Season 1 |
Episode 3: Health equities research with Dr. Francine Gachupin
[00:00:00] Rori: You're listening to Science Wise, a podcast designed to inspire people embarking on a career in science through conversations that will feel like talking with your wisest auntie.
[00:00:08] Emilia: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Emilia.
[00:00:13] Rori: And I'm Rori. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:21] Emilia: Our guest today is Dr. Francine Gachupin, a professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Public Health. She is a big advocate for improving health outcomes in tribal communities, protecting American Indian research participants, and building research programs that directly address the needs of American Indian communities.
She founded and directed tribal epidemiology centers. She has chaired several institutional review boards at the National Institutes of Health. She holds multiple NIH grants to study chronic disease prevention, and she paved the way to develop integrated community engagement in research. Today, she shares with us how her upbringing, growing up in Pueblo Jemez, her training and work experience have positively influenced the way she navigates academia.
Thank you so much for joining us. Francine, we want to start with a little bit about yourself and your early beginnings. So think Francine as a kid. So where did you grow up?
[00:01:30] Francine: So I grew up in the Pueblo of Jemez, which is about an hour northwest of Albuquerque, a very small tribal community. And we are the only tribe remaining that speaks a language called Tonga.
[00:01:43] Emilia: Oh, so you speak the language too?
[00:01:46] Francine: I do, yes. We're very fortunate that we have a very high penetrance still in speaking the language. It's still our primary language. So when I'm home in my community, it's the language I speak primarily.
[00:01:59] Emilia: You think that's the case? It sounds like it's rare to have a big proportion of the, of the population speaking the language.
Do you think the members or of the tribe did something different from other tribes where they managed to maintain the culture?
[00:02:15] Francine: So in New Mexico, we were colonized by the Spaniards, and a lot of it included the missionaries who came and, uh, essentially, uh, forced Catholicism on the tribal communities, and there was a lot of slavery that happened, there were a lot of hangings if tribes didn't comply, a lot of just really horrible things happened to my people in the conversion process, and a lot of our Our religion and our language went underground, so it was essentially hidden, and that was I think the main reason why it survived.
[00:02:52] Emilia: What was your childhood like there?
[00:02:55] Francine: Well, our community is agricultural, so we grow our food, and so our staples are things like chili, corn, beans, squash, and so I spent a lot of my childhood working in the field. We didn't have a lot of technology that wouldn't own tractors or anything, so everything was done by hand. And so, we would be up by four thirty in the morning because it got so hot during the day, and we'd be out irrigating or hoeing our fields, and we would do that for the majority of the day, every single day. We are about an hour away from Albuquerque, so it's a long way. And so we would not go into town very often.
So we, we literally stayed in the community. And because I come from a big family, I mean, I remember as a child that I never even went to the city for I think three or four years. I never went to a grocery store or a mall or anything like that. And we were very kind of removed. And so it was hard. We grew up very poor.
And so there was never any Extra anything. So it was really just making sure that we were helping our families and in our community were very, we have extended family. And so I grew up with my maternal and my paternal grandmothers. And so I would go and I would chop wood for them, make sure they're okay, go to the store for them, keep them company.
We'd stay overnight with them. So it was a lot of making sure that we were doing tours not only for our household, but also for my grandparents. One of my fondest memories is that when it was harvest season, we would pick the corn and my dad would have, here's this stack for your aunt, here's this stack for so and so, here's this stack for somebody, and then I'll go get chili, and then we'd add the chili, go get the beans, we'd add the beans.
And then coming from the field, we would literally stop at the houses, okay, go take this in for so and so, go down the road and I'll take it into this house, and this house, and this house, so, and that was one of the most funnest things I remember because people were so appreciative that we thought of them and even they would recognize what it took to be giving them all the food that we were sharing.
And so I remember that that was one of the most gratifying feelings that I had as a child because you're so proud of what you were giving to help somebody. And usually they were all elders. And so, really helping them to, to have things that they weren't capable of growing anymore themselves, and they were able to eat very fresh food, and it was healthy, and, and so that was something that I, I remember and I really treasure in, in remembering that my dad never forgot anybody, and making sure that we had enough to share.
[00:05:50] Rori: That's very kind.
[00:05:51] Francine: He was very kind, my father was very kind.
[00:05:54] Rori: I feel like it kind of foreshadows some of your career later too, where you're keeping in mind your entire community is like central to what you're doing.
[00:06:05] Francine: Exactly. I remember in my position at the Northern Plains. I was speaking with the medical epidemiologist one day and I had kind of described my background just like I did with you both.
And she was saying, oh, that explains a lot. And she said, and I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, you're so patient. And I think she said that having worked in the field, you have to learn patience because it takes a really long time once you find something to really nurture it to grow. There's a lot of hard work.
to make sure that you're watering it, that you're taking care of things. And she said it makes sense that you, that's part of your work ethic. So it was really interesting how she drew that conclusion.
[00:06:49] Emilia: So, Francine, for our listeners, could you describe what is a Pueblo?
[00:06:53] Francine: Sure. So, a Pueblo is, in Spanish, it means village.
It's denoting a community, and when the Spaniards came, they saw the community, and we live in kind of a village. Centralized area. And so they call the whole community Pueblos. And if you're in New Mexico, we have 22 tribes, most of which are Pueblos. Each of them were given a different Spanish name, but we were all called Pueblos.
[00:07:27] Emilia: And when did you first get interested in science?
[00:07:30] Francine: So, a lot of it has to do with my paternal grandmother. When we were growing up, we were very fortunate that our community had a lot of elders, and they made a point of visiting each other. And so when we came to visit our grandmother, we would have a lot of the elders stop by for a cup of coffee.
They all be sitting and they've been talking and they talked about a lot of very, I think, important. And they were almost kind of thinking about the future and what the future meant for our community. And one of the things that they spoke about was health. Health and well being of our community. Or my grandmother's peers came from households that were like midwives, or they would be people who were like the bone setters or somebody broken ankle or something like that.
That's who we went to. They'd be the people who did the massaging. They would reflect it. On how Western medicine was coming and how it was going to change the fabric of not only our care, but also the need for some of our own traditional healers and what that would mean. They would go out and they would gather a lot of the traditional medicines and they'd be talking about like preparations for them or applications of them.
And so I was kind of their shadow. I'd be serving the coffee, I'd be listening to them. If they were going out, they would let me come and they would let me carry some of the things that they needed. And she had a little red wagon. I don't know if you remember the red flyer wagons. So she had one like that.
So I'd be Well, holding that I'd be carrying it for them. And so I was very lucky that I was able to spend so much time with these elders. And so that was an area that I think piqued my interest, that I really wanted to somehow be involved.
[00:09:33] Emilia: Does the community still have? You know, the bone setters or the traditional healing.
How has the sort of Western medicine been integrated?
[00:09:44] Francine: So we no longer have any midwives, which is unfortunate. Everybody goes to the hospital when they're going to deliver a baby now. We have Traditional healer still, but it's more male dominated. Now, when I was growing up, we had equal numbers of women and males.
And so now it's become very male dominated, for example. So certainly lots of changes has happened and we had a very. small clinic. Now we have a very big clinic. And so I think just the reliance on western medicine is exactly how they predicted it was going to happen. And along that they were also talking about behavioral lifestyle changes that will impact and contribute to the recognition of different chronic diseases and everything that they said is true.
[00:10:38] Rori: The elders really called it.
[00:10:39] Francine: They did, yeah.
[00:10:41] Rori: So you did your undergrad and your PhD at the University of New Mexico. I mean, did you have an itch to leave?
[00:10:48] Francine: So I went to high school and it was not college preparatory. It was a school where, I mean, it was horrible. There was a lot of racism, structural challenges that we had.
So I remember one teacher saying, uh, he walked in, literally saw all the native students and he said, you're not worth teaching, and walked out. Wow. And so it was really a place where they were not working to educate you to succeed, and it was really hard to be in that space, but it was only school that we had.
And so whenever I had a chance. for enrichment programs, I would take advantage of it. And so when I was at UNM, it was very obvious that I didn't have good study skills or I needed to do more to kind of keep up with my, my classmates. And so as an undergrad, I actually spent a semester at the University of Texas as a Sloan fellow for a program in writing.
Um, I actually, uh, Made the dean's list one year, and I spent a semester abroad at the University of London. And so I took advantage of these different things that were available. And then when I graduated, um, I actually, I told you that my father had heart disease problems, and so they actually called my siblings and myself to the clinic so that they could make sure that there was no big risk for each of us.
And I remember sitting in the doctor's office and he was saying, so what are you doing? What do you do? And I said, well, in a week I'm going to be graduating from college. And he did a double because nobody or very few people from my community go on to college and that I was graduating made him really happy.
And he said, well, you hold on a minute. And he ran out the door. And a couple minutes later, he's like calling me. He said, come, come, come over here. And he took me to his office and he handed me a telephone. And I'm like, why are you giving me a telephone? And it turns out that on the other end of that line was a principal investigator from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at NIH.
And he was going to be starting this multi center study on the genetics of alcoholism among American Indians. And he needed a site coordinator. And so I was hired on to be a site coordinator right there.
[00:13:20] Rori: Wow.
[00:13:21] Francine: The doctor never did his exam on me, but I walked out with a job.
[00:13:26] Rori: Whoa.
[00:13:27] Francine: And so, so then I was hired by NIH and about two weeks later, I was in Bethesda, Maryland, building number 10, and ultimately led to my getting my doctorate in population genetics.
[00:13:41] Rori: Wow. That's the most amazing job hiring story I've ever heard, especially psych coordinator job. Is that what you were hoping to do? Were, were you hoping to like go into public health immediately?
[00:13:53] Francine: No, I never had had thought of that. I have a dual degree. I have a criminal justice and a psychology background.
[00:14:01] Rori: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:14:01] Francine: So I was really interested in forensic psychology. So that's what I was going to do. I was going to get into more law enforcement was kind of my, my personal goal. And so this was as an undergrad in psychology, I did a lot of research based work. I worked in a social behavioral lab where we actually studied anorexia and bulimia.
I also worked in a different lab where we had animal models looking at sensory motor recovery and it was a grant from the United States Army. So it's really looking at frontline military and if they were to have injuries to the brain, what kind of medications could be given in the. field to really arrest the damage to the rain.
And so I did have the basic background to hold a psych coordinator position. It's just that I hadn't thought about working in the area. And it wasn't until I was getting my master's that I took a class in community health. And when I took the course in community health, I really became interested in public health.
And I actually took two years off to get my MPH during my doctorate program. And actually that is what has saved my career.
[00:15:20] Emilia: Why do you think that?
[00:15:21] Francine: Because when I finished my doctorate, my, my dissertation work was looking at the genetic variation of Athabascan speaking populations. And so I did my field work in the interior Alaska with the Athabascans in Alaska.
And then I did a work in the Southwest with the Apache tribes and the Navajo people. And my whole dissertation was looking at different genetic markers between the different Athabascan groups and trying to. see if their variation was congruent to things that we found in logistics, for example, water chronology.
And so I was doing all this work and the ultimate goal was to have a basis so that I could ultimately study genetic variation in disease process in native populations. That was my ultimate goal. When I was getting permissions for my dissertation work, all the trials were. They were so excited about this new area of research, the potential for it.
They were really excited that Native people were, Native students were getting trained in the area. And then, the Human Genome Diversity Project happened. And I don't know how much you know about it, but the whole goal of the project was to identify populations around the world that were about to go extinct and to get their DNA, and to start these huge biorepositories, while the tribes, the Indigenous communities around the world were outraged.
They were so offended and doors on genetics just started shutting everywhere. Moratoriums were being passed, just a lot of different, just biocolonialism. The terminology was born and it was not a good day to be a geneticist. So, because I had my MBH in epidemiology, that became the degree that I ended up basing my
whole career on.
[00:17:20] Rori: What a story. I feel like it's so important to highlight how this, like, giant biocolonial project that had nothing to do with what you were trying to do made it so that your research was totally shut down as well.
[00:17:34] Francine: It was never published. I never published it because it was that controversial. It wasn't when I started, but when I finished, it was really, really hard.
[00:17:45] Rori: I mean, makes sense in all of these ways. By the time you finished your PhD, you were like, well, the population genetics isn't going to work out, but because I mean, you know, so many different things, you have like this background in psychology, you have this background in public health and site coordination in population genetics.
[00:18:03] Emilia: Yeah. So how did you go from finishing your PhD in, in having this population genetic projects, and then.
[00:18:14] Francine: So, I think that's one of the most fortuitous things that happened to me is that when I picked up that phone in the doctor's office, my, the door to NIH opened. And when I walked through that door, it not only gave me practical experience of working out in tribal communities to do this project, but NIH let me come to their lab learn how to run gels, how to purify DNA, how to run electrophoresis gels, all those things. And so they really supported my work, which I really, really appreciate. But because of the controversy around just The whole field. I knew that this was not a viable career option for me. And that's why I took two years off to go get my MPH and my dissertation committee were horrified.
They were just like, no, you can't take two years to do this. They said, you're never coming back. You're not going to finish. And I said, yes, I will. When I was finishing my doctorate at NIH, I got one phone call and I got one knock on the door. The phone call was from the Indian Health Service.
And this was Dr. Bill Freeman, who was the chair of the research program at the time. And I'm not sure how, but he had heard of me and he had heard of the work that I was doing. And on the IRB, they were beginning to see these protocols. And incidentally, it was from the Human Genome Diversity Project that was now starting to recruit tribes domestically.
They said, we don't know how to review them. Will you come and sit on our IRB and help us to review this documentation? Since that day, I've been ingrained in the IRB world, helping to educate researchers, researchers, communities, students, about What biospecimen considerations need to be made when you're working with Native population.
The other interesting thing that happened to me was the knock on the door. And the knock on the door was actually from the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. The very first Four tribal based epidemiology centers were being born. And this was because, through self determination, tribes had started to take over their own healthcare delivery systems.
They were starting their own clinics. They were running their own hospitals. And quickly realizing the importance of data. They needed data to make decisions, not only on hiring, but also on projections for what kind of needs they had, what kind of training they needed to do, what kinds of priorities they needed to start focusing on and kind of moving their time and their money towards.
And so the very first four epicenters were born and Portland area was one of them. They heard that I had a degree in epidemiology and they needed epidemiologists. So six months before I completed my doctorate, I was hired. When my father had his heart attack, while I was in Northern Plains, I received that dreaded phone call that he had died.
And so I, I left, uh, to be with my mom and moved back home and I actually, uh, applied for a position with my tribe and I became their tribal health director. I ran the, the clinic for a couple of years and realized that it's really not for me.
[00:21:59] Emilia: Why was it not for you?
[00:22:00] Francine: I think as a Native person working in your own communities, you have to always realize the politics that go on there.
And that was really hard for me because I really felt as a small community that the resources that were coming in should be to the benefit of all. Our leaders did not feel the same way. And so it was a struggle. It can be very challenging when There's different ideologies and different philosophies about how things should be run.
And I come from a community where women are not on par with men. And so that becomes even harder as well. So it was better for me to be in a space where I felt that I was more valued. For what? I could contribute. So then I went back into the happy world and was there for another five years. And then I actually moved into academia.
I took a position with the University of New Mexico and I ran their I. R. B. While I was there, I started looking at what researchers were doing, and I thought, you know, I can do this. I can do this myself. And quite frankly, I really have been doing it with the epicenters. So then I started applying at UNM.
Never got caught for a single interview, not one, and I became really frustrated, and Dr. Jenny Cho, she's a Navajo, she's Professor Emeritus here at U of A, but she and I go way back, and she was telling me that she's getting ready to retire from U of A, and she had the Native American Research and Training Center here, and would I consider applying, and I said, oh, that's too far away to go, I don't think it'll work, But then, reflecting back, I said, you know, maybe that's a chance I should take.
And I went ahead and applied, and immediately I was called for an interview, and that's how I ended up at U of A.
[00:23:56] Emilia: You gained
so much experience helping build these centers that you mentioned, and you know, being part of IRBs. And you said something like, I see faculty who are doing things that are very similar to what I'm doing.
So I, maybe I can do that as well. But what else drew you to academia?
[00:24:18] Francine: So I think a lot of it has to do with my own perception of institutions. And I felt this way at NIH. NIH is the premier biomedical institute in the world. I mean, it has billions of dollars, and yet very little of it ever goes to tribal communities.
And I felt that I needed to do my part to make sure that I used some of their resources, but also kind of helped other people to get in so that they could benefit as well. I felt I was holding the institutions accountable. And I felt that way about the university, is that here are all these universities, they have all these things that they're doing, but our faculty counts, our student counts are so low.
And I've really pushed here, like for example, at U of A, for us to get free tuition for Native Americans. students and to get land acknowledgment and both have happened. I'm not saying that I did it all, but I certainly spoke up for it and just really making sure that we're not isolating tribes from the potential of them benefiting from all that these institutions have, because in my opinion, a lot of where the institutions are at are because of Native people.
[00:25:29] Emilia: It sounds super great that you were advocating. for your community. And I'm pretty sure that you probably faced many obstacles and challenges. Do you have a story about a challenge that you encounter while advocating for these things in academia, for instance?
[00:25:49] Francine: Oh, plenty. There's been so many. I think it was the first week I was here, there was a colleague who somehow learned on my arrival, and she came and she said, Can you come to this meeting that I need to go to?
And I asked her, Well, what's the meeting? And why do I need to be there? And she said, Well, I'm, I'm part of this research lab, and the investigators are meeting, and they want to do this project. And they want to start collecting, and she was very worried about the biospecimens. And she said they want to collect all these specimens, and they're working with a community that's across the border, so Mexico and the United States.
And they're not talking about what it means to do proper, respectful research with the community. They just want to go and get the samples and leave. Like, there's nothing about reaching out to leadership, the traditional leaders, there's nothing about informing the community. And she said that I heard that you know these things, so can you come to this meeting with me?
And so in the time that I've been at U of A, I can say a dozen times or so I've been called into meetings or I've talked with colleagues who really just want access to Native people. And we really they just want the research. I don't want to build the partnerships. They don't want kind of reciprocal relationships.
They just want to go in and and get the data and leave. And so that's been something that I've been kind of educating people on just really recognizing that So people really do appreciate and respect the experience of Native people,
[00:27:29] Emilia: which I assume must be very tiring to have to deal with this side of things.
What helps you with these barriers? What helps you get through these moments?
[00:27:38] Francine: Sure. So I think grounding is really important and I always tell Native people this is to really Recognize what you value as an individual, because you're always going to have to ground yourself in those values. I come from a very traditional community, and so I always go back to my background, my training, my upbringing.
Having these very challenging discussions, I have to remind myself that that's what I'm fighting for. The protections of those things that I hold really personally dear to myself, and really just saying, you know, this is an important conversation to have, because sometimes it's really true that you do get really tired, and it's just, oh, here I go again.
But then you have to remember that maybe my sharing this with this group, person is going to make a difference in how they conduct themselves moving forward. And in my investment of time and energy is going to be worth it because I have made somebody more aware. The other thing is the research that I do.
I am very fortunate that all my research is based in the community. And so I do go out into the tribes and to see the community people that I'm working with. And to know that the work that I'm doing. is impacting them and they are appreciative of the work that I'm doing and just to see the little kids and them smiling and being happy and them knowing that you're there for them.
I mean to me that makes everything worthwhile.
[00:29:15] Rori: That's a beautiful and I can't help but think of like you as a kid working in the field and being like okay it takes a lot of work to nurture a crop out of a seed and now I'm thinking of like You as a tenured faculty, like over and over again, doing this educational work, I can only imagine that your experiences growing up in the field and your experiences seeing your dad as a thoughtful leader are impacting the way that you're making a difference today, too.
[00:29:41] Francine: No, definitely. Literally, I remember one year when my younger sister, we went, we went to one of our outhouses, like, we have a house where we store a lot of our, our crops and things like that. And there was a. rodents going in. And so we said, what do we need to do? And I said, we need to build a foundation.
And she said, okay, so go get the pickup or we'll get the gravel. We need to get the cement. And I mean, literally we just got our heads together, started doing it, doing the work, laying the, the foundation and all that. And we got it done like the next day. We didn't need to call somebody else to go do it for us.
We just rolled up our sleeves and started. So I think those are the kinds of skills that we were given that you know how to do those things.
[00:30:27] Rori: Yeah, and you just kept doing those things, seeing the problem and making the solution, being like, okay, like tribes are running their own health centers, but we need data analysis.
So you're like, okay, let's, let's make a tribal epidemiology center. I'm curious, when did you start to see community engaged research? Is that something that you came? That you kind of created your own model, or did you have other models that you built off of?
[00:30:50] Francine: So I think it was how I grew up, because it was always that you were not the core.
That there were other people that were impacted by decisions that you've made. And I think it's just an extension of that in the work that I've done, and how I approach the work that I do. Because I, I realized. I'm a visitor to these communities. I'm not an integral part of it. I don't ever plan to know the community.
And that's why these tribal partners are so important because they know what works, what doesn't work. They know who's talking to who, who's mad at whoever. And so it's those kinds of things are really important to know fundamentally. And as an outsider, I will never have that. And so it's really important that I work with.
people who understand that. And a lot of times I tell them, I don't need to know. I don't need to know all of that, but I'm trusting you to guide me in how we need to be doing our steps moving forward.
[00:31:48] Emilia: Do you think funding agencies like NIH are appreciating community engagement?
[00:31:54] Francine: No, we're not there, and I think only pockets within NIH recognize it.
I don't think NIH as a whole appreciates what it means to be investing in tribal based research. I don't think it's there uniformly at all, and I constantly educate NIH about this.
[00:32:12] Emilia: What do you think we need to do to have institutions like Say the NIH consider this important work, not just like some pockets of NIH.
[00:32:24] Francine: Well, I don't know how much you know about Canada, but in Canada, their Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which is their kind of NIH version, they have an Institute for Aboriginal People's Health. I think at NIH, we need to have our own institute specific to American and Alaska Natives.
[00:32:43] Rori: Yeah.
[00:32:44] Francine: And include Pacific Islanders on that, Hawaii and Pacific Islander.
[00:32:47] Rori: Right, but on par with all the other institutes.
[00:32:50] Francine: Exactly.
[00:32:51] Emilia: Have you proposed this?
[00:32:52] Francine: Yeah, I was just there last week and I brought it up at that meeting too. I'm a broken record. Anybody who listens, I bring it up.
[00:33:02] Rori: I mean, your patience and persistence has gotten you so far. I'm like, okay, let's see how many times you got to play that record before something happens.
[00:33:09] Emilia: To me, this is like a new idea.
[00:33:11] Francine: Now, when you go, you'll bring it up too.
[00:33:13] Emilia: Exactly. I'm like, it's a good idea, so why not? Thank you for sharing that. But I do want to talk to you a little bit about the tribal academic relationships, because you mentioned you are like a bridge between both, and this puts you in a position probably where you have to mediate lots of relationships and conflicts to folks at the tribe.
recognize and appreciate the work that you're doing, as well as your academic peers?
[00:33:41] Francine: No, no, definitely not. Yeah. Because I don't think the other appreciates and understands the other.
[00:33:49] Emilia: How would you envision, like, the ideal relationship between both worlds, the academic world and the tribal world?
[00:33:56] Francine: So I think for the institution, one of the things I said earlier that I really feel is important is, It's expensive to go to school, that if the university was really interested in promoting its mission of educating people, then money shouldn't be a barrier.
And recognizing that Native people were here. Again, I go back to my host Phil about there should be no tuition for Native people. And I think that's across the country. I mean, just, it should just be a given because this is our land and that's where universities are located. And so I really feel adamant about that.
If we're able to open the gateway for Native students to go, then they have options to get education. And if they get educated, they can get better jobs, they can help their families, they can help their communities, they can do a lot. for social determinants of how they're really making inroads to making that change for the tribal communities.
I feel that they can do more to demand from the institutions, things that are rightfully theirs to understand that they, they almost, to me, have a responsibility to hold accountable these different institutions. are here that have built a lot of what they do off the backs of native communities. I feel that tribes have to be a little bit more demanding and really, again, holding these institutions accountable.
[00:35:28] Rori: Ideally, the institutions would just be be accountable already.
[00:35:31] Francine: You would think that. You would think that. Another thing that I'm really fighting is that right now, when a student receives their doctorate, they want them to go away. They want them to go to another school and they're really discouraging us to bring them on as post docs.
And that's one of the things that I'm saying we need to rethink because a lot of natives Students especially have responsibilities to their family and their communities, and if we don't give them the option to stay at that home institution, they may not continue. That may be the end of their academic trajectory, but if we were to allow them the option to stay, then maybe they would complete postdocs and become faculty, or at least consider staying within the academic environment. But right now, that is It's like really frowned upon and not supported at all.
[00:36:24] Rori: Yeah, this is kind of like standard academic culture idea that you must move around. It's so exclusive. So, in your career, you kind of like left New Mexico and then came back another, a number of times and like, it seems like you left for different kind of career purposes, and you came back a couple times for family reasons.
You came back from Colorado, and you came back from North Plains when your family needed you. And, you know, that's, that's counter to our standard narrative of how academic careers go. And there's something else that you've done that's very counter to our standard narrative, and I think it's important to highlight these counter narratives, which is like, When you were doing your PhD, you took two years off to go and get your MPH and you even said that your advisors were like, you're never going to finish, and they were wrong.
You went and finished. And then after you got your PhD, you worked at tribal epidemiology centers in like lots of different contexts. You work at the IRB. And I think our usual thinking is if you kind of like leave academia after a PhD, you're not coming back. You're not going to get a faculty position, but you managed to do it.
You showed that the standard narrative is not the only way to be, is not the only trajectory. And when I'm thinking about students these days, who are imagining their trajectory, who are weighing their obligations and opportunities, I'm curious, what advice would you give them?
[00:37:49] Francine: Just because you say no to an opportunity at this time it doesn't mean it's not ever gonna come back. And nowadays, people have the opportunity to have multiple careers where you could actually spend 20 years here, but you still have 20 years that you could do somewhere else. It doesn't mean the end of something if you're not pursuing something. And if you're really passionate, interested about it, that you could come back to it later.
That it's not a final decision, that you can do multiple things with your career.
[00:38:21] Rori: I think that's so powerful, especially for students who are offered multiple opportunities to know that they have many chapters of their career and that they get to choose. It should be an empowered choice always, not like you feel like you must take advantage of an opportunity.
Francine, what do you do outside of work to bring balance to your life?
[00:38:40] Francine: I like walking. I like being outside. I like doing yard work, those sorts. Yeah, anything that's part of my, my growing up, right? Doing things with the soil, with Mother Nature, those are really important to me. You mentioned earlier, like you're in Arizona, you live in New Mexico, and I feel like I've never left home.
Like I have a job, I go to work in Arizona, but I'm really in New Mexico, I'm really with my home community. And so I get home as much as I can. And really try to immerse myself in things that are going on in the community, to help, to be there for people, and to just support my family and my community.
Those are really important for me, and I value the things that my mom taught me, and she taught me how to embroider, and so I try to do that. I try to be true to where I'm from and what I am, and I think I do that in my off time.
[00:39:37] Rori: So And culture, community, and groundedness is what, what keeps you here and able to do your other work. I appreciate how you describe it as a job that you're doing. And the primary thing is still about your family and your community. We are so grateful for your time.
[00:39:55] Francine: It's great. Well, thank you both for taking time.
[00:39:58] Emilia: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with someone.
[00:40:03] Rori: You can also support this program by writing a kind review if your listening platform allows it.
[00:40:08] Emilia: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, sound engineering by Keagan Stromberg. Special thanks to Dr. Francine Gachupin. The hosts of Science Wise are Rori Rholfs and me, Emilia Huerta Sanchez.
[00:00:08] Emilia: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Emilia.
[00:00:13] Rori: And I'm Rori. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:21] Emilia: Our guest today is Dr. Francine Gachupin, a professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Public Health. She is a big advocate for improving health outcomes in tribal communities, protecting American Indian research participants, and building research programs that directly address the needs of American Indian communities.
She founded and directed tribal epidemiology centers. She has chaired several institutional review boards at the National Institutes of Health. She holds multiple NIH grants to study chronic disease prevention, and she paved the way to develop integrated community engagement in research. Today, she shares with us how her upbringing, growing up in Pueblo Jemez, her training and work experience have positively influenced the way she navigates academia.
Thank you so much for joining us. Francine, we want to start with a little bit about yourself and your early beginnings. So think Francine as a kid. So where did you grow up?
[00:01:30] Francine: So I grew up in the Pueblo of Jemez, which is about an hour northwest of Albuquerque, a very small tribal community. And we are the only tribe remaining that speaks a language called Tonga.
[00:01:43] Emilia: Oh, so you speak the language too?
[00:01:46] Francine: I do, yes. We're very fortunate that we have a very high penetrance still in speaking the language. It's still our primary language. So when I'm home in my community, it's the language I speak primarily.
[00:01:59] Emilia: You think that's the case? It sounds like it's rare to have a big proportion of the, of the population speaking the language.
Do you think the members or of the tribe did something different from other tribes where they managed to maintain the culture?
[00:02:15] Francine: So in New Mexico, we were colonized by the Spaniards, and a lot of it included the missionaries who came and, uh, essentially, uh, forced Catholicism on the tribal communities, and there was a lot of slavery that happened, there were a lot of hangings if tribes didn't comply, a lot of just really horrible things happened to my people in the conversion process, and a lot of our Our religion and our language went underground, so it was essentially hidden, and that was I think the main reason why it survived.
[00:02:52] Emilia: What was your childhood like there?
[00:02:55] Francine: Well, our community is agricultural, so we grow our food, and so our staples are things like chili, corn, beans, squash, and so I spent a lot of my childhood working in the field. We didn't have a lot of technology that wouldn't own tractors or anything, so everything was done by hand. And so, we would be up by four thirty in the morning because it got so hot during the day, and we'd be out irrigating or hoeing our fields, and we would do that for the majority of the day, every single day. We are about an hour away from Albuquerque, so it's a long way. And so we would not go into town very often.
So we, we literally stayed in the community. And because I come from a big family, I mean, I remember as a child that I never even went to the city for I think three or four years. I never went to a grocery store or a mall or anything like that. And we were very kind of removed. And so it was hard. We grew up very poor.
And so there was never any Extra anything. So it was really just making sure that we were helping our families and in our community were very, we have extended family. And so I grew up with my maternal and my paternal grandmothers. And so I would go and I would chop wood for them, make sure they're okay, go to the store for them, keep them company.
We'd stay overnight with them. So it was a lot of making sure that we were doing tours not only for our household, but also for my grandparents. One of my fondest memories is that when it was harvest season, we would pick the corn and my dad would have, here's this stack for your aunt, here's this stack for so and so, here's this stack for somebody, and then I'll go get chili, and then we'd add the chili, go get the beans, we'd add the beans.
And then coming from the field, we would literally stop at the houses, okay, go take this in for so and so, go down the road and I'll take it into this house, and this house, and this house, so, and that was one of the most funnest things I remember because people were so appreciative that we thought of them and even they would recognize what it took to be giving them all the food that we were sharing.
And so I remember that that was one of the most gratifying feelings that I had as a child because you're so proud of what you were giving to help somebody. And usually they were all elders. And so, really helping them to, to have things that they weren't capable of growing anymore themselves, and they were able to eat very fresh food, and it was healthy, and, and so that was something that I, I remember and I really treasure in, in remembering that my dad never forgot anybody, and making sure that we had enough to share.
[00:05:50] Rori: That's very kind.
[00:05:51] Francine: He was very kind, my father was very kind.
[00:05:54] Rori: I feel like it kind of foreshadows some of your career later too, where you're keeping in mind your entire community is like central to what you're doing.
[00:06:05] Francine: Exactly. I remember in my position at the Northern Plains. I was speaking with the medical epidemiologist one day and I had kind of described my background just like I did with you both.
And she was saying, oh, that explains a lot. And she said, and I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, you're so patient. And I think she said that having worked in the field, you have to learn patience because it takes a really long time once you find something to really nurture it to grow. There's a lot of hard work.
to make sure that you're watering it, that you're taking care of things. And she said it makes sense that you, that's part of your work ethic. So it was really interesting how she drew that conclusion.
[00:06:49] Emilia: So, Francine, for our listeners, could you describe what is a Pueblo?
[00:06:53] Francine: Sure. So, a Pueblo is, in Spanish, it means village.
It's denoting a community, and when the Spaniards came, they saw the community, and we live in kind of a village. Centralized area. And so they call the whole community Pueblos. And if you're in New Mexico, we have 22 tribes, most of which are Pueblos. Each of them were given a different Spanish name, but we were all called Pueblos.
[00:07:27] Emilia: And when did you first get interested in science?
[00:07:30] Francine: So, a lot of it has to do with my paternal grandmother. When we were growing up, we were very fortunate that our community had a lot of elders, and they made a point of visiting each other. And so when we came to visit our grandmother, we would have a lot of the elders stop by for a cup of coffee.
They all be sitting and they've been talking and they talked about a lot of very, I think, important. And they were almost kind of thinking about the future and what the future meant for our community. And one of the things that they spoke about was health. Health and well being of our community. Or my grandmother's peers came from households that were like midwives, or they would be people who were like the bone setters or somebody broken ankle or something like that.
That's who we went to. They'd be the people who did the massaging. They would reflect it. On how Western medicine was coming and how it was going to change the fabric of not only our care, but also the need for some of our own traditional healers and what that would mean. They would go out and they would gather a lot of the traditional medicines and they'd be talking about like preparations for them or applications of them.
And so I was kind of their shadow. I'd be serving the coffee, I'd be listening to them. If they were going out, they would let me come and they would let me carry some of the things that they needed. And she had a little red wagon. I don't know if you remember the red flyer wagons. So she had one like that.
So I'd be Well, holding that I'd be carrying it for them. And so I was very lucky that I was able to spend so much time with these elders. And so that was an area that I think piqued my interest, that I really wanted to somehow be involved.
[00:09:33] Emilia: Does the community still have? You know, the bone setters or the traditional healing.
How has the sort of Western medicine been integrated?
[00:09:44] Francine: So we no longer have any midwives, which is unfortunate. Everybody goes to the hospital when they're going to deliver a baby now. We have Traditional healer still, but it's more male dominated. Now, when I was growing up, we had equal numbers of women and males.
And so now it's become very male dominated, for example. So certainly lots of changes has happened and we had a very. small clinic. Now we have a very big clinic. And so I think just the reliance on western medicine is exactly how they predicted it was going to happen. And along that they were also talking about behavioral lifestyle changes that will impact and contribute to the recognition of different chronic diseases and everything that they said is true.
[00:10:38] Rori: The elders really called it.
[00:10:39] Francine: They did, yeah.
[00:10:41] Rori: So you did your undergrad and your PhD at the University of New Mexico. I mean, did you have an itch to leave?
[00:10:48] Francine: So I went to high school and it was not college preparatory. It was a school where, I mean, it was horrible. There was a lot of racism, structural challenges that we had.
So I remember one teacher saying, uh, he walked in, literally saw all the native students and he said, you're not worth teaching, and walked out. Wow. And so it was really a place where they were not working to educate you to succeed, and it was really hard to be in that space, but it was only school that we had.
And so whenever I had a chance. for enrichment programs, I would take advantage of it. And so when I was at UNM, it was very obvious that I didn't have good study skills or I needed to do more to kind of keep up with my, my classmates. And so as an undergrad, I actually spent a semester at the University of Texas as a Sloan fellow for a program in writing.
Um, I actually, uh, Made the dean's list one year, and I spent a semester abroad at the University of London. And so I took advantage of these different things that were available. And then when I graduated, um, I actually, I told you that my father had heart disease problems, and so they actually called my siblings and myself to the clinic so that they could make sure that there was no big risk for each of us.
And I remember sitting in the doctor's office and he was saying, so what are you doing? What do you do? And I said, well, in a week I'm going to be graduating from college. And he did a double because nobody or very few people from my community go on to college and that I was graduating made him really happy.
And he said, well, you hold on a minute. And he ran out the door. And a couple minutes later, he's like calling me. He said, come, come, come over here. And he took me to his office and he handed me a telephone. And I'm like, why are you giving me a telephone? And it turns out that on the other end of that line was a principal investigator from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at NIH.
And he was going to be starting this multi center study on the genetics of alcoholism among American Indians. And he needed a site coordinator. And so I was hired on to be a site coordinator right there.
[00:13:20] Rori: Wow.
[00:13:21] Francine: The doctor never did his exam on me, but I walked out with a job.
[00:13:26] Rori: Whoa.
[00:13:27] Francine: And so, so then I was hired by NIH and about two weeks later, I was in Bethesda, Maryland, building number 10, and ultimately led to my getting my doctorate in population genetics.
[00:13:41] Rori: Wow. That's the most amazing job hiring story I've ever heard, especially psych coordinator job. Is that what you were hoping to do? Were, were you hoping to like go into public health immediately?
[00:13:53] Francine: No, I never had had thought of that. I have a dual degree. I have a criminal justice and a psychology background.
[00:14:01] Rori: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:14:01] Francine: So I was really interested in forensic psychology. So that's what I was going to do. I was going to get into more law enforcement was kind of my, my personal goal. And so this was as an undergrad in psychology, I did a lot of research based work. I worked in a social behavioral lab where we actually studied anorexia and bulimia.
I also worked in a different lab where we had animal models looking at sensory motor recovery and it was a grant from the United States Army. So it's really looking at frontline military and if they were to have injuries to the brain, what kind of medications could be given in the. field to really arrest the damage to the rain.
And so I did have the basic background to hold a psych coordinator position. It's just that I hadn't thought about working in the area. And it wasn't until I was getting my master's that I took a class in community health. And when I took the course in community health, I really became interested in public health.
And I actually took two years off to get my MPH during my doctorate program. And actually that is what has saved my career.
[00:15:20] Emilia: Why do you think that?
[00:15:21] Francine: Because when I finished my doctorate, my, my dissertation work was looking at the genetic variation of Athabascan speaking populations. And so I did my field work in the interior Alaska with the Athabascans in Alaska.
And then I did a work in the Southwest with the Apache tribes and the Navajo people. And my whole dissertation was looking at different genetic markers between the different Athabascan groups and trying to. see if their variation was congruent to things that we found in logistics, for example, water chronology.
And so I was doing all this work and the ultimate goal was to have a basis so that I could ultimately study genetic variation in disease process in native populations. That was my ultimate goal. When I was getting permissions for my dissertation work, all the trials were. They were so excited about this new area of research, the potential for it.
They were really excited that Native people were, Native students were getting trained in the area. And then, the Human Genome Diversity Project happened. And I don't know how much you know about it, but the whole goal of the project was to identify populations around the world that were about to go extinct and to get their DNA, and to start these huge biorepositories, while the tribes, the Indigenous communities around the world were outraged.
They were so offended and doors on genetics just started shutting everywhere. Moratoriums were being passed, just a lot of different, just biocolonialism. The terminology was born and it was not a good day to be a geneticist. So, because I had my MBH in epidemiology, that became the degree that I ended up basing my
whole career on.
[00:17:20] Rori: What a story. I feel like it's so important to highlight how this, like, giant biocolonial project that had nothing to do with what you were trying to do made it so that your research was totally shut down as well.
[00:17:34] Francine: It was never published. I never published it because it was that controversial. It wasn't when I started, but when I finished, it was really, really hard.
[00:17:45] Rori: I mean, makes sense in all of these ways. By the time you finished your PhD, you were like, well, the population genetics isn't going to work out, but because I mean, you know, so many different things, you have like this background in psychology, you have this background in public health and site coordination in population genetics.
[00:18:03] Emilia: Yeah. So how did you go from finishing your PhD in, in having this population genetic projects, and then.
[00:18:14] Francine: So, I think that's one of the most fortuitous things that happened to me is that when I picked up that phone in the doctor's office, my, the door to NIH opened. And when I walked through that door, it not only gave me practical experience of working out in tribal communities to do this project, but NIH let me come to their lab learn how to run gels, how to purify DNA, how to run electrophoresis gels, all those things. And so they really supported my work, which I really, really appreciate. But because of the controversy around just The whole field. I knew that this was not a viable career option for me. And that's why I took two years off to go get my MPH and my dissertation committee were horrified.
They were just like, no, you can't take two years to do this. They said, you're never coming back. You're not going to finish. And I said, yes, I will. When I was finishing my doctorate at NIH, I got one phone call and I got one knock on the door. The phone call was from the Indian Health Service.
And this was Dr. Bill Freeman, who was the chair of the research program at the time. And I'm not sure how, but he had heard of me and he had heard of the work that I was doing. And on the IRB, they were beginning to see these protocols. And incidentally, it was from the Human Genome Diversity Project that was now starting to recruit tribes domestically.
They said, we don't know how to review them. Will you come and sit on our IRB and help us to review this documentation? Since that day, I've been ingrained in the IRB world, helping to educate researchers, researchers, communities, students, about What biospecimen considerations need to be made when you're working with Native population.
The other interesting thing that happened to me was the knock on the door. And the knock on the door was actually from the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. The very first Four tribal based epidemiology centers were being born. And this was because, through self determination, tribes had started to take over their own healthcare delivery systems.
They were starting their own clinics. They were running their own hospitals. And quickly realizing the importance of data. They needed data to make decisions, not only on hiring, but also on projections for what kind of needs they had, what kind of training they needed to do, what kinds of priorities they needed to start focusing on and kind of moving their time and their money towards.
And so the very first four epicenters were born and Portland area was one of them. They heard that I had a degree in epidemiology and they needed epidemiologists. So six months before I completed my doctorate, I was hired. When my father had his heart attack, while I was in Northern Plains, I received that dreaded phone call that he had died.
And so I, I left, uh, to be with my mom and moved back home and I actually, uh, applied for a position with my tribe and I became their tribal health director. I ran the, the clinic for a couple of years and realized that it's really not for me.
[00:21:59] Emilia: Why was it not for you?
[00:22:00] Francine: I think as a Native person working in your own communities, you have to always realize the politics that go on there.
And that was really hard for me because I really felt as a small community that the resources that were coming in should be to the benefit of all. Our leaders did not feel the same way. And so it was a struggle. It can be very challenging when There's different ideologies and different philosophies about how things should be run.
And I come from a community where women are not on par with men. And so that becomes even harder as well. So it was better for me to be in a space where I felt that I was more valued. For what? I could contribute. So then I went back into the happy world and was there for another five years. And then I actually moved into academia.
I took a position with the University of New Mexico and I ran their I. R. B. While I was there, I started looking at what researchers were doing, and I thought, you know, I can do this. I can do this myself. And quite frankly, I really have been doing it with the epicenters. So then I started applying at UNM.
Never got caught for a single interview, not one, and I became really frustrated, and Dr. Jenny Cho, she's a Navajo, she's Professor Emeritus here at U of A, but she and I go way back, and she was telling me that she's getting ready to retire from U of A, and she had the Native American Research and Training Center here, and would I consider applying, and I said, oh, that's too far away to go, I don't think it'll work, But then, reflecting back, I said, you know, maybe that's a chance I should take.
And I went ahead and applied, and immediately I was called for an interview, and that's how I ended up at U of A.
[00:23:56] Emilia: You gained
so much experience helping build these centers that you mentioned, and you know, being part of IRBs. And you said something like, I see faculty who are doing things that are very similar to what I'm doing.
So I, maybe I can do that as well. But what else drew you to academia?
[00:24:18] Francine: So I think a lot of it has to do with my own perception of institutions. And I felt this way at NIH. NIH is the premier biomedical institute in the world. I mean, it has billions of dollars, and yet very little of it ever goes to tribal communities.
And I felt that I needed to do my part to make sure that I used some of their resources, but also kind of helped other people to get in so that they could benefit as well. I felt I was holding the institutions accountable. And I felt that way about the university, is that here are all these universities, they have all these things that they're doing, but our faculty counts, our student counts are so low.
And I've really pushed here, like for example, at U of A, for us to get free tuition for Native Americans. students and to get land acknowledgment and both have happened. I'm not saying that I did it all, but I certainly spoke up for it and just really making sure that we're not isolating tribes from the potential of them benefiting from all that these institutions have, because in my opinion, a lot of where the institutions are at are because of Native people.
[00:25:29] Emilia: It sounds super great that you were advocating. for your community. And I'm pretty sure that you probably faced many obstacles and challenges. Do you have a story about a challenge that you encounter while advocating for these things in academia, for instance?
[00:25:49] Francine: Oh, plenty. There's been so many. I think it was the first week I was here, there was a colleague who somehow learned on my arrival, and she came and she said, Can you come to this meeting that I need to go to?
And I asked her, Well, what's the meeting? And why do I need to be there? And she said, Well, I'm, I'm part of this research lab, and the investigators are meeting, and they want to do this project. And they want to start collecting, and she was very worried about the biospecimens. And she said they want to collect all these specimens, and they're working with a community that's across the border, so Mexico and the United States.
And they're not talking about what it means to do proper, respectful research with the community. They just want to go and get the samples and leave. Like, there's nothing about reaching out to leadership, the traditional leaders, there's nothing about informing the community. And she said that I heard that you know these things, so can you come to this meeting with me?
And so in the time that I've been at U of A, I can say a dozen times or so I've been called into meetings or I've talked with colleagues who really just want access to Native people. And we really they just want the research. I don't want to build the partnerships. They don't want kind of reciprocal relationships.
They just want to go in and and get the data and leave. And so that's been something that I've been kind of educating people on just really recognizing that So people really do appreciate and respect the experience of Native people,
[00:27:29] Emilia: which I assume must be very tiring to have to deal with this side of things.
What helps you with these barriers? What helps you get through these moments?
[00:27:38] Francine: Sure. So I think grounding is really important and I always tell Native people this is to really Recognize what you value as an individual, because you're always going to have to ground yourself in those values. I come from a very traditional community, and so I always go back to my background, my training, my upbringing.
Having these very challenging discussions, I have to remind myself that that's what I'm fighting for. The protections of those things that I hold really personally dear to myself, and really just saying, you know, this is an important conversation to have, because sometimes it's really true that you do get really tired, and it's just, oh, here I go again.
But then you have to remember that maybe my sharing this with this group, person is going to make a difference in how they conduct themselves moving forward. And in my investment of time and energy is going to be worth it because I have made somebody more aware. The other thing is the research that I do.
I am very fortunate that all my research is based in the community. And so I do go out into the tribes and to see the community people that I'm working with. And to know that the work that I'm doing. is impacting them and they are appreciative of the work that I'm doing and just to see the little kids and them smiling and being happy and them knowing that you're there for them.
I mean to me that makes everything worthwhile.
[00:29:15] Rori: That's a beautiful and I can't help but think of like you as a kid working in the field and being like okay it takes a lot of work to nurture a crop out of a seed and now I'm thinking of like You as a tenured faculty, like over and over again, doing this educational work, I can only imagine that your experiences growing up in the field and your experiences seeing your dad as a thoughtful leader are impacting the way that you're making a difference today, too.
[00:29:41] Francine: No, definitely. Literally, I remember one year when my younger sister, we went, we went to one of our outhouses, like, we have a house where we store a lot of our, our crops and things like that. And there was a. rodents going in. And so we said, what do we need to do? And I said, we need to build a foundation.
And she said, okay, so go get the pickup or we'll get the gravel. We need to get the cement. And I mean, literally we just got our heads together, started doing it, doing the work, laying the, the foundation and all that. And we got it done like the next day. We didn't need to call somebody else to go do it for us.
We just rolled up our sleeves and started. So I think those are the kinds of skills that we were given that you know how to do those things.
[00:30:27] Rori: Yeah, and you just kept doing those things, seeing the problem and making the solution, being like, okay, like tribes are running their own health centers, but we need data analysis.
So you're like, okay, let's, let's make a tribal epidemiology center. I'm curious, when did you start to see community engaged research? Is that something that you came? That you kind of created your own model, or did you have other models that you built off of?
[00:30:50] Francine: So I think it was how I grew up, because it was always that you were not the core.
That there were other people that were impacted by decisions that you've made. And I think it's just an extension of that in the work that I've done, and how I approach the work that I do. Because I, I realized. I'm a visitor to these communities. I'm not an integral part of it. I don't ever plan to know the community.
And that's why these tribal partners are so important because they know what works, what doesn't work. They know who's talking to who, who's mad at whoever. And so it's those kinds of things are really important to know fundamentally. And as an outsider, I will never have that. And so it's really important that I work with.
people who understand that. And a lot of times I tell them, I don't need to know. I don't need to know all of that, but I'm trusting you to guide me in how we need to be doing our steps moving forward.
[00:31:48] Emilia: Do you think funding agencies like NIH are appreciating community engagement?
[00:31:54] Francine: No, we're not there, and I think only pockets within NIH recognize it.
I don't think NIH as a whole appreciates what it means to be investing in tribal based research. I don't think it's there uniformly at all, and I constantly educate NIH about this.
[00:32:12] Emilia: What do you think we need to do to have institutions like Say the NIH consider this important work, not just like some pockets of NIH.
[00:32:24] Francine: Well, I don't know how much you know about Canada, but in Canada, their Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which is their kind of NIH version, they have an Institute for Aboriginal People's Health. I think at NIH, we need to have our own institute specific to American and Alaska Natives.
[00:32:43] Rori: Yeah.
[00:32:44] Francine: And include Pacific Islanders on that, Hawaii and Pacific Islander.
[00:32:47] Rori: Right, but on par with all the other institutes.
[00:32:50] Francine: Exactly.
[00:32:51] Emilia: Have you proposed this?
[00:32:52] Francine: Yeah, I was just there last week and I brought it up at that meeting too. I'm a broken record. Anybody who listens, I bring it up.
[00:33:02] Rori: I mean, your patience and persistence has gotten you so far. I'm like, okay, let's see how many times you got to play that record before something happens.
[00:33:09] Emilia: To me, this is like a new idea.
[00:33:11] Francine: Now, when you go, you'll bring it up too.
[00:33:13] Emilia: Exactly. I'm like, it's a good idea, so why not? Thank you for sharing that. But I do want to talk to you a little bit about the tribal academic relationships, because you mentioned you are like a bridge between both, and this puts you in a position probably where you have to mediate lots of relationships and conflicts to folks at the tribe.
recognize and appreciate the work that you're doing, as well as your academic peers?
[00:33:41] Francine: No, no, definitely not. Yeah. Because I don't think the other appreciates and understands the other.
[00:33:49] Emilia: How would you envision, like, the ideal relationship between both worlds, the academic world and the tribal world?
[00:33:56] Francine: So I think for the institution, one of the things I said earlier that I really feel is important is, It's expensive to go to school, that if the university was really interested in promoting its mission of educating people, then money shouldn't be a barrier.
And recognizing that Native people were here. Again, I go back to my host Phil about there should be no tuition for Native people. And I think that's across the country. I mean, just, it should just be a given because this is our land and that's where universities are located. And so I really feel adamant about that.
If we're able to open the gateway for Native students to go, then they have options to get education. And if they get educated, they can get better jobs, they can help their families, they can help their communities, they can do a lot. for social determinants of how they're really making inroads to making that change for the tribal communities.
I feel that they can do more to demand from the institutions, things that are rightfully theirs to understand that they, they almost, to me, have a responsibility to hold accountable these different institutions. are here that have built a lot of what they do off the backs of native communities. I feel that tribes have to be a little bit more demanding and really, again, holding these institutions accountable.
[00:35:28] Rori: Ideally, the institutions would just be be accountable already.
[00:35:31] Francine: You would think that. You would think that. Another thing that I'm really fighting is that right now, when a student receives their doctorate, they want them to go away. They want them to go to another school and they're really discouraging us to bring them on as post docs.
And that's one of the things that I'm saying we need to rethink because a lot of natives Students especially have responsibilities to their family and their communities, and if we don't give them the option to stay at that home institution, they may not continue. That may be the end of their academic trajectory, but if we were to allow them the option to stay, then maybe they would complete postdocs and become faculty, or at least consider staying within the academic environment. But right now, that is It's like really frowned upon and not supported at all.
[00:36:24] Rori: Yeah, this is kind of like standard academic culture idea that you must move around. It's so exclusive. So, in your career, you kind of like left New Mexico and then came back another, a number of times and like, it seems like you left for different kind of career purposes, and you came back a couple times for family reasons.
You came back from Colorado, and you came back from North Plains when your family needed you. And, you know, that's, that's counter to our standard narrative of how academic careers go. And there's something else that you've done that's very counter to our standard narrative, and I think it's important to highlight these counter narratives, which is like, When you were doing your PhD, you took two years off to go and get your MPH and you even said that your advisors were like, you're never going to finish, and they were wrong.
You went and finished. And then after you got your PhD, you worked at tribal epidemiology centers in like lots of different contexts. You work at the IRB. And I think our usual thinking is if you kind of like leave academia after a PhD, you're not coming back. You're not going to get a faculty position, but you managed to do it.
You showed that the standard narrative is not the only way to be, is not the only trajectory. And when I'm thinking about students these days, who are imagining their trajectory, who are weighing their obligations and opportunities, I'm curious, what advice would you give them?
[00:37:49] Francine: Just because you say no to an opportunity at this time it doesn't mean it's not ever gonna come back. And nowadays, people have the opportunity to have multiple careers where you could actually spend 20 years here, but you still have 20 years that you could do somewhere else. It doesn't mean the end of something if you're not pursuing something. And if you're really passionate, interested about it, that you could come back to it later.
That it's not a final decision, that you can do multiple things with your career.
[00:38:21] Rori: I think that's so powerful, especially for students who are offered multiple opportunities to know that they have many chapters of their career and that they get to choose. It should be an empowered choice always, not like you feel like you must take advantage of an opportunity.
Francine, what do you do outside of work to bring balance to your life?
[00:38:40] Francine: I like walking. I like being outside. I like doing yard work, those sorts. Yeah, anything that's part of my, my growing up, right? Doing things with the soil, with Mother Nature, those are really important to me. You mentioned earlier, like you're in Arizona, you live in New Mexico, and I feel like I've never left home.
Like I have a job, I go to work in Arizona, but I'm really in New Mexico, I'm really with my home community. And so I get home as much as I can. And really try to immerse myself in things that are going on in the community, to help, to be there for people, and to just support my family and my community.
Those are really important for me, and I value the things that my mom taught me, and she taught me how to embroider, and so I try to do that. I try to be true to where I'm from and what I am, and I think I do that in my off time.
[00:39:37] Rori: So And culture, community, and groundedness is what, what keeps you here and able to do your other work. I appreciate how you describe it as a job that you're doing. And the primary thing is still about your family and your community. We are so grateful for your time.
[00:39:55] Francine: It's great. Well, thank you both for taking time.
[00:39:58] Emilia: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with someone.
[00:40:03] Rori: You can also support this program by writing a kind review if your listening platform allows it.
[00:40:08] Emilia: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, sound engineering by Keagan Stromberg. Special thanks to Dr. Francine Gachupin. The hosts of Science Wise are Rori Rholfs and me, Emilia Huerta Sanchez.