Chelsea Clinton: Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation (Raise the Line)
Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out the raise line interview series.
In which me and my cohost, Doctor Rishi Desai and registered nurse, Johnna Amil, explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government and they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well.
I hope you will watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sh in today and raised line.
I'm really honored to be joined by Chelsea Clinton, who's vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. In that role, Doctor Clinton works alongside the foundation's leadership and partners to help create economic opportunity, improve public health and inspire civic engagement and service across the US and around the world.
In particular. She focuses on promoting early brain and language development through the too small to follow a fail initiative and uplifting and empowering female entrepreneurs and women led businesses around the world.
She also teaches at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and has written several books for young readers, including the number one New York Times best selling.
She persisted 13 American women who changed the world. I'm really looking forward to learning more about her work at the foundation and getting her views on the state of public health in the US and abroad during the COVID pandemic.
And before we get started, I'd like to really thank uh our advisor and investor Alan Patrick off who initially made the introduction as well as made the connection that another raise line guest.
Marcus Osborne used to work with her at the Clinton Foundation. So Chelsea, it's truly an honor.
Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today. Sh Thanks uh Thanks so much for having me on today.
So we're recording this the day after the inauguration. It's January 21st today.
Uh We just love to hear what you felt about yesterday. How, how did that uh come across for you?
I was incredibly proud and grateful and hopeful. Uh It also was so uh meaningful to me in a way that I hadn't um I hadn't really anticipated, but II probably should have had I thought about it uh to be able to share the whole experience with my Children uh to not have to worry about um white supremacy being kind of central or celebrated or lies, kind of being kind of a, a main currency of communication.
Uh And so just that I didn't have to worry about that um as a parent and that I could see how excited my uh kids were admittedly to see their grandma and pop up like on screen.
But you know to see um President Biden, now I'd be inaugurated and vice President uh Kamala Harris be inaugurated uh to see Kamala Harris be inaugurated or kind of administered the oath of office by Justice Sonia Sotomayor who admittedly my kids know about because of the she persisted book that you mentioned earlier.
Um just kind of to watch their, their a and their pride and kind of the only real question was where is uh Major Biden? Cause both of both Charlotte and Aiden, my two older kids have learned about uh the uh Biden's pets.
Um And I'm in school and a and my four year old just kept asking like where's major? And I was like, you know, unfortunately, like dogs, dogs don't participate in this part, this part of the, you know, inaugural celebrations are kind of in the formal inauguration.
Um But after all of the mini conversations we've had over the past uh four years about um how uh we don't support what the president is doing.
We don't support bullies. Um We don't support kind of people who um are, are demeaning um to others who don't believe that we have and deserve kind of equal dignity.
Um It was a profoundly moving experience for me as an American. Um It was a especially profoundly moving experience for me as a parent.
That's, that's, that's wonderful. And, you know, I'm reminded of that Isaac Newton quote.
If I've, if I've seen further, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of Giants and I was thinking a lot about that, knowing that this interview was coming up that, uh, the historic, um, vice president, um Kamala Harris obviously has seen further and as a giant in her own regard and largely, I mean, your mother paved the way for a lot of that.
So, um, I'm sure there's a lot of pride and uh well deserved pride for that huge um kind of uh pride kind of in, in Kamala Harris and also um kind of in our country and kind of what this means for our, you know, march toward a more perfect union.
Um And, and also, you know, sh I don't know, um kind of for you and your family, but certainly for me, like I was thinking this morning, like, I don't know which like genre of photograph I now I am finding most uh important and meaningful to me.
Is it the pictures like of my friends sending selfies of themselves getting vaccinated? Like my friends who are, you know, frontline healthcare workers or my friends who are now sending me pictures because they know it's gonna mean so much to me of like their parents or their grandparents getting vaccinated or my friends, so many of whom sent me pictures of admittedly uh admittedly their daughters.
Although I like to think um they were also equally excited for their sons, their daughters, like watching Kamala be inaugurated and just, you know, representation is not everything, it certainly is um should not be the end goal.
Um but it matters, it really, really matters. And um I felt like I was really lucky to see that not only in my own kids reactions yesterday, but also had I been all the pictures that I got from my friends of their daughters just looking up and, and I could even like s see through those still images that they could see themselves in a really powerful way that uh hadn't been possible before yesterday.
That's wonderful. That's, that's, that's really exciting.
So, you know, right after the inauguration, a lot of executive orders were signed, obviously, including rejoined the wh O which we're all very excited about.
And um this morning when Doctor Fauci, you know, got up at like four o'clock in the morning to be able to zoom in or, I don't know, maybe it was Google me, like whatever the platform was where he joined, like the w executive board meeting happening right now uh in Geneva.
And I'm just so um so thrilled that one of the first things President Biden did was to reverse that uh absurd obscene, um you know, uh kind of letter uh kind of putting forth the kind of years notice to withdraw the United States from.
Wo So I'm thrilled that we didn't have to reverse the withdrawal, we just had to reverse the intention to withdraw. And also that we committed today to, to pay our dues to wo to help kind of support and sustain the institution.
And also that we committed today to join Covax, uh which is the effort um to help uh purchase and, and distribute. So to kind of uh finance the purchasing and finance the distribution of, of vaccines in the developing world in the global South.
Um Kind of something that uh the Trump administration had, had resisted doing so, so much. Um kind of good news uh this, this morning, um long overdue news, but also really uh still very, very good news totally.
And so, I mean, we launched this podcast in the, in the heart of the epidemic. And, you know, most of our guests, we asked them how we can do better, how we can raise line and improve healthcare capacity.
And now, since this is the day after the inauguration, a lot of these things are already starting to happen. I would love to hear what, what you're most excited about.
Um As far as the uh public health efforts that are starting to go and you mentioned covax, we joined wh O but um what are, you know, wearing your public health hat and your Clinton Foundation hat, what are you most excited about?
Um And how are you all uh contributing cause? I know you do a lot around global health and how that, so, you know, Shal, I'll talk with, uh, about both, what I'm, uh, excited about and what I'm really grateful to see, uh, thus far and what, um, I still think we need candidly.
So, you know, one of the other things that happened, um, both last night and this morning, um, was President Biden kind of signaling and then signing executive orders to invoke the Defense Production Act, which, you know, there had been enormous pressure for um the Trump administration to do and it has always resisted doing for reasons that were never um kind of made clear.
Uh So what the, the DPA will allow um is for the, the government to effectively um kind of work with private companies to expand their, their manufacturing um capacity.
Uh And that the Trump uh administration kind of resisted doing this kind of writ large and in specific and very quickly, the Biden administration is kind of showing its juxtaposition because it is doing both.
It is both kind of calling for ways where the DPA um could and should be invoked and kind of soliciting suggestions to do that while also uh invoking it in very specific ways.
So we've already invoked it for swab production um so that we can um ramp up our testing capacity because still a year into COVID, we're still not testing enough people every day.
Um And kind of not only kind of swabs but kind of the other uh components that we need for the PCR test. Cause one of the other things that has happened recently sh which I'm sure you probably talked about um on, on your podcast before.
Is that um we've moved away from the gold standard of PCR test. Increasingly kind of the tests that we're performing are, are not kind of, you know, at, at the PCR level and are not actually the, the PCR uh itself.
And now there's growing pressure or um the Biden administration to do the same around around vaccines. And, you know, I think um that would be really important, not only um to help ensure that we're uh doing more than just vaccinating a million people a day, which is the initial goal with the Biden administration to set uh here in the United States, but also to help us meet our commitment to Covax.
Um We, I mean, yes, like building um a biologic production capacity is expensive. Um But it's certainly a lot less expensive to invest in doing that than in continuing the hemorrhage um kind of lives and um economic productivity uh with what we're seeing today uh in, in our ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
So I hope that kind of what the Biden administration has started to do through the Defense Production Act is only a small part of what it will do.
Um because I think we really desperately need to be scaling up um our vaccine distribution capacity so that we are able to vaccinate more people here in the United States and then support um the, the vaccinating of people around the world.
Yeah. No, totally.
We're very excited about that. We, we had a recent guest Omar Ishq, who's the long time CEO and now executive chairman at Medtronic.
And we talked a lot about, you know, the work that they were doing for ventilator capacity and how the defense uh the Production Act helped, helped uh you know, streamline some of that, it was, it was one of the only um times that it was invoked, right was when the Trump administration evoked it for uh four ventilators in, in the spring.
And there were some other kind of more technical things that they did. But really like that was the major example of the DBA and we saw how much uh it mattered.
Um So it will forever remain a mystery. Um probably as to why, why they didn't use the um not only the, the moral uh but also the logistics and the purchasing power of, of the US government to help better equip us.
Uh and, and kind of make our public health uh kind of response um more robust. Uh they didn't.
But thankfully, um I'm confident the Biden administration um will do so and that what we're seeing kind of, yes, last night and today is only only the first step.
So in, in addition to the things that obviously the administration is already doing. I mean, obviously no major nonprofits like the Clinton Foundation, uh academic health centers like the Mailman School of Public Health where you teach at, um, are obviously doing a lot around, uh, education around distribution and equity.
What are some of the things that you're most excited about, about the work that you all are doing? Um, that, that raise line and improve healthcare capacity.
So, should I think I, I'm gonna s you know, I'll, I'll separate out kind of what II think Mailman and, and Columbia are doing well and, and kind of what we're doing at the foundation and what I kind of think um and hope we will be able to do more of.
So I do think um kind of uh one of the, the kind of really um kind of good parts of Colombia's response is that it very much has drawn on kind of every part of, of the institution.
So whether that's working with kind of public health experts at, at Mailman or recruiting um kind of Mailman faculty to help support uh the vaccination efforts that are happening um that are happening through, through Columbia Presbyterian.
So, you know, helping support data entry or helping support kind of patients as they navigate, booking their appointments, reminding them to show up for their appointments, booking their kind of second dose appointments, kind of really trying to help ensure that um those who can uh administer the shots are administering the shots um and that others are doing the other work.
Um And, and I point that out because I think that's actually been a, a challenge in some other institutions where kind of the, the front line of the front line has been expected to do kind of anything and everything around uh vaccinations.
Uh And that's not a good um kind of use or kind of an optimal use of, of their time or institutional capacity. So I really um proud to be part of an institution that I think has, has done a good job there on, you know, the broader Clinton Foundation.
But um certainly through the Clinton Health Access Initiative, um which we call for sure, we've been working kind of with uh wo over the last year to just try to help support uh their efforts um on everything from trying to um kind of forecast uh the the trajectory and velocity of the epidemic to then forecast kind of what um kind of uh health commodities would be needed on kind of everything from uh testing to um uh kind of now vaccines and vaccinations to kind of human resources that would be needed for everything from testing to contact tracing to supporting kind of isolating um suspected and and positive um COVID cases, uh isolating kind of those uh people and patients with dignity um to support um kind of treatment once, you know, we have had real robust and not kind of, you know, hydroxychloroquine um as uh of data around, around what really can work to uh improve someone's chance of, of survival and kind of pace in their recovery.
So we've done all sorts of work to support w there and then also, you know, with the um kind of partner governments and countries where we work to support their, you know, you know, more, more national and, and local efforts um while also still trying to support, um, kind of the, the programs that, uh, you know, hopefully, hopefully haven't been disrupted, although some have, whether that is kind of HIV AIDS, like testing and treatment or um, routine childhood immunizations.
Um, and we know that, um, you know, in some countries where all, you know, routine childhood immunizations were stopped, you know, trying to keep a good log of, um, which Children haven't been vaccinated against which, um, against which diseases so that in a kind of more safe time, I will be able to catch up kind of those kids as, as quickly as possible.
Um, because I think it would just be, you know, a, a tragedy on top of a tragedy if, um, we lose progress against, you know, kind of deaths attributed to diarrhea or kind of, um, deaths attributed to uh pneumonia and, you know, things that we really, really, really do know how to, how to prevent with, with good, um, child inoculation coverage.
And then here in the United States, we've done everything from you turn the Clinton Presidential Center into um the largest uh feeding site in the state of Arkansas to support um kind of people, uh who uh very much have been economically struggling over the last year because of our government's mismanagement of, of the virus.
You know, it is not the lockdowns fault. It is the fact that we ever needed a lockdown um because the Trump administration failed so abysmally to um kind of stop the uh trajectory or then um kind of failed to really successfully kind of flatten and then, you know, stamp out the the COVID curve um to helping support um families whose kids are, you know, now at home through more early uh reading uh and kind of early kind of brain development and engagement um materials and um a deep passion of mind shift, which is um where, where you're now focusing kind of more and more energy is trying to combat um vaccine is information and really build kind of public uh trust, but also, you know, ensure that trust is connected to all kind of public knowledge and understanding of what of what vaccines are um and what they aren't.
And I'm happy to talk more about that. And now I'm gonna pause because I think that was a lot of, there was a lot of words kind of said all altogether, but hopefully that gives you a small sense of kind of work we're doing around the world and, and call.
Yeah. No, that, that's wonderful.
Um, I think a lot of really good thing, threats to pull on there. Uh, but I want to be mindful of your time.
So, you know, as far as vaccine education, I, I'd love to go deeper in that. I mean, one of the things we're most proud of at osmosis is we, we work now with youtube, which is, which just this month announced launching youtube Health um led by a physician Dr Garth Graham.
Um because those tech companies obviously have massive distribution which they can use for good or for bad as we've seen recently.
So what, what exactly uh I'd love to hear, you know, I know you all have been helping with vaccination efforts globally and vaccine education.
Well, before anyone, most of society knew what a Coronavirus was, but uh I would love to hear your thoughts on, on how we can be more effective at vaccine education.
And then as the second part, you know, the too small to fail initiative sounds really great. You mentioned, you mentioned, um you know, that's definitely a passion.
So if you can double that uh after the vaccine education response and talk about if you're not too small to fail, that'd be great.
So, you know, Shiv, I, why don't I start with kind of explaining how I first even uh came to understand what a challenge um We, we confront here in the United States and, and also increasingly around the world um around uh misinformation and, and misconceptions about uh vaccines.
So I was pregnant with um I'll tell you just two quick stories. I was pregnant uh with my first child, Charlotte and I was uh coming home from work, walking from the subway station across the park to um our apartment building.
And uh this woman uh came up to me and uh said, you know, are you Clinton? I said, yes, she grabbed my hand.
She, and this does happen a fair bit like people come up and say all sorts of things to me. She grab my hands and she looked deep into my eyes and she said, please don't vaccinate your child.
And I said, I, oh, you know, I was still taken aback. Um I said, you know, thank you for your concern.
II will be vaccinating my child and she said, then you will kill them. I mean, it was such a dramatic and wow, kind of un nuanced response.
And I said, no, II don't, you know, II think thankfully like that is not true. In fact, like I think the vaccines are gonna, are gonna protect them.
Maybe you save their life. So she just looked so disappointed and she walked away and then I had a, a couple of other people say nothing quite that dramatic but also really kind of position the question of, um, whether or not I would vaccinate my child as if it should be a question as if there were like, you know, equally valid views, um, on multiple sides of a debate for a question that I didn't actually think was a question.
I certainly didn't think it was a debate. And then when I, um after I had Charlotte, she was maybe a, a year old.
Um and I was being interviewed um and I had started to speak out about my concerns um as a parent and a, as a public health person as a citizen um that we were facing a, a growing wave aided and embedded um by social media um of a vaccine uh misinformation and then uh correlating uh kind of vaccine distrust and then uh parents opting out of, of vaccinating their kids.
Um and, and an inter this inter this woman interviewing me said, um well, would you let Charlotte play with an unvaccinated child?
And I said no. And she said, isn't that judgmental?
I said yes. Yeah, it is like I am her parent like she is a year old.
Like it is my main job in like to make judgments on her behalf to help like right now, especially because she's a year old, like protect her health and safety.
Um And, and the person me was like, so taken aback, you know, and, and I should have also said, like, and I wouldn't have let her play in a house with an unlocked gun, right?
Like, no, like I'm not gonna willfully expose my kids, you know, to, to danger. Um And so, you know, that then kind of further, um just got me interested and it got me interested kind of, you know, not only as a citizen and as a parent, as an activist, but also kind of as an, as an academic.
And I got like more involved um in, in the literature and in kind of the research and um also in the various efforts, um some of which are quite longstanding here in the United States um to uh really educate um parents, especially on, on vaccines and vaccination.
So, you know, fast forward to the last year. Um And I think we had really started to make progress actually uh to kind of beat back.
Um the, you know, really very worrying uh trends that we had seen, especially on parents opting on the mmr and we were starting to see kind of, you know, vaccination levels tick up again.
You know, wo had warned that, you know, the US could lose our measles free status because we were having so many measles outbreaks um directly related to parents, you know, now you vaccinating their kids against measles and, and we were starting to see real um progress again.
Vaccination rates are starting to go up. Um States were tightening the um the rules for kind of what really qualified as an exception for uh parents to not vaccinate their Children and still be able to send their kids to school.
Um States and cities also started to include private and parochial schools in those regulations. So kind of it became harder for parents who didn't want to vaccinate their kids to kind of, you know, route their kids out of the public system and put them in um schools uh where maybe uh vaccines weren't required.
So all of a sudden, thankfully, like states and cities started to ensure that there wasn't that loophole. Um and then COVID happened and uh tragically, one of the main purveyors of, of vaccine misinformation and um and really distrust I think unfortunately recognized a, a pretty great market opportunity for them and they have massively expanded their, their market chip.
And so there are now, um you know, there are now groups that had, you know, 100s of people on Facebook that now have 100s of thousands of people on Facebook.
They're groups that had, you know, 100s of thousands of people that now have millions of people. And so thankfully, um you know, you mentioned youtube earlier, youtube had um already um prevented the monetization of anti vaccine content.
So they stopped, you know, del Big Tree and Robert Junior and some of the kind of I think great villains in this story from being able to make money off of their kind of antiscience content.
Um and, and Facebook kind of took down uh a lot of the kind of most egregious information about COVID specifically, but they still have allowed a lot of equally egregious, equally kind of unscientific um misinformation to still uh not only exist but really thrive um on, on their platform.
So if you're asking like, what you can do, I think, you know, we have to um we have to continue pressure uh the, the, you know, not, not just the social media companies, but especially especially Facebook and especially youtube um to say, you know, it, well, it's great that you're preventing monetization and maybe you're also kind of preventing kind of these um these sites or this information from kind of showing up the top of the newsfeed.
Um We just saw pretty powerfully that deplatforming works, right? When, when Facebook removed Trump, um hate speech dropped dramatically.
So we know deplatforming works and we really need their partnership right now to deplatform um the, the big single and the big kind of groups of um of anti vaccine uh content.
Um And, and we also need to continue to support, you know, doctors and nurses on the front lines who are having conversations with um parents or Children or, or with anyone for ourselves about questions we might have and, and to equip them with kind of every resource that they need to be able to answer everything from, you know, the questions of um you know, is, is the COVID vaccine actually just to cover for Bill Gates to chip us and track us, which, you know, depending on the survey, like more than 10% of Americans at least think it's a possibility right to how, how you actually address something that you and I know is, is lunacy.
But it is a very real concern tragically that, that people have at the moment to, I think, you know, m much more understandable um concerns that, that people have that the uh that this vaccine was maybe a rush because of uh how quickly um we were able to get to um at least two now, you know, fully uh kind of qualified uh vaccines that are being administered here in the United States and more elsewhere.
So how do you talk about that to, how do you reassure people that while Trump tried to politicize and manipulate the process, um all evidence says that the FDA was not politicized, was not manipulated in its approval process, you know, to very real concerns that people have.
That kind of, this may be like an extended phase three and they're still being experimented on. And, you know, especially for um kind of black Americans that other Americans of color uh who have often found their bodies to be sources of medical experimentation in our country.
Um have very, very, very valid questions there. So I think she, there's so much that we need to do to kind of in your language, really raise the line.
And some of it is um helping support individuals having individual conversations. And some of it is is putting pressure on, on the platforms and also on Amazon, like, why is Amazon still selling, you know, books that are full of endless lies?
Why can you still watch Andrew Wakefield who I think is like one of the great mass murderers of like the last, you know, two decades.
Like, why can you still stream his documentary on, on Amazon? You should not be able to do that because it's not a documentary.
It's like a, I don't even know what the, what the anti documentary word is but whatever that word is like that is what it is.
Yeah, like a that's Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of things we have to do that's uh those are some really insightful points.
And I agree like that's something we, we hope to be able to contribute to as well. Now that we're partnering with, let me know if I can help cause I clearly feel very strongly about all of this for good reason.
Absolutely. I know we're uh at times.
So my last question for you, which is one I know our audience will appreciate is you know, we have an audience of millions of current and future healthcare professionals, people who go into public health from contact tracers to physicians.
Um What advice would you give to them about meeting the challenges of not only this pandemic but moving forward, I think she have that.
Um One of the reasons we were um so vulnerable here in the United States um is because we had uh we had divested effectively from public health over many years.
Um We had divested at a federal level, but also at a state and local level. Um And I think that we're living kind of painfully in a moment where robust public health systems clearly matter.
I mean, even if evidence in the question that you asked, like we still don't have enough contact tracers here in the United States, um you know, just another example of that, we still don't have enough like fill in the blank, right?
We, we still don't have enough tests. We still don't have enough people to administer those tests.
We don't have enough contact tracers, we don't have enough people administering um you know, vaccinations and we don't have enough kind of people working to make vaccines, right.
So we still are not doing enough. Um And I hope that if we are able to do enough uh in this moment, then when we persist beyond this moment, uh we are able to maintain at least some of that capacity um because we know that um this is not the last time that we'll have a zoonotic virus jump kind of into humans, especially as we continue to live and intrude upon and continue to unfortunately exploit more and more of nature.
And so I just think what can any of us do? We can all continue to try to meet this moment, kind of more urgently and more effectively.
And then to ensure that when we are beyond this moment, uh that not only do we not forget the lessons, but that we continue to live in the lessons and that we continue to um kind of recognize uh that um we, we need to kind of have, have public health systems that are complementary, the local kind of state, federal and, and global levels.
Um And that what we do now kind of should help, better prepare us um for the inevitable, the inevitable next time, some really great advice.
And hopefully we as a society won't have short term amnesia that, you know, just this morning, I was reading again about the Fauci effect of 20% increase in enrollments or applications to medical schools.
So hopefully people there will be a lasting effect on public health and infrastructure here in the US and and abroad. So Chelsea, I mean, thank you so much for being generous with your time.
And with that, I'm Shibani. Thank you to our audience for checking out today's show.
Remember to do, do your part to flatten the curve and raise line. We're all in this together.
Take care. Thanks for watching this full episode of Ra Line.
To listen to other full line interviews. Check out osmosis.org/ra Line podcast and don't forget to subscribe and rate wherever you get your podcasts.
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