You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hi Shortwaveers.

If you haven't listened to part one of this conversation, hit the pause button, go back

right now, get yourself caught up, because we're talking to this amazing physician on the

front lines, Dr. Jasmine Marcellan, who is an infectious disease specialist in Omaha,

Nebraska, and is treating serious cases of COVID.

This time last year, she was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

Particularly, you know, for me as a black woman physician during this time, it is compounded

by a feeling of inadequacy of being able to protect my community.

Which for her meant shifting what it meant to be on the front lines, getting out of the

hospital and helping more people get vaccinated.

In the last year, she's had countless conversations with Nebraska's about the vaccine.

How does it work?

And why get it now?

And these conversations have really kept her going.

It really has underscored for me the importance of moving out of the ivory tower of hospital

and of the machine of medicine and how important community engagement and community involvement,

real community involvement is for community health.

So today on the show, how to talk about the vaccine with those who are unvaccinated and

have doubts.

Dr. Jasmine Marcellen draws from her own experiences in parking lots and her parents'

living room to help me navigate a conversation of my own.

...