not only to the public health places around the world, but the surveillance systems, the stockpiling, all these things that public health control. The vaccines, public health doesn’t make the vaccines but they do control the distribution. And I think that’s very important to have that done in an efficient way. We saw that it was not particularly well done at the beginning of the distribution process of the vaccine, but then it kind of picked up steam and was able to do it in a much more efficient way. And that’s important, just because you have the vaccine, if you can’t get it out to the right people in the right amount of short time, you haven’t really done a whole lot of good. So I think one of the things I’m very happy about is that the actual mass production of vaccines was going on at the same time they were being evaluated. Most of the time in the past if a vaccine you go through all the steps and once you’ve reached that final step, phase three studies are done, you can go and start mass producing it. They mass produced at the same time as they were actually studying the vaccine. Downside being at the vaccine was a dud, they wasted a lot of money. But in the case, like in a pandemic, that’s well worth the risk. And so that was a step taken that I think was very smart. And the overall federal budget of things. It wasn’t that huge amount of money, although it was well into the billions. But you know, Gates Foundation contributed to that, it wasn’t just a government entity. So I think that was that was something that I think was well done in a world of things that were not so well done with this outbreak.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:24

Well, it’s to your point that there was a sense of urgency and expediency to take on this demmick through that one step that they did with the vaccines. At least that was timely.

Dr. Peter Katona  37:38

Yes, I would agree with that.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:39

Yeah. Well, Peter, it’s just been incredible. You’re such a valuable member of our UCLA community, and we’re grateful that you have given us so much of your knowledge and guidance. Thank you.

Dr. Peter Katona  37:53

Thank you for having me.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:59

Thank you again for joining us. For more information about today’s episode, visit our website at healthy.ucla.edu/livewellpodcast. Today’s podcast was brought to you by the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA. To stay up to date with our episodes, subscribe to UCLA Live Well on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave us a rating to tell us how we’re doing. And if you think you know the perfect person for us to interview next, please tweet your idea to us @healthyucla. Have a wonderful rest of your day and we hope you join us for our next episode as we explore new perspectives on health and well-being.

Transcript

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  00:03

How do you make souffle with just chocolate and water? What makes souffle so light and fluffy? Today we are zooming in to the molecular level of food to answer these questions with Associate Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology at UCLA.\, Dr. Amy Rowat. Amy is a pioneer in the realm of science and food. She uses food and cooking to open up the world of complex physics concepts to the non-scientists. As the co-leader of the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center’s Eat Well Pod, Amy advocates for change on campus to enhance food literacy, and increase accessibility to nutritious and sustainable food choices to all UCLA community members and beyond. Keep listening to learn more about Amy’s incredible journey through science and food and the secret to make a tender and delicious kale salad. Dr. Amy Rowat, thank you so much for being here. And I’m going to start with a memory I have of you when I first met you, and I’ll never forget, it was at one of your science and food lectures. And you had Billy Yosses, the White House pastry chef for Bush Jr. and Barack Obama. And he was presenting on how to create a chocolate mousse without cream by manipulating temperatures. And I have to say that, I mean, you’re a biophysicist trained at elite universities like Harvard, and you clearly communicated the complicated science of food through bringing it down to foods we all desire to eat, like chocolate mousse, and then of course, kale. And on top of all that you had famous chefs presenting recipes we all wanted to run home and try. So I’m going to start with this first question. Can we post your recipes on this podcast after we interview you?

Dr. Amy Rowat  01:57

Of course, of course. And some of those recipes, of course, are not mine. The chocolate mousse, for example, comes from Herve This, who’s a French scientist and molecular gastronomer, he calls himself but it’s a great recipe with just water and chocolate and like you say, manipulating temperature. The kale, I’ve sort of worked on a little bit as well. But I think the key technique of massaging it and cutting it finely is not unique, of course, to my recipe development. But absolutely, we can post the recipes.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  02:31

So Amy, you know, you’ve been the leader of the Eat Well Pod, member of the Eat Well Pod for six years, now leader. I’d love to hear your comments on that. What is the wild pod? And and what does it mean to you?

Dr. Amy Rowat  02:46

Well, we are a group of food-focused people from all over campus, including faculty, staff, students, that span many different disciplines, and as well as UCLA Dining. And the overall mission is to promote knowledge of food for everyone on campus, and in the UCLA community, and to make good food accessible for everyone as well. So a lot of our activities focus on improving food literacy, so improving and making knowledge of food accessible to everyone, and supporting projects that do that, that are carried out by students and faculty on campus, such as the development of new courses, or activities or events that engage people in thinking more deeply about food.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:35

And I know you’re very involved in the support of students with food insecurity. How are you doing that?

Dr. Amy Rowat  03:41

So making sure that food is accessible, good food is accessible to everyone on campus is definitely a big mission or important aspect of our mission. And so to achieve that goal, we have sort of a multi-pronged approach where some of the food literacy work we’re doing I think can really benefit knowledge of how to prepare and cook foods on a budget for example, and then right down to the hardware that’s required to, for example, store foods in refrigerators so that less of it goes to waste and it can be readily available for students and to pick up or eat in food closets for example.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:27

It’s very broad, but also really fantastic. So Amy, I’d like to take a pause and talk about kale a little bit more because you really motivated me to not cut corners, so to speak, and chop my kale very finely and I want to have you sort of share your wisdoms about kale and why you have to do that.

Dr. Amy Rowat  04:46

Kale is fantastic. But one of the issues in eating kale raw at least is that it can be very fibrous and hard to chew. And so by breaking down the fibers by massaging it with my fingers, for example. Or I do a combination of grabbing and forming clusters with the kale or by grabbing it and holding on to it and massaging it, while chopping it into very narrow strips. I find that that that gives a really good texture of kale that can be used raw in salads, for example.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:20

Something that struck me and that was where you described the plant itself, which is that the cell walls are so tightly aligned, right? This is what stuck with my, and correct me if I’m wrong, but they’re so tightly aligned, that that creates the bitterness. And that’s why you have to massage, is that kind of why you have to sort of break the cell wall? Because I do find with that thought process by breaking the walls down at least with the massaging and cutting finely, and then adding lemon to it, for instance. And you can hear the crunching of the walls, even when you’re massaging that the kale itself is less bitter after that. Because I don’t like raw kale, really. I mean, except once you explained to me, and that this also creates some advantage to the kale plant in the, you know, in the sort of agrarian world. And what would the kale plant benefit from with that kind of structure?

Dr. Amy Rowat  06:27

Well, definitely the cell walls are really important for the texture of plants and their ability to grow and shoot up to the sky to get enough sunlight, for example. So the plant texture is really balanced by these osmotic pressure inside of, or the pressure inside of the plant cells, which is determined by how much water there is inside of the vacuole, balanced by the structure of this of the cell wall and its ability to resist being stretched. So all of those fibers, molecules really, really help with that. So that’s why massaging or cutting finely can help break down those fibers so that it makes it more tender to eat. As for the bitterness, many of the taste molecules, presumably would be inside of the cells. So perhaps by cutting or macerating the cells, you’re releasing some of those bitter compounds, but I really don’t know.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  07:26

So are you saying that the fibers are really a series of small cells all together, and by cutting it, you’re breaking up the fibers by that?

Dr. Amy Rowat  07:37

The fibers formed sort of a interconnected network, at least that’s how many of them have been visualized in the world of plant cell wall imaging. So they might connect across or span many different cells. So by breaking those up, you’re essentially tenderizing the kale.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  08:01

It’s great, right, I think we’ll definitely have a few kale recipes posted. Now, one of the things that really has struck me is how you’ve been a true pioneer, breaking down the silos of science and food. And I’ve heard you talk about this concept of soft matter physicists, and I don’t really understand what that means.

Dr. Amy Rowat  08:22

So soft matter physics is a field of studying the physics of soft deformable materials, as opposed to hard matter like metals, for example. Soft matter refers to materials that are easily deformable, such as foams, gels, cells, biological materials, many of these things fall into into that category.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  08:46

And so as a soft matter, physicists, what does that mean for you and your research, but also in this whole arena that you’ve been developing around the science of food?

Dr. Amy Rowat  08:57

So in my research lab, we study the material properties of cells, which are materials that are easily deformable. And we try to understand what their texture is how easily they can deform through narrow gaps. And this is largely in the context of cancer cells. And then I also been using soft materials such as foams, emulsions, which are little droplets of liquid and another liquid, and gels to be able to communicate concepts of soft matter physics to undergraduate students and the general public.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  09:33

So, yeah, build on the emulsions inside fluids. Like what does that have to do with cooking and your whole evolution of developing a class or a course for students, college students around food and science.

Dr. Amy Rowat  09:48

So back when I was a postdoc at Harvard, I was working with colleagues there, Dave Weitz and Michael Brenner and Otger Campas, and started working with this chef, Ferran Adria from Spain, who was very interested in collaborating with us. And we thought an easy way to collaborate with this chef would be to develop a class and use concepts in cooking to teach some of these concepts in soft matter physics, which are not typically taught to undergraduates, especially freshmen. So we use these concepts such as emulsions, foams, and gels, to design a class that would teach students about science and the science of soft materials, but in the context of food and cooking.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:31

So me a full description about this course that you’ve developed at Harvard, as a postdoc, and now repurposed it here at UCLA.

Dr. Amy Rowat  10:43

Well, when I got to UCLA, I was tasked with creating a course for physiological sciences. With my background in biophysics, which I was trained in, I thought, I’ll pick out concepts in food that students need to know to understand biophysics. And so many of these concepts were similar to the concepts in this original soft matter physics course that we developed at Harvard, such as understanding what gels are, how they form, emulsions, foams, diffusion. I also integrated in a lesson on the physiology of taste and understanding how molecules bind to certain receptors like the taste receptors, proteins on our tongue. So the full structure of the class, Science and Food: The Physical and Molecular Origins of What We Eat, each week, there’s a biophysics topic and one of the classes of the week I teach the science. The other class is when a guest lecture comes in, and I have used lectures that somehow will introduce some other perspective on the science topic and how it relates to food and cooking. So that can range from nutritionists, farmers, food artisans that make for example, kimchi, or have developed a homemade yogurt business. Chefs, for example, including some of the chefs that Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, like Ari Rosenson, who works the CUT, to Sherry Yard, who is a renowned pastry chef here. So altogether, this gets the students, I think, excited and interested to see how that science concept which may seem, you know, divorced from everyday life, but I try not to make it that way by giving lots of examples of how it relates to food and the plants and animals that we eat. But having that extra perspective, I think helps to highlight how the science concepts can be useful and relevant for everyday life. So that’s the main structure of the course. There’s homework assignments every week, and a midterm exam, and a final exam. And then this scientific Bake Off that we have that the students work on for the last few weeks of the class, where they’re developing their own experiments and gathering data and trying to study some aspect of pie

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  13:07

Bringing back to foam chocolate mousse again, I always want to bring it back to some of my favorite foods. You mentioned that that has to do with foam. So explain to me the recipe that Billy Yosses was presenting where he used water and chocolate and created chocolate mousse. How can you explain that in scientific terms?

Dr. Amy Rowat  13:28

So that recipe involves melting your chocolate and then whipping the chocolate while you incorporate water into it. And so you’re creating a foam because you have pockets of air that give that chocolate mousse it’s light, airy texture, and you’re using some of the molecules that are in the chocolate. Chocolate has lots of molecules that are amphiphilic that means that they like water and fat at the same time. So they like to be at interfaces and that interface in this chocolate mousse is the interface of the water and the air. So by using these molecules that are in the chocolate that are these natural amphiphiles, they naturally like to be this interface. They’ll help to stabilize that interface between the water and the air and it makes the chocolate stable. But then you also manipulate the temperature so you cool it down so then the fat molecules in the chocolate will freeze into a solid state so that makes the the foam this solid material that is the texture of chocolate mousse.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:33

And that takes the place of the cream that you normally would use that would have created that kind of foam.

Dr. Amy Rowat  14:40

That airy texture, that’s right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:42

Yeah. So the whipping always happens anyway even if you had cream but it’s the temperature, rapid temperature change.

Dr. Amy Rowat  14:50

Right and then some other chocolate mousse recipes might use gelatin for example or some jelling agent that would be, provide that stability. Once you cool it down, it would sort of freeze into its position and the gelatin in that case would stabilize this foam. But in this case, we’re using the chocolate itself to do that.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:12

So with your science and food class, you can explain that kind of ampilif – how do you pronounce it?

Dr. Amy Rowat  15:18

Amphiphilic.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:18

Amphiphilic properties, which always struck me as something super interesting, because it’s really just positive and negatives on the ends of these molecules, right? That then, and that’s what soap is too, right? They dissolve the fat and then dissolve into water. And that’s what creates it?

Dr. Amy Rowat  15:35

Yep, the key point that I wanted to emphasize in the course at UCLA is how these concepts also relate to the plants and animals that we eat. So for example, those tough fibers in kale. What are those molecules? How do they help the plant? And how do we manipulate those as we cook? Same with thinking about meat and the texture of meat, the molecules that a cow needs, for example, to support its body weight, when it moves around are structural proteins that are also involved in regulating the texture of meat. So how do we manipulate those as we cook, and how do chefs deal with that? For example, understanding how much collagen is in a particular cut of meat is really important when you’re figuring out how to cook it over what period of time, at what temperature. So those were some of the concepts that I tried to highlight throughout the course and kind of give the central theme to the Science and Food course, which is called the Physical and Molecular Origins of What We Eat.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  16:42

Yeah, I really liked that idea that you are bringing people not just to the food itself, but to what the ingredients that are building that meal. So I want to get back to when we first met and it was a UCLA public lecture on the science of food, and what made you decide to branch out from teaching college students to broader public?

Dr. Amy Rowat  17:07

So when we first offered this class, it was at Harvard, the first Science and Cooking class that there was so much enthusiasm and excitement for these chefs that were coming, learning about the science underlying food, but the class size was limited. So we thought, well, maybe we need to broaden this out somehow so that more people can come and participate. And that was really the birth of these public lectures. So when I got to UCLA, I felt like that was an important aspect to continue. Because broadening the understanding of science and broadening participation in science is really important, I feel. So having these public lectures where people would come and learn more about science, learn more about their food seemed like an important step.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  17:54

As I understand you have, first of all, a line around the block of chefs who want to be in your lectures, and agents are knocking on your door right and left. And then also, you have sold-out events. I mean, explain to me why you think this is? I mean, why do you think it’s so exciting to people?

Dr. Amy Rowat  18:14

Well, there’s a confluence of factors, I think, that are at play here. So we have, on the one hand, people are just very excited about food these days. And you can see in the social media world, and Instagram, and all of these methods, people have to communicate their excitement about food. People want to know more about their food, people want to know more about what they eat. And then there’s also that chefs have gained sort of a celebrity status these days. And there’s a lot of excitement to follow them to hear what they have to say. And there aren’t so many opportunities to do that in an interactive format. So I think all of these factors have played a role in why these events are so popular.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  19:01

Yeah, I mean, I find that the topics you cover, they range from the microbiome, to sustainability, to minimizing food waste, and I found them incredibly informative. And I just wonder how, how do you pick those topics? And and also, like, what are people telling you like, what do they say about these public lectures?

Dr. Amy Rowat  19:24

So the topics we pick based on what we think will be interesting, largely. Some of the topics recently, I mean, we had future food a couple years ago, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, you know, how can science play a role in the future of food, and whether that be contributing knowledge of how we can generate more sustainable foods, how we can make food production more efficient. There’s also this interesting tension I think, between eating local and buying things at the farmer’s market versus some of these science-based approaches of genetically engineering, for example, proteins in a more efficient way that can be used in food production. So we brought on an ethicist to talk about that aspect along with the chef, Daniel Patterson, who spearheaded the restaurant Locol with Roy Choi here in LA, and Kent Kirshenbaum, who’s a scientist with a deep understanding of how we can, from molecules up, build foods of particular textures. So that created a really nice dialogue, I think, on that topic. Other topics have come about because a certain chef is excited to come to UCLA. So last year, for example, we had Massimo Bottura that was spearheaded by the LA Times Food Bowl Festival, that Jonathan Gold and Angus Dylan had really initiated. And he was in LA, and they wanted to do an event at UCLA. And he’s very passionate about sustainability and in food waste. So that formed the topic for that year. And I think in all of these elements, the really key thing here is just bringing in that scientific dialogue. People get scared about science, or they’re skeptical, and there’s a lot of misinformation floating about food issues. So I think that to me, is the core here, is bringing together people with different perspectives, including scientists that can talk in an educated way about some of these important food issues.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  21:30

Yeah, I mean, I think that you knit the different disciplines beautifully. And you’re a perfect example of it and given your incredible background in, training and as a physicist, engineer, postdoc, and faculty member, now tenured at UCLA, and then your ability to have conversations with the chefs in a meaningful and practical way. How can people who are listening know about your next event? I mean, I think that that’s something we’d all like to know about.

Dr. Amy Rowat  21:59

Well, we have a website, scienceandfood.org. And you can stay abreast with the new developments there. There’s also a link to be able to join our mailing list. And even if you’re not in Los Angeles, where the events are held, we do video them and we have a YouTube channel. And in addition, at the science and food site, you could read some of our blog postings as well. The undergraduates here are very active in maintaining a blog that I curate on topics related to science and food.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:31

And if have you ever influenced the chefs’ recipes?

Dr. Amy Rowat  22:33

It’s a good question. I was at this demo, at the cooking demo at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, where someone was doing a demo on tahini. And she’d formed a company actually to produce tahini-based food products. So she demo’ed a few recipes, and then asked if there was any questions. And actually, I have to give full credit to my son who’s three, because he’s the one who asked the question, it was more of a statement of how he had whipped cream the night before. But that made this really interesting connection between foaming tahini, which I think and some of the iSi Whip container, which is used very widely in the chef world to make, what’s a whipped cream maker, basically. You have a little compressed nitrogen that you stick on to this pressurized container and then you can whip whatever you want. And again, because tahini is ground-up sesame seeds that has all of these fats that are naturally inside of it, why wouldn’t it whip? Anyway, she took that challenge, she’s gonna go and do some experiments. So apart from that, I mean, I’m sure there have been other influences in the past, I’ve had some, one of the things the students do in my class is to engineer a pie. The final pie project involves students having to identify some aspect of a pie that they’re going to study. So this causes them to formulate a scientific question, identify a hypothesis, actually do experiments, analyze the data, and present a poster that describes the whole scientific process, along with a pie that is served at this poster fair. We call it a Bake Off, a scientific Bake Off. So the pie is served up and judges come around and just for fun, we have a taste test of the pies. So the judges, I’ve invited some local chefs and even there have been times when we’ve had Billy Yosses or Christina Tosi.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  23:00

Who’s she?

Dr. Amy Rowat  23:43

Christina Tosi is a pastry chef and founder of the Milk Bar in New York and which is now expanding also here to LA. And so in this process of these chefs and bakers judging the pies Zoe Nathan from Huckleberry, for example, also came. She’s a famous pie baker, fantastic baked goods. And so they’ve been, I think, surprised and interested in some of the pies that the students have made. But I think generally while they’ve been interested, it seems that none of the actual innovations that the students have made, may have made it into their recipes. I remember one team used chia seeds as a way to to increase the viscosity of their apple pie filling. So to make it stick together, so it doesn’t, it’s not very runny and liquidy when you slice it and it flows onto your plate. And at that time, Jonathan Gold was one of the judges and he actually wrote about it following his experience as a judge, that one of the downsides of the chia seeds is that they tend to get stuck in your teeth. So while there may have been some development, I’m not familiar with any who have actually impacted the processes of any chefs.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  26:08

Their repertoire, yeah. So one of the things that struck me in some of your public lectures, and I’m wondering if you’ve incorporated that in the class is your whole area of focus around minimizing food waste. And I know Billy Yosses came and, you know, really presented a really valuable lesson on pistachio paste and what you could do with it, which is considered a food waste that you presented at the Eat Well Pod, the Healthy Campus Initiative Food Day that happens every October. How does that play into your work that you’re doing?

Dr. Amy Rowat  26:45

Well, definitely, there’s themes of head-to-tail cooking, or stem-to-leaf cooking, or root-to-leaf cooking, I guess. I can’t remember the title of that lecture, but addressing how we can use all different parts of plants and animals in cooking, and is something that comes up in my class. I’ve contemplated incorporating a section on more quantitative analyses and approaches to characterizing food waste. For example, using carbon footprint calculations, like Jenny Jay here at UCLA has so elegantly done, and others as well. But that hasn’t yet made it into the class. But I think it’s definitely something that could be integrated in but it’s a little bit further afield than the actual biophysics approach of relating the textures of food to plant and animal physiology.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:42

Yeah, so explain to me a little bit more about that carbon foodprint and how that would relate to the biophysics. What is carbon footprint? What is that? What do you mean by that?

Dr. Amy Rowat  27:52

So the carbon footprint calculations that, for example, Jenny Jay, has been working on sort of ascribe carbon dioxide emissions to all of the processes that go into the production of a food. So that could relate to, you know, the amount of gas that’s needed to power tractors that have to till the soil, to where the food is transported to be processed. If it’s an animal product, considering how much methane or the carbon emissions from a cow would be important as well. So yes, so I need to think more how that how that would be integrated in, but I’m sure there is a link somewhere.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  28:36

Yeah, and I know that her some of her calculations demonstrate that the carbon foodprint of a beef burrito versus a bean burrito is 10 times greater. So it’s got some interesting ,sort of, connection to the environment and then the food that you eat.

Dr. Amy Rowat  28:52

Yeah.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  28:53

So you know, you’ve been a professor at UCLA since 2011. But even before that, you had a distinguished career in research as a postdoc at Harvard and a doctorate student in Copenhagen. I’d like to know, how did these previous roles prepare you for your role at UCLA, and as a current leader of the Healthy Campus Initiative Eat Well Pod, focusing on making UCLA the healthiest place to eat, as well as learn, live, and work, and a researcher in biophysics? Like how did all these previous roles and these other places brought you to this place?

Dr. Amy Rowat  29:28

Well, since the age of three or so, I was always in the kitchen cooking and doing projects. They were basically experiments.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  29:39

Since you were three, just like your son.

Dr. Amy Rowat  29:41

Right, yeah. And well, this is what, as I hear the story from my parents, you know, and but there’s photo documentation.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  29:50

Like what?

Dr. Amy Rowat  29:51

Oh, of photos of me in the sink, you know, spooning muffin batter into tins, and even some recipes that I started writing out when before I could really spell. And so, you know, I’ve always been interested in food and cooking, and I contemplated going to chef school. But then I realized that going to graduate school, I could still cook, but it would be harder to still keep doing science while going to chef school. So I ended up at graduate school and then it turned out that my PhD advisor was very excited about food and ended up writing books on scientific aspects of sushi and seaweed and various other topics. So already at that time, I was realizing, and seeing these connections between the research I was working on at that time on lipid membranes, which are very thin nanoscopic layers of fat that surround all the cells in our body, and understanding how the research I was doing related to food. So I think these ideas have been brewing for a very long time, so to speak, right. So then being here, I think, you know, clearly the course development I’ve done before I got to UCLA poised me enough to develop the curriculum further. But all these other past activities, you know, I’d done a lot of volunteering when I was an undergraduate. We used to put on a big banquet each year for, it was our Society of All Nations student organization. And so I was, for many years, was one of the head chefs for that. And we put together this menu and banquet for hundreds of people, I suppose. So yes, I’ve always been involved in food in some ways. So that really all comes in handy. I think when in my work with the Eat Well Pod integrating with, you know, UCLA Dining, and other student organizations. And I’d also in high school volunteered at a food bank for many years. And so all of these topics, you know, come up in our daily discussions and work in promoting knowledge of good food to eat and making that accessible for everyone at UCLA.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  30:14

I mean, that just speaks to the advice to people is, you know, let your passion be your vocation.

Dr. Amy Rowat  32:16

Right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:17

You found a way to really integrate food into your occupation in a big way, it’s pretty cool. Would you say that there were any major research breakthroughs that you’ve done that have been related to your love of food and your knowledge of foods?

Dr. Amy Rowat  32:33

I don’t know, breakthrough is maybe a bit of a strong word. But we had a project a little while ago, where we were trying to figure out why the nucleus inside of the cell changes shape. So this is very commonly used for cancer diagnosis. Pathologists look at the shape of the nucleus inside of cell and they’ll say, oh, that one’s cancerous. They can even do prognosis and say, okay, this one, this is a bad one, this one’s not as bad, based on the shape of the nucleus. So it was a fascinating question from a biophysics perspective. What is it that makes the nucleus round? Why does it change shape? So we had a model cell system we were working with in the lab, but I kept trying to think of something even simpler, we could use to model this kind of shape change. And sort of I was reading a paper one day and came across this example, someone had cited about how these shape changes happen in everyday life, for example, heating a pot of milk, and this skin forms. And you can see the wrinkles across it, especially if you blow on it or something.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  33:40

So the skin of the milk, when you boil it and you have that you don’t like?

Dr. Amy Rowat  33:45

You have that layer, like a bunch of denatured proteins. It’s always gross, right? You always want to remove it, you don’t want that to get into your coffee. So anyways, we set up a system in my lab, mostly undergraduates did all that work of characterizing these wrinkles that form in the skin of milk. And it turns out, it’s driven by this evaporation of the water across the film of the milk, coupled with the material properties of the milk film itself. And you can start to see these morphological changes. And we characterize those, I can’t say that it provides any deep insight into the cell nucleus per se, but it was a paper that we published. So that’s I think the best example so far of how food topic has sort of made it into the lab, but we’re constantly thinking about new ideas. So we’ll see where that goes in the future of how food, or least edible molecules will make it into the lab.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  34:45

I think that this kind of integration or this sort of cross-collaboration of chefs, scientists has translated to something that you just achieved, I think, a real accomplishment. You’re a co-principal investigator on one of the first National Science Foundation’s grants is looking at training doctorate students in water, energy and food. And I’d like to know, you know, give me a little bit more information about that, and what are your hopes for that grant?

Dr. Amy Rowat  35:17

Well, I think it’s definitely an exciting and much-needed support for training, given the challenges we face in energy and water. And you know, food is really central because to that, because food production really heavily relies on water, and so.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:32

And energy.

Dr. Amy Rowat  35:33

And energy, yes. So, yeah, I think that the educational opportunities it’s going to provide for students, including internships in companies and nonprofits nearby, where they’ll be able to gain firsthand experience in some of these issues, like, for example, potentially, some of these plant-based food companies that are developing novel ways of making food that’s more sustainable. And so that’s a possible new direction of work for my own lab as well. So I think there’s some exciting potential.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  36:06

So you’re saying in your own lab, you might be looking towards developing food products or food?

Dr. Amy Rowat  36:13

Yeah, and understanding more how I could develop plant-based scaffolds, for example, for cells to grow on for cell culture, and possibly for food production down the line, but my lab would focus on more not developing a food product, but more of the basic research angle of it.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  36:33

What does that mean, when you say basic research aspect?

Dr. Amy Rowat  36:36

So not developing a product that will be in a supermarket that people could eat, but understanding more fundamentally, how cells might behave when they’re on a scaffold of some plant-based molecules versus some animal-based molecules like gelatin or something that could in the end, provide a more sustainable way for cells to be grown.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:00

So helping cells grow that might be ultimately food?

Dr. Amy Rowat  37:05

Right. But there’s not more I can say about that, right?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:07

Yeah. But it’s an idea that might go forward in the future. That’s pretty cool. So I’d love to, you know, understand from your point of view, what kind of advice would you give others how to become a scientist like you?

Dr. Amy Rowat  37:23

Well, I think following your passion is really key. Because whatever one does, but being in science, especially academics, I’d say, just requires a lot of hard work and perseverance. And so being passionate and excited about what you do is, I think, one of the really key points, like you had mentioned already.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:46

Yeah, like, let your passion be your vocation.

Dr. Amy Rowat  37:49

Right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  37:49

Yeah, and is there a particular researcher that you admire?

Dr. Amy Rowat  37:54

I would say, not one particular researcher, but in general researchers, such as you know, Linus Pauling, who did really great science research in many different disciplines, but also some activism. You know, Ursula Franklin is another great Canadian physicist, who as a woman in science, you know, I appreciate that she was someone I admired. Back when I was an undergraduate, who was doing, again, great research in physics, but also she wrote several books and also an activist herself. So I think I’ve always sort of gravitated to admiring researchers whose impact has spanned many disciplines, and which is perhaps natural. And translates their knowledge to the community as well. So that’s more of the theme of researchers who I admire.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  38:50

Well, like so maybe to sort of build on that, is there some kind of recipe that you particularly yearn for when you are feeling nostalgic that you’d like to share?

Dr. Amy Rowat  39:02

I mean, macaroni and cheese was always my very favorite dish that my mom made for all my birthday parties. So that’s always a great dish to eat, as well. Delicious, yeah, and I discovered a great new recipe recently from J. Kenji Alt, who wrote the Food Lab recently. And it’s a very easy one-pot meal that’s very simple to make. You can do it in like five minutes. So you might want to add that to your repertoire as well.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  39:34

Oh, definitely.

Dr. Amy Rowat  39:35

But otherwise, nostalgic. I mean, I always loved making pies. And that’s something also that I always enjoyed eating as a child as well. Those are probably the top two, carrot cake.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  39:47

So all those bring you back to something, a happy moment.

Dr. Amy Rowat  39:51

Right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  39:52

Well, thank you, Amy, so much. Incredible. You’re just such a treasure here at UCLA. Being a leader of the Healthy Campus Initiative Eat Well Pod has just been a true joy for all of us to have you participate in really creating the healthiest campus in the country. So thank you so much.

Dr. Amy Rowat  40:09

Thank you.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  40:13

Thank you for tuning into UCLA Live Well. For more information about today’s episode and the resources mentioned, visit our website at healthy.ucla.edu/livewellpodcast. Today’s podcast was brought to you by the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA. To stay up to date with our episodes, subscribe to UCLA Live Well on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Get to know us a little better and follow us @healthyucla. If you think you know the perfect person for us to interview next, tweet your idea to us, please. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and we hope you join us for our next episode as we explore new perspectives on health and well-being.

Transcript

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  00:03

Today we’re excited to share the second part of an episode recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic with UCLA social well-being expert, Dr. Ted Robles. In last week’s episode, Ted defined and discussed the importance of social well-being as a social determinant of health. Join us, as Ted and I continue our conversation, where we will be exploring how social well-being affects the biological processes behind stress, how social media can hijack our reward systems, and much more. In your research, in your lab, you talk about two sets of biological processes. And I’d love you to describe what you mean by allostatic processes and restorative.

Dr. Ted Robles  00:50

Yeah, well allostatic is a term that – I believe he was a physiologist by trade – Peter Sterling coined. I want to say in the late 1980s, and then one of the big researchers in our field who study stress, Bruce McEwen, really took that up and coined the term allostatic load. Now, what allostasis basically is – is when we are faced with challenges in life, we have to change; and we have to change physiologically in order to deal with those changes. And so this – the sort of classic thing would be any kind of physiological changes that occur because you’re being chased by a scary person or animal; or because you’re facing an impending – you have to give a lecture to your class, and you’re sort of nervous to talk in front of people. So these are all kind of changes in our environment. We have to adapt to them in some way, whether through increasing the amount of energy that our brain and our body needs to manage those challenges to prepare for threats like getting wounded, to increase the amount of blood oxygenation, because I need to use blood oxygen in order to fight or flee. So all of those changes that we go through when we face some change in the environment, those are what others and myself term allostatic processes: maintaining survival through change. But of course, usually those things end. So you know, it’s not that I’m running from a lion that’s chasing me forever. At some point, the lion goes away. And so now I’m left back to recover and restore stored energy, or start to store energy again – I should say – repair any wounds that I’ve encumbered as a result of fighting off the lion. And so restorative processes have to do with the things that are involved in repairing and bringing our systems back to before we faced whatever challenge it was. A lot of repair-related things from the level of wound healing to DNA repair would be included; mechanisms involved in energy storage, so instead of breaking down glycogen to make glucose, storing it back up again, and storing back up the, you know, energy in the form of lipids. Those are all restorative processes. And so sometimes you’re going to need to engage in allostatic processes to cope with change, and then there’s going to be a lot of other times where you’re just going to need to prepare and restore back. And that’s what the restorative processes are.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:19

So how will your body respond to a constant threat? Can you actually –

Dr. Ted Robles  03:27

That is a great question.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  03:28

– deal and actually trigger restorative processes if you recognize this and can like through meditation…? I don’t know what it would be, but –

Dr. Ted Robles  03:37

Yeah. And that sort of – so I think about something like noise pollution, for example. If you live in an area where, you know, you’re constantly being exposed to pretty high levels of noise, all the time, and it never remits, right? Can one truly ever have a period where, you know, your systems are at a point where you could start to reengage those processes again? And probably the answer is, to some degree, no. So when I think about how factors could disrupt these restorative processes, I usually like to think of like a home remodeling analogy and how home remodeling can go wrong. So one is that –

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  04:13

Doesn’t it always go wrong? That’s why I’ve never done that.

Dr. Ted Robles  04:17

Right, right. So one possibility is that the materials that you use, they just don’t work as well, right? So, like you get some drywall that’s defective for some reason, or maybe some screws wear too much, or something like that. And so likewise, some of the materials that we might be using to, or the processes that we use to repair ourselves, might not go as well as we would like. So DNA repair mechanisms, for example. So you can imagine that under conditions of constant exposure to, you know, you name the problematic thing, that while we have mechanisms to repair DNA, they may not work as well, all the time. And so you may not get repair as reliable as you would like, and then you have cells running around that have some slight, you know, slight mutations in the code that they use when they’re doing their regular activities. And then, you know –

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:11

And what happens then?

Dr. Ted Robles  05:13

And then later on – and then maybe at worst, you have cells that accumulate enough mutations where they develop into, say, cancer cells or something like that. That’s kind of, you know, the accumulation of multiple mutations. But certainly, all of that kind of starts with faulty DNA repair.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:29

And that’s what you hear a lot more people say, “Oh, this person was in a lot of stress, and they developed cancer.”

Dr. Ted Robles  05:36

Right, right. It’s got to be one – it has to be one, among many things that go wrong.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  05:40

Right.

Dr. Ted Robles  05:40

But certainly, it could be one things that go wrong. Another possibility is that the repair just takes – now this is a very common, you know, kind of home remodeling complaint, which is that the repair just takes longer than I would have wanted to. So I think that’s where a lot of the delayed wound healing becomes really – it is relevant. So in wound healing, if your innate immune system is busy cleaning up all the bacteria that have invaded your wound, and they’re not cleaning it up in a timely manner, that wound is gonna take longer to heal. And so, again, this is where this repair process is supposed to happen. Ideally, we’d like it to happen within a certain timeframe, but it takes longer. And so if you’re exposed to chronic conditions, you could imagine things being prolonged. And then the third thing is that sort of normal processes that you would use to kind of do things, like store energy, that they go awry. So my favorite example of this is disruptions to sleep and what they do to insulin resistance. So you could imagine that we evolved a mechanism where, sure, after a short night of sleep in our ancestral environment, it was really important for us to maintain high circulating levels of glucose, because maybe that was adaptive. You know, the reason I wasn’t sleeping was because, you know, some kind of problem was happening in my environment. Maybe there was an invading tribe, or something like that, and we had to move quickly to get to another place to safety. And because I’m not sure I’m safe yet, it would be helpful for me to have high levels of circulating blood glucose. Well nowadays, why don’t we get enough sleep? It’s because I stayed up late looking at my phone, and you know, doing some other things; it wasn’t because I was really concerned about my well-being, but my body doesn’t – you know, like about my survival – but my body doesn’t know that. And so my body still reacts to sleep deprivation with insulin resistance. And if you accrue that over time, it’s a normal thing, to some degree, and it has a purpose. But then you end up running into problems later. And then there’s other interesting things related to how sleep deprivation might impact your appetite. And so again, if I am in an environment where I’m sleep deprived, perhaps it’s because I’m in an uncertain environment, so I need to have energy. But in the current environment, where food is readily available, my increased appetite might actually work against me. And so those are some examples of how, again, the chronic exposure to stressful experiences can short-circuit, or maybe kind of hijack, some of these restorative processes that ultimately hurts our health.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  08:20

So in a circumstance, for instance, of somebody who is living in a world where there – there’s bias against them, how does that play into it?

Dr. Ted Robles  08:29

Well again, so just like feeling unsafe, you could imagine the same kind of thing where if I – so this is another important piece about social relationships and health and related to the smoking thing. You know, the reason why smoking is pernicious and problematic is because it happens every day. And so, you can imagine the same thing happening if I’m in an environment where I feel bias, both explicitly, but also where I – some of this may be internalized, where I don’t view myself favorably, because of what society has taught me. You could imagine those same experiences on a day-to-day basis where I feel under threat. I’m worried that I’m going to do something that then shows people that “yep, you know, people like me are not smart, or they are not capable,” that kind of thing. And every day of living in that manner activates my sympathetic nervous system, which then activates, you know, my immune system to be more vigilant, and that’s my daily experience, and then that might have long-term cardiometabolic costs.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  09:41

So if we dissect your definition of social well-being, and I want to make sure I don’t forget some of the important aspects that you shared, which I thought were so very insightful for me is the high quality relationships that allows you to be able to feel like you can depend on someone; that you can turn to them for help; that you can get advice from them; and then also that you can do the same back. Maybe not to the same person, but maybe to another person. And I always sort of equate this to, if I was on a deserted island, who would I want to end up with?

Dr. Ted Robles  10:25

Right, right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:26

And I’m just wondering, there’s also the definition that you have common interests or you have – so is there any data out there that talks about how to promote or reduce bias?

Dr. Ted Robles  10:42

Sure. Right, right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  10:43

And how – would that be sort of just relying on what you’ve just described as the definition is building those kinds – so what is it?

Dr. Ted Robles  10:52

I’d like to, again, if you think about – I’m using the lens of our kind of the study of social relationships and this idea of being understood, for example, and valued –

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  11:06

Yeah. Understood. That’s so important, right?

Dr. Ted Robles  11:08

Yeah. And when you imagine that you are working together towards a common goal, you know, that brings with it some –

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  11:15

Well common values, right?

Dr. Ted Robles  11:16

Yeah, yeah. Right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  11:17

If you’re working on the same thing.

Dr. Ted Robles  11:18

Exactly. So I know that this person who’s with me knows that I think “x” is important, that I think social justice is important, or the environment, or that I think education is really important; and I know that person knows that. And because we work together on these common things, I know that person values my contribution, for example. And maybe, there are times when, in the process of working on these things together, that I need help from this person from time to time, and I know that that person can be there for me when I need it. And so I think there’s definitely something to be said, for working together on common goals and objectives, and cooperating around those things. That is sort of critical to fostering connection and critical to fostering feeling like you’re, you know, included, and combating, you know, many of the sort of bias problems that we’ve been talking about. And again, if you think about it, small, we evolved in small groups of people, and where we were doing nothing, but trying to solve common problems together, like, what are we going to eat? Are we going to stay safe? You know, what is our shelter gonna look like? What How can we keep everybody is sort of, you know, alive as possible. And so we were, you know, that I’m not the one who’s made this argument, there’s been plenty of others to really talk about this. But, you know, the idea that we evolved as social species to solve problems together, I think that’s something that in our kind of attempt to be self reliant, ends up being lost, in some ways. Right, and also our attempt to include others. Again, it’s not enough to have everybody around the table, we all have to like work on something together around this table.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  13:10

Yeah. Well, the cultural part about being self reliant, I mean, it’s not completely adopted by everyone in the United States. I mean, we’ve got right many cultures that are much more collective.

Dr. Ted Robles  13:21

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  13:23

Yeah. So what are you seeing the difference – what’s the differences between a collective versus individualistic?

Dr. Ted Robles  13:31

So some of it has to do with how you see yourself relative to other people. And so there are certainly some cultures where I’m not defined by standing apart from how I’m different from everybody, but I’m also defined by who I’m with, essentially, so that I am part and parcel of, you know, a bigger, other group of people. And how I function in that group – well, it’s really not about how I function in that group; it’s how we sort of function together. That’s a lot of how I think about that, is how – and that’s work from people like Hazel Marcus, for example. And so yeah, you’re right. And that idea that people are separate from others, so independent – you see that in some groups, but there are other groups, for instance – and I know she’s done work to this effect – where more blue collar, sort of lower income, people in society who are lower income, for example, they do tend to see themselves as sort of interwoven with another.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:28

I didn’t realize there was a socio-ecoomic aspect.

Dr. Ted Robles  14:29

Yeah, there’s an interesting socio-economic aspect.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  14:33

My observation, having taken care of predominantly Mexican-American families, is in Mexican culture a collective culture is much more dominant and very much family-focused, and not necessarily just the nuclear family either.

Dr. Ted Robles  14:53

Right. And that’s totally, absolutely true. Yeah, exactly. And then what I know less of and will be interesting to think about is, if you looked at that across the entire spectrum within that culture, in terms of socio-economic status, for example.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:05

Yes. I don’t know that, yeah.

Dr. Ted Robles  15:06

But at least – I know she’s studied, at least in the States, you do see -and again, some of this is also because who tends to be more lower income in the United States because of history, and discrimination, and prejudice? That tends to be underrepresented minority groups, who also tend to have much more collectivistic beliefs, as well.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  15:28

From the cultural aspect. That’s more room for research, right? Every time you have a conversation with a researcher, you always come up with more questions, right? That’s the great thing about research, though – lots of questions, lots of answers. And so, you know, speaking of sort of the new, sort of where we’re heading. You know, the smartphone, or some people call the dumb phones. Gosh, I don’t use that word. But, you know, the not-so-smartphone. But what is it – you know, where does this land in terms of social well-being?

Dr. Ted Robles  16:02

Right, right. I mean, certainly technology – it’s certainly a tool – and just like any other technology or tool, it can be used in both the right and wrong ways. And I think one of the challenges we face – I’m thinking a lot about some writing that some of my colleagues have done. So, one of my co-authors on the American Psychologist paper where we were looking at social connections and health, he has a really nice piece coming out soon on smartphones, and technology, and relationships. And the way they describe it is kind of like – I guess a good analogy would be something like sugar. So sugar – processed, refined sugar – is a technology; it’s a tool that we use to make food. It’s certainly something that would not have developed, were it not for, you know, the industrial process, right? And it’s something that, for better or for worse, we can easily misuse. And the way we misuse it is, we hijack our existing circuitry – our neural circuitry, our physiology. Sugar hijacks that, right? It’s highly palatable, we like it, we have systems evolved to really want it, because we didn’t get it very much when we were evolving.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  17:15

And also masks the flavor of salt?

Dr. Ted Robles  17:17

Yeah, right. Exactly. So it has all these things that it does, that we want. And we have created a world where we are – we’re sort of hijacking and taking advantage of that in some ways. You can say that a food company, for instance, is taking advantage of that and making a high density, you know, processed food and testing out what flavors work, etc. So the reason I say sugar is because, if we think about, you know – I alluded earlier to social relationships and social well-being as involving circuitry that includes pain, and hunger, and reward. And we have circuitry that is sort of built for social rewards. I mean, there’s something highly rewarding about having a wonderful connection with somebody, and being able to have a good conversation, feel understood, valued, and cared for, etc. And what the smartphone has done is it is, kind of like sugar, it’s hijacking that circuitry in some ways. On one hand, you can hijack that circuitry for good. So if you’ve got someone who – so using sugar as analogy – like if I’ve got a child who’s really having trouble with gaining weight, and in order to be healthy, like, I can give them and ensure something, you know, that has a lot of sugar to help them get the nutrients they need. Likewise, you know, if I have someone who’s really socially isolated, like the smartphone is a really great way to kind of get them connected in some ways. But I think what people are finding is that the hijacking has much more cost right now, particularly when there’s cost to our sort of offline relationships. And if a smartphone can help us connect better with the people that we’re with, together, like offline, that’s good; but when it disrupts those offline relationships, that’s where it’s a problem. And it’s really good at doing that, because it pushes all our buttons related to social connection, right? It makes it really easy for me to see what’s happening with my friend in Pittsburgh that I haven’t seen in a long time. “And boy, look at those pictures, they’re really interesting.” Or let me watch this video of my friend jumping into a pool. And that, unfortunately, can then take me out of my offline relationship – the person I’m sitting with right now – and can make me less responsive to them. And their whole argument is that technology is a problem when you become less responsive to the people that you’re actually with physically, and that that’s the problem that we have to reckon with. It’s still good in terms of – it can be good in terms of deepening those relationships, but you have a kind of unbalance. There may be more of a problem right now than the benefits in terms of deepening. And then if you have wholesale replacement of offline relationships, that’s even worse. Right? So now my only social connections are online, and that’s problematic.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:08

And that’s what people are concerned about for college students; which it’s nice they’re keeping up with their high school friends, but they then don’t get engaged with their immediate surroundings.

Dr. Ted Robles  20:18

Right, right. And in terms of developing skills and developing new in-person relationships – that’s what our brains evolved for. And that’s, to some degree, what we probably want ultimately, as a species.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:33

Although it can be uncomfortable, to create new friendships.

Dr. Ted Robles  20:36

Exactly. Yeah. But again, we struggle through that, right, and then we benefit through that struggle.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:43

And why do we benefit through that struggle? Why do we –

Dr. Ted Robles  20:46

You learn how to become more adaptable to other people in your environment. You know, you learn how to – you can attune to people better, in some ways.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:55

Which means you learn cues?

Dr. Ted Robles  20:56

Exactly. You learn cues. You learn what works, what doesn’t work, you know, those kinds of things. But when, you know, likewise, I suppose – I’m trying to think of a good food analogy that involves sugar. But, you know, sugar can, to some degree, be a little bit of a shortcut to flavor, so to speak. I guess maybe one way to think about it would be like you’re trying to – maybe you decide not to try making the really awesome-tasting mole because it’s just too complicated, and instead, you just, you know, eat the candy bar; when maybe, over the long-term, it might be more beneficial to learn how to make the mole or something like that.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  21:31

Like I used to make carrot cake, and then I decided I just like the frosting – I just made the frosting.

Dr. Ted Robles  21:39

Yeah, yeah. So they argue that this – they use this term called technoference – that the big problem is when the phone takes us out of our ability to be responsive to others.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  21:53

Where it concerns me, and I know it’s a transitional period, but I feel that that’s what’s going on with the medical record – the electronic medical record.

Dr. Ted Robles  22:02

Yeah, well, that’s interesting.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:04

As I practice with the electronic medical record, I see how people and physicians are not able to connect. And there is data out there, now that’s reporting that physician burnout since the electronic medical record has come around. There’s a huge burnout, and I think that’s probably because physicians, I mean, the hypothesis is that they’re missing that social connection.

Dr. Ted Robles  22:33

Right, right. Exactly.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:34

Yeah. I’m sure the patients are feeling the same way, but from a physician’s point of view it’s really tough.

Dr. Ted Robles  22:40

And being a developing physician, you know, someone who’s learning – so like a first or second year resident – you’re not developing the cues to things to attend to, the skills.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  22:49

That’s a tough one, especially in my field, pediatrics. Because it’s very much – you always had to tell the residents, when I was training them, to trust your instincts. You walk in, and some kid with an 104 fever is going to ride through, because it’s a virus; and the next one could be at death’s door.

Dr. Ted Robles  23:10

Right, right. But your got to –

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  23:11

I know it, and you know it, because you get good at it.

Dr. Ted Robles  23:14

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, and the sort of depressing news about that is that, in terms of the technology piece, is that – there haven’t been as many studies of this yet, but from what I was reading, and I mean, it sort of jives with my experience, too, is – when we’re on our phones, we’re not really, or when we’re typing on the electronic medical record, we’re not really aware of how not responsive we’re being, right? Because, you know, I’m doing something really important, right? I don’t realize that I’m not being as responsive as I should be. And you see that in surveys. So, I think it’s something like a pretty low percentage of individuals describe that they are not attending to people when they’re on their phones. You know, it’s kind of the same thing – I’m trying to think of an analogy where, you know, we often don’t think we’re doing something when, in fact, you know, that’s harmful, when in fact we are. I feel like driving, or something like that would be good example.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  24:10

Very good example. Because people think they can text at stop signs, or things like that.

Dr. Ted Robles  24:18

Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  24:22

My daughter taught me way back before electronic medical records that I couldn’t be on my computer and doctor at the same time. And she still catches me sometimes when I’m on the phone with her, and she goes, “What are you doing? Are you doing something else?” She can totally pick it up. So I’m busted and I – thankfully, she’s very acutely aware of the circumstances. You know, I’d love to read that paper you just described to me. Yeah, I think this information’s cool. We’ll have to have it – we’ll have it online, too, so people can read it.

Dr. Ted Robles  24:58

Yeah, it’s freely available, too, through this service, or this site called PsyArXiv, so preprint – it’s a preprint.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  25:06

Fantastic. And getting to papers, you’re – one of your recent papers, you talk about the relationship between between culture and social support across different communication contacts – face-to-face and text messaging. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Ted Robles  25:22

Yeah, sure. So this is a project by a developmental psychology student who – so she had a long-standing interest in culture and communication, and what forms of communication might be more beneficial to others. So one of the really interesting findings in work on culture and social support is, you know, the idea of asking for help, depending on what culture you’re in, can be very threatening – it’s just like something you don’t do. So if you tend to be in an interdependent culture, so Asian cultures tend to be kind of the prototype here, you know, asking for help is incredibly threatening. And some really interesting work actually done by a former colleague here at UCLA, Shelly Taylor, finding that if you were – so participants who were randomly assigned to either write a letter asking for help, versus just describe the people in your social network, versus don’t do anything at all. Those folks did that – so they either wrote a letter asking for help, they either wrote a letter describing their social network, or they didn’t do anything at all. They were then asked to give a speech and do some mental arithmetic, a typical laboratory stressor.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  26:29

Really? Arithmetic? That relaxes me.

Dr. Ted Robles  26:33

Yeah. “So take that number 1792 and subtract 13.” So in this study, there was a group that was either Asian or Asian American, and there were also European Americans, as well. And again, they were randomly assigned to one of these three groups. And the really interesting thing was, for the Asian/Asian American group, writing a letter asking someone for help, those individuals showed physiological responses to the stressor that looked just the same as people who didn’t have to write anything at all; but the European Americans, they showed less of a physiological response to the stressor. And then for the European Americans, asking for help was related to sort of lower physiological responses; and I don’t remember what happened to the European Americans who were just thinking about their social group. So all of this, and there’s some other data to suggest that, again, for certain groups, asking for help, it’s sort of culturally inappropriate and so potentially more stressful. So what about instant messaging? Because it’s not quite the same. So part of this might be just the face-to-face thing – meaning making a request for help.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:38

Even a letter is considered face-to-face?

Dr. Ted Robles  27:40

So, I guess the letter was less face-to-face, certainly; but I think probably the letter was less superficial than the instant messaging. So that’s where the instant messaging becomes interesting, because: 1) you’re not face-to-face; and then 2), I mean, I think there’s something about kind of the act of writing the letter –  It writes more formal – exactly. That was problematic. So what she was really interested in testing was whether face-to-face versus instant messaging versus no support at all, before you do this speech and math stressor, which of these would sort of buffer psychological, and biological, or physiological responses to the stressor? And would you see more benefits for one group versus another? Now what we ended up – I think because of our recruitment – what we looked at was actually, instead, independent versus interdependent self construals, which is exactly what we’re talking about earlier with collectivism versus individualism. So if you see yourself as apart from others – versus to-the-what degree you see yourself as connected with others – and the interesting thing there was that we saw that face-to-face and instant messaging, you saw sort of similar benefits in terms of reducing anxiety, so that was sort of good to know. And then we also saw that for people who were more independent, actually – like who sort of valued seeing themselves as apart from others – that’s where the, I believe, I want to say the face-to-face support was kind of most beneficial in buffering their stress responses. And we didn’t see anything for being more interdependent, but some of that might have been related to the sample that we had. And I’m trying to remember what happened for the Asian/Asian American group, I think their face-to-face and instant messaging ended up looking somewhat similar. So all of this suggesting that, again, for some groups, some types of support might be and requesting support – some modalities may be more helpful than others, and maybe taking some of the psychological distance might be more helpful on the instant messaging sites. So there’s an example of where this tool could potentially have benefits depending on what social group that you’re in.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  27:59

More formal. And so moving to other forms of communication, like social media, what do you think might –

Dr. Ted Robles  29:56

Yeah, so the challenge with that – I think that’s a little bit different than sort of an instant messaging platform, right? Because now, you know, that’s more bi-directional.  Whereas social media, I think the challenge is that you have more of this – I guess what I’ll call the sugar effect – which is like, you can always come back to it, it’s something that’s persistent, and so it can kind of take you out of your immediate experience. Whereas instant messaging, like it’s still a kind of a very intentional experience.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  30:28

Right, kind of conversation.

Dr. Ted Robles  30:30

Yeah. And so that’s kind of one of the, I guess, for lack of a better term, kind of dependent or addictive aspects of social media. So Peter, he developed a measure of digital support. And one of the things that is different from social media compared to all other forms of support, is what we’re terming response support – so that’s “likes,” basically. And so I say, you know, I write something, I post something, and I get a bunch of likes. And I think the issue there also is that hijacks, to some degree, our kind of circuits that evolved for processing reward and social reward. There’s some data from one of our colleagues in developmental psychology showing that in areas of the brain that sort of respond to things like pictures of food, and money, and that kind of thing; you see greater responses, when you see a picture that’s got more likes on it, compared to ones that don’t. And so clearly, that phenomenon of likes – what we’re calling response support – takes advantage of the circuitry of valuing things that are highly rewarding, kind of like sugar might, for better or for worse.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  31:43

And so, explain about social media – how does that become addicting?

Dr. Ted Robles  31:48

I think because we – it’s so easily accessible; it’s easy to get a quick hit, so to speak, of social reward, right?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  31:59

And what’s the social reward?

Dr. Ted Robles  32:00

So I got a bunch of likes on a picture I just posted, for instance, of something I ate, or of me doing something. And so then we kind of keep coming back to that. And again, they’re sort of empty calories, in a sense. Like, I feel like people like or validate me to some degree, but it’s not the same as a one-on-one or, you know, an experience with a group of actual, physical people.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:24

Right. You might not want to have them all on your desert island.

Dr. Ted Robles  32:27

Right. Exactly.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:29

Or that great New Yorker cartoon that had the one person in the pews of a person’s funeral, and they they said, “Oh, he had 2,000 Facebook friends.”

Dr. Ted Robles  32:38

Yeah. Right, right, right. Exactly.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:40

But only one person shows up at your funeral.

Dr. Ted Robles  32:42

Yeah, exactly. And again, I think sort of viewing – you know, it’s not like they’re empty calories all the time. But when someone’s just posting things, just to get likes – I mean, I’ve seen examples of this in the movies, you know, these sort of extreme examples – you can see where it becomes empty-calorie-like, right?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  32:59

Yeah, I get it. Well, it’s been an incredible conversation, so I’d like to just wrap it up with something that I’m sure everyone would love to hear from you, which is – what would you consider to be the most important steps that people can take to improve their own social relationships?

Dr. Ted Robles  33:18

Yeah. Well, I’ll go back to what I sort of started with, which I think is always good advice, which is – and I’m sort of stealing this a little bit from some of my colleagues in psychology, because they kind of came up with this first – it’s Tom Bradbury, and Ben Carney. They study couples, and they would hold workshops for couples, people who are interested in relationships. And what I like about this advice is that it’s consistent with what we study in relationship science, and it’s very simple; which is just to find ways to communicate every day to the people that are around you, that you understand, and that you value, and that you care about them, and that you communicate that in ways that they can see. As opposed to – I mean, it’s great to help people out, kind of in ways they don’t notice; but if you kind of make yourself seen and let them know that you get them, that you care about what they do, or that they’re in the world, and that you value them as a person, that’s something that – you know, if we think about not smoking every day is important – this would be something if you can do that every day would help really foster these kinds of high quality connection.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  34:21

And you receive something from that by giving.

Dr. Ted Robles  34:26

Exactly. Right, right, right.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  34:28

There was a really great article that – is it Steve Lopez from LA Times? He was interviewing this woman in her 90s, and she has on her business card: “too blessed to be stressed.” And having that attitude – her nickname was Happy.

Dr. Ted Robles  34:47

Yeah. Right, right. Well if you think about resilience, right? You know, part of why she can’t be stressed is because she is too blessed. She has built up this resource of people and that kind of thing, and it can help you withstand the sort of slings and arrows of everyday life.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:04

That’s right. And apparently, up until recently, she was driving other people to church because they couldn’t make it with her – they couldn’t drive anywhere but she was there pooling away at 90 years old. Yeah, anyway – you know, Ted, it’s just remarkable the work you’re doing. And I just find, each time I talk to you, more pearls of wisdom and also things I can just apply to my own daily life so really appreciate –

Dr. Ted Robles  35:34

Well, the feeling is mutual, as well. I always learn more from, and I sort of get more inspiration from interacting with you, as well, so appreciate it.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:42

Oh, thank you, Ted. Thanks for everything you do here at UCLA.

Dr. Ted Robles  35:45

Well, thank you for everything you do.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  35:50

Thank you for tuning into LiveWell, today. Today’s podcast was brought to you by UCLA’s Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center. To learn more about Ted’s research, please visit our website @healthy.ucla.edu/livewellpodcast. To stay up to date with our latest podcasts, make sure to follow our Twitter and Instagram @livewell_ucla.

Transcript

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  00:02

For the past year and a half, we’ve all been challenged to rethink the way we work. We have taken on different roles on our teams, transitioned to different styles of work, and adapted to a rapidly changing environment. Currently, we’re experiencing another transition with many people returning to the physical office. Dr. Brenda Bursch joins us for a three part series about how to optimize your well-being during this workplace transition. She’s an expert in resilience training, and a professor of clinical psychiatry and pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Over the course of three episodes, Dr. Bursch will cover three themes: remember, recover, and renew. Tune in to learn about actionable and practical tips for how you can prepare for your work transition and optimize your well-being. Hello there, Dr. Brenda Bursch. So great to have you back at the UCLA Live Well podcast to talk about how we can return to the workplace while actually improving our well-being. You’ve identified three themes with our return to workplace: remember, recover and renew. And we started off this series with an episode diving into the first theme, remember, and then discussed the second theme: recover. Today, we’ll be discussing the third and final theme: renew. So getting right into it. What do you mean by renew?

Dr. Brenda Bursch  01:29

Thank you so much for having me back. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about these topics with everybody. So renew, right, the third of our Rs, is really, in my mind, focused on developing an action plan. We’ve reflected on everything you’ve gone through. The different areas that we know really contribute to well-being and give you the best opportunity to flourish. And so now it’s really time to start the planning. It’s really thinking about, “Okay, how am I going to make my way back to the workplace?” And it includes both thinking about not just skills that you’re going to, you know, use as you’re doing that, but others things that you need to plan for. And so I think that, you know, when you think about renew, you can think about it at different levels. So you can think about it at your own personal level. You can think about it at your family system level. You can think about it at your workgroup level, and then you can think about it at the organizational level. And there’s other levels above that, but you probably don’t have much control over things like politics at large levels. So we’ll keep them at those levels. And so really thinking about each of those levels, and what you need to do to prepare yourself and what you can do to put yourself in the right headspace so that you are in a position to experience as much well-being as possible is really the goal of this particular session and this podcast. So to start off, I just want to quickly spend a tiny bit of time talking about self care more broadly. I think that a lot of people have maybe heard other podcasts or talks or read things over the last year and a half. So some of this might be a little bit of a review. But just to put it back on your radar. We all know the importance of healthy routines. When you think of routines, the reason that having routines is helpful is because it trains our body. If we did the same thing the same way each time, we actually alert our body that where we’re going, you know, they know what, our body knows what’s next. So for example, if we have a nighttime routine before we go to sleep, and we follow the same routine every night, then our body starts to relax sooner when it knows we’re starting that routine, because it’s been conditioned to do that. If you’re really haphazard, all over the place, and it’s different every single day, then your body never knows when you’re going to bed. And they can’t start that ramp down process. The other thing about routines is that they help us stay on track. And we do the same thing, you know, every day. When it comes to health, we’re less likely to forget to do it. So that’s another reason. We all know about the importance of having routines related to exercise, our diet, sleep. Many people incorporate mindfulness practices or spiritual practices, gratitude exercises, those types of things, to have opportunity to really reflect and appreciate on some of the good things in our lives, so that we can balance out some of the more challenging moments with being aware of the things that bring us joy and meaning. And then we also know the importance of sharing our stories. And processing through difficult times with others so that we can increase our own awareness and get important feedback from those people and better integrate our emotions with our memories by engaging in those practices or by keeping a journal. We know that having rules for ourselves or personal policies for ourselves that we implement in terms of boundaries and schedules and things like that can be really good for our well-being too. And those are really difficult, especially if you’re among people who have different boundaries or different schedules that requires you to really think about how am I going to communicate to others what my boundaries are, what my personal policies are. And we’ll talk about that more in a minute. And then coping skills. Everybody’s heard of the term coping skills, and there’s all sorts of coping skills that we know have been very well researched, that we know help people be more resilient. We know that setting inspirational goals can help us through difficult times, because there’s meaning attached to what we’re doing, and what we’re doing is helping us reach our goals. We know there’s a variety of ways that we can regulate our emotions so that we’re not just reactive to the things that happen. But we can be thoughtful about how to react when our emotions are triggered. And some of those have to do with what we pay attention to and what we tell ourselves cognitively. There’s all sorts of different techniques that can be used there. Deep breathing, just to regulate our bodies sometimes can help with our emotional control. Sometimes distraction, taking a break, so that we have an opportunity to calm down before we address the problem can be helpful. We know communication skills are enormously helpful. And we all interact with each other. And especially when we’re interacting with somebody who’s distressed, we feel distressed. And so knowing how to best help in that situation without absorbing all of that yourself is a very important skill for resilience. And then connecting to positive others and making sure that we have people that we can go to when we need support. You know, these are all things that we know. When you think about it, in terms of preparing to work, there are things you can think about for yourself, and things you can think about for those that you might report to you. And this applies if you’re a student, and you’re coming back to school, if you’re a faculty, if you’re staff. Doesn’t really matter; all of the same things can be applied to your domain. And so the first one is just thinking about, “What have you really appreciated? And have you been doing over the last year and a half that has been good for your health? Are there things that you’re doing now that you weren’t doing before you started to work remotely that you can continue to do, that you want to keep doing because you found that they are helpful for you? Can you make them a priority? Can you figure out how to fit them into your schedule?” You know, speaking of schedules, the next thing that many of us have to figure out is how to do the schedule changes that are needed now that you’re going to have to be commuting, maybe, or taking public transportation, or doing childcare. So many different things that could impact your schedule. I know that for me personally, because I’ve spent so much of my time now remote, that I’ve packed more into my schedule, because I haven’t been having to commute. So if I’m having to drive around, I have about four different locations that I regularly work at, I have to start cutting things out of my schedule so that I can be live. And have time for transportation, have time between meetings, those types of things. Some people might have to go back to a previous sleep schedule that you’ve had. We all know how hard that is. Just when we have one hour sleep difference for time change. If you are more off of your sleep schedule than that, then you might want to start transitioning now, so it’s easier later. My favorite thought about going back to work is “What would make me excited? Is the workspace I have, is my study space that I have, are the spaces that I’m going to be spending my time in: do I like them? Is there anything that I have control over that I can do to make them more pleasurable, or to change them?” There’s a little bit of research, for example, that shows having plants in the office can decrease your stress level and increase productivity. Not all of us can put plants where we work. But if you can, that’s something to think about as an example. I like the idea of upgrading my wardrobe, you know. I haven’t worn certain things for a year and a half, and I don’t even want to wear them again. If you feel that way, then you might get excited about the idea of doing a little upgrade, or if you gained or lost weight, you know, you might need to do that. You know that might be pleasurable for you. And if so, then any little thing that gets you a little excited about coming back, you want to really try to take advantage of. You know, many people might be fearful. And that’s a legitimate way to feel, you know. There’s a lot of effort being placed into ensuring that everybody will be safe. But everybody has different levels of risk tolerance, and everybody has different practices they engage in, related to what they do to keep safe. And if you’re around somebody that doesn’t have those same strategies you do or same level of comfort that you do, then, you know there’s going to be differences there. And that can be hard to negotiate. And so it’s helpful to think about that ahead of time. You know, what safety protocols will help you feel safe? How are you going to communicate those to other people? Do you need to like put a sign up in your work area? Do you need to practice explaining to others what your boundaries are? You know, those are all things that you can do now that will help you when you transition back. Just like in the beginning of the pandemic, you’re going to want to think about where am I going to get my information from. It could be COVID information. It could be work related information. If you have kids, information related to school. It could be all sorts of different types. If you are somebody who’s kind of ambivalent about coming back, or not very excited about coming back, it might be harder for you. You might have to think, really dredge up like, “What are the advantages? What do you miss? Is there anything you miss? Is there anything that you can interject into the setting that would help you be more excited? Are there things that you’re grateful for? Some people lost their jobs. Are you grateful that you have a job? Some people don’t have the opportunity to go back to school? Are you grateful that you can go back to school?” See if you can figure out what those things are that you’re grateful for. You know, some things will be better. Some things might not be as good as you remembered them. And allowing for that, just kind of being open to that. Change is really stressful and difficult. And, you know, when we had to all go on lockdown before, it all happened very quickly and all at one time. And we were in it together, and we had a common purpose. And now it’s going to be all staggered. And so it’s going to be less united. And that’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. So when you have those moments where you just feel anxious or stressed, just taking some deep breaths, and letting those waves pass can be the most effective thing to do. And if you find that those are coming too much, and they’re just really interfering with your ability to feel well-being, to concentrate into your work, to be functional, then reach out and tell somebody. You are not alone. Many people have been struggling. Many people have been. And so reach out. Tell somebody, and, you know, find out what kind of assistance is available to you. If you’re somebody, who is a supervisor, and you’re thinking about people who are looking up to you, or maybe you’re not even a supervisor, but maybe you’re, you know, a team captain or a club captain or in any leadership role of any type. And you’re thinking about trying to help those in your group transition back, the thing you really want to think about for those folks is how to communicate as much as possible. And really understand what people are going through, realizing that people are going to be very stressed. They’re going to see things differently. You’re going to have to have a lot of diplomacy in your toolbox. And you’re really going to want to look for opportunities to get positive reinforcement, positive feedback, highlight milestones, highlight the good things that are going on, the meaningful things that are going on, the moments of joy, what you appreciate about each other, to make sure you’re a lot more verbal about those. And to try to stay out of the kind of complaining loop that we can sometimes get in. I think the other thing for those who are leaders, that can be more important than all of the other things I’ve said is to be honest and vulnerable. Share, you know, that it’s not been easy for you either, if that’s the truth. And share what’s helped you. Share when you don’t know the answers. That communicates to other people that they’re not alone. And that you will be likely to understand and have empathy if they share their struggles with you. You’ll be more approachable as a leader if you can also be vulnerable and share your emotional experience. So I think that that’s the biggest take-home for people, who are in leadership positions. And if you think about the people in your groups, from a leadership perspective, making sure they also understand what resources are available to them. You know, there’s a lot of resources on our campus. UCLA has really focused on at every level of trying to be responsive and trying to think about what the needs that people in all sorts of jobs and our students have and addressing them. And if we’re not doing it, you know, there’s a great deal of interest in hearing about it, to see if there are things that can be done. And then the last thing I really want to highlight if you’re a leader: you also want to be monitoring those people in your group to see, you know, if they seem like themselves. And if you’re finding that suddenly someone’s quieter than usual or more irritable than usual or not showing up to meetings on time when they normally would or, you know, other behaviors that you’re just not used to seeing out of them, that you don’t just keep it to yourself, but you check in with them. “You don’t see yourself. How are you feeling? I’ve got a few minutes. Do you want to chat about it. Is it okay if I check in with you, again?” Those are all really appreciated. You know, even if someone doesn’t want to chat with you, even if, you know, it’s something that they want to manage on their own, usually, most people appreciate the fact that someone checked in on them. And sometimes people don’t even realize that they’re stressed out until somebody else says something. So you can raise their awareness by saying something like that. So I think that, that is kind of a big long checklist of a lot of things that you can do. But the idea behind it is if you review all of these and develop a toolkit for yourself, a wellness plan for yourself and for those that you might be a leader of, then you have opportunity, not only to transition back to the setting, to UCLA settings, in a, you know, healthy manner with a sense of well-being, but maybe you might be in a, you know, maybe you’ll really thrive. Maybe you’ll find a sense of purpose and joy that you didn’t have before. Maybe you’ll be more appreciative after everything we’ve been through so that the little things will spark greater joy and glee than they even did before. And maybe we will be a kinder and more appreciative set of individuals, because we’ve taken this time to really make such plans. That’s, you know, that’s a lofty goal. But that’s really, you know, what positive psychology is about, right? It’s really going for that, because if you don’t go with that plan, then we’re not going to make it. Doesn’t mean there’s not going to be problems. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have setbacks. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have feelings of grief, or sorrow, or trauma, or any of those things. But it really is setting us up so that when those do happen, we’re in a position to be more resilient. And we’re in a better position to really derive meaning from them and to be able to use those difficult times to propel ourselves to the next level of what we find meaningful in our life.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  16:58

Well, what you’ve just covered has been a tremendous roadmap for many of us. And I’m just feeling, this was under the theme of renew, which really, we could all start practicing now in whatever workplace we’re working, whether we’re on site as we speak, or on our way, or do flex work, or even are the group that ends up staying at home, because so much of that is just so basic in terms of self care, like a routine. I know when I try to teach routines for parents, it takes them weeks and months to really capture the ability to really manage that for their children. So sometimes that’s hard, even for ourselves to have our own routines, right? What kind of practical tips would you give people to start with when building routines? You talked about their sleep routine, but just in general, what would you recommend?

Dr. Brenda Bursch  17:59

You know, a couple things that pop into my mind when I think about routines, you know, sometimes we need reminders. So if you are trying to establish routines, and you get sidetracked into other activities, you might need to set reminders on your phone, so that you stop. You might need to put things in your schedule, so that you have, you know, a stop to remind you to do other things. The other thing about routines and other routine hacks, so to speak, is pairing right. So, you know, we’re often talking with our patients about medication adherence. And so, you know, taking your medication right when you do something else. And putting the pills right near something that you already have as a routine, so you just start adding to a routine that already exists, is often effective. The other thing is trying to get your whole family on the same routine, right? Much more difficult when you’re the only one in the family trying to change your routines. But if you can get buy-in from everybody. And then reward yourselves when you make progress and realize you might not be able to achieve everything you want to do, you know. Going for an hour and a half walk every day might be too lofty of a goal. Some people could do something like that, and others can’t. If the whole family goes, it increases your chances. If it’s a half an hour walk, then maybe that increases your chances. But trying to kind of be flexible enough so that you can really settle on something that you can make into a reliable routine. You know, because I think sometimes we give up if we have early frustrations. You mentioned that sometimes it takes months. I’m not that familiar with the research. But there’s some research that’s something like if you do the same thing, 30 days in a row, that there’s an increased chance that you’ll keep doing it. So you know, the more you do something, the more likely you are to do it. And that we know is true. So I think those are some routine hacks that you can consider.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  19:51

That’s great. That’s good to set a goal. So 30 days could be a really good goal for many people too.

Dr. Brenda Bursch  19:57

Right and then that helps. It’s less overwhelming, right?

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:01

Right.

Dr. Brenda Bursch  20:01

Like, okay, I’ll walk for half an hour a day for 30 days, then I’ll reevaluate.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  20:06

Exactly. The other things that you highlighted that I thought were really strong wisdoms to practice not just at workplace, but at home are things like communication, like your ability to share your feelings. Like as a supervisor, it can help people feel more comfortable about how they might be feeling. Can you elaborate on that in terms of what instances or stories can you tell us about where you’ve seen that work well?

Dr. Brenda Bursch  20:34

You know, it’s interesting. That’s something that I’ve really personally worked on over the course of this pandemic. Because I think, you know, as a health provider, I have always been trained, especially as a mental health provider, to not really talk about myself very much, right, to be very focused on our patients. And then I’m also a professor, so I’m very focused on my students. And, you know, what happens is that by doing that, we accidentally contribute to this inaccurate view that we are in all our accomplishments really impervious to stress and that we don’t struggle. And that makes us impossibly difficult to relate to, you know, and really contributes to our students and our patients and others, to feel like, “Oh, they have such a long way to go to be as perfect as we are.” And so to transition into being more open about myself felt like I was being unprofessional. It felt like I was off task, that I was being indulgent, that I was being, you know, kind of self-centered. So it’s been difficult for me to share, you know, when I had a friend who died of COVID. And I was so grateful; I had recently seen him. He lived out of state, but he’d recovered. And then two months later died. And so I thought that he’d recovered. Like, it was so unexpected, and, you know, so I had emotions about that. And it’s not something necessarily I would normally share with my students. But we were all in it together. And I knew it was going to be helpful. And we started having check-ins, which we didn’t do in the same way before the pandemic. And it gave the space and the time to talk about these things that we don’t normally talk about, because we’re always going so fast. And we’re always so focused on work. And so I was able to share that and then that meant that my trainees felt more comfortable talking to me about what was going on in their families, and who they were worried about and their friends. And then that leads to the next conversation about, you know, differences in the families, about safety practices. And all sorts, you know, one thing leads to another. And not only did that help us feel better connected, but because it’s specific, it really allowed for much stronger support. And, you know, if I think back on the trainees that I had, that were on my service, that first rotation in the first four months of our pandemic, you know, I’ll forever be so connected to them because of that. And so it’s this long lasting benefit to me, as well as to the people that I supervise, who felt a lot more comfortable sharing with me once I shared. One of the topics that I’ve been talking about recently is imposter syndrome. You know, we all remember being a student or transitioning to our jobs and having imposter syndrome. But a lot of our students and a lot of our younger faculty and staff don’t realize is that does not go away. There’s always new topics to have imposter syndrome about, right? And that we all have to ask for help. We all reach out, you know. You and I have reached out to each other when, you know, we’ve had a question or a dilemma or a challenge. And we knew that each other would be helpful in that regard. You know, we all have networks that we rely upon for those types of things. And so recognizing that, communicating across workgroups into those you supervise to your supervisors, across every which direction can only bring us closer together. And improve the work we do, because we’re being clearer about what’s happening, how we’re feeling, what we want, what our limits are, all of those things.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  24:29

I mean, what you just said about your students and how you have a bond, just from that experience early on, is going to be so valuable for them as they move forward too, because they’ve just been modeled by their professor. And it’s going to have that ripple effect. That’s one of the fortunate aspects of being a professor at UCLA. We have generations of students out there that really are products of how they’re being taught currently. So

Dr. Brenda Bursch  24:58

Exactly.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  24:59

How they were taught in the past, rather.

Dr. Brenda Bursch  25:01

And I have, you know, I have no plans on reverting back to my old practices, right? I think this is the new normal. We check in on each other now, in a more frequent manner, at a deeper level, as well. And it’s not just checking in about work, it’s, you know, it’s checking in about us as human beings.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  25:20

Well, it really gets to your last podcast point about creating a workplace or a learning place that is respectful and has the capacity for people to feel heard, and also, potentially, ultimately experience joy so and meaning. Well, Dr. Bursch, once again, thank you so much, not only for sharing so much important information about how we can renew at this stage, but also how we can all be models for others in our ability to share some of the feelings that we might be experiencing as well. So thanks so much and for all you do for UCLA and also the world.

Dr. Brenda Bursch  26:05

Well, thank you for everything you do for UCLA and for the world. I am very appreciative of you and for you offering this platform to me to share with others some of the tidbits that I’ve been collecting over the last year and a half. As I’ve been on the COVID mental wellness taskforce for UCLA and giving these talks all over the place, the best part of that has been, I’ve had to repeat it over and over. So it’s a reminder to myself. And as a result of that I’ve gotten to hear all of these great ideas from others. And those have been incorporated into all of these talks. So it’s really been not just me, but a collective effort. And I appreciate the opportunity to share some of that.

Dr.  Wendy Slusser  26:50

Thank you. Your response and recognition of others is just one of the many ways of your ability be so generous to us. So thank you. Thank you again for joining us. For more information about today’s episode, visit our website at healthy.ucla.edu/livewellpodcast. Today’s podcast was brought to you by the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA. To stay up to date with our episode, subscribe to UCLA Live Well on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave us a rating to tell us how we’re doing. And if you think you know the perfect person for us to interview next. Please tweet your idea to us @HealthyUCLA. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And we hope you join us for our next episode as we explore new perspectives on health and well-being.