Stan and Clarence chat with two incredible leaders in Indigenous health and public policy: Ravyn Gibbs and Kris Rhodes.Ravyn Gibbs serves as the Tribal Liaison at the Minnesota Department of Health. Ravyn works to uplift Native communities, focusing on Indigenous rights and reducing health disparities. With a Bachelor’s degree in Criminology from the University of Minnesota Duluth and dual Master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Health from the University of Minnesota, Ravyn is also pursuing a Doctorate in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on previous work in federal Native and Tribal affairs policy, Ravyn is committed to addressing social injustices and advancing health equity.Kris Rhodes was appointed Director of the Office of American Indian Health in 2024. With a deep commitment to public health, Kris leads initiatives to improve the well-being of Indigenous communities through policy and collaboration. Kris holds an MPH in Public Health Administration & Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an undergraduate degree in Community Health Education from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Over a decades-long career, Kris has founded initiatives like the American Indian Cancer Foundation, playing a key role in culturally grounded, sustainable public health programs across tribal, academic, and nonprofit sectors.Join us as Ravyn and Kris share their journeys, professional experiences, and visions for creating a healthier future for Native communities.Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Full Episode
Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's special show on American Indian, Indigenous, and overall Indian health. We have two great, wonderful guests with us today. We'll get to them in just a moment. I want to thank our illustrious staff that helps make all these shows successful and interesting for you, the listening audience. Maddie Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard, Matthew Campbell,
Sheridan and Nygaard are second to none. They take care of all of our research, our recording. our production because Clarence and I don't know how to do that. So it's really nice to have them. They're really, really great, great colleagues. Thank you to all of you. We also have Dr. Barry Baines, who unfortunately can't be on the show today.
He's our medical advisor and sometimes gives us some medical twists on some of the subjects that we're talking about. So thank you to Barry. We have Human Partnership is the sponsors for our show. It's a wonderful community health organization that does wonderful things out in the community for everyone. everyone. And so thank you to human partnership.
You can check them out at human partnership.org. You can check us out health chatter podcast at health chatter podcast.com. All shows will have our research attached to the shows on our website. And also that's an opportunity for you to provide some insight and even provide us with ideas for shows that you might want to hear in the future. So thanks to everyone.
Today, we have two great guests with us, Chris Rhodes and Raven Gibbs. Chris just started recently at the Minnesota Department of Health. She's an Anishinaabe and Bad River Fond du Lac Reservations affiliations. was hired as the director of the Office of American Indian Health in January, just this last January. She comes with much, much background in this area.
She's a trusted leader and partner on indigenous public health issues. She launched the health education department at the Fonda Lake Reservation, the American Indian Community Tobacco Projects at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and it goes on and on. A great, great addition to our health department.
So thank you, Chris, for being with us today and give us some perspectives on this. Also, we have Raven Gibbs is an Anishinaabe as an enrolled member of the Boys 40 Band of Chippewa, has family ties with the Red Lake Nation. She focuses a lot on federal policy. She's a public health social worker and She's focused not only on native and tribal issues, but also overall in public health.
Holds a bachelor of arts degree in criminology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. So she got her bachelor of arts degree and also master's in social work, is currently in the doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University, focusing on health policy. Again, unique perspective on the subjects that we're going to be talking about today. So both of you, thank you.
Thank you so much for being on Health Chatter. Actually, this show, Clarence, has been kind of a long time coming. And the reason why is for all the different subjects that we've talked about in the health arena, and you can imagine them all, inevitably, we will say that these populations are at higher risk. And it just goes on and on and on.
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