Click the play button to listen.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | PodBean | Spotify | YouTube
See the full Episode List
Or watch the video podcast on YouTube:
In this episode, host Lora Parent, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Research Development, welcomes Dr. Hope Barkoukis and Dr. Logan Harper for an engaging conversation on the art of science communication. Together, they discuss how researchers and clinicians make their work accessible to the public, explore how communication strategies evolve throughout a research career, and share insights on bridging complex scientific topics with real-world impact—all while highlighting CTSC’s role in advancing translational science.
Links:
- Become a CTSC Member
- Learn more about the CTSC
Transcript
"I think the proliferation of social media has really expanded misinformation and bogus health claims, and has made it much more paramount to have good communication, but also a more frightening landscape for those who are just patients."
Lora:
Well, welcome to another episode of From Research to Real Life Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Parent. And today we have another wonderful episode with two very exciting guests today. I'm going to spend some time introducing you. We'll get into our topic and hopefully have some really engaging, insightful conversations today. So welcome.
Hope:
Thank you.
Logan:
Thank you.
Lora:
Today's episode is about science communication, how we, as researchers and people digesting research, are kind of dealing with the communication across our careers, how we disseminate that, how we digest it, and how that has changed over time. How we receive our research and and understand it. So, today I'm joined with two very special guests.I have Doctor Hope Barkoukis, thank you and welcome.
Hope:
Thank you.
Lora:
Hope is the chair of the Department of Nutrition in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. She's a professor and nutrition researcher with experience and metabolic research, dietary intervention and interdisciplinary collaboration. She assists in getting the NIH funded research studies and CTS funding to connect with the metabolic kitchen, which is where we are today.Very exciting. Thank you for allowing us to be here.
Hope:
Thank you. Thank you for joining.
Lora:
Yes and then also we have Doctor Logan Harper with us today. He is a pulmonary and critical care physician with the Cleveland Clinic. He is an integrative pilot Ctsa awardee with interest in sarcoidosis and health disparities. So welcome to you.
Logan:
Thank you for having me. Really excited to be here.
Lora:
Great. Wonderful. So, today we're kind of again talking about science communication. The topic is quite broad, and I'm interested in hearing the perspectives from the two of you because your backgrounds are kind of, totally different. Let's just put that out there. Right. But with this kind of thematic idea of integrative health and understanding the whole health, the whole human, kind of how it's been put. So I'm going to start off with you hope. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your research, how you got started. And maybe what you're currently working on.
Hope:
I'll start from the back forward. Currently doing a really interesting study. We're providing individuals that do have, various types of dermatologic, problems and diseases with a mediterranean diet as contrasted to control patients that really just get, you know, medical drugs from their physician, trying to determine if we can see changes in gut, sort of microbiota in terms of quality of life, in terms of the severity of their psoriasis symptoms. And so it's really been, quite fascinating, interesting to hear as far as how did I get here? I have a very atypical background that in just two seconds, really started out completely unrelated to science and then ended up evolving because I love the space of food and the intersection of that nutrition.
Lora:
Wonderful. Well, I look forward to hearing more about it. And, Logan, so let's hear a little bit from you. Tell us about your background, your interests, and, a little bit about what you're working on.
Logan:
Yeah. So I started out, really not focused on not focused on integrative medicine. Initially. My initial interest was on was on sarcoidosis, which is a relatively rare pulmonary disease. And how we and how and how we could improve the care patients are getting for that disease. As part of that, I very quickly realized that I needed to have a lot of patient input on what sort of projects I would design and what we were trying and what we were going to try to do. As part of that, we formed a come a community advisory board of sarcoidosis patients, and they really quickly honed in on how they were having a lot of side effects from their drugs, and no one was offering them anything that wasn't a drug. And they really wanted lifestyle interventions. And that's how I've ended up, really starting to focus on these, on these integrative techniques. That's interesting.
Lora:
Yeah. Good, let's start off with our first question. How do you both, you can both comment on this or hope if you want to take the lead first. How do you feel and how do you see the role of science communication, in the public eye today? What does that mean to you when you hear that phrase?
Hope:
I think that's absolutely paramount, because everything that we do and our whole hope for humanity, our health, our environment is going to be to have an education process with the with the general public. And so as scientists, we really do need to tailor our message to the audience so that they understand. I mean, honestly, and I'm sure Logan can relate. I've never had a patient ask me what enzyme system you know, is operating when they are having. Right. But you know, we're we're scientifically very well trained. But then you come in to actually meet with your patient or your community, and they don't understand what you're saying. So I would say that communication should be a fundamental piece of all education in every single health care discipline. I'm sure you would probably agree.
Logan:
Yeah, I totally I totally agree with that. And I would also add that I think there's definitely room for us to educate our patients more about the ongoing, about the ongoing research. A lot of times in the clinic, I am hesitant to share anything with a patient that I, that I can't say that I know for certain. And I think patients really, really appreciate it. What when we educate them and share and share with them the questions the, the, the field is asking and how we are trying to answer them.
Hope:
That's actually a really good point. I follow the Kiss principle. Keep it simple, stupid. Okay. Because honestly, if you talk above anyone, irrespective of your personal life or your professional life, but especially with the community, you lose them in the first, you know, five seconds and then it really becomes a disconnect. And so to me, it's absolutely fundamental. We have to be able to explain in layman's terms. So what, you know, what difference does what you're doing make. Why is funding especially in this climate. Why is it so critical. And so to me, that should be absolutely across every single age group and every single specialty.
Lora:
Sure. So how has that evolved throughout your career? I'm sure at some point. There was a light bulb moment where you said something is not clicking. I'm not getting through, or my message isn't maybe being communicated as clearly as I had hoped. Was there maybe a turning point in either of your careers that made you think, okay, we need to do something about this or change the way were doing it?
Hope:
I'm really curious if you would agree with me. I think the proliferation of social media has really expanded misinformation and bogus health claims, and has made it much more paramount to have good communication, but also a more frightening landscape for those who are just patients. And I'm I'm curious. I would agree.
Logan:
I totally I totally agree agree. We tried to make kind of a step into social media with our community advisory board, and we quickly realized that we're just not as good at it as the people who are out there. And what I found as a, as a way to overcome that was partnering with a couple patient advocate, patient advocacy groups. So currently I work pretty closely with the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research. They're one of the largest patient advocacy groups for sarcoidosis, and they have been a fantastic partner for setting up,online webinars. We're able to get a couple a couple hundred hundred patients in. They post them on YouTube. The views range from a couple a couple hundred to a couple thousand, which is much better than I than I would be able to do. So we're still not overcoming. I think a lot of the people who really focus on just like how do you optimize the social media algorithms? But it's very interesting when the patients come to the live to the live question and answer sessions, the questions they're asking are very are very thoughtful. And they're very and they're very receptive to kind of explaining the explaining the process of forming a hypothesis, explaining how you test it and showing how you got to your answer. And I'm hopeful that that could be a way to, build trust back.
Hope:
You know, you reminded me what's interesting is our current research projects, the ones with food and nutrition, we've actually set up, like, Facebook groups for the, intervention patients. And it's helped in terms of adherence. It helped in terms of community development. Really honing in on the clear messaging about education for food and nutrition. And so I agree with Logan. And that piece is really important.
Lora:
So I'm assuming they don't teach that in medical school?
Logan:
No.
Hope:
No not at all. So I think it is the opposite actually is how sophisticated can you you know how many scientific words in one sentence can you marry and you just, you know, sort of look like a deer in headlights and, and that's not going to get the needle moving for health.
Lora:
Yeah. So how how do you navigate that? I mean, if they're not teaching that in the classroom, number one, should they be teaching that in the classroom? Or is this kind of a learned, behavior from culture and society?
Hope:
We are teaching in the undergrad. I will say that in our particular the Department of Nutrition, interestingly, probably 85% of our undergrads are actually planning on a health care profession. And we do have specific required courses in not just communication, but linking that to behavior change, because that's ultimately what we want. Even though we have different fields, our end goal is the same. And in medical school it's more complicated because there's so many competing factors for in the curriculum. But I think that working directly with patients, that's that's where you learn you you can't avoid burnout unless you see success in your patients. And that's basically do they understand what they need to do.
Logan:
I totally I totally agree. I think I think a lot of this learning comes, comes from the patients to the providers. And I think if we're able to highlight more what we're learning from the patients and how we're translating that into what we do, that will also kind of bridge, bridge that gap. Because I don't think patients or I don't, I don't, I don't hear, hear from patients that they want me to just tell them everything. They want to know that it's a conversation. And in clinical care, we've gotten much better at that. But in science, I think we're still learning how to turn it into a dialog.
Hope:
I think that social media, too, has changed the dynamics between the practitioner and the patient. It used to be just a one way flow, like Logan said of information, and that's completely changed. Now. It's very atypical that your community or your patient doesn't come with so many questions. And so it's really a two way, interface.
Lora:
That's great. So what do we think the key is to communicating our science effectively? We're dealing with complex issues. We are dealing with maybe some controversial things. We are dealing with, you know, topics that often could be misinterpreted. And so how do we effectively or, you know, what is maybe the secret ingredient to doing that effectively?And continuing a two way dialog instead of just disseminating into the void.
Hope:
I think, number one, absolutely. Knowing your audience. Number two, I think having your main points why, you know, so what what what's going to move the needle first and not buried in the details. And then what I said before that, keep it simple.
Logan:
I had this really interesting experience recently where we recently collected a multinational survey on side effects of steroids in sarcoidosis. And to do that we obviously had to work with a lot of patient, groups so that we were actually able to have the patients to take to take the survey. And as I'm going through, through the process of submitting that for publication in a medical journal. One of the one of the patient, one of the patient groups asked me if I could write them a patient friendly readout readout of the data that they would this, that they would disseminate through their patient networks and specifically to the people who took the survey so they could see where their where their information went and what we're going to do with it. And I thought that was a really incredible idea, because a lot of the stuff we do have happens on the scale of decades with the research we do where where it goes from observation to developing on intervention to testing it. And I think we're not telling people that we're working on it. And it turns into this, into this perception that we're coming in. We're collecting data. We're getting papers, and then we're not doing anything meaningful with it.
Hope:
Interesting.
Lora:
So how do you balance that scientific nuance with the clarity and the transparency that I think a lot of probably patients desire?
Hope:
Well, I think one of the pieces is to recognize if you are actually an expert in the communication field, the general public, your language and your written word needs to be at a fifth grade level. And that's very difficult for us to to even realize, you know, where we are. And so again, it's knowing your audience and not being condescending. I mean, just like what Logan just said, you know, translated into English.
Logan:
Yeah. I think we need to talk. We need to talk to our, to our patients. Like we talked to our family members at Thanksgiving when they ask us like, what are you doing? What are you doing. What are you doing now I'm sure, I'm sure none of us at the Thanksgiving table are busting out all of the all of the enzymes. But I think we all I think we all have a good story of, like what? What we're doing, what we're hoping to, what we're hoping to achieve. And I think a little bit more of a focus on where do we think this is going in the future. Would be really helpful. The couple talks that I've done that we've put on that, that we've put on YouTube, the ones that have that have the most views are the ones that are focused on what is the cutting edge. Where is this going? What are we dreaming of? And I think we need to be comfortable dreaming a bit with our patients instead of like in our in our in our journal clubs, we often like really highlight all the limitations of a paper. And like this probably doesn't apply to this person for that reason, but I think we need to let ourselves dream.
Hope:
You know, you made a really good point. Storytelling is also very effective so that if you obviously you use discretion and never, never, you know, expose a person, a patient's name. But storytelling is absolutely a very effective way to present a message because individuals will remember that story long after versus just, you know, spitting out scientific details.
Lora:
So tell me a story. Let's let's hear about either, you know, a time where your research has sparked maybe some meaningful conversation, dialog or debate, either on the internet or with with your peers and, and friends and family?
Hope:
Well, early on, I my research focused on looking at certain parameters or, descriptors of foods, not just what was their overall nutrient. And a nutrient is a compound that you must get from your diet in order to have normal body functioning, okay, vitamins, minerals, etc.. And originally my research was on a specific aspect of, a characterization of food called like the glycemic index. In other words, that you can eat the same amount of total carbohydrate, but depending on various parameters of the food, how it was cooked, the composition, etc., it would impact how much your blood sugar would increase. And at that point in time, it was extremely controversial. And I had a lot of, negative backlash. But ironically, now the needle is moving and we recognize that it's not just the nutrients in your diet, it's your total dietary pattern is how the food was cooked. It's all those parameters. Is the food hall or is it all, you know, blended. And so it's become much more mainstream. And and I found that very helpful because it is the total picture of what one does in all of those domains that that makes a difference in terms of metabolic well-being or increased risk of disease.
Lora:
I bet family dinners are fun.
Hope:
I never we never volunteer nutrition information staff. Because I was I was, you know, a lot of dinners by myself. I also. Yes, yes, yes. Although I will sneak in that I once worked with a physician, no less, and every single day he brought to work two two liters of diet soda. It was really challenging for me not to say, are you serious? But I didn't. I was very respectful and eventually he came to me and he said, this isn't a great idea, is it? And I said you might want to change your habits so.
Lora:
Well, you hear so many stories about the grandmas who drink, Dr Pepper every day.Who Smoke a cigarette every day and are living. To be 100 years old.
Hope:
Yes, yes. There's always. Yes. It's it's a challenge. Yes.
Lora:
What about you, Logan?
Logan:
So I think I want to tell the story of how I ended up in, into, Integrative Health because it, it actually started with presenting research to patients. So we had done a qualitative study where we just interviewed patients and we asked them, what is your experience with Sarc, with sarcoidosis, what could be better? And I kind of went into this with the bias, with the bias that, the doctors needed to fix it. And if we just reorganized our care, everything would work out. And we got the data and I had all of, all of these quotes, and you could read the quotes and come to the conclusion that there were some changes in how we deliver care that were that were needed. I presented the research to, my community advisory board and asked them, what do they think we should do? What changes in care seem best, and they really honed in on the quotes that I had, that I had kind of not interpreted this way. They honed in on the quotes about stress and side effects from drugs, and they told me how, in their experience, no one was ever giving them any other, any other recommendations other than drugs. And yes, the drugs were were toxic and and they sort of worked. But but what they really wanted was something else. And they actually and they actually explicitly called out mindfulness as a potential intervention. And I left the meeting a little sad because I wasn't really hoping to go into mindfulness at, at that point, as a, as a normal Western trained physician, I was like, I don't know if that's really going to do anything. And then the next, the next conference I went to, they presented a trial of mindfulness in sarcoidosis, and it improved everything. It was done in the Netherlands. So, we have to tailor it. We have to change a lot of things, hence the grant. But it was really fascinating to see that the that the patients came to a more, patient centered and more like coherent interpretation of my data than I did, if I gave them the chance to comment back on it.
Lora:
Well, I'm sure it's a lot easier to be mindful when you're living in New Zealand.
Hope:
Yes. Probably true.
Lora:
So what do you hope, that your research has contributed? So we're looking into the future now. You both have done some really great research and interesting research. What do you hope that it has contributed to the scientific community and to the public at large?
Hope:
In my area, I would say, to understand the concept of the totality of what you eat and not just focusing on specific foods or specific nutrients. And I think it also goes along absolutely with what Logan just said, because we focus a lot in the department on every single level of not just food and nutrition, but the concept of lifestyle medicine, which is a recognized branch of medicine. And it's the concept that you think about emotional well-being, social well-being, nutrition, physical fitness, all of those components. Because we live in a real world, you know, your diet alone is not going to take you to 110 successful aging. It's all of those components. And that's exactly what your patients moved your needle to get you. So even though ironically, we're in very different fields, it's a commonality of that's where we need to be as a cohesive health care professional, group, rather than focusing on our differences, we need to collectively work together because we have a long way to go to make us, a healthier society mentally as well as physically.
Logan:
That's really that's really great. And I think very similar to what I'm hoping to contribute is I really want to I really hope that with my work, there's a continued focus on what can we do outside of drugs for our for our patients. And I really hope there is a continued focus on how can we bring patients to the table when we're designing, when we're interpreting data, and how can we treat them like, like partners in the research journey? And not like subjects?
Hope:
And I would agree, because I think the other thing, even though I know this isn't your focus, health fraud in the US is a big problem. And it's very, I once had a friend of mine who had cancer. Long story. But her holistic healer was telling her to eat one specific food in great amounts, and it would do all these miraculous things. And it was heartbreaking watching her knowing that that is actually moving the needle away from her well-being. And so I think this whole concept of communication in the field of medicine is paramount, not just to move us to understand what are we doing, what's the future, but to really diminish the voices of health care fraud, that are very loud.
Lora:
I actually was going to ask about misinformation and how you deal with that. I mean, it must be so hard to watch somebody like that, right? I had a very similar experience. My mother in law went off of her cholesterol medicine because she said, I can take this herbal supplement. And my friend did it. And then two months later she had a heart attack.
Hope:
It's a problem.
Lora:
And so how do you handle that? I mean, personally and professionally? I think that's a very tough thing to balance.
Hope:
So I will tell you, professionally ironic timing. We get a lot of media requests here on food and nutrition. I can't even tell you how many. And I'm not going to lie, maybe I shouldn't say this aloud, but we typically deferred. Okay. And then I looked at the quality of what was being stated and I thought, you know what? This is really unethical. So about a month ago, I sent out an email to all of our faculty, and I said, I know that this takes time, but if we don't do it, then do not complain about the misinformation, which is really detrimental to health. And so we've actually really stepped up our game and responding to the media people here when I request information.
Lora:
To get ahead, to get ahead of the game?
Hope:
Right, right.
Logan:
That's really that's really wonderful to hear it.
Hope:
It's not it's a lot of time.
Logan:
It it is hard.
Hope:
But you know, it's worth it. I've learned that I don't know about you, but I'm curious. We actually now put it in writing and so will respond to the reporters in writing so that if you're misquoted or misrepresented, you can go back and say, you know what? This is what we said, let's have a correction.
Logan:
So, oh, that's that's a really great piece of advice.
Hope:
Yeah its a hard life lesson.
Logan:
So sarcoidosis is a pretty small disease. And it makes it so there's not we have, I think, less problems with misinformation than other diseases. A lot of it is just there's an information vacuum. So people are really looking for anything that's that's related to inflammation or anything else. And I think a lot of the myths of a lot of the draw of misinformation is due to the vacuum that we're providing as providers, because when I see someone in the office, I'm taught to give them a drug. And if the drug doesn't work, I tell them, well, that's about all that we can expect from the drug. And I think if we're more diligent in really having evidence based recommendations for lifestyle, we show interest that people are doing them and we're able to provide tools. I think that'll that'll make the misinformation less appealing.
Hope:
And you made a really good point. Evidence based is critical, okay. Not evidence informed. And that is where I do feel that we need to do a better job, because the challenge is there are a wide variety of alternative therapies that can effectively be used with mainstream, but some of them are honestly completely bogus. They don't even have a theoretical basis that could possibly work. And so staying with that messaging of clear and concise and knowing your audience, but evidence based, I think that's that's what we all do really well, Cleveland is really lucky. You know, we have amazing institutions here, but that needs to filter to all areas of the country.
Lora:
So kind of one last question. And to whomever would like to answer it, how can you maybe ensure that your work or, your colleagues work, will have lasting impact beyond the publication? Beyond the chatter. What is your hope for the future?
Logan:
I guess I have found that is a place where having a really good mentor is incredibly, incredibly important. Because there's some questions in fields that are very small and can be easily and can be answered very quickly, and there's some that are very complicated and take and take more time. And I think an example from an example from my career is early on. I was I was in training still and in a particular manifestation of, of sarcoidosis, where it where it impacts the heart. A lot of people were using a drug that works very well, has a really great, has a really great, mechanistic, mechanistic reason to work. And, and in our practice, we saw that it, that it worked, but it also had a black box label warning for heart failure. So the question was how safe? How safe is this? And we were able to very quickly go back through a registry of patients and put out a paper showing that, yes, we didn't see any of the problems they saw when they use this drug in patients who didn't have inflammation in their in their heart for heart, for heart, for heart failure. And I think I was able to do that because I had a, a really good mentor who was able to explain the limitations, explain what they were doing now, and we were able to really ponder what's the best way to answer this, answer this question. And I think a lot of and I think most researchers are doing that, I think there can sometimes be a little bit of a pressure to publish, to publish, publish, plot, publish. I know I am guilty of this at times in medical school and residency where you have to get a paper out to get to the next, to the next, to the next step of training. But I think it's it's really important that whenever we're doing something and we're looking for associations and risk factors, we're really thinking about what is the next, what is the next step and how are we going to intervene to make this better.
Hope:
I think your point about mentors is exceptional because they have the experience to give one perspective, and everything in life looks different from a perspective. And that, you know, is how you get a lasting impact. One of the things that I learned very early on is that even in your personal life and your professional life, there are three spheres the sphere that you can influence, the one you can control, and the one over which you have no control. And so you may as well not worry about. And so, you know, the key is to be very strategic about what can you control, to, to really have a defined thought process in terms of making the most impact in terms of your influence, and then the rest? If you believe that prayer is helpful, then, you know, go for it, because worrying will not help
Lora:
Yeah, absolutely.Hindsight is always 20 -20.
Logan:
Yeah. And I will and I will add just to harp on what I've said earlier, that, that it is really important that we, that we think of our patients in this mentor space as well, and not just our, our professional mentors
Lora:
Yeah. I'm sure and, and possibly you can answer to this as well. That there's probably been something that has been brought to your attention that maybe you were unaware of by a patient, in the past or a student, who has come to you. And so, being I think, open to that is also really, kind of necessary as well to, you know, not close yourself off to the potential of new ideas or you, you know, drug interactions and things like that. Absolutely.
Hope:
Open mindedness is key.
Lora:
Yeah. Great. So as we close,I'd love to give you both kind of an opportunity to, give a piece of advice. You know, think really deep down and think about, how you are communicating your research, how you're communicating your impact, and maybe the future of where you see things going. What would you tell somebody, a colleague, somebody who's up and coming or somebody who's maybe been doing it the same way, since the day they started?What's what's the piece of wisdom that you can share?
Hope:
I would say that regardless of the ambient environment, always sit at the table of positivity where the people at your table believe in you irrespective of what's going on. Because if you stay laser focused with those who are your best cheerleaders, you will never lose. But you know, one negative voice can really permeate every single thing that you do. So pick that table and go for it.
Lora:
I love that.
Logan
That's wonderful.
Hope:
Yeah. The food analogy.
Lora:
Yeah.
Logan:
Yeah. I would say, what I'm hoping for, for the future is that I'm hoping in, in the next 10 or 5 years when, when a researcher publishes their work in an, in an academic journal, they're also thinking, thinking just as hard about how they're going to how they're going to communicate to the patient population and the general public what they did and why and why it and why it matters.
Lora:
Great. So thank you both for sharing your insights, your wisdom and your kind of hopes and dreams for the future. For those listening, if you're a researcher, a student or just passionate about research, there are many ways to get involved. Through the ctsa, we have lots of education, training programs, funding opportunities, focus on engagement, translational science, integrative medicine. And we even have opportunities to get involved with, funding for the test kitchen. So using vouchers, our test kitchen is a valuable service through the CTSC. And again, we are just excited to have this platform to talk, and to learn something from each other. So I have definitely, taken some nuggets of wisdom from today.And I appreciate your time in sharing with us today. So thank you.
Logan:
Thank you.
Hope:
Thanks for your time so much.