Carolyn Aidman and Will Newman

[00:09] WILL NEWMAN: My name is Will Newman. My age is 23. Today's date is January 9, 2022. My partner today is Doctor Carolyn Aidman, and she is my volunteer mentor with the Urban Health Initiative.

[00:21] CAROLYN AIDMAN: My name is Carolyn Aidman. My age is 73. Today's date is January 9, 2022. My partner today is Will Newman, and they are my mentee and volunteer at Emory University's Urban Health Initiative.

[00:40] WILL NEWMAN: So, doctor Aidman it's nice to finally meet you in person. Just been communicating via FaceTime and phone calls because of COVID and everything like that. But today we're going to talk about the rolling suitcase drive, one of the projects with the urban health initiative. Before we get started on that, could you tell me a little bit more about yourself?

[00:59] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes, I can. So I was born in Ohio, moved to Miami when the family moved south to avoid the weather, and ended up getting three degrees at Florida State University, bachelor's, master's, and doctorate. And I've had a whole variety of jobs, but the one here at Emory is the most fascinating. I've been at Emory for eleven years, and every day has been really an exciting new opportunity.

[01:31] WILL NEWMAN: That's awesome. Yeah. So, and I'll just kind of introduce myself a little bit, too, before we get started. So I was born in Athens, Georgia. I attended the University of Georgia, where I studied economics. Funny enough, as I was approaching graduation, I had a change of heart and wanted to take a quick 180 and decided that I want to pursue medicine, which led me to being enrolled in the post baccalaureate pre medical program at Agnes Scott College. I'm hoping to matriculate into medical school in 2023. And that's kind of what led me to the urban health initiative. When I moved up to the Atlanta area, I was looking for ways to volunteer that I thought would have a meaningful impact. And the urban health initiative stood out to me and was actually accepting volunteers despite the COVID issues. And that's kind of what got me started. And here we are. But more specifically, what is the urban health initiative and what is kind of their mission and what are the kinds of things they do?

[02:29] CAROLYN AIDMAN: The urban Health initiative began when one of the former Emory presidents was talking about what a great program Emory had in global health. And doctor Carlos Del Rio and Bill Saxon and Nadine Kaslow said, well, we've got global health issues just a few miles from here. How about urban health? And so Doctor Charles Moore and doctor Jada Bussy Jones and doctor Bill Sexton took it on and they hired me, and they said within the first few days, we want to have a better connection in community. So I went out to the rolling Bends apartment community, and I asked nine women, how do you get to the grocery store? And nine women said, we call the ride Mandev. And I said, who's the ride man? And they said, that's the neighbor who will take you to the store. And when you get out of the car, you have 30 minutes, because he sets an alarm clock and you have to run through the store. We call it jog shopping and be out in 30 minutes or he might leave us. And it's a $30 ride. Well, this was before Uber, so we developed something called the transportation ministry, and it was paid for by Trinity Presbyterian Church. And Reverend Larry Hill of Northwest youth power had a bus. And so we started taking people to the grocery store. And what we discovered was they really thought they had to jog, shop and run. And when we said, no, you have all the time you need. I saw them say, that's good. And then they ran to the paper towels. So I run to the paper towels after them, and I say, well, why are you picking those paper towels? They looked at me like I wasn't too smart. And they said, they're the cheapest. And I said, no, they're nothing. They said, they're ninety nine cents. I said, that's right. But if you look at the label price comparison, this one that has twice as much is $1.21. So for $0.22 more, you get twice as much. They'd never seen it before. Then they left me, and they ran to the cereal, and they all grabbed one cereal, and I said, well, why did you pick that one? They said, it's the cheapest. And I said, no, it's not. Look at the nutrition label. Yours has 3 grams of protein. Mine has ten. So for $0.20, you get seven more grams of protein with the serving. And they had never known.

[05:01] WILL NEWMAN: They were too busy trying to get in and out so they wouldn't lose their ride. Man, that's awesome. So it all started with the transportation ministry. And here we are. Now. How long ago was that?

[05:10] CAROLYN AIDMAN: That started 2011.

[05:12] WILL NEWMAN: 2011. So it's been ten or eleven years now.

[05:14] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes.

[05:15] WILL NEWMAN: We have a lot more projects with the UHI, which we'll talk touch on towards the end. But the specific project that we've been working on is the rolling suitcase drive. So could you talk about that, its particular mission and kind of what we do with it?

[05:29] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes. I was at the Atlanta day shelter for women and Children. That was off Ethel. It was on Ethel street, off Northside Drive. And I noticed that everyone was walking around with a big trash bag. And so I asked, what is in your trash bag? And one mother pulled out. She said, my driver's license, my mother's wedding picture, my only decent pair of shoes and a few other items. And her son was there, and he said, in my bag, I have a teddy bear, I have some underwear, I have some slippers. And it really upset me. So I went to the social workers, and I told them I had just replaced my two rolling suitcases with some lighter weight ones. Could I donate them? And they said, yes, that would be wonderful. So I started collecting suitcases and getting churches and Kiwanis clubs and other groups to collect suitcases. And every time we have donated, we made a picture of how many we were up to. And as of last week, we were up to delivering 717 rolling suitcases.

[06:45] WILL NEWMAN: That's incredible. Wow. So how do y'all go about picking up the suitcases? Do you just drive door to door? Do they bring them to a particular location? How does that kind of work?

[06:54] CAROLYN AIDMAN: It really depends upon the group. We have three Kiwanis clubs that will get everybody to bring their suitcases. And then I may go there and we do a caravan and take them over to the drop off point. And the drop off is easier now because the day shelter area was bought out by the Atlanta Union mission. So now on Bolton street, they have a way to very easily drop off suitcases and other donations.

[07:28] WILL NEWMAN: How do you keep track of the number you had donated? 717 is a lot.

[07:34] CAROLYN AIDMAN: We have everybody hold up a card with a picture on it that says the number and the date.

[07:40] WILL NEWMAN: Gotcha.

[07:40] CAROLYN AIDMAN: So we've been doing that for really quite a few years. So we have a great collage.

[07:45] WILL NEWMAN: That's awesome.

[07:46] CAROLYN AIDMAN: I like to see that. One thing that's interesting is people keep saying, well, if you're going to collect suitcases, why don't you collect umbrellas? And why don't you collect tents? And what I said was, we are narrow casting rather than broadcasting. We can do one thing really well, and if someone else would like to do tents or umbrellas or something like that, I invite them.

[08:08] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah, that would kind of decrease the number of suitcases you could gather if you were busy getting tents and umbrellas and whatnot. So if a church or any individual organization or individual who isn't affiliated with an organization wants to donate to the drive, how can they kind of go about doing that?

[08:26] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Well, they have two choices. They can get in touch with either you or me at the urban Health initiative, and we'll tell them what number to put on it and where to go on Bolton street. Or they can have us come and collect them and we can bring them when we bring others.

[08:46] WILL NEWMAN: Yep. So that's kind of something we've run into lately, is issues trying to get donations because of COVID a lot of churches aren't really able to get their congregations to get as involved because a lot of them have gone on to online worship. But we're hoping that'll kind of go away. So what are some of the events the rolling suitcase drive has done over the years?

[09:08] CAROLYN AIDMAN: In the past, well, we have done Martin Luther King Day events, but this year we have not found much interest. And I'm not really surprised because most people are not going out and doing that sort of work with the Omicron being so contagious. But we do know that for Valentine's Day, there's a college sorority and fraternity that are getting together and they're going to be doing one for the entire university.

[09:35] WILL NEWMAN: That's awesome.

[09:36] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes. And we can ask sororities and fraternities. We can ask people when they go home to ask grandma if she has any extra in her attic and bring them back to campus and we can provide them a drop off place on campus.

[09:52] WILL NEWMAN: What we could do, we could maybe make it like a competition among the fraternities and sororities, see who can donate the most. That'd be good.

[09:59] CAROLYN AIDMAN: That would be great.

[10:00] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah, that'd be awesome. So, yeah, and I think, you know, with COVID obviously people aren't going to be as willing to donate, but I think it's just so important for us to continue to try to donate at least a little bit.

[10:13] CAROLYN AIDMAN: I think people are willing to donate.

[10:16] WILL NEWMAN: They're willing to, but they're hindered because, again, the online worship, you can't get your entire congregation to get as involved, bring their suitcases to church on Sunday like they normally would.

[10:28] CAROLYN AIDMAN: That's right.

[10:28] WILL NEWMAN: But I think even getting one or two here and there, that's one or two people who now have a suitcase, you know what I mean? Because we don't know when Covid's going away. And if we were to postpone any donation efforts for, say, an entire year, that's so many suitcases that we've now not donated. So we'll see how it works, but I think we're going to find a workaround, hopefully. So what do you kind of envision for the future of the rolling suitcase drive? Could you see us partnering with maybe some larger Atlanta corporations.

[10:58] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes. In fact, I've been talking to Macy's, and we made a presentation to Macy's at Cumberland Mall, and they have a few suitcases for us to pick up. But I think we're going to have to get past this phase of COVID before we're going to be able to get the. There are several other stores that are interested, like wherever Macy's around the community.

[11:21] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah, that's awesome. And I mean, Atlanta is a business hub. There are so many companies here that I think would love to do that kind of thing again. You said the fraternities and sororities. If we reached out to Georgia tech, Emory, Georgia State, every school, I mean, so many students who would be willing to donate.

[11:38] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Right. And we have the opportunity to offer volunteer experiences that will do things, for example, with you. When you get ready to apply to medical school, you'll have some great stories of the work that you did with the urban Health initiative in learning about diversity and equity and inclusion.

[11:57] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. So that's funny you bring that up. So I'm actually hoping to go to Mercer University, and they have a huge mission. Their mission is particular to kind of alleviating the rural health care disparities in Georgia. And I always thought, because I grew up in a more rural area outside of Athens and Bogart, Georgia, I always thought Atlanta was fine. Like there was, the healthcare was great. There were no issues. But there's a lot of equity issues, as you said. And I think the UHI is doing a really good job of kind of alleviating those. So going into that, what are some of the other projects that the UHI has done and is doing currently?

[12:38] CAROLYN AIDMAN: One of the interesting projects from the past goes along with this idea of asking the people what's going on and trying to understand, and that's called community based participatory research. And what that says is that the researchers, in this case, us, invite the other people, the ones who are the subjects, to also be researchers, to learn how to use the kinds of needs assessment tools that we use. And so everyone has the opportunity to be able to sort of study a topic. And that's important, I think.

[13:25] WILL NEWMAN: Oh, yeah, research is huge.

[13:27] CAROLYN AIDMAN: So one of the projects we've done over the years is community gardening. And we discovered after having had a garden at supergiant foods on the west side, we had the first organic teaching garden, co located with a grocery store in all of the United States. And one day we found out they were being foreclosed on. So we lost our space so we moved over to a place called, let's see, we moved over to Walmart and on the west side, and that turned out to be a fairly difficult space because we really didn't have all the water and electricity we needed. And at some point, Walmart was ready to take the land back. So we ended up at Magnolia Arms daycare, and then we ended up at a laundromat. And so what we have discovered is if you're a tenant farmer, you have to be ready to move at any time. And so now we'll be looking for a place where we can work more permanently. And one of the great programs we have is called sprouting readers. And we help young people learn how to read or read to others using books that are related to agriculture. And we've had a youth entrepreneurial agriculture program where lots of young people have learned how to farm and plant, as well as to create products they can sell.

[15:02] WILL NEWMAN: Have you all affiliated with any local elementary schools or anything like that with the reading program?

[15:08] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes, we are involved with lots of school programs, but these are generally. These programs are done out at the gardens.

[15:19] WILL NEWMAN: Gotcha. Cool. So you had actually told me about, really another interesting project was the cancer sniffing dogs.

[15:27] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Right?

[15:27] WILL NEWMAN: Which I had never heard. So could you kind of elaborate on that?

[15:30] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes. I was reading a story about the firefighters union or association wanted to know if younger people were being exposed to cancer as firefighters. So it turns out that the firefighters association set up a program where you could go to the firehouse and breathe into a mask for ten minutes and then send the mask into the laboratory, and the dogs would tell whether there's any cancer in the system. And so the fire chief went, plunked down his $25, breathed into the mask for ten minutes, and six weeks later, he got a letter in the mail that said the dogs indicated that he had cancer. Well, he didn't feel bad, but he said, I will do the protocol. So the first thing is you go to the dermatologist, because most cancer is skin cancer. And he was clear. Then he got a colonoscopy. He was clear. Then he got a mammography. He was clear. So he went through everything, and he just thought he got a false positive. Well, his back was bothering him. And he had a radiologist who was looking around, and he said, look, these dogs said, I have cancer. Would you look around and see if you see any cancer? And the radiologist said, oh, yes, indeed. You've got a little bit of cancer right here in your bladder.

[17:06] WILL NEWMAN: He would have never known if it.

[17:08] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Weren'T for the dog, he wouldn't have known for years.

[17:10] WILL NEWMAN: That's amazing.

[17:11] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Right? And then another woman who I've talked to quite a bit had breast cancer in her family. So when she came up with a positive, she thought it would be breast cancer. She went through all the tests. They couldn't find it. 18 months later, her mammogram showed a little teeny bit of cancer that the dog showed a year and a half earlier.

[17:31] WILL NEWMAN: Geez. And you said they're using that now for Covid detection as well?

[17:35] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yeah. They're taking dogs to stadiums and to airports. And if the dog sits down in front of you, you probably have got to go get isolated.

[17:46] WILL NEWMAN: Wow.

[17:46] CAROLYN AIDMAN: What's fascinating, though, is it turns out that bees can also smell cancer. Somebody developed a glass chamber, and if they put the breath sample in there and there's cancer and the bees smell it, they go into one particular chamber, and they can be trained in 4 hours.

[18:05] WILL NEWMAN: Golly. Never knew that. Never would have guessed. So it's something else I kind of wanted to touch on. So do you know what the Atlanta homeless demographic looks like compared to other states in the country, how it compares? Is it worse? Is it better? I was just curious. You don't know off the top of your head? Yeah. So you are a certified, you're a labor and delivery doula. Are there any sort of projects involving labor and delivery?

[18:36] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes.

[18:36] WILL NEWMAN: Women's healthcare?

[18:37] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Yes. As it turns out, Georgia is one of the worst in the country for women having a morbidity and mortality during labor and delivery, and up until one year postpartum. And so Georgia is one of the worst, and the United States is one of the worst in the industrialized nations. So we have been trying to have our doulas volunteer and connect up with patients, and so then they will. Some of them, like the. The doulas in DeKalb county, are also resource mothers, or more moms is what they're called. And as soon as they meet a girl or a woman who is pregnant, they'll stick with her throughout the pregnancy, the labor and delivery, and the first year. And if the girl or young woman comes to the classes, she might get a year's worth of diapers for her participation, which is a big deal.

[19:41] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. So why is it the United States struggles so much with that compared to other industrialized nations?

[19:48] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Well, there's a big inequity in what happens with women of color, and they are sometimes perceived as their pain isn't as real or their complaints aren't together. And so they often just have not as good of healthcare, and if there's a doula there to support it, then they find they're more likely to have better healthcare.

[20:21] WILL NEWMAN: And were you a doula in the Atlanta area, or was that while you were in Florida still?

[20:25] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Well, I started off in about 1970. Someone invited me to come to a birth and just be a helper. I took pictures and massage and things like that, and I was good at it. It. And I was interested in it, so I just kept doing it. Over the years, something that's strange that has come up, though, is several of us have gotten messages from someone who says she's young and she's going into labor and she's going to go to the hospital, and she doesn't have anyone with her, and would we be her virtual doula? So I said yes when that came. And I worked with her for a few hours and I noticed she was doing a lot of typing. Uh, it hurts. It hurts. I never heard her voice. I didn't ask her for money. And I was wondering if maybe she was doing some sort of research about how long can you keep someone engaged without paying? But when I put that out on the doula pages, they said, no, this is a fetish that people will call up and try to think about all the things that happened below the waist.

[21:30] WILL NEWMAN: Oh, my gosh.

[21:31] CAROLYN AIDMAN: I know, I know. I was shocked. I'm so naive.

[21:35] WILL NEWMAN: The 21st century for you, right?

[21:37] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Right.

[21:37] WILL NEWMAN: I was thinking that was some sort of amazing telehealth advancement with you being able to do that, but.

[21:45] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Well, I have done it. Where I saw the woman, I saw her husband. I talked to them. We took videos, but this was not the same. This is a major surprise.

[21:56] WILL NEWMAN: Never know, right?

[21:58] CAROLYN AIDMAN: You never know.

[21:59] WILL NEWMAN: So, yeah, I mean, that's most of my questions here. Anything else in particular that you wanted to cover? I mean, we talked a little bit about what you envisioned for the future of the rolling suitcase drive. You had mentioned partnering with universities and corporations and things like that. I mean, I'm excited to see what we can do in the future. Hopefully, this can go for years and years and years.

[22:24] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Wouldn't it be great if people, there weren't so many homeless people that they had somewhere to go and people to help them and be supportive? You know, at one point, our facilitator asked, have you ever been homeless? And I haven't ever been homeless, but a friend of mine who also worked at the Florida legislature and I were down in Miami walking around Biscayne Bay going, if we were homeless, where would we hide? Where would we sleep tonight? And she says, I know, carolyn. Let's just call my sister Phyllis, and she'll come get us. And we realized that we had resources. We had someone we could call who would come and get us and help us not be in that condition. And a lot of these people don't have that kind of support.

[23:15] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. And a lot of it just has to do with what, the kind of situation you were born into. I mean, that was, for me, at least, completely out of my control. I could have easily been born into a family who was struggling and who eventually was homeless. Unfortunately, I wasn't, which kind of led me to the suitcase drive. And Daniel mentioned feelings, and why do we choose to volunteer? Why do I choose to volunteer with this particular organization? Why do you work with them? I think as someone who has been lucky enough to be privileged and having never been homeless gives you the responsibility of needing to give back to those who are. And, I mean, some of those people are young. They're young kids. You know, they've lived their whole life that way. And I think providing them the dignity of a suitcase is what might seem like a very small thing, goes a very, very long way for someone who doesn't have a home and has no way of transporting their valuables and things like that. But, yeah, that's cool. But, yeah. Again, I think we've covered mostly everything. Do you mind if I ask Carolyn? Would you look at will and tell him, what was it like your first day, or maybe first couple of weeks at UHi? What did you do? What did you do on your first day?

[24:37] CAROLYN AIDMAN: My first day at UHI, I read all the paperwork that had ever been created about it, and I said, I need to get out there into the community. So within the first few days, I was at rolling bends apartment community, which is really quite isolated. Transportation, isolated food, isolated opportunities for advancement, isolated. I went to the homeless shelter. I went and talked to people about how they got to the hospital when they were in labor. So it was very exciting because it sort of being an intrapreneur, like an entrepreneur, but all the inside stuff. And so the people that I work with appreciated it and wanted me to keep meeting people and keep connecting and keep advocating for those who might need suitcases or might need transportation or might need labor and delivery support.

[25:44] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. I think getting out in the community is the biggest thing you can do. You can only do so much from a desk. You know, getting out and talking with people, seeing what they actually need, goes a long way.

[25:53] CAROLYN AIDMAN: And the seeing what they actually need is an art, because you have to check with them, because if they just need one little thing, they don't need it. They can get it. But how do they develop a system so that this isn't a problem forever?

[26:08] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. Well, would you look at Carolyn and maybe tell her, what was your first day of volunteering? Like, what did you see? Would you feel. Yeah. So again, I said this offline, but I started very recently, and lately, all I've really been doing, we haven't had a ton of in person volunteering yet, but I've been reaching out to local congregations, trying to get, gather support for the rolling suitcase drive, which led me to realize, okay, a lot of these congregations are going online. They're not able to donate. So that's kind of the extent of what we've done so far. And then we set up this story corps meeting, and now we're here doing this, trying to just get the word out there for the mission of the UHI and the rolling suitcase drive. And, yeah, so hopefully I can get out there kind of like you did on your first day. Carolyn, one other thing. Why do you think UHI makes an impact? So if somebody were to say, yeah, I don't believe it does, what, how would you convince them that it does? Kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, I think people who are lucky enough to, you know, not be homeless have, have all the basic necessities. Someone like that kind of has a responsibility in my mind to donate and give their time to people who aren't as fortunate and who may have been put into worse situations. And in doing that, I think they make a huge difference. I mean, 717 suitcases, you can't tell me that hasn't made a larger impact. That's 717 people who don't have to worry about their valuables falling through a grocery bag. I mean, that's pretty simple to me. And in regard to the other projects they do, they work with Atlanta's youth population, trying to get them literate, doing that kind of thing. That's huge. Anything that works with the Atlanta's youth, I think, makes a tremendous impact. And, yeah, I think it's in the numbers. 717 suitcases tells you everything. Carolyn, would you look at will and tell him, what is something you learned about homelessness since you've been at UHI? That really surprised me.

[28:39] CAROLYN AIDMAN: I didn't realize how easy it is for someone to lose their home. Oh, a terrible fight, a fire, a landlord. That puts you out. If you don't have the resources to be able to get to the next place. You can be shockingly homeless in just a brief moment.

[29:03] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. Given that, what do you think it would take to end homelessness?

[29:17] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Ending homelessness is a matter of public will. We have a new mayor who says he really cares about the people who are having the most difficult time. There are dozens of motels, hotels, apartment complexes that are sitting empty. And the big issue, I think, for many homeless people, especially if they've got mental health problems, is that they can't follow a lot of rules. So the places that they live cannot have too many rules because they'll get put out. And so the way to end it is to be able to have people have the same kind of freedom that I would have at my house.

[30:08] WILL NEWMAN: Yeah. No, I think she hit on it. It's funny. I was listening to a podcast the other day with Andrew Yang. Not to get political or anything, but he talks about universal basic income and how he thinks that could alleviate homelessness and general poverty for a lot of people. And he speaks to how it's not socialism. It's capitalism, starting from a basic level of wealth that would give people the basic needs. And I thought it was just really interesting and kind of applies to what we're talking about today. If you get $1,000 a month per se, that would kind of give you enough money to then, you know, be able to have things to carry around your valuables, hopefully afford to rent food, those kinds of things. But. And again, not to get political or anything, but I thought that was really, really interesting and could be a potential solution. I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but I thought that was interesting. I think that's everything. Yeah. No, I mean, this was great. Doctor Aidman fun talking to you. I'm excited to work with you more in the future. I think the rolling suitcase drive and the UHI, more broadly can continue to change people's lives in the Atlanta area and maybe eventually outside of the Atlanta area and other places as well.

[31:27] CAROLYN AIDMAN: Thank you, Will. I really appreciate your enthusiasm and the fact that as soon as you saw what we were doing, you understood how important it was. And I know that you'll get to go to medical school, and as a future medical professional, you'll know how to advocate for people who have some of these kinds of social issues.

[31:48] WILL NEWMAN: Yes, ma'am. I appreciate it. Thank you.