The Next Chapter: Health Equity and Innovation Post-Pandemic
April 8, 2025 | Episode 36
Producer’s Note: The following is an AI-generated transcript of The Wellness Conversation, an OhioHealth Podcast
SPEAKERS: Marcus Thorpe, Dr. Joe Gastaldo, Lindsey Gordon
Lindsey Gordon 00:14
If I asked you, where were you the beginning of March 2020, you'd likely remember. You'd remember vividly. You'd have a story to share. Pause for a moment and think of your story. Where were you when you heard the news that the pandemic was knocking at your door? Welcome to the Wellness Conversation an OhioHealth Podcast. I'm Lindsay Gordon.
Marcus Thorpe 00:34
And I'm Marcus Thorpe. I certainly remember when that time was happening. It was frightening, confusing. You were trying to figure out where we were going from here. World Health Day is celebrated annually in April, and this year it is the five-year anniversary. It's hard to believe of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are joined by Dr. Joe Gastaldo, infectious diseases expert, the former medical director in that field for OhioHealth, and the current vice president of medical affairs for OhioHealth, Dublin Methodist Hospital, as well as Grady Memorial Hospital. This is a name I'm sure that many people recognize somebody who really led us through the pandemic with great dedication and passion. Dr. Gastaldo, thanks for joining. It's good to see you again.
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 01:14
Marcus and Lindsay, it's always great to see both of you.
Marcus Thorpe 01:17
Let's start with how you've been last couple of years. You've stepped away from the infectious disease world and really working on the leadership side of things with Grady and Dublin. Why did you decide to make that move?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 01:29
Yeah, the great question. So you know, during my time in the COVID space, it was a great opportunity for growth. For me, I was really honored and privileged to do what I do for our public on behalf of OhioHealth, and I learned a lot. So I had a great opportunity to essentially become an executive physician and executive leader at a great hospital, Dublin Methodist Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital. So great opportunity, and I'm really happy to be doing what I'm doing today. It was a great time for my learnings, and one of the challenges I had was, how do you talk about something complicated to the public, in a 32nd sound bite? So that was a skill set that took me a time to develop. That was probably the biggest thing that I remembered. You know, oftentimes when I was out in public, people thought I was actually a TV reporter. It's like now I'm just an infectious disease doctor who happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I will say, you know, for me and what I did, I had a huge support of the marketing communications team at OhioHealth behind the scenes. They were the ones who really set this up for me. And, you know, we were an incident command center. I was sequestered there, and we actually had a really good thing going, where the three TV stations and the dispatch were easily able to get a hold of our MarComm team. I was there, so it was easy for me to get away from what I was working on, to do these little media snippets. And I remember there were days that we would do what we call the Fantastic Four, the dispatch and the three TV stations in Columbus. In addition, I was on all kinds of radio things, but it really was an extraordinary experience for me, and something that I'll remember the rest of my life.
Lindsey Gordon 01:59
Well, I remember, you were one of my very first interviews here in Columbus, when I was working in journalism. And at that time I was like fresh legs off the bench. My whole team was kind of exhausted with COVID fatigue. There were daily press conferences with Dr. Vanderhoff and Governor DeWine. And you know, I was in to do those interviews, and I remember thinking, wow, you just have this great way of explaining such complicated information very quickly, in a way that we can digest and understand. When I think back on this time, I think of you like you're one of the faces that comes to mind first, but for you, when you look back, what comes to mind.
Marcus Thorpe 03:50
Do you ever think, I mean, you did a lot of medical school, you studied, you fell in love with infectious diseases, as far as, like, figuring out what it is and that curiosity that brought you to that field, as you were kind of studying everything. Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you would ever be leading front and center when it comes to what was happening with COVID-19?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 04:12
To be honest, no, but I will say, you know, in the infectious disease world, we always learned and talked about a global pandemic. And you know, there happened to be one in the prime of my career, and unfortunately, there's going to be another one someday, and that's just a fact, statistically, that we will happen again someday. I just hope that I'm probably retired by then. But again, I never thought I would actually be front and center. But, you know, I happen to be in the right place at the right time. Things happened for a reason.
Lindsey Gordon 04:42
How challenging was it for you to navigate misinformation? There's so much out there, and I just remember, especially at that beginning, you know, you'd see something on social media and you'd run with it, or you'd see something here or there. How challenging was that for you to be that source of truth? But then also, how do you get that message out there?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 05:00
That's a great question. It's very complicated. And again, the way we consume information today is very different than 10 years ago, 20 years ago, with the internet, with social media, there actually is good material out there, but there also is too a lot of misinformation and disinformation that actually can harm people and harm the general public. So I don't fault people for going down a pathway of misinformation, because there's misinformation out there that looks pretty good. The last thing that you should really do is to blow people off or saying, oh, that's wrong. You really need to be respectful of everybody's different perspectives and then bring them to the table, take the time in them, and then really talk in language that they understand, be honest and transparent. You know, during the pandemic, there was new information coming out every day. Things were changing every day. What we were learning was changing every day, and it's hard to stay current on that when we learn things, when we learn basic arithmetic, one plus one equals two, you learn it once, and it stays that way forever. During the pandemic with this new novel Coronavirus, there were things that we learned initially that didn't apply six months later or a few months later. That's where things were kind of hard to for the public to really understand.
Marcus Thorpe 06:17
I think about five years, you know, I think in year one or two, especially after how long this pandemic took, it was hard to take a step back and go, Okay, what did what did we learn? How have we grown and those kind of things? Because everybody was so burned out, especially those frontline workers that did that every single day. And I think about the families and the lives that were lost here in Columbus and in OhioHealth hospitals and really everywhere. And that's hard to reflect on now that we're five years back, I think it's time to really reflect on things that we've learned about our healthcare system. What do you think we learned during that process to make us better at taking care of patients, whether it was a pandemic, whether it was small tweaks that we knew we needed to make after that, because it was just so heavy and so hard. What do you think we learned as a health care system?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 07:07
I will say, within the central Ohio community, the four health care systems, we can work together for the betterment of the community and get things done. We had many types of collaborations with Ohio State, Mount Carmel, Nationwide Children's Hospital, if you recall, at the convention center that was actually going to be used as a center to put people if needed. So that's the, one of the things that we learned, and I see the residual effect from that with our health care systems, swapping notes and kind of supporting the community in general. Most people think of us as competitors, but we're actually partners. We all have the community's health in mind. I think another thing that I learned personally is speaking about science to the public can be complicated and challenging in the context that you know, we're talking about very detailed things, molecules and immunity and all kinds of things. Keeping that down into a language that the public can understand in a short snippet can be challenging, and oftentimes you have to be respectful of people who don't necessarily understand it, where they need extra time to have a conversation with.
Lindsey Gordon 08:15
I remember vividly you explaining monoclonal antibodies to me, and I was like, Okay, I first have to learn how to say that correctly. That's step one. But you did a great job of explaining what that was at that time and how that was going to be a game changer. Paxlovid, it was that time too, from your perspective, kind of dovetailing off of Marcus's last question, What lesson was the most significant from your perspective of how we reshaped our approach to health care?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 08:43
Yeah, again, I could do a whole podcast on that. Yeah, the things that we have learned really I think when push comes to shove, we can work together to get things done. The other thing that I really have an appreciation for, too is how we consume information today, with the internet out there being such a vast array of good information, but also can lead to a vast array of confusion for people when it comes to trying to understand what's going on. Another thing that I think I learned too is when people are fearful. When people are fearful, they're worried about their family, their loved ones, people they work with, people sometimes under stress, sometimes get out of character, on how they react when they are under stress. I've seen the best in people throughout the pandemic here at OhioHealth and the public and our community, but I also saw people too really under stress, where sometimes, you know, they needed a hug, or they needed extra time to be spoken to about how they're feeling.
Marcus Thorpe 09:43
I never got to ask you this during that whole entire time that our team worked so closely with you, how did you have moments like you spent time in ICUs and talking to front line staff and then talking to the public and the governor's office and all those things when you would get home and have just. A moment to yourself. Did you get emotional? Was it hard for you like, this is what you study, then this is what you do. But was it heavy for you to sit back and go, Oh my gosh, we're this is chaos.
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 10:15
Great question. Marcus, it was heavy for everybody. You know, people in the ICU. I have many friends, doctors and nurses in the ICU, people fearful of coming home. I had many friends who were physicians, who would come home. They were so worried about their family, they either stay in a hotel or stay in the basement of their house, not had contact with anybody their family members. So I didn't have to deal with any of that, per se, because I went home and just live my life. But, yeah, it does weigh on you, but what kept me going was really knowing that we were there for our community. You know, I signed up to be a doctor. People sign up to be health care workers, and I think if you sign up to be a health care worker, no matter what your role is, it's in your DNA to really commit to being a health care worker and be part of a team that's really important to deal with our community during the pandemic.
Lindsey Gordon 11:07
I remember at one point in the in the COVID conversation, in the COVID coverage, there was a talk about, well, we have enough beds if there were to be the next surge or whatnot, but we're running into a problem. And this just was not just OhioHealth. This was across the country. We don't have enough providers to staff the beds. We're losing people in droves because some were just they couldn't do it anymore. What work is being done to address that, to build that pipeline? I mean, we already saw a shortage in nurses and doctors way before the pandemic, and then the pandemic accelerated that. So what's being done now?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 11:42
Yeah, that's a great question. Lindsay, so one of the one of the residual effects of COVID, is really a discussion on resiliency and well being. Health care workers, doctor, nurse, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, lab, a nursing assistant. They are stressful jobs. We take care of vulnerable patients, and we see people under a lot of duress and emotional duress, and that can weigh on you after a while. And we all have regular lives. We all have challenges that we're dealing with, and collectively, sometimes for people, you do need help. So during COVID, what we really saw at OhioHealth nationally is putting the resources into well being, and that means different things to different people. How do you define well being? What are you doing for yourself? Do you need someone to talk to? Do you need a counselor? We have those resources in place at OhioHealth for all healthcare workers, and that's actually a national trend that we're seeing throughout the country.
Marcus Thorpe 12:41
What does COVID look like now? What will it look like over time? You know, we heard, well, it'll be a lot like the seasonal flu. It'll be something that's always there that some people get. We've had people that, even in our department, that just got COVID for the very first time. They thought so it's interesting that people are still getting it. Some say it really knocks them down for four days, even with this latest little round, explain to folks what we're seeing and what we will see kind of moving forward with this thing.
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 13:10
Yeah, so the virus that causes COVID-19, is not going away. It'll continue to mutate. And what we think, although it hasn't happened yet, eventually, we hope it'll turn into a seasonal respiratory virus. Now, there's some caveats to that. We're not there yet. What we're seeing now is usually upticks in COVID when people are indoors more. So we typically see that in the summertime, when it's real hot in the south, people are indoors more, and then in the wintertime, I think the big thing now where we are now in March of 2025, is influenza. COVID is very much in the back burner Now, as far as hospitalizations go, the bigger thing we're seeing now in the hospital, or hospitalizations from influenza A So, to answer your question, Marcus, it's not going away. We're still studying it, and it still is a issue for vulnerable people, elderly people, those are the weakened immune systems. Those are frail. And again, I don't really don't want anybody to be COVID Because there's concerns with long COVID people. And again, I wouldn't want you to be out for four or five days under the weather for a while, because you don't know really what that could do to you, as far as sequela or complications.
Lindsey Gordon 14:20
Has it felt like five years?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 14:23
More like 50 years? Maybe you know, when I reflect on that time in my life, it really was a time warp, because there was non stop topics of the month, whether it be the virus, monoclonal antibodies, the new variants, the vaccines, new vaccines, therapeutics. It was always a topic of the month for a while, and once we got to the point where we had different vaccine types coming out, it kind of subdued a little bit, but for close to three years, it was always a hot topic of the month.
Marcus Thorpe 15:01
I think the state, looking back, really did an amazing job, kind of front center with everything and and very upfront and regular communication. How much do you think that helped save lives? And the fact that that it was out there so much and there were so many expert voices that were doing what needed to be done?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 15:18
Yeah, I thought it had a huge impact. Marcus, you know Governor DeWine, his team, OhioHealth, my counterparts at Mount Carmel and Ohio State. We are local faces of community. People know me, and it's really important to have leadership from the state level, but also from the local level of what's going on. But the communication, I think, is key. But again, you want to keep the communication simple, and it's also dependent upon people listening. And again, we all had fatigue after so many years of hearing things. People had COVID fatigue. People wanted to get on with their lives. People were confused by the nuancing of the messaging as we learn more information. So again, I think public health could talk all they want, but it's really up to the people to understand that and take the time to listen.
Lindsey Gordon 16:07
My kids were truly pandemic babies. I mean, they know no world different, you know. And now we're at the point where my son's five, he's starting to ask questions about it, like, what was the pandemic? Why were we locked in for so long? Why do I have to get this vaccine all the time, you know? And I wonder, you know, I kind of have fatigue answering the questions, in a way, because I'm like, oh yeah, we lived it. Let's move on, you know, let's look forward. But why is it important to have these discussions, to take the time to answer thoughtfully and not forget, I mean, we can't forget that this happened, because it reshaped so much.
Marcus Thorpe 16:41
I think after five years now, there's a lot of things that we focused on with COVID that we can probably take now into our everyday lives when it comes to our health and kind of weeding through some of the junk that's out there, and what's truthful, what's not. What advice would you give people that are listening beyond COVID When it comes to taking charge of their own health and doing the right research and talking to the right people. What can people do on a daily basis or a weekly or monthly basis that will help them stay healthy have the right information for them and their families?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 16:41
Absolutely not, you know, this is World History. You know, that's kind of the history books will put this in the same context of influenza, 1918, world wars. This that the other I mean we are living. We live through history. When we are senior citizens, we'll reflect back upon that again. You have to always know the history. History has a way of repeating itself. And like I said earlier, there will be another pandemic, and we have to kind of go back to us living through that. For other people, it's going to be the first time they've been through that. And so it's good always to talk about that and keep front and center things that historically, we've all been through. Yeah, great question again. Take care of yourself. That's a simple sentence, but it means a lot. Take care of yourself. Do you have a primary care provider, are you up to date on your blood pressure screenings, your cholesterol screenings, your vaccines, your cancer screenings, your mammograms, your colonoscopies, those are the best things you could do, as far as taking care of yourself. And again, you can't out healthy, not getting an infection, but if you are healthier, in general, your body is in a better place to fight the infection if you get it. So taking care of yourself is a big thing. We talked about that during the pandemic. But again, for people who have chronic health problems, you cannot out healthy not getting COVID. And I think a lot of people sometimes would emphasize the health part of it. Those are very important. But again, you still want to stay current on managing your blood pressure, vaccines, cancer, screens, all those things.
Marcus Thorpe 18:49
I think that's a little bit of my worry too. I have some physician friends of people kind of taking their health a little more for granted currently, right? The COVID pandemic is over, and I can relax a little bit, and maybe they aren't going to those screenings that they normally would have, that they put off during the pandemic. Have they jumped back on that wagon? Are you worried that people might be kind of taking their health for granted a little bit right now?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 19:10
I do, because we all use a lot of health care during the COVID years. You know, for a while at OhioHealth, it took us a while to catch up on colonoscopies, and I know there are many people out there who are still delinquent. So again, we have to get back to what we're supposed to be doing to take care of ourselves and the totality of our physical space, our mental space, and everything that really goes involved. And again, we have to do that for each other. And I think it's okay to talk about that with your friends or your loved ones, your family, about all of those things you that we all know you should be doing.
Lindsey Gordon 19:40
What do you appreciate more now than you did five years ago?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 19:45
Being connected to people you know in my role at OhioHealth, it's an honor and privilege to do what I do. I have a great work family. My work family really exploded to include both of you during COVID 19, it was really an honor. Honor for me to connect with people in the community. I still have people come up to me and say, Hey, I remember you from the COVID times and everything, if I will say to I had one, a wonderful interaction with a, my most memorial interaction with a with someone in public was I was going to Mansfield to a college up there. On my way back, I stopped at the gas station up by the outlet mall, and I was in there getting gas, and I had my mask on, and I went in, and there was an individual at the cash register who recognized me with my mask on. She was pregnant, and she goes, Oh, you're that doctor on TV. Can I have some of your time? And I'm not sure what she wanted. She asked me to step aside, and I talked to her in private. She was pregnant, and it's when the vaccine came out, and she was really under a lot of anxiety to decide whether or not to get the vaccine. She was getting her care at Planned Parenthood, and you could tell it really meant a lot to her emotionally. She was actually crying a little bit. So we had a nice conversation. Obviously, I told her, as a pregnant woman, she should get the vaccine. So she got it. Three or four months later, I went back to that gas station, and she was there too, and she came up to give me a big hug and thanked me for advising her to get the vaccine. She had a beautiful baby boy, and things did well. That for me, was well worth all of the effort I did that one interaction with the patient really brought to me such a delightful feeling of connecting with one person.
Marcus Thorpe 21:27
That's amazing. Yeah, me too. Well, I just wanted to thank you personally. I know Lindsay does too. You shared so much with us when it comes to information, but you shared your family with us, your parents, all the family dinners that used to have, and it was really special to watch you care for them, and to care for this community, and really to help us understand what was going on. It was chaos. That's exactly how it was, and you were that calming voice and full of information and the source of truth that we needed. And I just can't thank you enough. It was, it was so settling to have somebody who spoke in truth, in fact, and that was so nice for us.
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 22:09
I appreciate the comments again. I can think for my life, I will have such great memories that I bring to me that I'll try forever. So thank you for that.
Marcus Thorpe 22:20
Yeah, it was. It was an unbelievable time. I hope we never have to do something like that again, but we know that we'll be better prepared for whatever comes our way thanks to what happened with our with our frontline staff and with our experts.
Lindsey Gordon 22:33
Absolutely, we're going to wrap up. But is there anything else you'd like to share one last message before we go?
Dr. Joe Gastaldo 22:38
Just to thank everybody. OhioHealth, our partners in the community, Columbus public health, I'm so proud of the work that we did to come together to really support our community.
Marcus Thorpe 22:49
Our media too. They did a great job of getting messaging out there too. I mean, we had great partnerships during that time and again, great facts and what was going on. And we couldn't have done it without them and our public health partners and the state. It really was a true team effort.
Lindsey Gordon 23:04
It was unlike anything I'd seen before.
Marcus Thorpe 23:08
Well Dr. Gastaldo thank you so much. We appreciate your time, and we thank you for joining us for this episode of the Wellness Conversation an OhioHealth podcast. Before we wrap up, we invite you to follow us on all major social channels so you can stay up to date on new episodes and other health and wellness topics. If you're looking for more information on OhioHealth services and locations, be sure to visit ohiohealth.com.
Lindsey Gordon 23:27
The information in this episode will also be available on the podcast page. Also be sure to subscribe and join the conversation. And one final note before we say goodbye, we are just getting started. Reviews and ratings help us keep the conversation going with you, and allow others to find us and join the conversation too. As always, thank you for joining us.