Latest / CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered. / Brooke Ellison on Defying Disability

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Brooke Ellison on Defying Disability · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:00
  David: Well, Brooke Ellison's story is well known, in fact, the Brook Ellison's story, a movie based on her memoir Miracles Happen was directed by Christopher Reeve at age 11.
• 0:09
  David: She was struck by a car and paralyzed from the neck down.
• 0:13
  David: Later she graduated Magna Kum Laude from Harvard, went on to earn masters and PhD, and is now associate Professor of Health Policy and Medical Ethics at Stony Brook.
• 0:23
  David: Her latest book, look Both Ways, continues her personal story while focusing on public policy and her desire to see people with disabilities fully included in society.
• 0:34
  David: Welcome to CareTalk.
• 0:35
  David: I'm America's home for incisive debate about healthcare, business and policy.
• 0:38
  David: And although no one has made a movie about us just yet, you can subscribe to the CareTalk Newsletter for Trending healthcare industry news, highlights of the latest CareTalk podcast episodes and original blog posts.
• 0:50
  David: To take a deeper dive into topics covered in your favorite care talk episodes, check it out at CareTalk podcast.com/newsletter.
• 0:59
  David: I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group.
• 1:02
  John: And I'm John Driscoll, the president of Walgreens Health.
• 1:04
  John: David, can we please get to the questions that our great guests,
• 1:08
  David: why were you laughing at my intro, John, about the movie?
• 1:10
  David: I'm sure somebody would make a movie about you.
• 1:12
  David: I'm not sure it'll be flattering, but they might make one . All right.
• 1:16
  David: All right, let's get to it.
• 1:17
  David: Brooke, welcome to the show and thank you for putting, putting up with us.
• 1:20
  David: And if you wanna sign off right now, cuz John's not, you know, he's not suitable as a host.
• 1:24
  David: You know, we won't, we won't object.
• 1:28
  Brooke: It's a pleasure to be in your company one way, movie or no movie.
• 1:33
  David: Brooke, you, you've said that fear and hope exist side by side, and you've been explicit about some of your health challenges.
• 1:40
  David: How did this help to drive you to write your latest book?
• 1:43
  David: Look both ways.
• 1:44
  Brooke: Thank you so much.
• 1:45
  Brooke: Well, thank you, David.
• 1:46
  Brooke: Thank you John, for having me on today.
• 1:48
  Brooke: It's an absolute pleasure to talk about, uh, parts of my life with both of you, uh, and to talk to you more generally.
• 1:55
  Brooke: So thank you.
• 1:55
  Brooke: That's, I think that's a really, uh, that's a question that's fundamental to my life and to how I have come to understand the world.
• 2:02
  Brooke: So I first started, started studying hope, uh, when I was, um, a junior and senior in college, uh, writing my.
• 2:13
  Brooke: Undergraduate thesis, honor, honors thesis, and I was studying cognitive neuroscience, so I really wanted to take a scientific kind of biological and cognitive understanding of topics that can seem very amorphous or abstract or like, New wage are out there.
• 2:33
  Brooke: Um, and um, so I wanted to look at how we can conceptualize it and how we can measure it or look at it as something that's fundamental to our lives.
• 2:43
  Brooke: And I've come to understand that, that hope is an action oriented kind of, um, Adversity driven construct.
• 2:51
  Brooke: It's not something that is, that we simply wish for.
• 2:54
  Brooke: That's, that, that's synonymous with optimism.
• 2:57
  Brooke: I kind of see them as more abstractions, but hope as something that is driven by the adversity that we face, that we need to, uh, be front and have that front and center of, of our existence and say, okay, I understand that I have difficulty in my life.
• 3:13
  Brooke: I understand that there are things that, that cause complications, and then find a way.
• 3:19
  Brooke: Persevere nonetheless, to find ways to move forward with our lives despite, or even sometimes because of the challenges that we face.
• 3:27
  Brooke: Sometimes we don't know how hopeful or strong we need to be until we face these kinds of incidents in our lives.
• 3:35
  Brooke: I know that that was the case for me.
• 3:37
  Brooke: Were not for the accident that I sustained and the injuries that I've lived with ever since.
• 3:43
  Brooke: I don't know if I ever would have been able to live with the, with the sources of strength and the um, The objectivity of, of resilience that I have in my life ever since.
• 3:56
  Brooke: And those two things I think are really valuable to ha to, to know that we can incur difficulty in our lives and at the same time say, okay, I'm not going to let that define who I am.
• 4:08
  Brooke: I'm going to relegate it to the least impactful role that I possibly.
• 4:14
  Brooke: can play and find a way to move forward with my life nonetheless.
• 4:17
  Brooke: And those two things really don't happen unless they happen side by side.
• 4:23
  Brooke: So Brooke, it
• 4:24
  John: sounds like for you, hope is a choice of kind of creating the light, uh, in, in, in, in difficult circumstances.
• 4:33
  John: It sounds like that's a pretty important lesson, not just for folks with disabilities that are profound and, and.
• 4:41
  John: , but, but, but life in general, is that, is that, is that where you're going with
• 4:44
  Brooke: that?
• 4:45
  Brooke: I think that's very much the case.
• 4:47
  Brooke: Um, I, I have come to understand disability to be, um, just one often very obvious and profound manifestation of the kinds of, of challenges that we all experience in our lives, your challenges and inevitability in our lives.
• 5:05
  Brooke: That's why I think, um, I, I had originally, uh, Thought of my book as being applicable to everybody's life, right?
• 5:14
  Brooke: It it is a book, um, absolutely about disability and about.
• 5:20
  Brooke: The kinds of, of, um, challenges that I faced living with disability, but at the same time, it, I think it is broadly applicable to people's lives no matter what kind of adversity they might face or what kind of, um, potentially unexpected deviations their lives may have taken.
• 5:39
  Brooke: I think it's relevant no matter what.
• 5:42
  Brooke: I think the fundamental skillset.
• 5:45
  Brooke: that is embedded in living life with disabilities, the very same skillset that all of us need to incorporate in our lives.
• 5:52
  Brooke: If you want to effectively navigate the challenges that we're going to face, Brooke,
• 5:59
  David: you've talked about some ill-informed policy decisions that prioritize barriers.
• 6:05
  David: over isolation.
• 6:07
  David: What are you talking about?
• 6:08
  Brooke: Well, I, I, the, um, Americans with Disabilities Act, you know, was passed in 1990 and you, that was by far the most profound landmark, uh, piece of civil rights.
• 6:23
  Brooke: Legislation for people with disabilities, right?
• 6:25
  Brooke: So, so that was critical and important and certainly my life that I've lived, you know, post-injury, so that for the past 32 years has been on drugs, the kind of the aura of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• 6:38
  Brooke: But at the same time, we live in a society that's not we, that, that views accessibility almost as an act of compliance, right?
• 6:47
  Brooke: As, as just an act of, of fulfilling a mandate rather than looking at, uh, accessibility as an opportunity, an opportunity to.
• 6:58
  Brooke: In to include a greater number of people to allow people to live with as much opportunity as everybody else.
• 7:05
  Brooke: Um, I don't think that the Americans with Disabilities Act goes nearly far enough in, in making sure that people who live with disability can have as full inclusion as everybody else.
• 7:15
  Brooke: And I think that that is, that is what I'm talking about, what I'm talking.
• 7:19
  Brooke: The barriers over inclusion?
• 7:21
  Brooke: Uh, I think we still live with a mindset, a societal mindset that very much needs to be changed when it comes to accessibility.
• 7:29
  Brooke: And it comes to full inclusion of the lives of people with disabilities.
• 7:33
  Brooke: Um, people with disabilities have a, have a tremendous amount to offer when they live with the very same skills.
• 7:40
  Brooke: And I think we as society value when it comes to.
• 7:44
  Brooke: , whether it is problem solving or creativity or resilience, you know, the ability to have the perseverance to navigate.
• 7:53
  Brooke: A world that is you not designed for your needs.
• 7:57
  Brooke: Right?
• 7:57
  Brooke: These are the kinds of skills that I think, um, are very much embedded in the lives of people with disabilities, yet we view their lives as less than everybody else's.
• 8:08
  Brooke: And that level of inclusion, that level of inclusion, whether it is in the actual built environment or something, you kind.
• 8:16
  Brooke: Um, less obvious like inclusion and representation in media.
• 8:21
  Brooke: It has just not happened yet, and like that is the world that I would love to see.
• 8:25
  Brooke: That's the world that I'm hoping to create.
• 8:28
  Brooke: Do you, do
• 8:29
  John: you see Brook there, there's a, there's a movement now to be more inclusive of neurodivergent populations.
• 8:35
  John: There.
• 8:36
  John: We've made progress on physical barriers.
• 8:38
  John: Do you, do you feel like we're doing a better job as a society at being more open-minded and inclusive?
• 8:45
  John: are we stuck?
• 8:46
  John: Because it feels to me as in a, you know, in business, it feels like we're doing better over time, if not meeting the, the Absolut.
• 8:55
  John: sort of optimal place where you, where you look to your point of leveraging the strengths of everyone, regardless of what position they come from.
• 9:03
  John: Mm-hmm.
• 9:03
  John: , um, and the creativity.
• 9:05
  John: But do you, it, it feels, at least, at least to, to my eye, that they're we're making progress.
• 9:10
  John: Do you feel that's accurate or, or am I overstating What's, what's happening right now?
• 9:14
  Brooke: No, I, I think that there's some there, there, that is true to a, to an extent, yes.
• 9:19
  Brooke: I think that there is, um, broader acceptance of neurodiversity and even what that means, right?
• 9:25
  Brooke: The fact that we are even talking about a term like neurodiversity and, and not have that be a, a niche topic, I think is, is movement in and of itself.
• 9:33
  Brooke: Um, but I think we don't, we have not gone far enough to fully understand it and embrace the talents that, that, um, people who are neuro.
• 9:43
  Brooke: Half would have to offer.
• 9:45
  Brooke: So I have two nephews who are both on the autism spectrum and they have, uh, significant, uh, limitations when it comes to, for instance, understanding, um, you know, the general education paradigm that education takes today.
• 10:02
  Brooke: Right.
• 10:02
  Brooke: Having a little bit of knowledge in a lot of different areas.
• 10:05
  Brooke: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Brooke: They are very interested in one isolated.
• 10:09
  Brooke: Area, whether it's your technology or computer oriented, um, uh, capacities.
• 10:16
  Brooke: And given our general education structure, you know, their talents might not be captured as well as they could be, right?
• 10:25
  Brooke: So there is the potential of having, you know, changes to education, educational curricula.
• 10:31
  Brooke: Tap into those talents, you advance and highlight those talents.
• 10:35
  Brooke: So we are without feeling like we're, um, they're at the expense of anything else.
• 10:39
  Brooke: Right?
• 10:40
  Brooke: Those are the, I think, the kinds of modifications that can be made to how we approach education or how we approach people's lives.
• 10:47
  Brooke: That would be very valuable.
• 10:49
  Brooke: Allow them to succeed and allow them to.
• 10:51
  Brooke: Thrive in a way that possibly we haven't really been thinking about before.
• 10:55
  Brooke: Um, and I know that that's the case for others who, um, who are neuro divergent or who are on the autism spectrum, you know, allow them to thrive in ways that possibly we haven't thought about yet.
• 11:07
  Brooke: Um, disability does not fit into a very particular mold or mindset.
• 11:13
  Brooke: I think that we need to be, as a society, need to be much more open to.
• 11:19
  Brooke: To people's unique ways of life and how we can pot potentially make changes at the policy or societal levels to accommodate those needs.
• 11:30
  Brooke: , David: Brooke, you were talking quite a been talking about diversity, at least neurodiversity, there's this term, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and those three things get put together a lot, and there's some explicit backlash against that as well right now.
• 11:45
  Brooke: Um, so when we talk about, you know, moving forward and at the same time we hear about, you know, not allowing any funding of d ei or sort of confounding it with this so called a woke, uh, you know, attitude.
• 11:57
  Brooke: How do you.
• 11:58
  Brooke: , how do you interpret what's, what's going on and how do you maybe separate out diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• 12:05
  Brooke: Or do you sort of lump it all together as a d e i?
• 12:08
  Brooke: Yeah.
• 12:08
  Brooke: No, I, I, I think that there're three very distinct terms, and I think that the fact that they have been lumped together or viewed in pejorative terms like you wokeness, or whatever degree you want, View wokeness as as pejorative, right.
• 12:21
  Brooke: I think like that's definitely an avenue of debate in and of itself.
• 12:25
  Brooke: But no, those are, are three very different terms.
• 12:28
  Brooke: And I think, um, the fact that they're almost set as one, one kind of continuous street, you know, Stream of consciousness, I think is unfortunate.
• 12:37
  Brooke: Right.
• 12:37
  Brooke: So your diversity is just kind of who we are, right?
• 12:40
  Brooke: The the, um, the level of, or the, is it just a reality of society living in a, uh, society where people just come from different backgrounds?
• 12:49
  Brooke: So it's kind of, diversity is just who we are.
• 12:53
  Brooke: It's just a fact of society.
• 12:55
  Brooke: It's just a fact of, of having a, a very, uh, different and, um, eclectic.
• 13:03
  Brooke: Society.
• 13:04
  Brooke: Um, equity is kind of recognizing that and recognizing how, um, people start from different starting points, right?
• 13:13
  Brooke: Given their backgrounds.
• 13:15
  Brooke: Some people have, have opportunities and privileges that others just simply do not have.
• 13:21
  Brooke: And to not understand that, to not understand that we are starting from different starting points, I think is, is a fundamental error that many people unfortunately make.
• 13:30
  Brooke: And then inclusion.
• 13:32
  Brooke: Right is like, what are these, the actual strategies that we implement so that people starting from different starting points actually have an equal shot.
• 13:41
  Brooke: And then I can actually feel like they are, uh, you know, valued members of a conversation that's being had around them and about their lives.
• 13:49
  Brooke: So, in the context of disability as it relates to d ei, you know, unfortunately I think disability is not as often as it.
• 14:00
  Brooke: Integrated into the D E I conversations actually, you know, there is a push to have accessibility included in that, right?
• 14:07
  Brooke: So D E I A, you know, cuz as far as people with disabilities are concerned, you can't actually have full inclusion without actually having access at the same time.
• 14:19
  Brooke: , right?
• 14:19
  Brooke: So what, unless you understand all three concepts, unless you understand them to be a, a continuum, that you can be missing a really critical part of the conversation.
• 14:28
  Brooke: So people with disabilities, I think are far too rarely, um, thought of in any of those three.
• 14:35
  Brooke: Um, especially the inclusion piece, right?
• 14:38
  Brooke: Cause in order to be inclusive of people with disabilities, you have to.
• 14:42
  Brooke: Very differently think.
• 14:44
  Brooke: Think about our structural environment, our built environment, the kinds of changes we need to make in order to actually make the table.
• 14:51
  Brooke: An accessible place for somebody with a disability to change our vernacular, to change our language so that we're talking in terms that are not, um, objectionable or potentially offensive to somebody who lives with a disability.
• 15:05
  Brooke: Not feeling like disability is something, um, we need to be uncomfortable with.
• 15:11
  Brooke: I think that's very often the case.
• 15:13
  Brooke: Um, so yeah, so I understand those to be very, very different concept.
• 15:19
  Brooke: So, uh,
• 15:20
  John: Brooke, I had a slightly different, to take a slightly different direction, you Superman, Christopher Reeve made a movie about you.
• 15:27
  John: Um, what was that, how did he get to that?
• 15:31
  John: And, and, and what did, what, what, what, uh, what was that like?
• 15:37
  Brooke: So, so that era of my life was one of the most, um, significant potentially, um, transformative parts of my life.
• 15:45
  Brooke: So, um, as you know, I graduated from, from Harvard in 2000 and my graduation generated quite a bit of media attention and.
• 15:58
  Brooke: It was shortly after my graduation, the summer of 2000.
• 16:02
  Brooke: I was just kind of sitting in my bedroom, um, trying to figure out what my next steps are going to be.
• 16:08
  Brooke: And I got a phone call, um, that sort of came out of nowhere.
• 16:12
  Brooke: I was a bit tipped off that it was possibly gonna happen , um, from his agent saying, I have Christopher Reva on the line for you.
• 16:20
  Brooke: Would.
• 16:21
  Brooke: To patch me.
• 16:22
  Brooke: Patch you through, which like have you turned out and you say no to that.
• 16:26
  Brooke: No.
• 16:26
  Brooke: Sorry, I'm busy.
• 16:28
  Brooke: But, um, so, um, he connected us and he said you had a bit of a conversation about and just kind of similarities in our lives, kinds of challenges we may have experienced.
• 16:39
  Brooke: And then he said, you, I read about your graduation from Harvard.
• 16:44
  Brooke: And in the New York Times, and I think that that's you.
• 16:47
  Brooke: Quite, quite a story.
• 16:49
  Brooke: Quite impressive.
• 16:50
  Brooke: And I've always wanted to tell the story of somebody whose life was similar to my own, but couldn't find the right story to tell, didn't know the right story to tell, and didn't wanna tell my own story.
• 16:59
  Brooke: Would you mind if.
• 17:01
  Brooke: I told your story and you like, again, how do you say no to that question either?
• 17:07
  Brooke: So I kind of like, you know, said, well, let me, let me think about it.
• 17:11
  Brooke: Then we talked to some people, I'll get back to you.
• 17:14
  Brooke: So he said, um, you know, how about if I came down to your house and we did a working lunch, which was, you know, at 21 years old, my very first working.
• 17:24
  Brooke: So he and his team, uh, I think it was a nurse and some drivers and the production team all came down to my home.
• 17:30
  Brooke: So this is the first time I actually had somebody, uh, also in a wheelchair, wheelchair as large as my own in my home.
• 17:36
  Brooke: So we're kind of like trying to navigate around each other.
• 17:39
  Brooke: Um, and we had this long conversation, a kitchen table about, you know, what this would be like and what a story about my life.
• 17:49
  Brooke: Entail and I said, you know, my, my family and I are in the process of writing a book about, um, my, the time, the experiences that we had since the time of my accident until my graduation, um, 10 years later.
• 18:03
  Brooke: You know, could you use that as a model?
• 18:04
  Brooke: He said, you know, fantastic.
• 18:06
  Brooke: So Teleplay was, was, um, constructed or adopted from, uh, from my bar book, and.
• 18:14
  Brooke: It was an incredible, incredible experience.
• 18:16
  Brooke: Um, so there were some fits and starts as far as, um, the production timeline was concerned.
• 18:23
  Brooke: Um, 2000.
• 18:27
  Brooke: This happened in 2000 and then September 11th, 2001 happened and that kind of shifted everything in terms of timeline.
• 18:35
  Brooke: There was a lot of uncertainty about, you know, what projects were gonna be prioritized over others.
• 18:41
  Brooke: Um, so there was a bit of a wait time before things actually got rolling.
• 18:45
  Brooke: It was my second year of graduate school.
• 18:48
  Brooke: Well, all the way in 2004, your Chris and I stayed in contact for all that time, but then it was 2004 and you know, it was.
• 18:56
  Brooke: Dub Bs as to whether or not the project was gonna come to fruition.
• 19:00
  Brooke: Uh, but I got a phone call, it was from Chris again, saying, you know, things look like they're back in order there, there's, um, a lot of interest in the story.
• 19:09
  Brooke: Are you still interested in, in the project?
• 19:11
  Brooke: And I said, well, yeah, of course.
• 19:13
  Brooke: Yes.
• 19:13
  Brooke: Nothing has changed.
• 19:15
  Brooke: Go right ahead.
• 19:16
  Brooke: So, so at that point things sped off.
• 19:20
  Brooke: Consider Emily.
• 19:20
  Brooke: So they did a lot of casting actually.
• 19:22
  Brooke: Um, Alicia Chabe who played.
• 19:25
  Brooke: Older Brooke in the, in the, the film called My Home.
• 19:29
  Brooke: So at that point I was up in, up in Cambridge, up at Harvard.
• 19:32
  Brooke: She called my home and said, young relationship air.
• 19:34
  Brooke: I was just, that was just cast to play.
• 19:37
  Brooke: Brooke and I Come meet you.
• 19:38
  Brooke: So she actually came to my graduation from the Kennedy School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and that generated some fanfare.
• 19:44
  Brooke: So some, some excitement.
• 19:48
  Brooke: Um, and uh, so that summer, the summer of 2004, the Brook story was filmed in, uh, new Orleans.
• 19:56
  Brooke: So my family and I actually, my parents and I drove down from New York, from Long Island where I am, and we were down there for two weeks.
• 20:04
  Brooke: It was a, a a, a total of three weeks.
• 20:07
  Brooke: So it was three days down and then two weeks on set and then three days back.
• 20:12
  Brooke: And it was such an incredible experience.
• 20:15
  Brooke: There was such.
• 20:16
  Brooke: Pouring of, uh, emotion and love and such a bonding experience.
• 20:21
  Brooke: My sister and my brother, uh, they flew down from New York and from Boston respectively, and they spent, uh, a couple of weeks down there with us as well.
• 20:31
  Brooke: They got the, the freedom of taking a, taking a flight as opposed to driving down.
• 20:36
  Brooke: Um, and it was just like, it was such an incredible bonding experience and.
• 20:43
  Brooke: Yeah, so, so it was bloody hot for sure down in New Orleans in the summer, but um, the filming was done and then the production period was that September and to the beginning of October.
• 20:56
  Brooke: And then as I'm sure you know, Chris passed away in the beginning of October of 2004.
• 21:02
  Brooke: And, you know, that was.
• 21:04
  Brooke: Quite a, quite a blow, quite an emotionally devastating, um, experience.
• 21:10
  Brooke: There was so much, uh, excitement and, uh, yeah, sense of, of, i, I, I don't know, such a sense of emotion surrounding the film.
• 21:22
  Brooke: And then to have his, his passing.
• 21:25
  Brooke: Associated with it, you know, spun things in a different direction, obviously.
• 21:30
  Brooke: Um, I did, I was unaware how sick Chris was when he was filming the Brook Ellison story, but he was, um, determined to get it done.
• 21:39
  Brooke: Um, you know, in the, in the deaths of the New Orleans heat, you know, he was being, uh, patted down.
• 21:47
  Brooke: Towels and, and paper towels.
• 21:49
  Brooke: You had to keep him cool.
• 21:51
  Brooke: Uh, during some of the filming, he had like a, he had like a little cave that was set up in almost like, uh, U-haul to where all the technology was and then things you had to keep the production going.
• 22:04
  Brooke: So I didn't really fully understand how sick he was until, until much later than that.
• 22:09
  Brooke: And, uh, but like I said, he was really determined to, to get it completed.
• 22:14
  Brooke: It's amazing.
• 22:15
  Brooke: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Brooke: So a lot of the promotion that was supposed to be done by him, you fell on my shoulders and, uh, it, it created this real bittersweetness to the, the film and it's been broadcast around the world ever since, you know, to this day.
• 22:30
  Brooke: And I get, you know, um, email and correspondences are people really all over the world who have been touched by the film, and that really means quite a bit to.
• 22:40
  Brooke: .
• 22:40
  Brooke: David: Well, Brooke, John asked I almost feel badly asking a question that's not as good as that one.
• 22:45
  Brooke: But I'm gonna ask one last question cause I know it's something you've talked about and I'm interested in your view about it, which is that, you know, you mentioned before that there's a lot of people that are sort of uneasy or uneasy in the presence of someone with with disabilities.
• 22:57
  Brooke: And I wonder what advice, what advice do you have?
• 23:00
  Brooke: for someone who may feel uneasy, uh, when they're with someone who has disability.
• 23:05
  Brooke: Right.
• 23:05
  Brooke: Well, I think people, um, typically associate somebody with a disability with their own vulnerability, right?
• 23:13
  Brooke: People want to distance themselves as if there's some kind of contagion associated with disability or like, don't remind me of what my life could, how terrible my life could be to keep, keep me away.
• 23:24
  Brooke: Um, and I think that that.
• 23:26
  Brooke: Number one, an unfortunate understanding of disability in and of itself, right?
• 23:30
  Brooke: I think we, we tend to perpetuate this misunderstanding that a life lived with disability is some kind of abyssal, horrible life and like, God, keep me away from that.
• 23:41
  Brooke: Right?
• 23:41
  Brooke: I think that that is an unfortunate misunderstanding in and of itself.
• 23:45
  Brooke: But on top of that, like I, I, I, I think it, um, people just need to, to be willing to understand the, the humanity of a life lived with disability and, and, and treat somebody with a disability just like you would anybody else.
• 24:00
  Brooke: Not be afraid.
• 24:03
  Brooke: Befriend them.
• 24:04
  Brooke: Not be afraid to ask questions.
• 24:05
  Brooke: But I think some of the, um, the discomfort comes from not knowing the right words to use, not knowing, you know, what is appropriate and what is not.
• 24:17
  Brooke: So, you know, educate yourself a little bit.
• 24:19
  Brooke: Right?
• 24:19
  Brooke: Take the time to pick up a book about disability.
• 24:22
  Brooke: Take, take your time to pick up, you know, look both ways and, and like learn a little bit about what disability is all about and.
• 24:30
  Brooke: . So you feel like you're more, you have a greater capacity to talk to somebody and, and understand their lives and to understand the values they might contribute to your own life by virtue of being in it.
• 24:42
  Brooke: I think these are all, um, evolutions that society can take, has not yet taken to its fullest degree, but certainly sh ought to take.
• 24:52
  Brooke: Um, I think we need greater representation of people with disabilities in the media, in, in cinema, and on, you know, The, um, smaller screen so that somebody with a disability is not looked at as like an aberration to the, to the quote unquote normal way of life.
• 25:11
  Brooke: Whether that people with disabilities are as visible as, as present in the world as anybody else.
• 25:17
  Brooke: Um, To reduce that level of discomfort, to promote that level of understanding, um, and to just to not view disability as something that we need to be afraid of, but something that is very much a part of the human experience.
• 25:30
  Brooke: It's something that is actually a value.
• 25:34
  David: Well, that's it for yet another episode of CareTalk with our guest, Brooke Ellison, professor at Stony Brook University.
• 25:40
  David: I'm David Williams, president of Health Business.
• 25:44
  John: I'm John Driscoll, the president of Walgreens Health.
• 25:47
  John: If you like what you heard or you didn't, please subscribe on your favorite service.
• 25:51
  John: And thank you Professor of Life, Brooke Ellison, for joining us today and sharing your heartfelt insights into how much richer our life could be if we broadened our aperture a little bit.
• 26:02
  John: Uh, we're more inclusive, philosophically, structurally, and societal.
• 26:06
  John: Thanks,
• 26:06
  Brooke: Brooke.
• 26:07
  Brooke: Thank you, John.
• 26:08
  Brooke: Thank you, David.
• 26:09
  Brooke: It was a pleasure to talk to you.