The Blueprint: Dr. Davetrina Seles Gadson on Black Stroke Survivors Health Equity and Aphasia

Two world-class researchers walked into this conversation because of one woman. They did not have to. They chose to. 

Dr. Peter Turkeltaub is a neurologist at Georgetown University Medical Center. MD. PhD. He directs the Cognitive Recovery Lab, where his research focuses on the neural mechanisms of language recovery after stroke. He is Dr. Seles friend and co-author Dr. Charles Ellis Jr. holds a PhD and CCC-SLP certification and is a professor at the University of Florida, one of the most recognized authorities on equity in communication sciences in the country. He was her mentor. Neither of them does podcasts. Both of them showed up. First time on this mic.

The paper is published in Aphasiology, the field's flagship peer-reviewed journal. Open access. Free. No paywall. That was a deliberate choice, and it was completely consistent with who Dr. Davetrina Seles Gadson was.

She was a neuroscientist and a speech-language pathologist simultaneously. That combination is rare. It is exactly why nobody else was going to write this paper. Eight concrete action points for SLPs working with Black stroke survivors with aphasia. Not aspirations. A clinical blueprint. Built from evidence and from the understanding that Black patients carry a specific history into every clinical encounter that changes what good care actually requires.

Stroke does not see color. But your doctor does.

Black patients face higher stroke incidence, earlier onset, greater severity, and lower rates of sustained rehabilitation. That is documented. That is structural. Dr. Seles Gadson named eight ways to change it. Dr. Ellis extends the framework live, adding a ninth point on the spot. The paper is already generating scholarship.

This is not a tribute episode dressed up as science. This is science. The tribute is that she finished it.

This is the blueprint 

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2025.2561681

Open access. Free. Search her name.

https://aphasiaadvocates.com/ for Brain Friends Merch

https://aphasia.org/event/ask-the-expert-february-2026/

https://www.cognitiverecoverylab.com/seles

https://aphasia.org/stories/announcing-the-davetrina-seles-gadson-health-equity-grant-program/

Our beloved colleague, Dr. Davetrina Seles Gadson, passed away January 11, 2025. Dr. Gadson was an extraordinary speech-language pathologist and neuroscience researcher who devoted her energy to studying health disparities in aphasia recovery. She was a fierce advocate for improving services for individuals with aphasia, particularly Black Americans. Her research transformed our understanding of these health disparities and shed light on how we can address them. We were privileged to have Dr. Gadson as a cherished member of our lab community for four years, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as an Instructor of Rehabilitation Medicine. She was still a close collaborator and friend to many of us at the time of her passing. Dr. Gadson was an incredible person—compassionate, inspiring, and full of life. Her dedication to advancing equity in aphasia recovery and her profound impact on our community will never be forgotten. ...

Transcript

Why This Paper Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of a story time. Hey, brain friends. So about four years ago, Dr. Dave Trina Celeste Gatson sat down with her colleague, Dr. Peter Turkletalp from Georgetown University and wrote a paper. And it was like five things, specific things, five specific things she wanted speech language pathologists to know about health equity and black people with aphasia. It didn't get published. But she did not quit. She went back, she and Peter rewrote it, pushed it further, eight things this time, more complete, more specific, more celeste. The paper is overwhelmingly her ideas and her words. She was there for the revisions and knew exactly what this paper was becoming. Then on january eleventh, twenty twenty five, she passed away suddenly before the paper came out. Dr. Peter got it over the finish line. It was published this year in a journal called Aphysiology. It's free to download. Anybody can read it. Her name is on it as it should be. So today, today, today, you're going to hear how that paper came to life. Dr. Turkletop is here, and alongside him is Dr. Charles Ellis Jr. from the University of Florida. He is Celeste's mentor. Now I had never met them prior to Celeste's passing. Um, but the stories that she would tell me, I kind of saw um Peter as like a brother or favorite cousin character. And Dr. Ellis was kind of like Unk. You know what I mean? He was like the older statesman. That was the picture she had given me in my or the picture I had constructed in my head from her stories. I want to also tell you, trigger warning, you are going to hear from Celeste herself throughout this entire episode, her actual voice. Because she had already recorded on record everything about this paper before it had eight points when she was still teaching it, living it, and calling it out. So, you know, we built Brain Friends so that science would not stay locked in journals, so it could get back to the people who needed it, and this is that exactly that. So this paper started four years ago. It is done now, and today today we bring it home. My name is Angie Claw Thorne, and welcome to Brain Friends. Let's get it.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Welcome to Brain Friends, where two neuronerds talk all things aphasia, language recovery, culture, and community. I am Dr. Datrina Celeste

Celeste Explains The Manuscript

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Gatson, a clinical speech language pathologist and neuroscientist.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

And I am Angie Cawthorne, stroke survivor and aphasia advocate. Welcome to our show.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Welcome to Brain Friends. We want to thank all of our listeners for downloading the podcast. We appreciate everyone listening, so please tell a friend to tell a friend that we are here.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

And we are hey Angie.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Hey, Dr. Celeste, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

I'm good. How are you? I am fantastic. What are we doing? What are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Oh, today. I am so excited about today. Okay. I wrote a manuscript that's still in review, and I really want to talk about it because I think that our listeners and speech language pathologists and our brain friends need to hear about ways to improve health equity in black people with aphasia.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

I'm so here for it. So you did some research, and so you're gonna come and disseminate to us right here on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Right here on the podcast. And I also had a two opportunity to talk to black people with abasia. And so, yeah, we're gonna talk about it, and you're gonna let me know what you think, and we're gonna do it right after we get into this icebreaker. What's the icebreaker today? The icebreaker today is name something that you've done that has helped your brain.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

This podcast and the editing and doing this has been a tremendous stretch for me mentally, and it allowed me to um build more brain to be uh smarter, stronger, yeah. It's helped a lot. Um yeah, what about you? What have you learned, I'll say, recently that has changed your perception?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

I would say I've had the opportunity to do uh implementation science and dissemination workshops lately. Okay, and that has been such a game changer because when we think about science implementation, sometimes people think you just do science, but understanding these frameworks that really help practitioners uptake evidence-based practice, and you know, researchers use these techniques um by telling policymakers and practitioners. There's a whole framework that goes into it. And so I've learned some things about that, and I think that that's really helped stretch my brain recently. So you're getting some neuroplasticity too? I'm getting some neuroplasticity too, but I also want to come back. You kind of like said, oh yeah, I edit the podcast all humbly. First of all, you have done a phenomenal job with this podcast editing, and you not only edit it, but you add dings and beeps, and you take out stuff, and you have all these tracks that you use. And I mean, this is what people pay like mad money for, and you do it for us, and it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Thank you so much. And uh, nothing like being appreciated by your partner, but the heavy lifting of the reading and the writing, you do all of that. So I tip my hat to you, which is why we're a good partnership. We complement each other well.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, yeah. I had someone ask me an editing question, like email and ask me, and I'm like, oh no, that's why Angie didn't.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

So before we get into my conversation with Dr. Charles Ellis and Peter Turkotoff, I wanted to just let this little moment with me and Dr. Celeste play because it I'm not gonna front, it still makes me smile. Um we were talking about podcasting and stuff like that, and she had been chatting with her friend and fellow podcast host, Veronica Edwards from Balance Virtually, and um she had gotten the full rundown on how Veronica self-produces her podcast, and Celeste was like, Oh, so that's that's what Angie does for us. So that's kind of what you were hearing um in that uh exchange. And did I play my compliment? Yeah, maybe, maybe y'all need to know, alright? She was uh whole thing. So anyway, I just thought that was really dope, and I just missed my girl, and so that exchange says so much about who she was and how she was just sharp and curious and funny and always ready to give credit where it was due. So, up next, you're gonna hear from Dr. Celeste and I a little bit more, and then you're gonna meet Dr. Charles Ellis and Dr. Peter Turkotoff as they talk about how they met Celeste and how the two of them collaborated and worked together to get this important work across the finish line. And you're gonna tell us about what you found based on the health equity and the disparities in the black community. That's what we're that's what we're talking about today. That's what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

And so it was myself and a my colleague, um, Peter Turkletop at Georgetown,

Defining Health Equity Clearly

SPEAKER_01 9:55

and we wrote this, yeah. Hey Peter, we wrote this manuscript um because I really wanted to communicate that there are more ways that any practitioner, but specifically speech language pathologists, can help health equity in stroke survivors with aphasia, or in this case, from some of the people that I spoke to, just black people with aphasia, because it was people that have their aphasia due to stroke, due to brain tumor, dementia, everything. Um, and so first when we think about health equity, I want us to know that we're talking about the absence of unfair and avoidable differences among a population.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

So that would be the definition of health equity.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Okay. Say it again. So health equity is the absence of unfair differences or avoidable differences in health among a group.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

All right, okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, I happen to have two of the sharpest minds in aphasia care and aphasia research in here on the mic with me today. I have Dr. Charles Ellis and Dr. Peter Turkl. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Very happy to be here, Angie. Thanks very much. Glad you invited us. A great idea and certainly a good paper to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

All right, so we are actually here to talk about this paper that Dr. Celeste Gadson pinned prior to her passing. For those who might be new to the podcast, I'm gonna say this that this is personal to me. Dr. K Katrina Celeste Gadsen was my co-host, my co-conspirator, just a brilliant friend and a brilliant person in the field. She passed January 11th, 2025. And this paper is the last piece of scholarship she completed. Her co-author, Dr. Peter, pulled this thing over the finish line. Shout out to Dr. Charles Ellis for how he helped him within that. And that's why I'm talking to these guys today. Um, because Charles added his guidance um because he is the authority on equity in this field of language and communications, um, equity. He is the he's the man. You know what I mean? So we're gonna talk to them, we're gonna ask some questions, and I first thing I do want to know because we ain't gonna start without talking about my girl. How, Peter, how did you meet Celeste? What was your first inklings when you first met Celeste? Talk to me.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Oh man, now you're gonna get me. Uh, okay. Um, well, Celeste reached out to me um uh kind of out of the blue. We had never met, and she emailed me as she was nearing the end of her PhD in Georgia and asked if she could come work with me and said that she was interested in work on health disparities and promoting health equity in aphasia. And I talked to her and had this realization that the work that we were doing at that time was

How Peter And Charles Met Celeste

SPEAKER_02 13:45

about individual differences in aphasia related to the brain. And we weren't, we were considering a little bit sort of the context of the person, um, but really not adequately. And it um it occurred to me as we were talking that we could really approach the problem from both angles and think about individual differences related to social determinants of health in the brain. Um and Celeste was very excited about that. And so we applied for a supplement to the grant that I had at the time, and then she came to work with us maybe about six months later.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

All right, Dr. Charles, you are up. How did you meet our girl?

SPEAKER_03 14:33

Um, you know what? It won't remember exactly, but I'm sure it was in some meeting or some engagement, and it was uh anyone who knew her, it was kind of this whirlwind that that you you meet who just had energy and thoughts and was constantly trying to prick your brain. And at that time, similar to Peter, I I kind of was just thinking about race differences and issues with assessment and and you know, do these outcomes of people with communication issues do they mirror what we see in neurological disease? And if that is the case, then you know, why is that happening? Uh, Les had a very different view of it. Like she certainly accepted that part of it, but just as Peter mentioned, she seemed uh understand that there was more to people and to individual, that the individuality was driving what we're trying to measure in ways that we weren't trying to measure, and we weren't even really thinking about that. I met her, people were comparing people by age, by race, by not even really sex and gender, then just describing differences. That's kind of where the work was. And you could tell even as a dog student, she had a different thought about it based on her own experiences.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah, completely that totally resonates with me. She's was very focused on the person in front of her and what made that person who they are and how that

Patient Goals Versus Clinic Scores

SPEAKER_02 16:05

interacted with their stroke and their aphasia, which was why she was such a proponent of patient-reported outcome measures because they help frame everything in the context of what's important to the person themselves.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

When we talk about patient reported outcomes, I want people to understand why people have patient-proported outcomes versus clinician-reported outcomes and how and why it matters for the actual chart. And as that chart moves on, why it matters of what that person was trying to attain, what's important to them, and where their motivation to continue would come from.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

I think it's a blend of both of, you know, it was a person that worked as an SLP for 10 years. So I saw a lot of people with neurological injury. Um but what we're sometimes measuring in our environment, we're measuring their performance in our controlled office, which is not in line with their day-to-day environments. And I think that that issue became crystal clear to me as a doctoral student, in that I worked on a stroke recovery grant that had nothing to do with Astasia. It was just stroke outcomes and veterans, and they wanted to see what are the factors that drive outcomes and why Hispanic, Latin blacks, and whites have different recovery trajectories. And so one of my jobs as a doctor student was to go out and interview them. So it was a qualitative study. And in those environments, it forced me to go back and think of my 10 years as a clinician and what I would have quantified as an excellent outcome, or things that would have been mild, moderate, severe weren't that at all. There's almost no mild that what I would have thought was mild or they're within functional limits, they couldn't communicate in their environments, and you started to see it firsthand. So it changed my whole view. Wow, what an outcome should be. So these are people that would have gone home with very minimal physical disability that I would have thought, yeah, they don't even need to come back for follow-up therapy. But when you see them in their environment, particularly these rural environments, the outcomes that I thought I was measuring, I was measuring those outcomes, but they didn't align with how the person struggled in those environments or what was important to them in terms of the outcome.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Peter, I see you nodding your head. What do you got for me, sir?

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, I know. I can completely agree. I love the fact that you use the term NG, clinician reported outcome, because that is the term that I learned from Celeste. Um, I I remember the, I mean, I remember the conversation where she said it, because you know, as a neurologist, as a physician in general, we separate our information into what we call subjective, which is what the patient tells us, and objective, which is what we measure on an exam. And that is the way I always thought about the measures that we use for aphasia. There's subjective measures, which are what the person tells me, like a patient reported outcome measure, and then there's objective measures, which are the ones where we are giving them a test and measuring a score and getting a score that, you know, based on some objective test. And the day that Celeste referred to those measures as clinician reported outcome measures, it was like a little light bulb went off in my head. And I thought, well, that's I mean, that's so perceptive that these measures that we're calling objective contain the biases of the people who made the measures and the people who are scoring the measures. And they're what they're doing is they're taking into account the things that I value as the examiner and not the things that the person values as the as the patient or the client or the person recovering uh from aphasia. And so anyway, I just I love that you use that term because I think it's really apt for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

So when we think about patient-reported outcomes, we are looking to the individual with the disorder, with the disability, to give their own account on how this disease is influencing their ability to lead a fulfilling life. And it's different from the clinician-reported outcomes like your Western aphasia battery, that I'm saying, okay, this is what's wrong with you. You know, that patient-reported outcome that you are filling out, that you are giving your answers to. There's no right or wrong answer. It's your perception in this word.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

And so many of our objective measures really don't reflect what a person experiences in day-to-day life. And so they're they're useful um for understanding the kinds of things that um that are difficult for a person, but they really don't capture the context of what it's like for that person in their daily life.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

How could it, though?

SPEAKER_03 21:30

What's the answer? I I think the answer is somewhere in between. I think you almost have to have both. But the way that the medical model operates it has always been about the perspective of the clinician or the provider or the researcher. And I don't think all of that was necessarily raw, but I do think we were probably missing the broader impact. The way that I try to explain it to students is we measure a lot of counts. You know, how many words can a person say, or how many words can they put in a sentence? How many words can they understand? But we don't measure things like the efficiency at which a person can order a number three at Starbucks, or any adjustment that they want. I want it to supersize a number three, but I also don't want cheese on that. Can they do those kind of things? And clinician report measures, they don't tap into those kind of issues. Or can a person in the world that we're moving in now, can a person choose a vegetable that doesn't have a number on it at the self-checkout? Can they go into that panel and spell that banana or broccoli correctly to pull that up while there's 15 people breathing on their neck, wanting them to move along faster. Those are the things that we don't necessarily think about in terms of real-world performance when we're measuring, you know, number of words or the length of a sentence that someone can understand.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

That's good stuff. That, you know, if you want more tips, I think we our mental health episode in season one talks about that validation. And I mean, exactly what you just said. So that's awesome. Yeah. So in closing, our five ways that you can help health equity in black people with aphasia is

Real-World Communication Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 23:30

workforce diver uh implicit bias training, workforce diversity. Yep, yep. Because sometimes people want practitioners that look like them. Makes you feel better. Okay. Research. Come through. Represent having representation and research and sharing your findings back with the community. Indeed. Health literacy. So people can so people can be able to make informed decisions and then patient reported outcomes. Come through. Okay? Because it's not about you. We all, you know, we want to know what the individual wants to be able to do.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Can somebody talk to me about how I feel? And truth be told, come through tooth.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Come through truth. If you're working with someone, if the research isn't there, and so the representative sample isn't there, and the practitioner doesn't look like you, then you really do want to understand from the patient perspective what they want to do. They might want to learn how to play spades.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

I need to.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

The shame, the shame of it all.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

You know, I okay, I know we're out of time, but I talk about um, I have a paper that I did publish and it talks about social network. And I remember when I was first getting into really submerging myself into health-related quality of life for black people, there was this narrative that black people have lower social networks, which means they are more isolated and they could be more depressed. And we really need to look at that. And I remember part of my dissertation, um published dissertation work, looked at wanting to understand social networks and black people without aphasia, because I feel like in order to understand a community, you have to first measure that community against themselves versus against another race. So you can't measure black and white and then be like, oh, black people have lower social network. Well, what is black people's social network without aphasia? And we found that black people have a lower social network, whether you have aphasia or whether you don't. If it comes to, you know, sharing personal things, then black people often reported to share personal information with either one or two people. They weren't sharing personal information with four and five people like their white counterparts, which would indicate a larger social network. And that made sense to me because I ain't telling everybody my business. We keep it tight. We keep it so tight.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Oh my God, we keep it so tight. I remember so many things I couldn't, numbers and the words, certain things that were just not accessible. And I am mild in uh every way possible, in every report that you would have, you know, and but the reported outcomes is what I learned from Celeste, and it's not about what the clinician wants, it's about how the person can engage with their recovery for after they leave that office.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

I do think there's been some positive movement in the research world in this area. In particular, there's been a big push over the past several years towards community-engaged research where researchers talk to the people who hopefully might benefit from our research and get their perspective on what we should be doing, and in this case, the kinds of measures that we should do. Um, and so, and I do I also agree with what Charles said about there being a middle ground. I think both perspectives are are useful in different settings, um, the clinician perspective and the patient perspective. And there are ways to um try to assess sort of real life scenarios. And so, like we're doing a big study on reading right now, which is a

Action Steps For Equity In Care

SPEAKER_02 27:55

kind of understudied area in a phasure recovery. So we have lots of measures that are just can you read this word or can you read that word or match this word to a picture? And then we tried to also make a test that would simulate the kinds of scenarios that Charles is talking about, where you have to rely on reading out in the wild, you know, reading the street sign or walking into an office building to try to find which where your doctor is, or at a, you know, reading a pill bottle or things like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

All right. So for the listeners, describe the problem this paper is responding to more than what we've already discussed. And what is the gap that Celeste was trying to fill?

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Yeah. So Celeste um started working on this um a couple of years before, I mean, I want to say about three years before it was um published, maybe even a little bit um more. And really what she wanted to do was she had been, you know, looking at health equity issues in aphasia and learning as much as she could about it. And she wanted to sort of summarize her thoughts about what she saw and the different ways that speech pathology in particular might work to improve itself as a field to help, in particular, black people with aphasia. I think when she was looking around, she didn't see any review papers or any sort of perspective pieces that really summarized exactly how she felt about a situation. And there's so many different aspects to it. Like there are issues in every part of the field, in education, on the clinical side, on the research side, on the institutional um level. And so she was trying to capture all of that and give her thoughts about it, I think.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

So when we think about implicit bias, that is an individual's unconscious bias or stereotype toward a group, toward um, you know, in this case, we'll say black people. You know, I think about a story where I was working in the hospital and I had just finished an evaluation on a stroke survivor, and the nurse said, I don't know why he's here. He's just gonna eat fried chicken and be back in here in a little bit. Wow. And in that moment, I don't think she realized that that type of thinking was a stereotype. It was a bias that she had in treating her, her, her patient, our patient.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Right, right. And feeling like it what, and therefore it feels like it doesn't matter what I do, or I don't have to be as diligent because she feels like he won't be diligent. As if that's her call to make. Mr. Charles, what do you got for me?

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Having been working on this kind of stuff before, before I even met Celeste, one of the very consistent things that I saw as I'd get to an end of a presentation with all of this information of all of these differences, and the audience would inevitably ask, okay, so what can we do about that? What can we do about that in this setting? And it, you know, whatever setting they were coming from, they were asking those questions. I had some had some thoughts about what that would mean, but it was still focused kind of on my small view of environments of where I had had worked clinically and the approach that I was taking to research. So this was really designed to help answer that question to provide some basic guidance or some roadmap of what we can do next, so that we're not just talking about these differences in outcomes, but we

Implicit Bias And Its Harm

SPEAKER_03 31:55

can actually pull the profession together in some way that we're unified and trying to improve equity. I did want to add that this is not unique to speech pathology and aphasia. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, they're all kind of dealing with the same thing. And interestingly, they're all kind of coming to the same conclusion. So I think she had thought about this in a in a way that was probably ahead of where many disciplines were thinking of bringing it all together beyond just describing. And I and I think about four years ago, I had one of these moments of standing at this intersection. Anyone who's been in in Gainesville, Florida, it's on Archer Road between the the UF, the Shams Hospital and the Neuro Hospital. And it's this big intersection, and you have 25 seconds to walk that walk across, the light's gonna change. Now that's probably things that seems bizarre, but the number of times I've heard people talk about that a person can walk a thousand feet, but they I bet you they can't cross that intersection in 25 seconds. So this is what this means not only for emulation, but this is the same issue in communication that, yeah, a person can say 10,000 words, but can they under pressure answer a question or a series of questions that's gonna have some impact on their life? And so these issues are unique for aphasia, but the overarching problem that I think we're trying to solve in neuro rehab is pretty similar across all of these disciplines.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

That was something that we struggled with putting the paper together, was sort of where to draw the line around what we were trying to cover in this paper. And so, you know, Celeste's instinct was to make it more focused about aphasia. And my instinct was to say, you know, actually, these are the same issues that we could apply anywhere. And so where we ended up settling out, if you read the paper, is we're gonna use this as a case example, and then at some point right before the recommendation, say, but really this applies beyond this caseless is just an example of why this matters and what this field can do about it.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Well, and I think that that's that's where I think it's just so important, you know, and why this topic about health equity and people with aphasia is so important, because, you know, systemic differences and the barriers that are in place are in place. And we can't continue to talk about disparities. We have to start talking about what you can do in your own stratosphere as a practitioner to help health equity, to help make sure that there aren't differences in the treatment that you provided.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

This paper is kind of a broader impact than just aphasia that yes, published in aphasiology. But people who are really interested in in interdisciplinary, rehab science, all these areas, they're always looking in other disciplines to try to find ways to move the needle forward in the in the area that they're most interested in. So paper like this is gonna have a far-reaching impact beyond Aphasia. I mean, it certainly is accomplishing what was needed for aphasia, but it's also accomplished much more than that.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

It's wonderful. That is absolutely wonderful. We are almost out of time, gentlemen. I'm gonna ask you for your last thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Well, one of the things that I love about this paper um that you know is entirely celeste is how practical it is and how personal it is also, where what she's trying to do is meet each person in this field where they are. And so starting with educators and then going to clinicians and then going to researchers and to people who have the privilege of making decisions at the institutional level and saying, okay, here's what you can do to help. And um that is just it's it's so Celeste. Um, and uh, so I yeah, I don't know. That's that's one of the things that I love about this paper.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Yeah, I I would say this is kind of a final thought. Is if Celeste was still here with us, I believe she would add a number nine to this. And this is all kind of emerged in the last year, and it's the collection of social determinants. So it's a little bit more than just the patient reported outcomes. But in the past year, it has become clear to all disciplines that you've got to ask questions about these folks and where they live and what kind of resources they have. But we're great at measuring income. Actually, we're not even that great at kind of asking about it, but understanding family income, uh, the number of cars that a family has to get the person to a location. There has been a big push in our profession. And Ash has done an excellent job of creating a website to help us ask these kind of questions that we weren't thinking about in the past. The number of people in the home and then the relationships of the people that creates an environment that facilitates more communication, which helps the recovery process, or if the dynamics of the family are not positive, it actually disrupts that process. Because I think in the past two years, we've really understood social determinants in a different way, and we've figured out how to capture that information without offending people.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

So when it comes down to,

Community Research And Social Determinants

SPEAKER_00 38:00

I'm gonna wrap up with one of the recommendations here was to include minorities in research and reaching out to people where they are in churches, in health fairs, or in communities where they live and engage with them and not only have them come and be part of the research, but then make sure you go back and disseminate that information to the people, which is why brain friends exist. She wanted to disseminate science.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

I I completely agree. I think that's so important in so many ways. Um, it becomes a two-way street then. Um, you know, uh people, you know, the reason to do the research is to benefit the people who are living with these issues. And so the way to make that happen is to make sure that you are going back to them and explaining what the research produced and what the outcome was. And that also produces a population that's more engaged in research and understands the benefits of research. And then that benefits the researchers too, because you know, we we all need more support to do the work that is needed to help improve uh people's lives. Um, and for that, we need an engaged population that supports this kind of work. So it becomes a really positive cycle when we engage, I think, with people and where they are.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

Yeah, I know there's been some positive movement on that front. Universities can have a reputation of going to communities to get what they want for their research. In the Affordable Care Act, the patient-centered outcomes research institute, the CORI was created out of the Affordable Care Act. And in that research institute, you have to involve your populations of interest in the planning, the research, and then also in bringing it back to the community. So I think that has changed kind of our view of including communities. But I also believe if if you're if you're asking questions about people from a community, you need to have some representation of that community.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Before we get up out of here, do we have any last? I want to know. I'm coming off the cuff. I want your best Celeste hairdo. What's your best hair story on Celeste? What do we got? Peter, I'll let you go second because you seem like you're hard to pick a favorite.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

I mean, it was so I mean every every week she'd come in with something different. It was, I mean, you know, and she was like a model. I mean, she looked great in everything. Uh and uh yeah, no, I I love what she did. I mean, but it's hard to pick a favorite. Like yeah, I don't know. She had a great, she had a great afro uh at one point. I mean, that was it was like epic. It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

It was so good. Regal is the word I used. She was regal. And listen, I still haven't seen that coat again. I don't, mom didn't send it to me. I've I've been throwing induendos out there the whole time, and she's she's not budget. She she kept the coat. So, but anyway, Charles, you have anything for me or another. I agree with Peter.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

I have seen um a 1970 style afro in 20 in the 2020s that that really made the transition and then uh transition right to the long braids. So it's I have a lot of pictures, and there's there's never the same hairstyle. It's the same thing twice.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Yeah. Oh my gosh. It it it's so much fuel that that gives me. Um, and the fact that gentlemen as renowned in this work as you guys are picking up her mantle and carrying it over because of the love you have for her. And that's a beautiful thing. And I know she loved you both in a brotherly way in um a spiritual connection she had with you both. Um, it was very special to her. Um, and I didn't meet you guys until after she passed. So I but I feel like, which is why I'm talking you guys all reckless, because I feel like I know you because I do know you because of her um explanations and stories that she told me about you guys. So um I thank you guys for being here on BrainFriends. You gotta give me a Brain France. Brain Friends, Brain Friends, Brain France! That's right, that's right, that's right. That's what we do. All right, so listen, guys, I thank you. Where can they find this paper?

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Well, it's published at Ephasiology, is the name of the journal. And so they can look there. If they just search for Celeste's name, I think they can probably find it. And it's free to download and read. Anybody can have access to it. You don't need any special

Celeste’s Legacy And Where To Read

SPEAKER_02 43:10

subscriptions or anything.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

I Googled it right before I got on. Eight things SLPs can do to improve equity and people of the phase of So did I miss anything that I should have brought up?

SPEAKER_00 43:22

I don't think so. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Yeah, no, please encourage her work. No, I think this was great, Angie. Yeah. And thank you so much for doing this and continuing her legacy and spreading the word. I mean, it's so valuable for everyone and such an honor to her, I think.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

So listen, guys, again, Dr. Charles Ellis and Dr. Peter Turklethoff. I want folks to read.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

I want every clinician that works with anyone who has aphasia, people of color to go read this paper. It's not just about aphasia. It is about aphasia, but it's not much more. It's really to think about. The complexity of people and how we need to be flexible at how we manage complex people. Okay. Peter, you got anything on that?

SPEAKER_02 44:09

Yeah, just to add that I think one of the messages of the paper is that no matter who you are, everybody can do something to help. Um, and um, so you know, come to the paper with that and uh then take action after reading it.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Bye. Bye, Angie. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Uh yeah, let's get let's get let's get a let's get a decent outro. Dr. This has been so good. Thank you for sharing the research that you've done and Dr. Peter has done um to just shed a light. So I just want to thank you for the work that you've done and being a champion for stroke survivors as a whole, but definitely for being a champion for our community of black stroke survivors and people with aphasia.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Thank you. Thank you for being okay with um me being able to share this as I am not patiently waiting um for it to come out and if it will even come out. And so even if it doesn't come out, I know that one of the reasons we started this podcast was for science dissemination. So mission accomplished, mission accomplished, thank things thank you, Dr.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Celeste. Bye. Peace, y'all.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Brain Friends. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite streaming platform. Also, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, Brain Friends the Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

I'm so extra.