Health Equity and Advocacy for the Underserved- ep.152

In this episode, we’re joined by Nadeja Steager, a dedicated leader in healthcare advocacy and equity for underserved communities in California’s Central Valley. As Executive Director of the Community Health Leadership Council San Joaquin and former Director of the San Joaquin Pathways Community HUB, Nadeja has spearheaded initiatives to improve Black maternal and infant health, address homelessness, and increase access to quality healthcare. Join us as we explore her inspiring journey, strategies for change, and insights into building a healthier, more equitable future for all.

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m Melyssa Barrett, your host, and today we have an inspiring guest joining us. Her name is Nadeja Steager. Nadeja is someone who has dedicated her life to creating impactful, sustainable change in healthcare, particularly for underserved communities. Most recently, she served as the director of the San Joaquin Pathways hub focusing on improving black maternal and infant health outcomes. In her current role as executive director at the Community Health Leadership Council in San Joaquin, she’s on a mission to identify and address critical health issues that affect our marginalized and underrepresented populations. But NA’s work doesn’t stop there.

She’s a force in her community known for her collaborative approach and her deep rooted commitment to equity and inclusion. From serving as chief aid and senior advisor to the mayor of Stockton, where she led initiatives to combat homelessness to her role as chair of the San Joaquin County Equal Employment Opportunity Advisory Committee, Nadeja has been at the forefront of health policy and advocacy work in California’s Central Valley. Today, we’ll dive into her journey from growing up in challenging conditions to becoming a trusted voice for health equity and resource distribution in the region. She’ll share some insights into the systemic barriers, community space, her strategies for creating change and her ongoing work to ensure better health outcomes for marginalized populations. So whether you’re passionate about healthcare, community advocacy, or just looking to hear from someone who’s making a difference, this episode is for you. Let’s welcome Nadeja Steager to the Jali Podcast this week. I’m excited. I get to have a wonderful conversation with you, not just Dager, and I am excited to talk to you about so many of the things that you are working on that impact the community. So thank you so much for being here.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, no, I’m excited. So I know you are the executive director and have been for a couple of years for the Community Health Leadership Council. Did I say that right? And just reflecting on your journey, I know you’ve been doing this work for a long time. What motivates you to dedicate yourself to such impactful work? Can you talk a little bit about your own journey and how you got to where you are?

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. This goes back from, I mean, I’d have to say being I grew up in a situation where drugs were all over the place. Things were, I’m just going to keep it real,

But I want to give a disclosure as well. But growing up, my dad was a drug addict. It, I could try to make it sound better, but he was the victim of drugs, the victim of a system that accomplished what it tried to and drugs, alcohol, diagnosed, bipolar, schizophrenic, psychotic episodes. I could tell you some stories of some things that happened and you just feel like there’s no way, there’s no way. But often terrorized scared, oh, I’ll give you one example. We went on vacation one time and we’re Indian. My last name, my maiden name is Lightfoot, we’re Indian, and he bought, oh, what are those things called? Where they scout people he bought, yeah, something. He bought this tool and almost like a tomahawk or something. He was really

Into the Indian, I guess drugs might make you do that, but he would get really into the Indian side of things. And so he bought this thing, but one time he did some things, some drugs, and chased us around the house and this was real, it was sharp. And he was like, I’m going to S Scout y’all. And we were like, that’s me and my three siblings and we’re running around. Is this serious? Is this real or is this just a joke? Because when somebody’s laughing and stuff, but you don’t know when something takes over somebody, you know what can happen. And to that I say, but God, he’s always been there. He’s always been my outlet. I love the Lord. Jesus has saved me from so many things, and as you can see, I survived 21 years of that type of behavior and different things. Definitely God has a bigger plan for people.

Melyssa Barrett:  Absolutely.

Nadeja Steager:  And my disclosure is that my dad spent the last part of his life up to 74 clean and sober also lets you know how good God is and that he can heal anyone from anything. And so really I’m like, people can’t tell me different. I lived it and I saw it and I know how much we prayed for it, and I saw my prayers answered in my lifetimes. It’s really amazing. One thing that brought me to where I am today is the fact that over those 21 years, services never came for us. We never got anything. No one said, Hey, you can do this. Nobody handed my mom pamphlets. Nobody was like, these resources exist. So you fast forward to me being here in California and God putting me in jobs very specific to know what services exist, to understand those communities just like my South Chicago growing up, communities helping to understand and now be a part of a system that can actually connect those resources, connect those programs, connect all of those things to those people in need, even though they may go through the same things that I went through because structural racism, all of those things, it’s very real.

The trauma is very real, but I need them to understand that these resources are there for them, get them to them, and that no matter how you grow up, that does not have to determine your path forward. You can overcome things with the right supports. Again, God has been my saving grace. I want everyone to know how amazing he is and how he has good plans for all of us and plans to give us all a future and a hope. That does mean that we have to be willing and obedient. My God is not a God of rules and things. He’s a God of love, hope, joy, patience, all the good things. So

Melyssa Barrett:  That’s powerful. Powerful. So then talk a little bit about what you’re doing in this role today.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. So today I am really, if we’re talking just like project specific, we’re implementing a Blue Zones in San Joaquin County and Blue Zones is a study that was done where someone went around the world and identified we are the highest concentration of folks who are centenarians or people who live to be a hundred or more. And with that they identified some key commonalities in lifestyle behaviors, eating habits, all of these things and brought those together to share and they go into communities to help transform their health outcomes, their lives and just to improve communities to really build that community. I’m really excited about that opportunity to be able to do that because we know that you can do a program, but there’s all these other pieces that tie into that. So now we get to address food insecurity. Now we get to get into those high need areas, those priority communities and make sure that those programs, resources, tools are all being provided to them. And you’ll hear that theme over and over because I connect myself with people that get results by connecting things to folks to make their lives easier, better, and to get them educated.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, that’s awesome. And I know you working, I know you’ve worked on black and maternal health as well as I think we had talked about some focus groups, you guys you did with respect to migrant workers and preschool families, which I found really interesting. So I don’t know if there are unique challenges that you discovered through that process, and I know Community Health Leadership Council is really working to address a lot of those needs.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. The council, some of the members are public health services and they do a community health needs assessment. And so as part of that, we did do a couple of focus groups with some migrant workers and Hispanic families of preschool children, and one thing that just really blew me away was that out of our cohorts of 10 families for the preschool families in particular, six of them did not have insurance. These types of things need to be brought up to the top of our list of how do we make sure that, first of all, I’m pretty much sure that they all are eligible for Medi-Cal, but how are we connecting them? How are we getting them set up? How are we making sure that they have a medical home to go to, that they have a primary care physician and that their children are able to go to the doctor and to get the care that they need? Another thing that came up in both groups overwhelmingly was that there’s just not enough clinics. There’s not enough. It takes many months just to get an appointment and don’t let that be an appointment for a specialist. Then you’re talking about even longer. I don’t have Medi-Cal, but I had to wait a month for a specialist. So it’s not, it’s happening to everyone

Melyssa Barrett:  And I think that is a problem in our county for sure. I know in my household we have some of the same challenges with, and it was nice to see, quite frankly, our congressmen actually identify that it’s a problem because whether we need more doctors, more healthcare workers. I think some of the things you’re doing on focusing on career pathways as well provide for livable wages, right, for community health workers.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. Community health workers are for sure going to change the way that we deliver healthcare, not only in our region but just across the country. The need is so huge was just at a conference in Pittsburgh, Camden coalition putting care at the center, and everyone is so excited to get CHWs, to get hubs built where we can coordinate care and we can help individuals. Part of that is that support for CHWs, making sure that they have a livable wage, making sure that they’re being able to be upskilled, that they’re able to be put on career pathways that are going to take them from being someone from the community with lived experience, maybe not with the education levels that come with being licensed, but get onto that pathway where they can become social workers, where they can make a life for their families, where they can have this a career.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, I think when we met, you might’ve been doing, you had a focus on black maternal health and I should say black maternal health, not just maternal health. So what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing in black maternal health and how it’s impacting the community and how do we change it and give them sustainable support?

Nadeja Steager:  We need the federal government, we need the state government. We need everyone paying attention to this as director of the San Joaquin Pathways community hub and that demonstration project to show the value of CHWs and also to show how they can improve health outcomes. For this specific demonstration, it was black maternal and infant health, and in our county, our black infant mortality numbers are staggering, 14 plus per infant mortality per 1000 life births. So that is almost twice the state average. Why? It doesn’t matter about someone’s socioeconomic status, it doesn’t matter about their education level. So we want to understand why this is happening and in particular why at such staggering rates in our county.

What did was we launched this program, this project, and we contracted with a community organization that is very connected with the community, especially our underserved community, especially our black maternal community, and they employed CHWs or community health workers, and these folks were able to connect with a mom and they connect with many moms, but this one in particular, we call her our star story because her name is Starletta, and they connected with this young mom in her twenties who her nurse practitioner told her that there was nothing they could do for her and she was having intrauterine growth deficiency, so her baby was not growing as the baby should have been. We were able to connect her with one of our community health workers who supported her, advocated for her, went to appointments with her, educated her, and she had a healthy baby girl earlier this year.

Then we invited her to that Camden Coalition is a national conference putting care at the center. We invited her to Pittsburgh to tell her story, but to show her sweet baby ISIS who’s eight months old now, healthy as can be, just thriving, and all of this may not have happened if she was not able to connect with that community health worker. Imagine if we had community health workers for heart disease, for diabetes, for asthma, all of the supports that help to bring back that trust that has been just really the trust has, there really is no trust if there’s actually, it’s been replaced by fear.

So I don’t even want to say that there’s a positive trust right there at all because the fear comes out first and we know anyone who has trauma, especially if it’s a survival type of trauma, survival is going to come to the top of anything first. Anything that we feel might impact us in a negative way, they are rebuilding that trust, that bond, and they’re helping folks understand that doctors can help you and you can advocate for yourself. Things that we really over time have been conditioned to believe that we can’t or we’re not worthy enough to do or smart enough to be able to do. I love CHWs and I love that God gave me that opportunity to be part of that program. And

Melyssa Barrett:  You mentioned the hub earlier and now you hear that language all the time. I talk about resilience hubs, you talk about different community hubs, health, so what does a hub do and why should we be paying attention? I think there are so many lessons we can learn when we start talking about hubs.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. Hubs are amazing. Hubs are, I guess if I said at the core of it is leadership because hubs coordinate complex care for high risk individuals, folks that have many different health issues or social issues, and it really hones in on the root causes of things which go to those social issues that we have. Again, part of conditioning, not having resources, not getting exposed to them, not getting access to them. They fill that void so they make sure that all of those things are connecting, all of those things are being accessed, which if we look at it on the other side, all the leaders and everyone are like, why is nobody accessing our stuff? How do we overcome that? CHWs have shown that they can be that conduit, they can be that tether that will connect the household with our health systems, with all institutions. That’s education, that’s all of them. How to navigate, how to get to access those things. I can’t say it enough, is we can even say, oh, we have all these things for you and you can access them, but if you can’t navigate to get there, then what good are those things?

Melyssa Barrett:  And it’s so interesting to me because then you have this segment that is, we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and there is a segment that say it’s not important. And I look at what is happening in the world and people are always trying to figure out how do we engage and how do we connect things, but you have to go to where people are, and we are in so many different places, not necessarily just ethnically, but in all different populations. We are not just one thing. We have all these intersections that are so different. And so when I see hubs at work, there’s so much more collaboration that really leads to such better outcomes and so many more levels of success because you actually are being very intentional about making sure you’re reaching out to populations that you haven’t reached out to before. And so I just feel like it’s such an important opportunity for us to really be able to collaborate more. Everybody wants to take off DEI, but when you become intentional, maybe one day we have the opportunity to eliminate DEI, but right now it’s all about how do we create equity and make sure that we’re pulling people along with us as we go.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. I can’t even emphasize enough, we would not have had to implement something like diversity, equity, inclusion if it already existed. Now some people have been able to do some things for a long time on their own and we see what we have, we see what our results are. You need diversity, you need equity and inclusion. And to your point, I can see it going away once it’s part of our natural order once it’s part of us working together naturally and being intentional about things as chair of the San Joaquin County equal Employment Opportunity advisory Committee, diversity and equity and inclusion is part of what we do. And just had, I think it was oh two Fridays now time just flies, but had the annual diversity luncheon for the employees where it highlights diversity, equity, and inclusion within the county and their employee base and the work that they do in the community.

It’s very important that we are hearing from everyone. I think if we even said diversity, equity, inclusion and lived experience, right, because that’s where we’re really going to be able to make strides. People being willing and open to that are setting themselves up for success. Especially when you look at Stockton being voted the most diverse city in the country multiple years. So I can’t go and represent somebody else in somebody else’s culture because I don’t know that culture. I just know what I’ve read and who knows what that person who wrote it, what their connection was to that culture. So it’s very important. I think that we are diverse and that we honor each other and the things that they have experienced, and we look at how we can bring all of those things together to serve all of our community.

Melyssa Barrett:  And I know we talked earlier about funds that come into the region, I think on the backs of black communities, but then they don’t actually receive the direct allocation from the benefit of that. Do you see, I know you’ve spent a lot of time with government, local government. Do you see opportunities for government agencies and funders to really address this? Because it feels every time we have a measure or a bond or whatever that hey, we’re going to allocate this money over here, but there tends not to be the accountability that we need to actually see it happen.

Nadeja Steager:  You’re right. I believe it should be mandatory that we have diverse people at the table that is actually making the decisions. That’s actually putting together the framework for how we’re going to address these things. That’s where that voice needs to be in the structure of everything. And that’s how we can ensure that everyone is getting equal support services allocation of funds, and we need to build each other up. I’m just going to say for our area, it’s very disheartening to see that there are really no strong black organizations that are completely for this race that are specifically, but handling all of the different areas of social drivers that we need to have being touched on at the same time. So we need health, we need diabetes, especially when for, again, this area, the black population is the lowest health indicator in all of these areas. They’re most at risk. They’re having many health issues. And if we address what I’ll say is our weakest link, meaning that there’s so much burden because we have not been able to have access to the things that we need to, that we’re going to get stronger as a people as a whole. And it is in everyone’s best interest to strengthen our whole foundation, especially since we’re so diverse across this whole region.

Melyssa Barrett:  I know I hear this all the time from the president of the N-A-A-C-P in Stockton, he’s always talking about when you lift black people, you lift everyone because it is such a difference in services and access to services and all of those things. When black people benefit everybody, benefits is

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely, and I think I want to say we have come a long way, but to your point, we can’t keep letting or allowing people to tell the black and brown story and bring all this money in and then look over here and say, oh, they’re such a small population. They don’t really need it. As a small population per capita, we needed so much disproportionately more than any other race or ethnicity here, so we need to look at this data in a new light. We can’t always just say, oh, there’s only five of them. There may only be five, but they all have the worst of everything, so how do we really have an equal playing field? And I think part of that again comes from having the right people at these tables helping each other, advising saying, Hey, wait, this is what’s really impacting us, and that money would go great right here and you’ll see that you’ll get the benefit on the other side.

Melyssa Barrett:  And that kind of brings me to another point on because I know you’ve worked on structural racism and health and how do you approach the issue, especially when you’re dealing with regions like South Stockton or East Lodi where you were talking about residents are struggling with every health indicator.

Nadeja Steager:  It really is being a connector. I think people are so overwhelmed that sometimes they just can’t see the connection to their benefit. For whatever reason, everybody is what is the benefit? To me, the benefit to you could be that you’re helping save somebody’s life, but aside from that, if you’re talking about money or other things, the benefit is that it’s helping your data. It’s helping your health outcomes that you’re measured by. If we take and give these resources and supports to the people that need it the most, first of all, some of the health organizations, they have a measure on member satisfaction. Aren’t you going to get people just singing your praise when you’re taking care of them, when you’re helping them, when you’re being that extra nice to them? CHWs could fill that whole thing. They’re loving on people in a one-on-one way. They’re standing in the gap for family members.

They’re standing in the gap for people who have no connection whatsoever. It really is in my leadership position, is connecting those things for people in their mind, in their work. Here’s how what you do connects with this. Here’s how pulling all these things together is going to meet that need that you’re trying to meet. And it isn’t a new way. It’s not the same old traditionalist way we see that’s not working. And just a side note in the Bible, we’re actually warned against it. So maybe tradition isn’t always the greatest thing, but it can inform and it can be a framework to say, oh, traditionally we’ve moved this way because the larger system say we have to. But that doesn’t mean once you get down into those details, you brought up multiple times of being intentional. That’s where we need to be intentional. That’s when we build strong foundations and we know that a foundation that’s built on the rock is not going to fall over like the one that’s built on the sand. When the struggles come, when prop one comes, when it moves all of behavioral health from the county who’s been doing it forever and puts it on the shoulders of our managed care plans who haven’t been dealing with it, this is when we know that we’re going to have some solid structures and foundations within our communities.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, I love it. And it’s so interesting. I know you also have Health Forum, you did a Blue Zones symposium last year. You want to tell us a little bit about what you all got out of that and how it’s reshaping what you’re doing this year?

Nadeja Steager:  Yes. Blue Zones, that was really eyeopening. I think the key there because we’ve been doing a lot of these things that are their paradigm. Some of those are healthy eating, active living, having the right tribe, having spiritual connections, having communal connections, all of these things. I think we all know this and we know how important they are, but what I saw when they shared that was if you do all of those together or even a great portion of those together, you’re going to have an exponential impact on your health and your wellbeing. And we know that being is health. Again, all of these things tie together and I’m really excited that we had Dan Butner Jr. Whose father is the one who came up with Blue Zones as our keynote speaker last year, amazing individual to carry that on. We have a local initiative that’s been around for several years with our public health department called Healthy Eating, active Living, heal, right?

We want to heal people. We want to heal our communities. We’re working to integrate those together and carry that on. And in partnership with Blue Zones, we are able to implement a Blue Zones assessment in San Joaquin County in one of our cities. That is just the kickoff. This six month assessment, which will start very soon, probably within the next couple of days, we’ll culminate in around April or May of 2025. And then we are straight into implementation into the communities, providing them food, providing them education, helping them handholding if we want to call it handholding and helping and coming alongside individuals to help them get healthy, to help them be well. And overall that’s going to help all of our leaders, all of the things that they need to improve on those measures that I mentioned before that’s going to improve people’s A1C that’s going to make diabetes rare and non-recurring because people are going to be able to get healthy and stay healthy. And so those are the types of interventions that we’re needing that are very upstream, that are really taking just small modifiable hacks, modifications to our behaviors that we can do in our daily lives to help us get healthy and stay healthy.

Melyssa Barrett:  And I think it’s nice when you have the ability to change the trajectory of your household. And now I see it so much more with even kids that are so focused on eating better that they influence their parents. And I think we were having a conversation the other day, I was having a conversation with a young person and they were talking about how cheap the fast food is, but how expensive the healthy food is. And they were like, why is it like that? It should be the opposite or something. You should have an incentive to eat healthy, not be penalized for it.

Nadeja Steager:  Those are all great observations and I love that a young person is having them because they are change makers. They’re able to change policy, they’re able to get in with public health advocates here locally and it be a part of that change. When we talk about the fruits and vegetables, they’re a hundred percent correct. I don’t understand it either, because our region is an agricultural mecca. We have so much fruit and vegetables here. So I work with partners who actually get to glean from farms who get to pick things that are leftover after harvest and they donate those things to our emergency food banks that we’re working with to partner to be more than just a resource in emergency conditions, but just to be a community resource, to just be a food bank. And really excited about that. And with those projects that I mentioned after the Blue Zones assessment, when we start to implement, we’re looking to implement through schools, through school gardens where young people can grow their own fruits and vegetables, then they’re going to take them home.

I think I mentioned it to you, but anyone who has kids knows that your kid could bring a burnt piece of bread that they made at school home to you and you are going to taste it. How wonderful to give kids a fruit and vegetable box and give it to everyone. So no stigma. Everybody’s getting this free gift. Give it to them with some recipe cards. Let them take some of the stuff that they’ve grown, take it home, and you’re giving people, you’re exposing people to new fruits and vegetables. You’re showing them great fantastic ways to prepare them and building family because now the child is there saying, Hey, mom, hey dad, can we make this together? Can we do these things together? And we just don’t even understand how that can exponentially improve and change relationships within the household, and it’s going to get the kids are going to influence their parents to eat more healthy, to be more healthy, right? Seeds don’t even cost that much. If we have a program that gives raised Flo Garden beds where you can just garden on some people live in apartments, maybe you can have one on your little patio.

I think we just need to get more creative and when we say we’re going to meet people where they’re at, we really need to meet them where they’re at.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, no doubt. And I’ll just drop a quick shout out to Public Health Advocates, and I know they are. I’m working with them on Neighborhood Change champions and young people are amazing. They literally are learning so much about how to change policy, what meetings do I go to. They have their own thoughts and opinions right now, and getting those opinions in the right hands makes such a significant difference when we think about what we’re impacting in our own community. So I’m just excited to see the work that they’ve been doing. So shout out to them as we do this, but I just appreciate all the things that you’re doing in the world with even with respect to data and the outcomes, the blue zone assessment. There are so many things going on that I think are so helpful to provide perspective and context for what we’re doing in the community.

And I haven’t, there’s so many more things that we need to be doing, but I love finding people who are doing just wonderful things in the world. So I just so appreciate all that you’re doing, and I’m so glad we finally got to connect so that we could have a conversation about some of the things that you’re working on. So are there other things you want to talk about? I know you have your health Forum coming up in a few weeks, if I remember. So tell us about that. When it is where it is, how do they get in contact?

Nadeja Steager:  Yeah, so that’s Friday, November 15th, so you’re right, it’s just right around the corner. Very exciting. This will be the first time that we have not stuck to a traditional forum with a keynote speaker and a panel of local experts, although we will have a lot of keynote folks in the room and we’ll have all kinds of experts. But now we’re going to have those experts mixed with the community members mixed with the community based organizations, with stakeholders, with government officials, with all of the pieces that make up this ecosystem that’s needed in order for us to provide the care that our folks need, especially the complex care that’s coordinated and that’s bringing those outcomes to fruition that we all hope that will realize. And it’s going to be out at the Robert j Cabral Agricultural Center here in Stockton, California, and it’s in person and this time we’ll have cohorts of people about 13 going around to different stations, specifically talking about some of the chronic health issues.

They’ll get education and interactive activity and a huge bag full of tools, tips, packs, things that you can do in your daily life that can help you improve your health. We’re all busy. We all have just meeting after meeting, but when you’re on that meeting and you’re off camera, you can do some chair exercises, you can do some stretches. I think one of the key pieces to this whole event is leadership saying it’s okay to take care of yourself so that you can take care of all of these other things that I have given you a list to do. Just having that empowerment to stop, to breathe, to have some quick breathing exercises. I’m not necessarily a public speaker. We all get nervous, but there’s things that we can do. We can stop and we can just ground ourselves without people even knowing just by changing the way we breathe, giving ourselves a second to not get triggered by something, especially if you have traumas, which surprisingly enough or ironically, usually when you have traumas, that’s what you’re speaking about, right?

You’re helping people know that they can overcome it, but you are also putting yourself at risk of getting triggered as you’re trying to go through that. Having some tips and tools and hacks, things that you can do to help you through that is so beneficial, and we are so excited and looking forward to having folks out there, networking, making friendships, making partnerships, and really having that opportunity to talk about how we can come together and have, maximize our impact in supporting our communities, especially those who don’t have a voice, who don’t have access, and who have fear. We’re really excited.

Melyssa Barrett:  That’s awesome. So can they go to find out more information on your website or where do they go?

Nadeja Steager:  So we actually have been really a behind the scenes organization. We do not have a website. We do not promote ourselves like that. We are busy back in the background looking at these things and trying to get people together so that they can address them strategically and in a collective and collaborative manner. What I can do is I can share the invite with you, Melissa, and you can share it out to those folks. It is first come first serve because there is a limit of a space because we want to get the cohorts, you’ll be assigned to a cohort. We want people mingling with people. We don’t want everybody whose friends to be in one cohort, but we want people to get exposed to each other. Going back to that diversity and just getting a chance to hear from others and make those connections.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. I just think this is so awesome to actually have people collaborating well, and so I’m glad you brought up the mindset and just I think entrepreneurs leadership really allowing their employees, it’s okay, you need to take a day, take an hour, take five minutes. It’s okay. We cannot be on all the time. So I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing in the community, whether you call yourself in the background or in the foreground. I think there is impact that is happening, which I absolutely love. So I just want to thank you for all you’re doing because sometimes it’s exhausting and it’s not just about the tools. It’s about building the trust that we need in order to connect everyone and impact those that are marginalized and underrepresented. So I just appreciate you being in those rooms and being able to represent the way you do. I think that is one of the most significant things that we can do, is to make sure that everyone is represented and that we’re being inclusive as we create these communities, because there’s been so much of a challenge for years and years now, and we have the power to make the change.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely.

Melyssa Barrett:  So thank you for all you do. I really appreciate it. I know we’re probably running out of time right now. Any closing thoughts?

Nadeja Steager:  I would just like to say God gets all the glory I know that I am in my assignment. I’ll just tell you a sweet little side note that I mentioned, how those services and programs never came for us as kids growing up and a struggling family. And one of my first duties as chief aid and senior advisor to our current mayor was to identify all of the resources and services in San Joaquin County and Stockton specific. I just knew in that moment that I was getting access to be able to make some type of change, to be able to influence how folks are able to get connected, how they’re able to have access to the resources, and then to have this other position just drop into my lap to have the tools, the community health workers to be that resource, to get that done. Only God has that kind of order.

Melyssa Barrett:  It’s the plan. It’s

Nadeja Steager:  Been my experience. Yes. So I’m so glad to know my assignment and to be working in my purpose, and I love people and I love working with people and supporting people, and I hope it just grows. I hope I’m able to reach more people and help more folks get healthy. So thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate it. I’m so glad we were able to connect again.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes, for sure. And now that we’re reconnected, we’ll stay connected. Thank you again for all you’re doing, and I would love to have you come back and talk about Blue Zones Project or the assessment, all of those things that you’re doing that are definitely making a difference in our community. So thank you again and I look forward to more conversations for sure.

Nadeja Steager:  Absolutely. Thank you.Melyssa Barrett:  Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.