Rochelle Rivas and Brian Spicker: Maricopa Community Colleges (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out our raise the line interview series.

In which me and my cohost osmosis chief Medical Officer Dr Rishi Desai 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'll watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Shabani and today on a raised line, I'm happy to be joined by two leaders affiliated with one of the nation's largest community college systems.

The Maricopa Community College District, which contains 10 schools located in the Phoenix Arizona area and that educates approximately 200,000 students a year.

Brian Sper is the interim president and CEO of the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation. And Rochelle Rivas is the Director of healthcare Education for the district.

Ok. So can we start with you Rochelle because you, you do healthcare education.

How did you uh wind up at Maricopa Community Colleges District? And then we'll turn right over to you, Brian prior to being in higher education.

My education and background is in public health. I did a lot of work around preventative health care and education into underserved communities, which led me to working with Maricopa Community College, specifically at South Mound Community College, where I coordinated bilingual nursing fellowship program.

And I was in that role for about 10 years. Um For the past 66 years, I've been at the district office um serving in many capacities in the last couple of years.

I've been the District Director for Health Care Education. For me, it was always uh I've been doing this since I was basically 20 opening group homes for the developmentally disabled back in the seventies when people were living in institutions and seeing the impact that a community can have around really improving lifelong outcomes for individuals uh has really been important to me um which, which really led me then to work in the HIV AIDS arena building clinical trials here in Arizona in the nineties.

And it was community based and we were, we were doing the research on protease inhibitors and so many other emerging uh drugs when we didn't even have a university hospital at the time uh to draw upon.

So a lot of passion there, a lot about fixing the wrongs in, in society and health care. Uh and the the need for education, the need for empiricism and science to really drive uh solutions forward in our community.

So I'm so privileged to be at the uh Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation to work with Rochelle and others to really move solutions for or whether they're individual or systemic.

What advice would you give to somebody considering a career or already in a career pathway uh to become healthcare providers in some or, or at least to join the healthcare workforce in some way.

What I would say is be adaptive, watch the emerging trends, lifelong learning uh is really critical in this um who who would have guessed that uh the Coronavirus risk would be changing so much in healthcare delivery as well as how we approach health care, um demographics matter.

Uh And, and so not only being great at what the practice is that you're doing, but keeping your head up and look at, look at where systems are changing or where today's solutions may not be.

Tomorrow's answers I would add to Brian. Um is that, you know, with the pandemic, uh there's a lot of uncertainty and it, it is scary to enter into a healthcare profession at this time, but it's also an opportunity for learning.

Um We, we have an opportunity to see firsthand your the prote the profession that the student is entering, how they are adapting and responding to a world, um a world pandemic, we're learning together and every day there's something new and innovative to help deliver patient care.

So continue to be engaged and excited about the profession that you're entering. Thanks for watching this preview of raised line to hear the full interview.

Check out all of our podcasts and subscribe to the series. Please go to osmosis.org/raised Line podcast or listen wherever you get your podcasts.