On Research Podcast – Politics and Research: Transferable Skills

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1. Podcast Introduction (00:00:24) Justin welcomes listeners, introduces the podcast’s purpose, and presents Rachel Baker as the guest.
2. Rachel’s Background in Nursing (00:01:45) Rachel shares her transition from clinical nursing to research and her interest in endocrinology and diabetes.
3. Entry into Politics (00:03:17) Rachel explains how COVID-19 influenced her decision to run for state representative, connecting healthcare and policy.
4. Balancing Roles (00:06:38) Rachel discusses the logistics and mental challenges of balancing her roles as a legislator and a researcher.
5. Transferable Skills (00:09:24) Rachel highlights the valuable skills from her research background that enhance her effectiveness in politics.
6. Healthcare in Legislation (00:10:36) Rachel describes her involvement in healthcare-related committees and the importance of health perspectives in legislation.
7. Innovative Health Solutions (00:11:40) Rachel shares ideas on using drone technology for healthcare delivery in rural areas.
8. Critical Thinking in Policy (00:12:02) Rachel emphasizes the importance of evidence-based decision-making and critical analysis in her legislative work.
9. Engaging the Community (00:14:45) Rachel discusses the need for active community engagement in both research and politics to improve representation.
10. Bridging the Gap (00:16:11) Rachel reflects on the disconnect between healthcare and politics, advocating for better public understanding and involvement.
11. Education and Accessibility (00:18:28) Rachel stresses the importance of education in making research and political processes accessible to the general public.
12. Impact of Research on Politics (00:20:07) Rachel shares a personal experience of recognizing the influence of research testimony in legislative discussions.
13. Engaging in Politics (00:21:51) Rachel encourages everyone to engage in the political process, highlighting the importance of researchers’ insights.
14. Staying Informed (00:23:03) She emphasizes the need for researchers to stay updated on political developments relevant to their fields.
15. Research vs. Politics (00:23:32) Discussion on the differences between the research and political worlds, particularly in decision-making processes.
16. Data in Politics (00:24:09) Rachel shares her experience of presenting research data in a political setting and the challenges faced.
17. Shared Goals in Research (00:26:06) She contrasts the collaborative goal-oriented nature of research teams with the often subjective goals in politics.
18. Power Dynamics (00:28:14) Rachel discusses how power and status differ between research and politics, affecting decision-making.
19. Ethics in Professions (00:30:23) The conversation touches on perceptions of ethics in nursing versus politics and the importance of integrity.
20. Skill Development (00:31:28) Rachel reflects on gaining new skills in politics that enhance her research capabilities.
21. Bridging Communities (00:38:17) She discusses the potential for researchers to impact local communities and improve health outcomes.
22. Common Goals (00:41:49) Rachel highlights the importance of recognizing shared goals among researchers, clinicians, and politicians for better health.

Rachel Baker: I went into this because I saw skills that I had learned in the research world that I thought would be helpful in the political world. But what I have surprised myself to find is that through the political world, I’m actually building new skills that I never really thought about, that have been really helpful back in my research world.

Justin Osborne: Welcome to On Research with CITI program, your favorite podcast about the research world where we dive into different aspects of the industry with top experts in our field. I’m your host, Justin Osborne, and I appreciate you joining. Before we jump in, as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not designed to provide legal advice or legal guidance. You should consult with your organization’s attorneys if you have questions or concerns about the relevant laws and regulations that may be discussed in this podcast.

In addition, the views expressed in this podcast are solely those of our guests. At the beginning, you heard a clip from Rachel Baker, my guest this episode. Rachel is a clinical nurse, a researcher, educator, and a politician, serving as a state representative for Ohio’s House District 27. In her first year as a state representative, she sponsored 13 bills addressing a variety of topics. Rachel serves on five committees, several being healthcare-related, and as a research nurse we talked about the challenges of balancing a political role with her researcher and clinical hats.

And there are some great takeaways, Rachel shares related to the skill sets that she brought over to politics and also skills that she learned from politics to bring back to her researcher role. We covered a lot and I hope you enjoy our discussion. So without further ado, let’s jump in. Rachel, thank you so much for joining. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Rachel Baker: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Justin Osborne: Of course. Of course. Well, I want to dive in and hear about your background. So can you tell us how you got into research in the first place and what your role is now?

Rachel Baker: Sure. So I’ve listened to some of your podcasts and I would say I am like all your previous guests. I fell into it. So I was a clinical nurse. I still am a clinical nurse, but working at a hospital on a floor that half the patients were endocrinology patients and half the patients were enrolled in research studies. And so I was really interested in endocrinology and diabetes and I loved those patients as a new nurse. And once in a while I would get assigned a research patient and I’d be really stressed out.

And then as I became more secure in my nursing knowledge and in my practice, I found myself being not challenged by the endocrine patients and I loved the research patients. That was always something new, always a new protocol, disorders that we’d only read about, really rare in nursing textbooks. And so I started loving taking care of the research patients and then kept down that path and ended up going back to school, getting my PhD in nursing research. And I’ve been in the research field ever since.

Justin Osborne: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So you kind of came in through the healthcare space and now you’re doing research as a nurse. So besides the research hat, you also wear a political hat. Can you kind of tell us about your role in politics?

Rachel Baker: Sure. So about I would say maybe four-ish years ago, I was working as a nurse researcher, which is what I do now, and kind of saw firsthand, COVID and our healthcare system’s reactions to COVID, the way the healthcare systems built up policies and guidelines and initially were really conservative and as we learned more, we changed things and pivoted and loosened up precautions when we learned more about what we were dealing with. And I really saw firsthand how healthcare knowledge can help inform policy and keep communities safe. I saw that from the clinical perspective and the research perspective at our hospital system. And as we were adjusting protocols, I’m sure people working in the research space during this time remembers lots of changes and adjustments and adaptations. And I watched that all happening, and at the same time I watched what was happening statewide with legislation and policy around COVID.

I was watching what local elected officials were doing, so what our local school board was doing with; are my kids going to be at school in person or at home? Are they going to wear masks or not? Our state government could places mandate vaccines or require vaccines to go into their businesses? There were just lots of questions and I’m a little embarrassed to admit, but I had never really taken the leap in my head of how important policy is in health of communities. I loved that I went from clinical to research. I felt like that was a big jump, that we really need research to improve health of communities, but I never really understood how policy impacted things until I saw it in COVID.

And so I decided, I watched this decision-making, and I thought, gosh, a lot of the things we do in healthcare and in the research world around making decisions based on evidence and data could really be useful at the policymaking table. And it was the perfect storm of me having this aha moment. And at the same time, the state representative seat that I was part of where my house is, the person who’d served there for eight years was term limited out, so it was going to be an open seat. And being a true nurse and researcher, I ran right into the fire and thought, I can do this.

Justin Osborne: That’s great.

Rachel Baker: And ran for office and actually had a primary election and then a general election. And I think that was part of the perfect storm too, coming out of COVID, being a nurse, being a researcher, looking at science and data, people were really open to that kind of a person running for office. And I ran and now I’m a state representative in Ohio.

Justin Osborne: That’s awesome. That is awesome. Well, that’s a fantastic story and it’s fascinating, of course, that you wear both of these hats in very seemingly different worlds. Knowing that, and it sounds like you do have two distinct hats that you have, what’s the overlap? How do you balance these two things? They probably inform each other a little bit, but how do you balance these?

Rachel Baker: This is my favorite question, because there’s kind of two parts to it. I would say one, logistically how I balance it is a lot. So because I am healthcare researcher, that is I don’t want to be governor and I don’t want to be president. I am really in a unique position of running for an elected office, truly just to help and then come back to my real life. And in Ohio, we have a part-time legislature. Actually, we have a full-time legislature, but we only are in session once a week. And so we have the ability to work and live in our communities and then go to session once a week. And I’m also pretty close, an hour and a half or two-hour drive, so it’s not bad to just go once a week. And other than that, really live and continue as a researcher and as a nurse in my community.

And I think that’s really important. I don’t want to give away… I want to be a legislator who lives and works and is a real person in her community. I don’t want to go live in Columbus and be wrapped up in that political world. I want to be a real community member and represent people like me. So the logistics of that has kind of worked. But I would say what’s a little bit harder sometimes and what I have to be really conscious about is mentally which hat I’m wearing.

So am I a legislator right now or am I a nurse researcher? And making sure that those are two really distinct roles that I have. And it’s come up a few times as part of our role, we’ll do things like be invited to come tour a hospital system and hear about their needs and their resources needs. And so when I tour competitors to where I work, they’re always a little, “Oh should I…” and I try to assure people I am right now a state legislator and I see my two roles as really distinct. And when I’m a researcher, I’m not thinking about state house and policy and I’m really looking at the research projects we’re doing. And so I try when I’m in my roles to keep them very separate, but what I’ve been surprised about is how helpful having a research background has been in the political world and the skills that I’m able to translate.

Justin Osborne: That’s really interesting. Well, let’s talk about that. And again, you sound like a… I don’t know the stats, but you sound like probably not the average politician. As you said, you’re not looking to continue and rise in the ranks in the political world. And so you really are a researcher at heart and a nurse and wearing that hat. So with these transferable skills that you talked about, what have you discovered? What have you found in this wearing both of these hats that has been the most valuable?

Rachel Baker: I think there’s a few things. One, I would say so many of the topics that we cover are healthcare-related. So we as legislators in Ohio sit on… I sit on five different committees where really we do the work of legislation. And it’s interesting because until I got here, I didn’t really understand. You see media of the big house session and I thought that’s where everything happened. Now I see that’s just where you push your little yes or no button on all the work happens in the committee rooms.

So in Ohio, we have three committees that are really completely healthcare-related. So we have a public health policy, health provider services and behavioral health committee, and then we also have an insurance committee, which includes a lot of health-related topics. So a big portion of our committees are content that healthcare people can help. But I would say even more important is every committee I sit at, I can find health implications. If we’re talking about transportation, if we’re talking about housing, if we’re talking about education, there is a social determinant of health, there is a health implication. So I’ve really found that I’m able to bring health and looking at every problem with a health lens is a new perspective. I have a kind of funny story on that. I serve as ranking member of our house aviation and aerospace committee, which I was a little intimidated by since I have no aviation or aerospace expertise.

I would’ve loved to have been ranking on a health committee, but they needed me on aviation and aerospace. And we’ve been talking about drone regulations. So the airspace where FAA isn’t in control, but there needs to be some state level regulations around it. And the examples are things like Amazon delivery or DoorDash delivery. I’m able to bring a perspective of what if we had this technology and we could… There was a really bad motor vehicle crash in some rural area and we could drone in equipment and perhaps telehealth to be helping a trauma physician to be talking with the first responders.

Justin Osborne: Oh, very interesting.

Rachel Baker: What if someone way out on a field with a friend has a anaphylactic reaction and we could within a few seconds drone an EpiPen to them? My eyes, everything we look at, I think how could this be used for the health of Ohio? So I think content is one area that’s important and that’s probably the least important, because you can’t be a content expert on everything. I have to vote on taxes, you know, I’m not an expert in that. So I can’t expect everyone to be a healthcare expert.

So I would say the biggest help is the skills that I’ve learned clinically and through research that I can use there. So things like making sure that we’re pulling in experts in a topic area, being able to look at data, evidence, collate that, be able to think critically about data we’re being given and identify potential bias. Not just believe everything I see. Being able to look for disproving evidence. Things that researchers do. I’m able to bring there and to really help facilitate an evidence-based decision-making process, which is a little different perspective than many of the people at the legislature.

So those skills have been super helpful. Skills in how to have someone bring us data and not just take it on face value, but to really look at how is this collected and in what population? And is this generalizable to all Ohioans and should we really be basing policy on this? Is there conflicting evidence? Would there be conflicts of interest? All of these research kind of things, I can bring when I’m helping to make policy decisions.

Justin Osborne: That’s great. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like you said, you can’t be an expert in everything, but you need people like you, I would think at the table. You need somebody who’s going to look at it from this lens, and you need all the lenses, but that sounds pretty important to have the skillsets.

Rachel Baker: Yeah, it’s been really… I think the skillsets are more important than the healthcare content, but I do think that the passion of doing our work, whether it’s clinical work or research work or policy work to improve the health of people, to improve the health of our communities can exist everywhere. And so we do that with our research protocols. We do that in policy decisions. And so I’m really conscious to think what perspective are we not hearing? And I think the system is set up that we have hearing that people could come in and be for a bill or against a bill and we hear both sides, but what I don’t see us doing is looking for what perspective did we not hear from? So it’s a little more passage of information versus like, wait, we heard from this group of people or it’s someone in this situation.

So bringing that perspective, which research has really taught me, making sure that I’m looking at all sides of this and considering potential conflicts of interest of the people coming in, why are they testifying? What could their interests be in that, are important to consider. And advocating for voices that aren’t paying attention and coming it… Until I did this, I wasn’t following what was happening at the state house and going in and testifying, but now I’m actively reaching out. We had legislation that was going to change some things for our law enforcement and I called all the police chiefs in my district to say, have you seen this? Do you want to write a letter? Is this good? Is this bad? So making sure the right stakeholders like we do in research, the right stakeholders are at the table when a decision’s being made.

Justin Osborne: That’s really good. Well, and you kind of just touched on it, but you said that before you got into politics really, you weren’t going to these hearings and whatnot, and most people aren’t, right? That’s sort of the disconnect, but there is obviously a disconnect between the healthcare, I guess, but the research industry and the political world. Can you talk about that? I mean, what are things that you wish both sides would understand about each other and how do we sort of bridge that gap? Because I mean politics influences everything and it impacts everything, but similarly, research has a very large impact on the general population as well. So what are your thoughts on how do we bridge that? That’s a big question, but what do you think?

Rachel Baker: That is. And I didn’t put together what you’re saying until you just said that. But I think the similarity between the two, is there two areas that people want nothing to do with until-

Justin Osborne: So true.

Rachel Baker: I tell people I do research and data and they’re like, “Oh, I hate math.” And then I tell them I’m the state rep and they’re like, “Oh, I hate politics.” But it’s two things that impact all of our lives and that actually I would push back for people to learn more about both of them because I have completely loved them both. And I think that we have this idea that research and numbers and math and all this stuff is bad and politics are bad. Maybe not bad, but something we don’t want to be involved in. But I think they’re both better when the general population is involved in them.

So if we look at qualitative data, if we look at enrolling patients, we want a representative sample of the community and we have areas that are hard to enroll, and the data is better. The results are more [inaudible 00:17:14] if we have a good sample. So we need people to understand this stuff and to engage. I would say the exact same thing with politics. If people don’t vote, if the middle of the political spectrum isn’t engaging in voting, then we are getting representatives who are really speaking the voice of often extremes that voted. And if only-

Justin Osborne: That’s a good point.

Rachel Baker: … people are coming in and testifying, that’s all we’re hearing in committee, we need typical America to engage politically as well.

Justin Osborne: Yeah, that’s interesting because I think to hit on that example that you just used, we’ve seen from a regulatory standpoint even and from guidance, from all the agencies, that there are actions being taken now to try to… As you said earlier, try to look for the group that’s not represented and what are ways that we can represent them better in clinical research? That is a strong focus and a heavy research in research right now in this area. In politics. How does that look, right? Do you see legislation going out there to say, “Hey, how do we force policies to exist where we are actively pulling in people that aren’t represented or not showing up to these things?” The average people like you said. I mean, there’s no activity around that side, but it’s the same concept as we’re talking about in research to pull in the people that we’re just not including.

Rachel Baker: Yes, absolutely. And I mean if anything, I think politics generally is doing the opposite. We’re trying to make voting harder. And it’s a balance between having secure voting and election security, but at the same hand, making it easy and accessible to people. And so the same thing with research. We want our research to be good and controlled, but we want it to be accessible and open for people. But the biggest thing probably in both worlds is education and education to people about why you would be in research and what a huge help to humanity and to our science and advancing our healthcare to engage in research and what a huge importance to our social society to engage in politics.

Justin Osborne: That’s true.

Rachel Baker: So I think a lot of it comes to do with educating and then systematic things that make enrolling in research and engaging in the political process accessible to everyday people.

Justin Osborne: Yeah, that’s great. So you just shared about some of the transferable skills and the similarities and some of the things that are in common between research and politics. Can you talk a little bit about how your experience or skills and knowledge through research has impacted your political world or the political world?

Rachel Baker: Yeah, I think I’ve seen it a little bit and I think it’s needed a lot more. But probably one of the really fun moments when I was brand new, sitting in committee and really nervous, sitting in my chair and it’s all very formal. And so I’m sitting up there in my suit with my little name plate up.

And we have iPads in front of us that have all the testimony of people that have been submitted and they have to submit 24 hours in advance, but they’re often not uploaded for us until right as committee starts. So I’m sitting there in committee, if you see people looking… We’re not just playing on our phones, but I’m going through this iPad looking at testimony to who’s going to be coming in to testify in front of us. Because sometimes you see someone that you kind of know is a kind of culture war person, or you see someone that is a huge expert in the field. So I like to kind of look ahead of time and I’m sitting in committee before it starts looking… And then after we have our in-person testimonies on our iPads, we have all the written testimony of people who couldn’t be there. And I saw a physician and researcher that I used to work with had written in about in support of a policy, and it was so fine to see him explain how his research in this field and why this policy would help support that.

And I immediately texted him and said, “I see your testimony. Good job. I’m on committee.”

Justin Osborne: That’s awesome.

Rachel Baker: Being able to… When I saw that, I thought I had known this person as a really successful researcher who had big teams of people working on his studies, and I never realized that he was also following what was happening politically and writing and testimony to support. And so I would encourage every single person to run for office. I get that everyone doesn’t have that desire, but I think everyone could engage in the process. So if you are a big biomarker… Here’s a good example for Ohio, a big biomarker or researcher, we have legislation in Ohio looking at whether insurance companies, Medicaid should be required to reimburse for biomarkers. And so we can have researchers writing in telling about what cutting edge is happening, what kind of cost savings there could be if we’re routinely screening and using biomarkers, just kind of scanning what’s happening in the political world, in your state.

And federally, I think researchers have the most recent current knowledge of what’s happening in that field. And if we keep helping the policymakers, so that policymakers aren’t using data from 10 years ago but are hearing this is what is at the forefront in this field and this is how policy could be supporting these kind of advances in health, I think would be really powerful. So even people who want to stay in their research world and not take on two jobs, I think just staying abreast to not only what’s happening in the clinical world in your research field, but what’s happening in the political world and making sure that the knowledge that researchers have is really accessible to politicians.

Justin Osborne: That’s great. That’s great. No, it’s good to hear that those things happen and that’s a cool experience of seeing somebody that you know and you worked with involved.

Rachel Baker: Yeah, it was really exciting when I saw his letter. I was like, “Wow, when do you sleep?”

Justin Osborne: Yes. That is very interesting. I want to ask because you have these two hats, and we’ve talked a little bit about some of the overlap and some of the transferable skills from research to politics, but I do want to ask about the differences. Have you noticed any big, I guess, differences between wearing those hats, the researcher hat and the political hat?

Rachel Baker: I absolutely have. So I think I’m focusing so much on the translatable skills and the similarities because in my mind I was going to a totally different world, and so I’ve been super interested in the crossover that I’ve been able to use. But they are very different worlds. I definitely agree with that. One of my first public health committee meetings, we were debating something that was just really a hot button culture issue and everybody was debating and I was like, oh, I was trying to figure out why there were two sides to this, and I said something like, “Oh, you just don’t know the data, the research on it.”

And so I brought a stack of publications that I printed for everyone, and I even made an evidence table to summarize it in case they didn’t want to read all the articles. And they all looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, “Oh, this has all been published. Here you go.” Here’s an evidence table of all the data. And they were like, “Okay, thank you.” Totally uninterested.

And I realized it’s funny to look back on that committee meeting and how differently I would approach that conversation now. At that time I approached it like a researcher. If we have a research team meeting and there’s a big debate between things and one side has tons of systematic reviews and randomized control trials that show that it’s correct, I would just bring those in and maybe summarize them and then we would all be on the same page. I realized the same does not happen politically. So I think a big difference is in research teams, you definitely can have different people, different levels of experience and expertise and knowledge, but I’ve always… In all the teams I’ve been in, I’ve been able to have conversations with people with really different ideas and views initially, and we can all get on the same page based on data and facts.

There is a standard understanding of what the facts are, but always with data, we’ve been able to work through our differences and come to a decision looking at our ultimate goal. We’re all on the same team, we all have the same goal and data can inform how we move along to that. We’re always interested. A lot of the researchers I’ve worked with and people on research teams are super critical thinkers and really interested in questioning assumptions and looking… I would say that’s very different than my state house colleagues. They’re different factors in play in politics. I came into it thinking, oh, here’s the facts. This’ll be easy. But it’s called politics for a reason, and the facts aren’t always why decisions are made. And really honestly, from a research perspective, that happens too. Funding reasons. I mean, there are reasons-

Justin Osborne: Oh, sure.

Rachel Baker: … get made that aren’t maybe exactly what you want in data. I would just say it happens more in politics. So in politics, my comparison is that sometimes we don’t all have the same goal. I feel like in research teams, we all have the same goal. We want to complete this study, we want to enroll 200 patients. We want to get nice, clean, definite data. We kind of all are working towards this. We might have different ways that we’re approaching it or different roles in it, but we all are working towards the same thing. I think in politics, we need to take many, many steps back to get to the same thing. So I think I can connect with people… In my role, we all want to make Ohio a good place to live. I think I could get everyone to agree with that. However, people’s picture of what a good place to live is, is very different. And whether it’s a good place to live for me or in my family or a good place to live for all is a different thing. So I think…

Justin Osborne: A lot more subjectivity in…

Rachel Baker: There’s much more subjectivity in what our goal is. And then we have the issue with power and status in both. Right?

Justin Osborne: Right. That’s true.

Rachel Baker: I would say in research, power and status is typically tied more to data and productivity and breakthroughs. In politics, it can be more tied to what you’re doing for who and money and it’s not the same thing. And so there’s much more personal relationship trust needed to make progress politically. People need to trust you. People need to know that you’re doing things for a reason that’s right for them. There’s a lot of competing efforts and conflicts of interest. We think in research, we try to eliminate our conflicts of interest, right? In politics, you can literally see the conflicts of interest. I mean, people are there because they’ve been voted there. They’re voted there because they had enough money to run a big campaign, and there’s lots of special interests that give you that money.

There’s a built-in conflict of interest. And when you vote certain ways, you’re making certain people upset. And if you have a personal goal to become governor and president to keep moving up, then yes, you have a goal of making Ohio a better place to live. And yes, you have a goal of passing this legislation, but you may have a competing personal goal of getting somewhere politically. And you do see that in the research world, but I definitely see it more in the political world.

Justin Osborne: Well, I think, yeah… And I mean, again, there is a reason obviously that generally speaking, politics has a negative connotation as a profession, but that’s generally speaking. And I think in the research side, like you said, when you get bad players that go out of line and falsify data, it happens. Then they’re hopefully and generally found out, and then they don’t do research anymore. There’s very serious repercussions in the research side of things if you let that side win out over the greater mission of driving research forward and healthcare and all that stuff.

Rachel Baker: Absolutely. I think research really holds itself to a very high standard and helps clean out our own bad actors, and I don’t see that there yet.

Justin Osborne: Hopeful. I like the hopeful. I like that.

Rachel Baker: I would say, something really interesting I think, is that I went into this because I saw skills that I had learned in the research world that I thought would be helpful in the political world. But what I have surprised myself to find is that through the political world, I’m actually building new skills that I never really thought about, that have been really helpful back in my research world. And I think that that’s interesting. So we’re talking about… Politics has a bad name, and if we look specifically for nursing, there’s surveys of United States general people like who is the most ethical profession in your mindset? And for the past 20 something years, besides 9/11, it was always nurses. The most ethical professional. The least ethical professional is often politicians. So be a nurse politician and no one knows what to think of you, number one.

Justin Osborne: Exactly. Yeah.

Rachel Baker: We can bring ethical nurses, physicians, healthcare providers, researchers, data minded people to a place that has an idea and a stigma of being really unethical. I think that’s how we can win back people to engage. And I think the way out of the divisiveness, again, loved that you invited me to have this conversation because people don’t want to talk about politics. It ends up being an hour of fighting. In honesty, if we back up enough, there’s a space we all want, even if we have different political views, there’s some common goal. We all want to be able to have a nice family, to be safe, to have my kids educated, to have healthcare, to be safe in my community. Have a nice life. That’s what we all want.

So maybe how we get there is different, but if we can bring some trust and some ethics to the process and engage people, I think that’s how we get out of this divisiveness. And some of the skills, I think of research as… I’ve talked bad about legislators, so now I’ll get to… I look like a talk-bad, because I am one, but a lot of us researchers are pretty rigid, check-the-box kind of folks, like typing, I like things a certain way. I don’t know if they all are. I’m like that, for sure. We’re really nuanced. We really get into the detail of something. I can talk about one piece of data forever and think about it, right?

Justin Osborne: Yes.

Rachel Baker: Politicians don’t want any of that detail. They want the big, broad picture. They want a bigger look at what’s going on and how to fix things. And like I said, they need trust. And a lot of it has to do with relationships. I can have someone who has a really different maybe overall political stance than me, but if we agree on a topic and trust each other that we’re both doing this for the right reason, that we’re going to support each other through this, and have that relationship. There’s an actual chance that legislation will move versus if people don’t trust each other, it doesn’t matter how good it is. No one’s going to put it on the agenda. It’s not going to move. So there’s this relational kind of thing.

And then like I said, when I brought my systematic reviews to committee and everyone thought I was crazy, is that I’ve realized it’s so much more important in politics to give people an example and a real life consequence of something. So as a researcher, I want to know the p-value. I want to know what’s the correlation coefficient? How correlated are these two things? I can tell that to politicians, but they would much rather have someone come in and tell their life story and how this bill would impact them, and now they’re on board.

Justin Osborne: That’s interesting.

Rachel Baker: So part of storytelling, the art of bringing data to real life to people who might not be topic experts and explain why it’s important that that p-value is so small. Yeah.

Justin Osborne: Well, I think that’s fascinating, and I feel like you’re really hitting on something that hopefully everybody’s picking up on the research side of things here, in that a lot of times, because all been in here in the research side where you need more resources, you need more whatever to actually run the research itself, if you look at the administrative or the business side. And the people that you have to get a yes from don’t care about the p-value, like you said, right? So the ability to tell that story like you’re saying, and those skill sets involved in translating your needs in story fashion with the consequences and whatnot, what’s going to happen if I don’t get these resources? Well, maybe the research will suffer. How do you explain that properly? And I do feel like that is a very important skillset that a lot of us on the research side probably don’t have that experience.

Rachel Baker: And I think even more than not having the ability to do storytelling, I think I didn’t value it. I think I thought someone would tell their story, and I’m like, “Okay, well that’s one person and that’s great, but what does the data say?” What’s the p-value? You know what I mean? What’s the N? I don’t want an N of 1. I am a quantitative data researcher. I struggle even with qualitative, which I understand the importance of. But I’m a very number-rigid person. And so, I almost devalue the story because I was like, well, that’s your story. And there’s a lot of variables, and a lot of things in that I want to know what the data says, but being able to tell the story of the data, and even if that’s looking at what the average experience is and bringing that in as a story versus a number and a chart and a… I think can be really impactful, and I think we can use it when recruiting.

I keep going back to that connection of populations that are not wanting to engage in research. Can we bring not a table of where we’re missing data, but the actual story of participation, the story of [inaudible 00:36:43], and use that to tell the story of our data through a real story. And I’ve seen how powerful that is politically. So I’ll have tons of graphs and I’m super interested in that. And then we’ll have someone get up and give testimony. That’s just their personal story of someone who’s been in the hospital and how this bill would’ve helped their person, or their experience. And you just see everybody, like the aha moments of: that’s why we’re doing it.

And the researcher in me is like, “No, we’re not having a bill because of this guy’s grandma.” But I need to know how many people this impacts, and I need the numbers. But I think that there’s value in both. And so I went to politics to use my skills there, but what I’ve been super unexpectedly interested in is learning how some of the things that are done in the political world should be brought back, should be back to research, to advocate for what we need, to talk with participants about what research is, to kind of sell ourselves to communities of why we need communities engaged in research. It’s a, whole different skill set.

Justin Osborne: That’s fantastic. No, I really like that. I like that connection. I mean, again, I appreciate you agreeing to do this, because I feel like you do have this unique… You’re in a unique position wearing these two hats and just getting to parse through all the benefits of you being in this position, I think is very interesting. It’s good lessons learned.

Rachel Baker: And I think even outside of politics, if we can think of the areas in our communities that we can make things better using our research skills, there’s tons of areas where I’m sure helping your local school board who’s trying to figure out what to do about something, we could bring in data, could offer to look at their data around something. What are ways that we could use our skills to impact communities? And the surprise might be that you’ll learn some skills there that you can bring back to our research world and improve things here. So research, I felt it moving from the clinical world to the research world and healthcare. I felt really kind of siloed. Often the research department is separate from the clinical department and you’re kind of [inaudible 00:39:03] the world even in the same institution. So bridging that gap, but then taking it even further and looking at all the skills we have that can help our communities be healthy and have good outcomes outside of our studies.

Justin Osborne: That’s great.

Rachel Baker: I think there’s a ton of ways if we’re creative, that we can use what we know from a research perspective to reach our goals even outside of our studies.

Justin Osborne: Yes, I like that. I like that a lot. Transferable skills, right?

Rachel Baker: That’s awesome. It’s the theme of the day.

Justin Osborne: It’s the theme of the day. I like it. I like it. Well, Rachel, thank you so much. This has been fantastic.

Rachel Baker: Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

Justin Osborne: Well, welcome back to our same team segment here. I’m still sitting with Rachel Baker. And Rachel, it is easy to get bogged down in our day-to-day job responsibilities, but I believe that most of us do stay in this research industry because we actually care about the impact we’re making. And we want to make a difference. So can you share an experience or an example from your career that has connected you with this idea that we’re all on the same team in research?

Rachel Baker: Yeah, and I’m going to push your question a little bit since my segment is about looking at the political world and how transferable skills between research and the political world and going from the political world to research. I would say really the moment for me was sitting as a state rep and looking through testimony for a bill and seeing researchers that I know from the research world, writing and testimony and supporting a bill and realizing that we’re all on the same team. So not even just within research, but we’re all on the same team of trying to make things better and to improve health. And the team is the research team, but I would challenge people that the team is the clinical team, the team is the political team. And all these things have to come together to support our communities to make better health.

So we need politically, to bring resources to communities, to have transportation, to have housing, to have access to healthcare. When I saw that researchers that I really respected in the research world were also writing letters to their state government to advocate for policy, I really realized we’re all on the same team. And I think especially within politics, we can have lots of culture warry fights, but if we can remember we are on the same team and we have the same goal and we don’t have to be right or we don’t need our team to always win, but we’re all on the team of making things better and kind of stop the divisiveness and fighting for fighting’s sake and instead really bring people back to our common goals.

So I would say just seeing all… Knowing that I went into politics as kind of a separate hat, I was going to take off this hat and put on my politics hat, and once I got there, I started seeing all the things my other hat knows and realizing that it’s all connected. We’re all on the same team, whether we’re sitting at the state house or sitting… Enrolling patients in a research protocol.

Justin Osborne: That’s really cool. No, I like that because to your point, you kind of scaled it out a little bit because us in the research field, and that’s the main hat that we wear, we don’t often see the impact that our research could have on the greater good. I mean, we’re all doing it for that reason. But to be able to have somebody like you in the political side, who actually sees real legislation as a result of that research, like you said, is encouraging. It’s good to know that the stuff matters, right? It is making a difference.

Rachel Baker: It absolutely matters. And I think we can have policy that’s five years, 10 years behind, or we can engage researchers in the policy process and have policy that’s supportive of research, and that’s up-to-date with what we know in science. So I think it’s important that we’re on the same team.

Justin Osborne: That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Well, this is awesome. Again, Rachel, thank you so much for joining, and thanks for taking the time to talk.

Rachel Baker: Absolutely. Thanks for reaching out.

Justin Osborne: Be sure to follow, like and subscribe to On Research with CITI Program. If you enjoyed this episode, you may be interested in other podcasts in the CITI Program universe, including On Campus and On Tech Ethics. You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other streaming services. You should also review our content offerings regularly as we continually add new courses, subscriptions, and webinars. Thanks for listening.