Dave Choski spoke a lot on the importance of equity. He said that equity cannot be tacked on to the end, but has to be “baked in” to whatever medical solution they are working on. This is because people who are marginalized are often the ones who are marginalized further during a crisis. They are hit the hardest. He also related this to his time as NYC health commissioner during Covid, saying that they tried hard to eliminate the systemic bias between black and white New Yorkers. He told the story of even after trying hard, he still was not able to eliminate that discrepancy. It makes me wonder how we can fix the deep-seated equity problems in our city? What are the long term goals, so if there is another pandemic, it won’t be split between races?

I also enjoyed his talks about the importance of forging a private and public partnership between healthcare sectors. Despite the fact public health and private healthcare have fundamentally different interests, they both ultimately serve similar purposes, and the majority of people who work in both sectors think about how they can help people. It is a positive outlook on the world that I think we can all learn from.

Choski’s personal advice, that we should have a list of short, medium, and long term goals, so we always remember to work on goals far in the future, is important. His advice to nurture your convictions, because they will be tested the most during a crisis, is also very wise.