Anyone with a child will tell you having a baby is life
changing in all of the best ways, but in a lot of ways that
are also hard at the time of pregnancy and that first year of
early childhood is critical not just for mommy, but children
biologically and developmentally.
What happens in this really brief window of pregnancy?
Infancy literally shapes your entire life course.
And when I first learned like that, that this is when families
are poorest, I kind of freaked out because like, as a
pediatrician, this is the most important window of child
development. That's Doctor Mona Hannah.
You might know her as the Doctor Who is at the center of the
Flint water crisis. Known as Doctor Mona, she has
helped expose the Flint water crisis.
In 2015, the Flint pediatrician who helped expose the dangerous
levels of lead in Flint. The turning point came when a
local pediatrician found conclusive proof that the
children of Flint were being exposed to high levels of lead
in their water and prompted the state to declare an emergency.
Doctor Mona helped to guide the city of Flint through a
monumental public health crisis, and she fought for Flint to have
safe drinking water flowing from their faucets.
She's now taking on a different public health crisis, poverty
during pregnancy. And we are the only country in
comparison to pure countries that does not have paid parental
leave. Doctor Mona's new program aims
to change that, and it's called RX Kids.
It is the nation's first community wide maternal and
infant cash prescription program.
Yes, you heard that right. Cash prescriptions.
A prescription for money. A program that is giving every
expected mother in the city of Flint, no strings attached, cash
funding to help with the myriad of expenses and financial
stressors that come along with having a baby.
RX Kids started in Flint in 2024.
Now, a year later, they're in eight different Michigan
counties. Like, this is not a teeny itsy
bitsy pilot. This is like like the largest
cash transfer program right now in the country and we are
literally eliminating poverty and improving health.
Welcome to Path Breakers, a show about what it takes to cut
through the noise and read tape and all of the other obstacles
to progress. I'm Tracy Pearson and I work on
the communications team at the Kresge Foundation.
And I'm Jamie Bennett, and I work at the intersection of
arts, culture, and equitable community development.
On each episode of this series, we talk with a different path
breaker who's forging a new way forward.
Today, we're talking to Doctor Mona Hanna about what happens
when you ensure economic stability for new mothers and do
it in a way that centers love and trust.
Well, let's get started. So, Doctor Mona, you saw
something that others were unwilling to see in Flint, or
perhaps unable to see what within.
You refuse to look away. And of course, I'm talking about
that very, very unfortunate situation with the water.
What gave you sort of the moral clarity to act even when other
institutions resisted seeing what was sort of before them?
So, Tracy, you pretty much kind of summed up the title of my
book, which is what the eyes don't see.
So there was a blindness. There was a blindness in Flint
to our kiddos, to the to the problem, to the, to the place so
many people refuse to see this crisis, this emblematic
environmental and public health crisis that was potentially
threatening, you know, the future of an entire population
of children. And when I heard about the
possibility of lead being in the water in Flint, like I could not
Unsee like once I once I heard that possibility, like my life
changed. And that was driven by a lot of
things. But most importantly, it was
driven by kind of my role as a pediatrician in the community.
Like I have literally taken an oath to protect children.
And that means not just making sure that they're healthy today
and doing their checkups and giving their vaccines, but it is
about making sure that our kids have the brightest future
possible. And knowing that there was lead
in the water, even the potential of lead in the water, really
afforded me a choiceless choice of just moving forward, being
driven by our kiddos, and making sure that they had the brightest
future possible. And how did you even know there
was lead in the water? I mean, I know there was some
conversation about this, but I mean, you don't work in water.
You don't work in public works. I'm guessing you're not a
welder. Like, I mean, how did this come
to be known and so present for you?
Jamie, I actually am a welder. No, just kidding.
I'm not a welder. I'm not a plumber, but, you
know, I was. I was a kid that grew up in
metro Detroit that really got into environmental activism,
helped shut down an incinerator when I was in high school in
kind of Kresge's backyard in Madison Heights.
And that kind of environmentalism pushed me into
a career in environmental health, but pushed a lot of my
peers that were so involved in this environmental
environmentalism in high school into other really awesome
environmental careers. So my best friend in high school
became an environmental engineer and lo and behold, became a
drinking water expert. She worked at the EPA, went on
to work at like other water agencies in DC, and then she
decided to come back home to Michigan to be closer to her
family. So my bestie, who I've known
forever, who is of all things a drinking water expert, was at my
house. And like, we were just hanging
out chilling. Our kids were playing, and it
was through her that I learned that Flint's water wasn't being
treated properly. And because it wasn't being
treated properly, it was going to be super corrosive, which
meant that whatever was in the plumbing was going to come out
of the plumbing and into the drinking water.
So it was my high school girlfriend over a glass of wine
in my house with our children running around that first kind
of, you know, let me know of the possibility of lead being in the
water. So make all kinds of friends,
stay connected to besties. You know, I think that's one of
the most important lessons I've learned is, is just how critical
it is to, you know, be surrounded by people who do
different things. You know, we live in a very,
very siloed environment. We hang out with folks who are
just like us. And it is so important to hang
out with all kinds of different people, with all kinds of
different backgrounds and experiences, because we ask
different questions and we come up with different solutions.
Yeah, I, I, what I'm hearing is community because I have a 5
year old and an 8 month old and so much of what I know about
mothering, I get through community and, you know, we
solve our problems in that community.
And I love my pediatrician and I love the school system, but it's
when I'm in community with other and different types of parents
and caregivers that I learn and get so much.
So I love that that is where that dialogue happened and how
that sort of got the ball rolling on this really big issue
being addressed. I want to ask you, how did you
arrive in Flint? Oh, that's a great question and
I'll only spend like the next two hours answering it.
So, so I, my family immigrated to this country when I was about
four or five. So we are Iraqi American.
So came here kind of for freedom and opportunity and an American
dream, but actually landed in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.
My dad did a postdoc at Michigan Tech University.
He's a metallurgical engineer. After a few years in the UP, he
came, we came downstate and he worked at General Motors and my
mom became a teacher and grew up in metro Detroit, like so much
of the Arab American diaspora. Went to school at the University
of Michigan for my undergrad in environmental health, which I
kind of created on my own, but then went to medical school at
Michigan State University, the College of Human Medicine, which
is this really neat and different kind of medical
school. You know, it's really kind of, I
think the embodiment of the Lane Grant University.
It's all about serving the people of our great state.
And you know, it's the very first community based medical
school in the country with this mission of serving the
underserved and really kind of a primary care focus.
So it was definitely kind of the work that I wanted to do.
And from the beginning of the medical school, you know, they
had a focus of, you know, training clinicians in all parts
of the state. So there's been AUP campus like
forever about campuses throughout the state, and
there's been a campus in Flint for over 60 years training
medical school students. So I was a medical student and
where I did my last two years of medical school in Flint.
And that is where I fell in love with the city.
I fell in love with the people. I fell in love with the history
and the grit and the loyalty and the pride.
And that's also where I fell in love with Pediatrics.
I just fell in love with the little people.
And then I left. I left to Detroit.
I, I went to the Children's Hospital Michigan in Detroit,
where I did my my residency training.
I stayed another year as a chief resident, stayed a few more
years at Wayne State University. And then in 2011, the
opportunity came to come back to Flint as a residency director.
And it was just this kind of perfect moment for me to give
back to a city that had given me so much and to kind of be in a
position to train the next generation of pediatricians to
really not just treat, you know, ear infections, but try to
address these upstream inequities that make our
patients sick. Tracy, how does it feel that she
picked Flint over Detroit? Yeah, I, I love for both, love
for both. We've spent some time in the
Children's Hospital in Detroit. So thank you for your service
and and your colleagues service there.
But you know, it's for the babies, and I want all babies to
have excellent care babies. All babies, all babies.
I love, I love children's. I was there before it became a
for profit, you know, I was there.
I don't, maybe I'm being nostalgic or I was there during
the best time. So, you know, and I, I'm, I am
so grateful for my training and for the ability to be there.
And I never thought I would, would have left children's
because it was an amazing place. It's a massive free standing
Children's Hospital. I was in charge of training of
hundreds of people. It was, it was joyful work and
like, I actually like, I didn't want to leave and that I, I, my
colleague pushed me to interview in Flint.
I'm like, I am not going to Flint.
Like, why would I go to Flint? It is this tiny, tiny hospital.
Like why would I leave Detroit? She's like, just go, just check
it out. And, you know, it was when I
went to Flint, you know, I realized like, you know, the
same struggles are in Detroit that are, are in Flint, You
know, and this is another community where they they need,
they need people, they need folks who care kind of who are
leading kind of with their heart.
And, and it was a challenge. And I love challenges.
So that's one of the reasons that I came back to Flint.
But I think the biggest reason that I came back is that
Michigan State University was about to take a deep dive in
Flint in terms of public health. They were doing something that
had never been done before. They asked the community of
Flint, hey, if we were going to like build public health here in
in Flint, like, how would we do it?
So all of MSU's public health programming is based in Flint,
and that's driven by community. The community identified big
issues that they wanted the university to work on.
The university hired translation researchers not to just like,
observe and study, but really to make make things better.
So that is also what drew me back to Flint to be able to be
part of this round up, never been before done effort to work
hand in hand with community to address big issues in in public
health. And can I ask, I don't mean to
be dense, but sort of when I think about health and when I
think about doctors, right? There's someone I go see in a
room once a year who sort of, you know, pokes at me, prods at
me, writes me prescription if I need it, right?
I mean, health and doctors is something that take place in a
closed room in a hospital or clinic.
But help me into understanding what this public health is.
Jamie, that is, that is such, such a good question.
And I think this is kind of something that a lot of folks
are confused about. They're like, there's healthcare
and there's health and we spend and we people confuse the two
like aren't they the same thing? And they're actually not the
same thing. So Healthcare is that, that
one-on-one that that, you know, often in a hospital or clinic
encounter that we have with people.
And we spend a lot of money in this nation.
Actually we spend more than any other country on healthcare,
which is by and large a sickness based system.
It's a profit driven sickness based system that is after the
fact and reactive. We don't focus on health, and
that is keeping people healthy. And that's often what the kind
of the domain of public health is.
It is stronger environmental regulations, it is economic
stability. It is universal childcare.
It is, you know, all these other things which are normal in other
countries that keep people healthy.
And because we don't spend much on public health and because we
spend so much on healthcare, our health outcomes as a nation are
actually kind of terrible, you know, in terms of maternal
mortality and morbidity and infant outcomes and life
expectancy. So there is a mismatch in terms
of where we invest and what our outcomes are because we don't
invest in prevention and public health.
So I often say like we are, we are putting really expensive
band aids on bleeding social wounds because we are not
investing in health and we are reactively spending a lot on
healthcare. So that that kind of brings us
to this RX Kids program. So what is RX Kids?
Oh my gosh, Jamie, Ark's Kids is like pure love and joy.
We call Ark's Kids a prescription for health, hope
and opportunity. So, you know, as I, I'm a
practicing pediatrician to this day, and it is my greatest joy
when I get to hang out with our kiddos.
And for so long, you know, I have felt frustrated as a
pediatrician because I have been unable to treat this really
terrible pathogen, this thing that makes kids and communities
sick, which is poverty. And I end up treating the
consequences of poverty, be it misappointments or developmental
delays or filling the thrive or childhood obesity or the list
goes on, because we have not dressed this root cause, this
social determinant of health, which is, which is poverty.
And it turns out that families are poorest in this maternal
infant period. So, you know, all those folks
out there who are listening who had a child, like, Oh my God,
when you are having a baby, like there is so much stuff you need
to buy like car seats and strollers and diapers and
packing plays and like, you know, the list goes on and on.
It's estimated that just that first year of life is an added
$20,000 in expenses. And this is happening at this
time of a perfect storm where income is dropping.
Moms often have to come out of the workforce so there's a drop
in income, expenses rise. So this is a perfect storm of an
economic shock, the greatest economic shock in your life
course. We have learned so much in terms
of early childhood and the consequences of early adversity
and toxic stress. Literally what happens in this,
this milieu, this, this, this short period of time predicts
what happens on later in life. And we as a society, as a nation
have been abandoning our Mamas and babies.
So when I'm in clinic and I'm holding a little newborn in my
hands and that newborn is like wide eyed and staring at me,
right, with like bright eyed potential.
Like, you know, it is so frustrating when I know that zip
code that that kid is born into. And I know that that zip code
and that that environment, that milieu that, you know, that
situation is predicted of anything.
You know, it is predicted of their life course more than
anything else that I can do as a clinician.
So RX kids is like this bold, impossible effort to say no, to
refuse the status quo. And, and kind of in the same
spirit of our work with the water like flip story, the the
story of our environmental crisis more than the story of a
crisis. It is a story of resistance.
It is a story of a group of people that came together and
said, no, we can do better on behalf of our kiddos.
And we resisted. And since then, we have been
building hand in hand with community and so many partners,
a model of recovery to make sure our kids have the brightest
future possible and to make sure that kids everywhere, in
communities, everywhere don't have to go what we have gone
through. And in that same spirit of
resistance, we are now resisting to have our babies, our precious
babies, being born into and growing up in poverty.
So RX Kids is this impossible effort of eliminating poverty
for Mamas and babies. So every pregnant Mama in the
city of Flint gets $1500 in the middle of pregnancy and then
once a baby is born it is $500 a month.
It is for everyone, no strings attached, no conditions.
And that universality and that unconditionality conveys these
really important values, dignity and deservingness and love.
Love. This is a program built on love
and trust and freedom and choice.
All of these values that are not seen in other kind of social
programs that often are stigmatizing and shameful,
shameful and often administered in very kind of systemically
racist ways that have vilified our Mamas and our babies.
So we are up ending all of that with RX Kids.
So that's what RX Kids is. And it started in Flint.
We're in eight counties already in Michigan, and it's spreading
all over the nation. Doctor Mona, you are really
talking to me. I will tell you just fully
transparent. When you are in that period of
carrying a child, you feel so vulnerable.
It's so. Hard, you know, you're, you're
making, you're going to, you're doing the test and you're going
to the appointments and you got to buy this and you got to do
that. And so to have that added stress
of financing all of this be removed, that, that is
monumental for mothers and families and people just wanting
to support mothers and knowing that they'll be OK.
Like you don't have to worry about how you will get to that,
to that doctor's appointment because you can pay for the Uber
there now, you can pay for the, the, the, you know, whatever you
need, medications you need. So it's wonderful.
You can pay for a rent, you can pay for food, you can, you don't
have to worry between diapers and dinner.
And we, we hear that, we're seeing that in the data, that
stress relief that, that mama's saying like, I can breathe a
weights been lifted off my shoulder.
I can be present. I can be the amazing Mama I
always knew I was. Absolutely.
And you said this word deserving this, and many policies are
built on this idea of deserving this and it's terrible, but our
kids rejects that. The What message do you hope the
program sends to Mothers of Flint, but also to policymakers
across the country that can implement this in in various
other communities? Yeah, so you know, Ark's Kids is
once again, we started in Flint in January of 20/20/24, thanks
to Kresge and thanks to so many amazing partners.
And then this year we are in the city of Kalamazoo.
We're in five counties in the eastern Upper Peninsula.
We're live in the city of Pontiac.
It's about to go live in other kind of southeast Michigan
communities. There's a, you know, there's
legislation right now in the state to make it a statewide
thing because everybody wants this.
Everybody needs this. It is so common sense and really
kind of we've had bipartisan support.
All kinds of folks understand how hard it is to bring a baby
into the world. Like, you know, people are like,
Oh my God, Mona, your job is so hard.
I'm like being a mom is so hard. Like that is the being a parent.
It is the hardest job in the world is to be a parent,
especially kind of in that in that first year life.
So we're excited about the enthusiasm throughout the state
and really throughout the nation.
There's a lot of other states that are looking at adopting our
kids as well. And, you know, once again, it is
about economic stability. And this is an an evidence based
program. Programs like this are done
throughout the world. This is not a new brilliant
idea. You know, this is really based
on mountains of evidence. We did something like this as a
nation during the expanded child tax credit in 2021, where child
poverty dropped to the lowest level ever.
That was not renewed by one vote in the US Senate.
So it became really important to do something of a, you know, to
keep this work in the public imagination at a scale that
hadn't been done before. Like we are running the largest
cash transfer program in the country.
That's amazing. So that, you know, so yes, we're
eliminating poverty. We have amazing health outcomes.
But Tracy, what what is the most exciting thing is these values
that we are sharing and the narrative work that we are
doing. You know, we celebrated the
launch of Arcs Kids last year on Valentine's Day because it's
about love. This year, the UP program was
announced on this year's Valentine's Day.
Every baby in Flint gets A and any Rs Kids community gets a
onesie when they're born that says love and another onesie
that says best baby ever and they get a card from the
governor of Michigan. Every baby that says welcome our
newest Michigander. We are so happy you're here.
We love you and we can't wait to see what you grow.
Up and we care about. You, we care about you.
We care about you. So, you know, this work is about
all these different outcomes, but it's also so much about how
can we reimagine the social contract.
Like how can we reimagine that relationship that individuals
have with government institutions and academia and
philanthropy? And, you know, I was with a Mama
yesterday who was part of the program and, and somebody asked
her, like, when you think of this program, who do you think
is bringing you this program? You know, and the mom said, I
see it as a whole community that has come together to support to
support us. And that's what it is.
Because like, you know, this program is led by a university
in partnership with a nonprofit, but the funding is public and
private, the state dollars and federal dollars and
philanthropic dollars and corporate dollars.
So there's a whole community that has come together to
support our, you know, our Mamas and our families in this kind of
historic place based way. So, you know, those, those
values are like are, are so much that are part of this program.
And and that's something that we, you know, hope to continue
to instill as we continue to expand.
And we actually seeing it play out, not just in these like, you
know, anecdotal statements by moms, but like in our big
surveys and our big research data.
Our Mamas who are part of our kids feel more loved, they feel
more respected, they feel more empowered.
Our moms actually have more trust, which is amazing in
government institutions. We actually even we are seeing
more civic engagement in the last election, we actually had
more women of childbearing age in Flint turn out to vote and
register to vote in comparison to any other community and in
comparison to to men and older women.
So really, really great other data points that's that are
showing that these values which we think are so critical to this
program of once again of dignity and love and deservingness and
trust are also being translated can.
I ask. So this notion of cash
prescriptions is so interesting for me because on the one hand,
poverty seems like a relatively easy thing to cure.
You just give someone more money, they're no longer poor.
100% they don't need like 10 million parenting programs to
tell them what they're doing wrong.
They just didn't need to be not be poor.
Well, and so then let me like, let me channel some folks that
aren't aren't on board with this and say.
Jamie, everybody's on board, Like everybody is on board with
this. Well, except one vote in the
Senate wasn't on board with. It.
That's right. And and just to say that.
So there's this notion that if you wrote me a different kind of
prescription, you would tell me to take it three times a day.
You would tell me to not eat grapefruit, you would tell me
when to stop taking it. And I sort of don't want to ask
this question because it's not a Jamie question, but how do we
know that those families are going to do the right thing with
that cash prescription? Because they, because that's,
that's what they do, because our, that's based on massive
global and domestic evidence that when families have the
resources, they do what they need to do.
So for example, in our research, it just in ours kids.
So the most common thing that families spend their money on is
baby supplies. And when you breakdown baby
supplies, it is diapers. That is the most common thing
that folks spend their money on. Then it's food, rent, utilities,
transportation, childcare. And that is also consistent with
the global evidence for the extended child tax credit, what
people spent their money on. And then, you know, we, we can
put requirements. So we could say, oh, you can
only spend this money on food or you could only spend this money
on this, or we could. But you know what, when we do
that, it became the values change.
It is telling our Mamas, we don't trust you.
We don't trust you to, to know what, what is best.
And that's not what that's not what this is all about.
But also when you Add all those requirements, those
paternalistic patriarchal requirements, it, it costs more
money, it it becomes administratively more
burdensome. And that's also, that's also
something that, you know, folks are not supported of.
I think the reason that we have such bipartisan support for this
program is because we are such an efficient program.
There is very, very little bureaucracy.
This is a low overhead program. It is also a very time limited
program, starts in pregnancy, either ends at six months or
ends at one year. You know, it's just a short
window of time, but, you know, we're not policing people.
We're not figuring out who's in, who's out.
The universality makes it really easy for folks to understand and
it makes it easy to administer. If you add any of those things,
it increases kind of the cost. So, you know, this week there
was an article in The Detroit News about, about our kids.
And it's kind of it's spread across the across the state.
And there was a great quote. And I'm pulling up right now
from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which is like a
pretty conservative think tank. And it, it gets right at that
one. Looking forward, I'm going to
get to it right now. I'm going to keep talking.
Oh, here it is. OK.
So the the director of research at the Mackinac Center for
Public Policy said that while he doesn't believe it's possible to
completely prevent the misuse of direct cash assistance,
providing the subsidies without strings is still more cost
effective than the overhead and administration expenses that
come with a more traditionally structured government social
welfare program, He went on to say.
I think even recognizing that some of this money is going to
be ill used is still more efficient than setting up a
whole government program and trying to deliver services
through a new arm of government. So that in efficiency is key.
But once again, it's the values that we are sharing that we
trust you to know what's best. And that flexibility to for
families, like some families have diapers, but they need
food. Some families have food, but
they need, you know, they need to pay their car payment and
some families, you know, that's OK, but they need housing.
So that flexibility also enables us to address so many different
needs. And we're seeing that in the
data. For example, we have massive
improvement in housing stability.
We had no evictions in our surveyed Mamas last year.
We have less you. Had no evictions.
No evictions in our low income Mamas that were so red last year
in Flint, the poorest city in Michigan.
We have no evictions in our surveyed moms and and this
period of life has some of the greatest residential instability
and we were able to address that housing crisis.
Our Mamas were able to pay for childcare.
So there's these Poly crises that we are facing, housing and
childcare, affordability, health, maternal health, and
this simple program that is administered so efficiently is
addressing all of these crises. That's beautiful and amazing for
them. I want to talk about you a
little bit. This is a very path breaking
program. Yeah, that's a great word, Path
breaking. You guys should come up with
like a podcast named Path Breaking.
Such a good word. Double her Grant, Tracy.
What would it take to scale our kids beyond Flint?
And what role do you think sort of philanthropy, government and
civic infrastructure? What would it take to make it
possible? Other places?
You know, when we started our skids, just like everything that
we have done in Flint, be it from pipe replacement or
environmental justice work, it's once again, it was never about
Flint. It was about figuring it out and
then sharing our best practices to to communities across.
So you know, we figured this out in Flint.
We developed this plug and play program that that is that's
already kind of spread across our straight and and that is
easily, you know, scalable to the whole state and to to other
communities. So with dollars at the table,
we're ready to go within months. We can launch in Detroit if the
if dollars are at the table. We already have kind of
commitment from the state, you know, with, for some of the
funds. But right now we we need other
match dollars to make a possible in other communities.
So I think of especially philanthropy and I'm I'm
stealing something that my Dean said.
He's like, you know, I see philanthropy as a doula of this
program, like it's helping bring it to life.
You know, it's helping, it's helping birth it.
But our goal is always to make this like a sustainable
government, like scale public program.
And and that's absolutely where we're headed.
And did you, I was trying to do the math as you were talking.
It's what is It's about $7500 per mother to support her and
her baby through the first year. Yeah.
So in Flint and Kalamazoo, we've been able to raise so much money
that it is a prenatal and 12 month program.
But in our other communities like the UP and Pontiac and
other places, it's a prenatal plus six month program based on
how much money we've been able to raise.
So in some places it's $7500 and in other places it's about
$4500. So there's about 100,000 babies
born in Michigan a year. So the math is not typically
hard. So to do this for the whole
state, it's about $750 million that would be needed per year if
it was a 12 month program. And then if it was a shorter
program, it'd be about $450 million a year that would be
needed. And I, I can't, I can't see how
we can't afford not doing this. Like, you know, once again,
every hour, every day that goes by when a baby is born without
the resources they need is a failure on all of us as a
society. And we're already even showing
kind of a cost savings, like we prevented about 40 NICU
admissions last year. We have, you know, we've
impacted birth weight and gestational age.
We have less child welfare involvement.
All of these afford cost savings to the state and to the society
in the short term and the long term.
And that's also consistent with kind of evidence on cash
transfers in this window of life.
And that's even before you get to the cost of what happens when
a family is evicted or what I mean. 100%.
There's all of the sort of non healthcare costs that I mean, I
can't believe I'm saying this, but $750 million seems cheap.
No, it is, It absolutely is. You know, even if a mom lives in
a community with a high rate of eviction, if even if she's not
being evicted, but but there's a lot of people in the community
being evicted, that alone can increase the rate of premature
delivery and low birth weight. And that is a massive, you know,
health issue and a cost issue. So there's massive kind of
benefits that are really unquantifiable.
That's awesome. And then the Kresge Foundation,
I'm sure there's another foundation, you know, called the
Skillman Foundation. And one of the things that the
Skillman Foundation sort of thinks a lot about is the Masai
people in Africa have a greeting when they meet each other that
goes and how are the children right?
Not how are you not how was your day, not how are you doing?
But how are the children right? Because they believe that if the
next generation is doing OK, things are going all right.
Do you any? Does that spark anything for
you? Does that bring up anything up?
I love that so much. And we're also grateful to the
Skillman Foundation, who are supporters of our kids.
They're actually funding the mailing of all the onesies to
all the babies in the state. That's I love that.
How are the children? That is that's what, that's my
why. That's why I wake up every
morning. That's why I do this work is for
these kiddos. They are all our kiddos and and
they're not doing OK right now. We we do, we do not care about
our our children kind of as a nation and and we need to do
better and our kids is kind of one path forward.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right. We're we're going to close with
our lightning round. Tracy, I'm just pulling up my
list. And I will start.
You were kicking us off. Yes.
What? What's the first word your
friends would use to describe you?
Probably energetic. When you were 10, what did you
think you were going to be when you grew up?
A journalist. Me too.
What age is the best age? Oh, I would say nine months.
It is a sweet age. They sent a new miles new
development in the last one, like every day.
Like every day, babies at between 6 and 12 months are
doing something new and it's so much fun.
Xavier, my 8 month old just discovered his hands and all day
long he's just shaking his hands and looking at him.
It's the best it's. So fun, So fun.
Right now, what tabs do you have open on your computer?
Oh my God. Three different e-mail accounts,
my two different calendars, shopping like, all kinds of
different things. Describe Flint in one word.
Path breaking. Coffee or tea?
Oh, coffee. What's the last song that made
you want to dance? I've been playing R.E.M.
In my car. So I'm I'm stuck in the like the
1990s. So shiny happy people I.
Love that close your eyes and make one wish for the next
generation. Oh my goodness, that every baby,
no matter the color of your skin, the country of origin, the
zip code, the state of birth, the drinking water source can
can be whatever they want to be. Who was one path breaker who
made a way for you? So many pathbreakers.
I'm, you know, my, my book is, is so much a tribute to so many
folks who walk before me and walk alongside me, who you know,
made, made me who I am. None of us is here because of
just us. We we all stand on the shoulders
of giants. You know, I, I'm going to, I'm
going to stay close to the, the heart and say my mom, you know,
my mom is a badass. She's a tough woman.
She was a chemist back home in Iraq.
She retrained. She became an ESL teacher here
in Michigan. She's she's strong, she's smart.
She's amazing. She's she's enabled me to be who
I am. Say your mom's name.
My mom's name is so her name is Talia, but in Arabic is Thalia.
So but Talia that's. Awesome.
If you had a pad big enough, what's the prescription you
would write for America? I love this.
I would well let's stay with the arcs because themes.
I would end child poverty. Beautiful Doctor Mona, we just
want to say thank you so much for all you have done for the
state of Michigan, the young people in Flint.
Thank you for joining us today. We really do appreciate you.
And we want to make sure that we've got a link to your book, a
link to that Mackinac article, and we'll put all that in the
show notes. And we'll make sure that anyone
who wants to bring RX kids to their community, their city,
their state has way to reach out and get in touch.
Thank you so much for what you're doing today.
Thank you. Thank you, Tracy and Jamie.
This was so much fun. Thank you for what you do and
thank you to the Kresge Foundation and an entire village
that has come alongside to support this program.
Thank you. Doctor Mona Hanna is a
pediatrician and professor with the Michigan State University,
where she is also the Associate Dean for Public Health and the
founder and director of RX Kids. We put a link to rxkids.org in
our show notes. Path Breakers is produced by the
Kresge Foundation, which was founded in 1924 with a mission
to promote human progress. Today, Kresge works to expand
equity and opportunity in America's cities.
Read the stories of all of this season's Path Breakers and learn
about our grant making and social investing work in
Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Fresno, and cities across the US
at kresge.org. To hear more stories from the
Path Breakers, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever
you listen to podcasts. Our producers are Juliet Hindley
and Zach Rosen. Managing editor is Krista
Yankee. Our show art is by Rochelle
Baker and Creative direction by Alejandro Herrera.
Thank you to my colleagues on the Human Services program for
lifting up Doctor Mona and speaking her name as a truly
phenomenal path breaker. We'll talk to you next week.