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 jh.

Jh.edu.

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

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers, and today we focus on the positive.

That is, positive childhood experiences and

their long-term impacts on health and thriving. Dr. Melissa Walls, co-director of the Center for

Indigenous Health and a member of the Boys Fort and Kuchuching First Nation bands joins me to talk about her research on

benevolent childhood experiences in indigenous communities and why it's so important to celebrate

the inherent strengths of individuals, their families, and culture. Let's listen.

Melissa Walls, thank you so much for coming back on public health on call.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me.

So first, could you tell us a little bit about your work?

Sure, happy too.

So I work as part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, and we really have a pretty

simple mission and vision, and that is thriving indigenous communities worldwide. And we really have a pretty simple mission and vision, and that is thriving indigenous communities worldwide.

And we do that by working in partnership with communities on all sorts of public health research, practice, training initiatives.

And our goal is really to advance indigenous well-being and health leadership to the highest level.

So today we're going to talk about something that we don't often focus on,

...