Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers.

Today, community health workers and research.

Donald Young Jr. is a community health worker who advises researchers from the very start of a community-based research project to the dissemination of the results.

He joins Dr. Josh Sharstein to talk about how he came to this work and what researchers need to know. Let's listen.

Donald Young, Jr., it is great to have you here in the studio, Public Health on Call. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Josh. Thank you for

inviting me to this space in the historic Bloomberg School of Public Health to discuss community

health work and public health with you. Well, you are very much an expert on that topic, and I've been aware of the various roles you've had, but our listeners are not aware. So could you maybe introduce yourself?

I'm Donald. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. I'm from Park Heights, as a matter of fact, a small subset in Baltimore. And I started doing research with the

Baltimore City Health Department for a needs assessment. We were quite overdue for a needs

assessment. I partnered with the HIV planning council for Baltimore City. And I ended up being

the project manager on that research, on that study. It was really important to have somebody with lived experience to be out there to make the connection and to build the trust.

And when you say lived experience, what does that phrase me?

Lived experience, Josh, is a term used for individuals who have experience in dealing with the social determinants of health,

and dealing with chronic issues like substance abuse or chronic disease issues.

They've dealt with it, they've overcome it, and continue to work through it because it's a continuing process.

But we get the training and some core competencies that allow us the ability to get into our community

and make a connection that often researchers can't make without that person with lived experience.

Now, from there, you moved on to a whole bunch of different roles.

...