Authors: Meghan Etsey, Vashti Price, Dr. Eileen Barrett
“Our Voices, Our Future” is a podcast by the Gender Equity Task Force of the American Medical Women’s Association that explores the challenges, stories, and successes of those working to advance gender equity in medicine. Through candid conversations with changemakers, advocates, and leaders, each episode dives into issues like pay gaps, leadership disparities, and inclusive workplace culture. Tune in to be inspired, informed, and empowered to take action. Full episode listening links are available below the transcription.
Meghan: Welcome to Our Voices, Our Future, a podcast where we amplify the voices driving change in equity within medicine and beyond. Brought to you by the Gender Equity Task Force, a committee of the American Medical Women’s Association. We’re here to challenge norms, break barriers, and ignite conversations that matter.
I’m Meghan Etsey, and in each episode, we bring you candid conversations with leaders, change makers, and advocates, working to create a more inclusive and just world. No more silence, no more waiting. It’s time to get Our Voices, Our Future.
Let’s get into it. Today, we welcome Dr. Eileen Barrett, an internal medicine and addiction physician based in Albuquerque. She received her MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MD from Georgetown University. She completed her internal medicine residency at Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital. She completed a medical justice and advocacy fellowship through Morehouse School of Medicine and the American Medical Association in 2022. She is the 2025 -2026 President of the American Medical Women’s Association and Chair Emerita of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians. Her writing has been published in JAMA, the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the Journal of Hospital Medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, Modern Health Care, the New York Times, and more. Thank you for being here, Dr. Barrett.
Dr. Barrett: Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for valuing this type of work. Thank you for doing this work. I did hear you refer to me as Dr. Barrett, which you’re welcome to continue to do. Please feel free to call me Eileen.
Meghan: Thank you. So you’ve had an incredible journey from earning your MD and MPH to leading national medical organizations and publishing across these top journals.
What first inspired your passion for medical justice and inclusion in health care spaces?
Dr. Barrett: So I opened it with an um, which clearly means I’m unsure what to say or where to start. I think most of us don’t really have a Shazam-type moment. Instead, what it is is an extension of how we experience the world, the way that we see other people experience the world. What are our reflections, and at what moment do we realize we can be a change agent?
So I can’t say that there was one day that a light switch went off. I was raised by parents who believed in justice and inclusion and tried to make the world better in ways they could. For example, when I was little, my dad ran for our local school board. One of the things that he was really effective at doing, I don’t know how many years it took, but he was on the board for like 20 years. He ended up helping with the distribution of where teachers were and redistributing specifically, so that the underperforming schools didn’t always have the teachers who had the lower teaching evaluations. So, where we went to elementary school, it was where teachers who were underperforming in the wealthier parts of the school district were often replaced. My dad didn’t think it was right. He didn’t think it was right in the other school where it happened either. So that was one of the things that he worked on.
My mom, she also was someone who was also someone who felt like she could be a change agent. Although my mom was a stay-at-home mom for my early childhood, and I didn’t realize it at the time, my parents had decided together that when I started kindergarten with my twin, that is also when my mom would start community college. So that’s when she started working on her associate’s degree. That was the decision they made, and then she took one class per semester. One of the things she also did during that time was when there was a position open in our village board that she ran for village trustee. What she wanted to do was she really wanted us to have a mandatory recycling program. That was like a key part of her platform. She just thought that that was right, and she did it. This was in 1998, way before this was something that was everywhere.
I guess what I’m identifying here is that I had parents who thought it mattered to them and were people who saw themselves as change agents. So sometimes you plant potatoes and you get potatoes. I don’t remember the first time, but I know my first letter to the editor I submitted was 11. It was not accepted. I want to be clear, but that’s okay. My parents also said, “Don’t worry”. Then that sort of continued. I did a domestic volunteering program the year after college, which was also justice-oriented. After that, I thought, well, if I really want to be a doctor and care for people, I have to understand the context in which people receive their experience and health. So that’s what led me to get an MPH before I went to med school. So you asked a very direct question, Meghan, and I was very circumlocutious.
Meghan: I think it’s just in your blood. I think that’s your answer, right?
Dr. Barrett: Okay, I should have asked you what I should have said because you nailed it.
Meghan: No, that’s awesome. You’ve had a great experience. It sounds like your parents have really raised you to be this person. I think the next question ties directly into that.
In your experience, what does this inclusion and belonging truly look like in these training environments and professional workplaces, and how do these concepts go beyond just diversity metrics?
Dr. Barrett: I love this question and I feel as though it could be a dissertation and I’m going to do my best to answer from my heart, which is that I truly believe that inclusion and belonging in both our training environments and our professional workplaces, what it is, is when you never, never even occurs to you to question that the place is better for having you. I think that’s what everybody deserves.
Meghan: I love that. Very simple, but perfect, right?
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, I’m glad that that landed with you as well.
Meghan: Yeah, I love that.
What would you say some of the most common or overlooked barriers to this inclusion and belonging would be like, especially in these historically marginalized backgrounds that we have, we face in the medical education, and these especially early career stages, although it’s throughout your entire career, more than likely.
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, one of them, it’s such a great question that you’re asking because it is so often when we feel like we don’t belong, and this space doesn’t look like us. What we often don’t recognize is how many other people feel similarly. So for other reasons, right? Yet they may be struggling with the same things that we are.
I think that one of the barriers is that people who feel like they belong, it never occurs to them that other people don’t. People who don’t feel that way for lots of different reasons, including the way as an adoptive response to how they’re treated, right? An adaptive response to the hidden curriculum, an adaptive response to even the way the physical planet looks, to the way we treat the patients, the way we talk about the patients, the way we treat each other, the way we treat the patients. There are lots of different reasons, and there are many barriers.
They’re a little bit like the first line of the Leo Tolstoy novel by Anna Karenina: “all happy families are alike and all happy families aren’t happy in their own way”, which is that when people don’t feel like they belong, it can be for lots of different reasons. No matter the reason, we all have a duty to help create an environment where everybody knows the place is better because they are there.
We don’t believe it fully. There’s this line that I read in this wonderful book called An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice by the Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, famously, he’s a Pakistani American Muslim who’s an attorney who was speaking at the DNC, and he held up his copy of the Constitution. A lot of people know that image, but they don’t know his name. He wrote a wonderful book, but that is his memoir. However, one of the things that he does throughout is quote different famous poets. One of the lines in it that I believe is from Rumi is: “just because you’re thirsty doesn’t mean you can’t be a river for somebody else.”. I feel like that is something all of us can do.
To your idea of barriers, and what are some of the barriers? One of them is something we don’t even recognize. Another is that we don’t know if we can be the change agent. Then yet another one is still that we don’t always recognize that the time to make a change was yesterday. However, in line with the fact that the next best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, the next best time is today. So we can do that at every moment, to try to make our learning environments, work environments, and living places where people feel and know they belong. Megan, I hope that I got to what you were trying to say. Again, another likely answer that you’ll probably be able to distill into something brief.
Meghan: No, I love it. I love it. Those are amazing quotes. Like you said, many people might hesitate to act because they think it’s too big for them. Acting on these changes is big; they may think it’s beyond their capabilities, or people may not listen.
What are some of these small but meaningful actions people can take, you know, that ripple effects, whether they’re a colleague, a faculty, a trainee, to just foster these environments, they’re gonna push us forward in these areas.
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, there are so many, and it’s hard to even know where to start, right? Because I think that, of course, it starts with a lot of their super foundations, which is the gosh and matter line that I can’t take credit for, which I get from John Bruno, who is someone I took meditation and mindfulness courses with, which is that the best gift you can give somebody is your attention.
So if we are attentive to the people around us, and we’re mindful of what their experience is. There’s something about just seeing people matter, right? Like kind gestures, moments of kindness, and moments of recognition. Then, building upon that, really foundational things like that, we address people with their proper pronouns and honorifics, right? Most of us women with experience in medicine, and out of say, this is like such a low-hanging fruit, but that, you know, when you’re giving a talk somewhere, and it’s doctor, doctor, Doctor Eileen. I say that because it’s men, men, and then me.
That just happened to be like, presenting at national conferences with international attendees, and it was doctor, doctor, doctor, and it’s actually like, I’m a doctor too. You know, so what we do is we, you know, we make sure if we’re going to, we’re going to air, we’re going to air in the caution of saying, doctor. Graciously, you did too. My job is also to be gracious and to say, “Please call me Eileen, do what you want.” So we can do those things.
Of course, others also ask people, “What is the best way to pronounce their name?”. Those are some pretty low-hanging fruit. Other things, like how we think about images we will use in our talks, our built environment, things like that. How can we involve people in the built environment to say, How can we make this better? We can also think just really creatively. So
I’ve talked about some really foundational things. I would like to take a moment to say some things I had a lot of fun with. Is that okay?
Meghan: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Barrett: Oh, thank you. When I was a medical educator, one day I had the absolute privilege and joy that on my team, I was the only person whose first language was English; everybody else spoke another language before they spoke English. One person’s household was Spanish speaking, one was Navajo speaking, one spoke Farsi as her first language, and one spoke Arabic. Specifically, when I was working with the two students, one whose first language is Navajo and the other whose first language is Spanish. Then one of them had the little tag on their name badge, which was the physician’s oath. They had gotten that when they did their white coat ceremony. I had seen something in a magazine once that someone had said, like, oh, they were thinking about translating the Hippocratic oath into a different language or something.
So I just happened to mention, oh, my gosh, I see that you have that. That’s really nice. This is kind of random. Would that mean anything if that were in Spanish and Navajo? They both said, “Yeah, that would be really cool”. So you know, what is the small change I can make in the world, right? Like what is within my sphere of influence?
So in this case, I was able to partner with one of those learners who was then connected with a deeply, deeply respected Navajo elder who was an educator, and he translated the physician’s oath into Navajo. Then I submitted it to DIVA. So I sent it to them and asked if they would consider this an official version. They said, “We love getting this. We want to confirm it.” I followed up, but they couldn’t find a Navajo language speaker in Switzerland who could confirm it. But they said, “We’ll take it.”
It became officially one of their versions of the Physician’s Oath. Then, I collaborated with some students and did some successful advocacy so that the Physician’s Oath could be read in English, Spanish, and Navajo when the students were graduating for the first time in the world. So, this small moment, and then one of those students, by the time I saw her again, I passed in passing, but like, we were talking, and she was now about to do a fellowship. I said, “You know, I don’t know if you ever knew, but that time in graduation, when the Oath was read in English, Spanish, and Navajo, it was because of you.” She said, “I did not know that it was,”. I said, “That was because of you, because you had said this could be interesting.” I said, “Thank you”. She said that was the only graduation of all my graduations in my life that my mother understood a single word of it.
Yeah, so we can just choose something small. So you asked a simple question, and I turned it into a story, but what if we just start with the levers in front of us and start pulling them? So it’s like when I was co-chairing our Grand Rounds Steering Committee, then I was like clowns to the left and we jerked to the right. Why have we not had more international medical graduate speakers? Why have we not had more women? Why have we not had more people who are Indigenous Americans? Then we recognized their expertise.
So we had the largest number of early-career faculty, but we also had learners presenting for the first time to their faculty. We also had the largest number of Native American speakers and people who were IMGs. We could just look in front of us, and how can I make it? How can I try to do better? So don’t try to change somebody else. Try to change myself first. I don’t know. Meghan, what else? What? What? How’s that?
Meghan: No, I love it. I think that as you’re talking through it, it resonated a lot with me because sometimes these things sound trivial to some of us, you know, that have had these more, I would say, worldly experiences, knowing that for everybody, English is not their first language, right?
As somebody whose first language is English, I grew up in a very small Ohio community. I would not have thought about these things until I got out and went to medical school and surrounded myself with more culturally diverse people. I would not have thought that it’s super important to have these conversations and start, you know, like having the physician’s oath in something other than English, languages that are other people’s first languages, because one, their family, it means a lot to them to be able to hear these things and process them. Words are very different culturally, right? When you translate them, things are certain; they might know the English version, but they might resonate very differently in their home language. These are small steps, right? These aren’t crazy big things that are super hard to do.
These are things that most people can attack and get done with every day. That seems much more doable than making this crazy systemic change, right? But these are all steps in getting there. Yeah, I love it.
Dr. Barrett: I love that you drew out the most important parts there, which is something all of us can do. We can start small, and we can just start with the person in front of us and start with anything that we have control over. I don’t mean don’t go big, I also think we should go big, but we can just start with the change in front of us, even if it’s small.
So I love the way that you just reflected that so nicely. I heard you also say that you were from this smaller town in Ohio and that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of this. Here’s the thing. None of us thinks about anything we haven’t been exposed to, right? None of us do. I didn’t hear this from you, but I don’t think we should feel bad about it. I think instead, what we try to do is we just always try to do a little bit better. That’s all.
Meghan: Yeah, I love it and give grace to
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, and give grace, my goodness. Beautifully said. Thank you.
Meghan: As someone like you who’s led these high-level medical organizations, you’re president of AMWA now. What strategies have you found most effective in influencing these higher institutional cultures towards more equity and inclusion?
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, so I feel like those are the same lessons we employ, no matter where we are. One of them is to do our best to treat people well. Do our best to be present, observe, and be aware of the people around us and our effect on them. I’m not gonna say it’s like the Thoreau quote that most men, of course, because those men lead lives of quiet desperation. I actually don’t think that, but I think that everybody likes to feel recognized.
So do our best to acknowledge where people are, acknowledge what they’ve been through, have gratitude that they’re with us, and be willing to learn from them constantly and to look at ways to elevate and amplify them. I try to do my best to treat people well, and try to have humility about the times that I don’t, and try to do better next time. I find that those soft skills can go a long way to being persuasive with individuals because all organizations are made up of individuals, right? They’re made up of individuals. Culture starts with each of us.
Yeah. And how about you? How do you effect change?
Meghan: It comes down to something very similar to you. Kindness. Just being kind to everybody you’re interacting with and knowing that, I think you mentioned before, everybody has their own reasons, right? Everybody has their own situations that they’re going through. Everyone has their own thought process that brings them to where they are. But if you follow it, most people, if you sit down and have a conversation and follow it back to your roots, you likely come to a common moral. I think that just displaying kindness, whether you know those common roots or not, is important because I like to believe that most people’s roots are of a good nature.
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, I do too. Yeah. Beautifully said. Thank you.
Meghan: To go off of that. This work can sometimes be emotionally exhausting and very slow to show that visible change. You said you wrote your first letter at 11, right? It wasn’t accepted. When was your first one, right? It was a long time.
How do you stay resilient and hopeful? What advice do you give others about navigating this long path of advocacy and justice in health care?
Dr. Barrett: Oh, you know, one of my wonderful friends, one of the things, he’s a wonderful person. His name is Omar Atik. He was the former president of the American College of Physicians when I was the chair of the Board of Regents. He taught me a line I had never heard: “Hope is a discipline. Yeah, so hope is a discipline. So we have to cultivate it the same way we cultivate other things. So that has been an important practice for me.
I think it’s been an extension of my gratitude practice. I’ve had an intentional gratitude practice for probably 15 years, where every day I reflect on three or five good things that I’m grateful for, and they’re big and small. So today I’ll be talking and meeting you, right? And that we hardwire our brain, which is that, I mean, the data shows that this isn’t my idea, right? The data shows this, and when we intentionally seek out things that make us grateful, that we are grateful for, I should say, then it makes us more grateful. So when we intentionally seek out things that make us feel more hopeful, we end up feeling more hopeful. So that is something that is sort of like a real foundation.
The other is to surround myself with people who give me hope, who inspire me. I was just thinking about it. I recently found out that one of my non-medical cousins, after RBG passed away, started to think about what she could do to make the world a better place beyond being a good person, which she is. But then, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, she started to volunteer for an organization where people who need abortion care are not available in their communities, and she hosts them in her home. Wow. I mean, she hosts strangers in her home who need abortion care. And I was just so moved and inspired by that. So I say this is that we surround ourselves with people who bring us hope and inspire us, and we can’t help but have that period.
So I have those, and I’m very lucky. I hope everybody has that, and here’s the thing, they probably do and may not always know it. So if we give people the benefit of the doubt and open up to deeper and often hard conversations, sometimes we’re afraid to have hard conversations for good reasons. But if we have an open mind, we keep an open heart. That kindness that you talked about, I think we can find out that people often are doing more good work than we knew, just like right next to us, and that it can inspire us when things are hard.
I also think it’s important for us to take care of ourselves. I think it was Audre Lorde who had said that self-care is an act of political warfare, some version of that. Do you know that quote? I bet you’ll say it correctly because I think I butchered it.
Meghan: No, I don’t know if you were wrong, but yes, I’ve heard that before.
Dr. Barrett: Yeah, let’s take care of ourselves so that we can also be of service to others. Yeah, those types of things keep me hopeful very tactically. Sometimes, it means I will step back from some news media for a bit. I will direct my attention toward the things that I know that provide consolation and solace. Sure, yeah.
Meghan: So, to wrap that all up.
If a listener walks away from this conversation with just one step that they can take, no matter how small, toward creating a more inclusive and welcoming space in their training or workplace, what would you encourage as that first step?
Dr. Barrett: The first step is to do our best to embrace what Thich Nhat Hanh says, which many others have said, “that we are here to dispel the illusion of our separateness”. When we believe that and we see that most people are good and they’re just doing their best, then I think that it can help us see that and to see the hope, so that then we feel strong enough to take that step to support the person in front of us in the way that they would like to receive support.
Meghan: Love that. It’s great. Thank you so much, Dr. Barrett. This has been an amazing conversation that has just been full of fruit and will be very helpful to the listeners.
Dr. Barrett: Oh, thank you. And I know that we’re just about time, Meghan. You asked lovely questions. May I ask you what sustains you?
Meghan: What sustains me? I think it’s that positive outlook that we talked about. I guess you can call it hope as well. I think there are many good things, especially in medicine. I think there are many good fights that we’re fighting right now as women in medicine and just in the world. And there are a lot of inequities that exist, and there are a lot of bad things. But I think that even having the ability to fight the battles is a blessing. I think the ability to have a voice to do these things is great, and I have hope in that. So, being on the journey itself is sustainable. Although it may be exhausting as well. But right, we fill our cups so we can pour into others. So I just think the outlook is what helps sustain me overall. Yeah, the hope and the outlook.
Dr. Barrett: Oh, my goodness. Thank you. Thank you for providing me with the gift of that answer. And I want to give you credit in the future when I say we fill our cups so we can fill others. Yes, that was perfect. Thank you, Meghan.
Meghan: Thank you. I really appreciate this conversation. It has filled my cup. Having a good conversation with somebody who has a good heart when it comes to these things is so nice.
Dr. Barrett: Well, that’s gracious and kind and generous. Thank you for sharing your strong and good heart with me today.
Meghan: Absolutely. So that’s a wrap on this episode of Our Voices Our Future. We hope today’s conversation inspired, challenged, and reminded you of the power of raising your voice. The fight for equity doesn’t stop here. Join us in the movement. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you love this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, stay bold, vocal, and keep the conversation going. This is Our Voices, Our Future.
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About the Authors
Meghan Etsey, MS4
Meghan Etsey is a fourth year medical student from St. George’s University. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Biology and a Bachelors of Arts in Nutrition and Dietetics from Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio. She served as the President of the St. George’s University’s Women in Medicine chapter in St. George, Grenada where she expanded relationships with the community and worked towards educating women and helping the youth. She is also a member of the Gender Equity Task Force and Sex and Gender Health Collaborative Committees within the American Medical Women’s Association. When she is not pursuing medicine, you can find her with her friends and family on different road trips and adventures exploring the world.
Vashti Price, MS, MHS, MS3
Vashti Price is a third-year medical student at St. George’s University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a Master’s in Biological Sciences from Alcorn State University, and a Master’s in Health Sciences from Meharry Medical College. With a strong passion for public health and health equity, Vashti has dedicated much of her time to volunteering with underserved populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness and children in need. Her commitment to service continues through her involvement with the American Medical Women’s Association, where she serves on the Gender Equity Task Force and the Sex & Gender Health Collaborative Committees. Vashti is particularly interested in the intersection of medicine, public health, and community outreach. Outside her academic and clinical pursuits, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, attending festivals, exploring new cities, and winding down with a good Netflix series.