Bubba's Fund

Bubba’s Fund

Health Chatter Podcast Transcript: Bubba's Fund and Community Engagement

Host: Stanton Shanedling

Co-Host: Clarence Jones

Guests: Tony Ayala and Connor Lonning (Co-founders of Bubba's Fund)

Medical Perspective: Dr. Barry Baines

Health Chatter: Navigating Menopause (Full Transcription - Part 1)

Stanton Shanedling: Hello, everybody! Welcome to winter, and our show today is on menopause and all the information around it—and there is a lot. Hopefully, it will be educational for all of you. We have a wonderful guest with us, Dr. Robin Austin, who I’ll introduce in just a second, so stay with us.

We have a great crew that helps us do all our shows, and I like to introduce them and make sure they’re recognized because not everybody listens to every show. If you listen to just this one, you’ll know we have a great crew in the background. Maddie Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, DeAndra Howard, Matthew Campbell, and Sheridan Nygaard are next to none. They’ve been with us since day one, doing our background research, production, marketing, and transcribing the shows.

Clarence Jones is my co-host and colleague. Clarence and I have been doing this show for quite a while now. He is our community engagement guru and brings that community perspective. Dr. Barry Baines is our medical advisor, and he provides that wonderful medical twist to the show. Our sponsor is Human Partnership, a community health organization that provides wonderful programming and connections. You can find them at HumanPartnershipAlliance.org. And of course, you can find our shows at HealthChatterPodcast.com. We are closing in on our 140th show, which we are very proud of.

Stanton Shanedling: Today, it’s really a special treat to have Robin Austin here. Robin is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and the Director of the Center for Nursing Informatics. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Robin, welcome to the show!

Dr. Robin Austin: Thank you so much for having me! I’m happy to be here.

Stanton Shanedling: It’s great to have you. This is a topic that I think is on the minds of a lot of women in midlife, maybe even more so today than it was back in the day. Let's start with the basics. What is menopause?

Dr. Robin Austin: That’s a great question. We often think of it as just one point in time, but it’s really a trajectory. We have perimenopause, which can start in your 40s and last anywhere from seven to ten years. That is when your hormones—specifically estrogen and progesterone—start to fluctuate and trend downward.

Menopause itself is actually diagnosed retrospectively. You are in menopause once you have gone twelve consecutive months without a period. After that twelve-month mark, you are technically post-menopausal.

What is really important to realize is that women are living longer now. We are spending about a third of our lives in post-menopause. That has huge implications for healthy longevity, chronic disease management, and how we live the later part of our lives.

Stanton Shanedling: That’s a significant amount of time. Clarence, I know you had some questions about the community side of this.

Clarence Jones: Yeah, Robin, welcome. I’m interested in the "why." Why is this becoming such a prominent topic now, and how does community engagement factor into how women experience this?

Dr. Robin Austin: I think it’s coming to the forefront because women are speaking up more. For a long time, it was a "silent transition." You just dealt with it. But now, women in midlife are often at the peak of their careers, they are the "sandwich generation" taking care of kids and aging parents, and they are realizing that these symptoms—the brain fog, the fatigue, the hot flashes—are impacting their ability to function at the level they want to.

Tony Ayala: ...if you find the right person, and they connect you with that one-degree person, all of a sudden, doors open up. And that's how we met our partner, Sherry Olson. She was a retired physician who had a sudden cardiac arrest moment. The team at her facility saved her life, and she's been saved multiple times from an AED. She was connected with us through a friend's mother, who said, "You need to meet Sherry, she's the perfect person for you if you're working with AEDs in the area." And it just works out. I've had the opportunity to be in front of the Kiwanis Club of La Crosse and a couple other service-focused community organizations, and I explain what we're talking about today. Every person that I interact with, I think in my head, "You're the person that's gonna make this bigger".

Tony Ayala: I send a lot of one-way emails, and I imagine there's a lot of people who are like, "Who is this Tony from Bubba's Fund? He's badgering me about getting on the news, getting on air, getting a report about the story, getting an article written." Every opportunity that we have a touchpoint with a potential community member is an opportunity to grow. We had an event two weeks ago, and we got a billboard. I was driving in the car with my daughter, and she saw "Bubba's Fund" on the billboard. It’s one of those one-way emails—the team at Lamar Advertising originally said it would be $1,200, and I said, "Done." They got back to me two days later and said, "You know what? You're a good community initiative—$150 to be on the billboard for a week long." If you don't ask, you can't find out.

Stanton Shanedling: I have a question. Before I retired, I was the head of the cardiovascular unit at the Department of Health here in the state of Minnesota, and I remember distinctly that the staff at the Minnesota Department of Health weren't trained in CPR, and they didn't even know how to use an AED. So, the question I have for you is: do you combine the, on one side, making sure that there is an AED in a facility, and at the same time, does it go along with training?

Connor Lonning: I can jump in with this one. First, the great thing is that all the staff at these licensed childcare facilities have to already be trained. Step two is that Sherry Olson and Seven Rivers C.A.P.E.—the physician that was saved by an AED—she's committed her and her staff's resources to do free additional trainings at the childcare facility so that they are ready to go in an emergency. Everyone knows where it is; they know the specifics of the AED that we're providing them and how to use it.

Connor Lonning: Tony has also done a great job of using another partnership with the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, allowing us to work with a program that will provide us with master's degree students who will help track where the AEDs are, the serial numbers, whether or not the batteries and pads need to be replaced, and checking in with the facilities to make sure everything is in place. We didn't just stop with, "Oh, here's these things, good luck, go for it." We're also setting aside money that will help subsidize some of the replacement costs, because it can get costly to replace batteries and pads.

Connor Lonning: One of the things we've done with our other partner, State Senator Brad Pfaff, is we are in the middle of getting "Bubba's Law" passed at the state level. It would create a million-dollar fund through the Department of Children and Families that would provide two-thirds of the cost of an AED to any childcare facility in the state. We're thinking long-term; we want to create a situation where 10, 15 years from now, everyone knows when they're driving down the road that any childcare facility has an AED in it.

Stanton Shanedling: You know, I'm really curious about how you measure success. Is it just the number of AEDs, or is there a bigger metric you are looking for?

Tony Ayala: That is a great question. We have two metrics. One is the number of AEDs in childcare facilities—we are currently at 100% in La Crosse. The second is the number of people who have been trained to use them. Our goal is to make sure every single person working in these spaces feels confident enough to act. If we can get to a place where a cardiac arrest in a childcare center is met with an immediate, calm, and correct response, then we have done our job.

Connor Lonning: And I would add, the long-term success is the policy change. Like Tony mentioned, "Bubba's Law" is about sustainability. If we can get the state to provide two-thirds of the funding for these devices, it ensures that even after our fund has been operating for years, the infrastructure remains in place. We want to stop relying on individual fundraising and make this a standard public health requirement.

Stanton Shanedling: I love the sound of that. It really is about creating a system that survives beyond the initial passion of the founders.

Tony Ayala: Exactly. We’ve had a lot of people reach out, asking how they can do this in their own towns. Our answer is: find a partner, identify the gap, and start small. We didn't start by trying to change state law; we started by putting one AED in one facility. You have to prove the concept before you can scale it.

Clarence Jones: That is such a vital piece of advice for our audience. Start with the "low-hanging fruit" and build your credibility. Before we wrap up, where can people go to support you or learn more?

Tony Ayala: You can visit BubbasFund.org. We have a 10 to 12-minute documentary on the site that tells the full story of our work and the families we’ve helped, including the Gallster family, who we were able to support just recently. If you have questions or want to start something similar in your own community, email me at tony@bubbasfund.org. We are more than happy to share our roadmap, our templates, and our lessons learned. We don't want to keep this to ourselves; we want to see it happen everywhere.

Stanton Shanedling: I want to thank you both again, from the bottom of my heart, for doing this. You've turned a personal tragedy into something that is quite literally saving lives. It’s a remarkable legacy.

Connor Lonning: Thank you for having us. It means a lot to be able to talk about Charlie and the work we’re doing in his name.

Stanton Shanedling: To our listening audience, thank you for sticking with us for this deep dive. I hope you’re feeling as inspired as I am. Until next time, this is Stanton Shanedling. Stay safe, stay healthy, and keep health chatting away!