Ep 43: Fighting for the Health of the World’s Most Vulnerable

Sanjula Jain  0:03  

Women make up 70% of the healthcare workforce but only 20% of its leadership. On Her Story, we’ll explore the careers of bold and influential women from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill and learn how they’ve overcome the odds. I’m your host, Sanjula Jain and this is Her Story, a program where we explore what’s beyond the glass ceiling.

 

Sanjula Jain  0:25  

It’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Parveen Parmar, Associate Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine and Chief of the Division of Global Emergency Medicine at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. Parveen, thanks for joining us today.

 

Parveen Parmar  0:38  

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Sanjula Jain  0:40  

You have a phenomenal career, and I’m really excited to dig into it, but let’s start with the origin story. What inspired your interest in medicine?

 

Parveen Parmar  0:49  

About as long as I can remember, a thought was implanted in my head, probably because I’m a good South Asian girl with South Asian parents who believe that their daughters should be doctors, so I’ll credit them with planting the seed. Both of my parents are the children of survivors and the Partition of India, so I grew up with the stories of refugees fleeing across the border, and then seeing the inequities in my own life across the different settings, Southern California, knowing that medicine was an avenue potentially to address that really was what spurred me on and seeking a career in it.

 

Sanjula Jain  1:25  

What inspired specifically emergency medicine then?

 

Parveen Parmar  1:28  

I didn’t know I was going to be an emergency physician until the last part of my third year, so it was very late. Coming to emergency medicine, I thought about obstetrics and gynecology because of the ability to do women’s health and advocacy there, I thought about internal medicine. I even loved Psychiatry and Neurology, so I loved a little bit of everything. Ultimately, I love having the ability to (at least in theory) address just about everything that comes through the door. That was one piece of it from a clinical standpoint, then knowing I wanted to do global health. Being able to address the needs of a variety of populations—whether pediatric, whether geriatric with a whole variety of medical conditions—that’s what made me love emergency medicine. Once I found it, it’s definitely been a fantastic choice I have been very happy with.

 

Sanjula Jain  2:14  

A lot of your work, as you’ve alluded to with emergency medicine, lives at the stem of global health and human rights. That’s a unique intersection of a lot of different dimensions. Where did the passion for global health specifically come from?

 

Parveen Parmar  2:29  

It comes back to my grandparents. I was born in the UK. My mom and dad married in the UK and from there went to Canada and then the United States, so I have had a little bit more of an international perspective with that, and certainly not one that involved resource-poor settings at that point. At least from my father, who grew up in a village in Punjab, heard stories of how inadequate access to basic things led to real morbidity and mortality. So people dying in childbirth, people dying of preventable diseases, it became really clear that that wasn’t fair. For lack of a better way of saying it, it seemed that all the privilege and the ability that I was given by being raised in the West and having access to education, I felt compelled to honor that history, and address it in some small way. So that’s what brought me to global health.

 

Sanjula Jain  3:22  

For those of us who are less familiar with some of those international dynamics and some of the human rights issues, how would you characterize the landscape of what some of the current priorities and challenges are specifically in that area of human rights?

 

Parveen Parmar  3:36  

With the pandemic, the answer has changed. The answer and both changed and stayed the same. What became really clear to most of us in medicine, global health, and probably everybody watching this is that COVID was about more than a virus. It’s the virus and the virus harms people, of course, and kills people. But different people are harmed in different ways. A lot of that has to do with historical inequalities, it has to do with race and ethnicity, and, and gender and location, vaccine access has been a major issue around the globe. So I would say at the heart of human rights and global health is the fact that where you’re born and what kind of situation you’re born into, just so fundamentally affects the way you are able to live your life and the access to care and access to opportunities. So I’d still say inequalities are still the biggest issue with regards to global health across the board and COVID really highlighted that it’s highlighted globally. It’s highlighted in LA. We see it here, too.

 

Sanjula Jain  4:39  

COVID has spotlighted a lot of these issues, but you were really at the forefront of this well before that. As you think about your career and a lot of the different challenges and trends you’ve seen in the industry, how have you seen some of that evolve? Do you think we’re making progress in tackling some of those inequities?

 

Parveen Parmar  4:55  

It depends on what day you catch me on. There has been progress made. It’s very easy to get lost in all of the negative stories, too. That’s where we all focus, especially when we’re trying to affect change, but many health outcomes have improved in many different settings. That’s a good thing. We certainly still have a long way to go, though. One of the real challenges globally is the reality that we have some very difficult decisions to make if we’re going to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable in our world, we can’t really continue to live in the way that we do if we really want to make other people’s lives better in other places. We have to think about what it means that we’re thinking about a third booster shot in the United States, and a huge proportion of our world hasn’t had their first shot and is still very much at risk.

 

Sanjula Jain  5:48  

What’s phenomenal about your story is that you see all these issues, but you’ve really been leading a lot of different initiatives, both domestically, internationally, and really starting to look at these issues from a lot of different areas. Do you consider your foray into the healthcare leadership realm more accidental or intentional?

 

Parveen Parmar  6:11  

In general with my career, I get asked by students, how did you get to where you are? How did you become the chief of the division? How did I get to work with some of the really great organizations I’ve had the privilege of working with? I didn’t envision a specific career path. Actually, at any point, I was lucky enough to be able to pursue different opportunities, and really identify what resonated with me along the way. That’s made my path in my career. My current job is much more interesting in that I’ve had the freedom to end the luck to pursue things along the way. In terms of my foray into healthcare leadership, a little bit of both.

 

Sanjula Jain  6:54  

Unpack that a little bit because that is exactly the point, particularly for those pursuing careers in medicine trained as a clinician. You have this very unique experience from childhood and family influences that have shaped a few of your interest areas, but you didn’t really plan this or know that some of these opportunities might have been the route that you’d be spending your time today. How does one go about carving out these? I don’t want to call it “non-traditional,” but different applications of clinical practice, because there is no linear path all the time.

 

Parveen Parmar  7:27  

The number one thing is, if you’re going to be a clinician and if you’re going to get an MD, you have to like practicing medicine. I made the joke about being a South Asian doctor and being a good South Asian doctor. A lot of people, especially in that community and other communities as well, may feel pressured, as many people do feel pressure to enter different career paths. It’s important specifically with medicine, because it’s demanding, it’s really demanding. You have to love it. People will ask me, “What’s the best specialty to do global health or human rights work?” I’m like, “That is exactly how you shouldn’t be picking a specialty. You have to pick a specialty where, if the whole world falls apart and the only thing you can do (because family things come up, other things come up) is just practice every day because you love it.”

 

Sanjula Jain  8:13  

That’s really well said. You have to start with the core, but it’s really this idea of there are just so many different avenues or options for those with the clinical training or those without to go into global health or get into human rights. How do you think that you have been able to create those opportunities for yourself knowing that, in many ways, there wasn’t someone that came before you to follow that same pathway?

 

Parveen Parmar  8:38  

I got lucky enough to find the specialty that I love, and which is great. It’s a matter of seeking opportunities. It’s a balance between keeping the field open and then picking things you think you’re going to like and trying them long enough to see whether you like them or not and then having the courage to step away from things that you don’t like, that’s just true in life, but just in general. For example, I chose to do a global emergency medicine fellowship, which was really helpful because it exposed me to what was possible within emergency medicine to do global health. Within that, there’s a whole range of things you can do as an emergency physician in the global health space, you can focus on developing emergency medicine, you can focus in the humanitarian space, and I happened to really be drawn to the research and human rights side. So that’s where I land. It was just seeking, seeking various opportunities, building on networks thinking creatively about networks. One of the things I learned early on, which has been probably the most helpful piece of advice I read anywhere was, find the person that you think maybe doing something you might like, and write them an email, ask for 20 minutes of their time or advice. Inevitably, it leads to more. It doesn’t always but I feel like every time I did that, as an undergrad and a medical student, it always led to an internship and opportunity, something else and that’s held true today as well. That’s still true. I consider myself very much a work in progress. I still ask for advice all the time.

 

Sanjula Jain  10:03  

I love that. To that point, you’ve made a lot of decisions along the way and you’ve experienced things and figured out that’s something you want to go deeper on or not so much. Has there been a particularly difficult decision or a trade-off that you think you’ve had to make in your career?

 

Parveen Parmar  10:20  

There was a decision at some point that happened without me explicitly making it, which was a decision to be based in the United States as opposed to spending a long period of time abroad to explore what that might look like as a global health practitioner, so that was something I decided wasn’t gonna work for me and my lifestyle, and I missed out on something by making that decision. I have a little bit more of a home base in the United States and can engage in supportive ways, the thing I’ve lost in that is the ability to really fully embed myself. So it’s in global health, it’s a little different, I go for shorter periods of time and remain involved in a setting for many years. I just finished up a project in Jordan. I started in 2013, so that was a very long project. That’s one I’ve found myself finding what I like and pursuing it. It hasn’t felt like trade-offs, it felt like following opportunities.

 

Sanjula Jain  11:17  

I love that. That’s a quotable moment because you’re right, it’s all perspective. It’s all learning. Also, you mentioned Jordan. I know your work has taken you all over the world. When we talked a lot about comparative health systems and some of the similarities and differences. What are some of the most interesting lessons you’ve learned collectively through your body of work that you think has shaped your perspective on what makes truly equitable health care?

 

Parveen Parmar  11:45  

The first thing that is important is that every system rations care. There isn’t a single one that doesn’t. You can be thoughtful about the way you ration care, you can think about ensuring that people have a basic level of access, ensuring that people that are the sickest, and you have the most emergent disease get taken care of, you can ration according to the ability to pay, you can ration according to citizenship and legal status, you can make those decisions. Many of those decisions are made without thought. They have real effects or they’re made with thought by some and not with thought by others and without appropriate input. The important thing when thinking about equitable access is to ensure that the right voices are at the table. We’re not very good at that in the United States. So we’re not good at that in most places. In terms of ensuring equitable access to carry the number one piece is ensuring that all of the voices are at the table when those decisions are being made. Our political systems aren’t, in general, very good at doing that but that would be a really important thing to work towards.

 

Sanjula Jain  12:53  

Absolutely. Taking it more to the bedside and more at the clinical level, are there approaches or different things that you’ve learned abroad that have carried with you as you think about the patients that you see when you’re at home in Los Angeles?

 

Parveen Parmar  13:08  

Definitely. We talk a lot in global health, about ensuring we’re partnering with communities appropriately. That means a lot of different things. That could mean a brief consultation with the community, that could mean embedding community in the decisions you’re making, it could mean giving community members roles in program delivery program design, those kinds of things. That’s true in the United States as well. That’s the piece that we still have a ways to go within the United States. Certainly, the LA county health care system does a great job of trying to do it as best as they can. I would like to see, and many community members would like to see, more diverse and voices heard to inform the way that, for example, healthcare is delivered in the emergency department, how we treat trauma victims, how we deal with the secondary side effects of trauma, mental health, all those other things. That’s probably the biggest lesson that crosses over this idea that there’s the United States and then there’s everywhere else and things are different everywhere else. It’s like dozens of communities here in Los Angeles, and they all experience their health very differently. There are hundreds of 1,000s of communities across the country. That perspective would be a useful one for every healthcare delivery system to really engage in.

 

Sanjula Jain  14:21  

That’s a really good point. We’re starting to talk more about that domestically, at least from my vantage point, but in many ways, there are a lot of parallels to we I don’t know if you would agree with this. Should we be thinking about our US patient population as a microcosm of different countries and different cultures and having a very different approach to each of those? That’s a very different way of thinking about it.

 

Parveen Parmar  14:44  

There’s a lovely subspecialty of emergency medicine that just grew up over the past decade or so called Social Emergency Medicine. At first, I was really skeptical about it because it was a little bit of global health and a few vulnerable populations in Los Angeles or whatever community, most often urban because that’s where these academic centers pop up. I thought, “But they’re totally different issues. It doesn’t make any sense that we’re mixing the two.” It’s different skill sets and all these other things. Then coming to Los Angeles, I was like, “Oh, I get it.” I was in Boston before my job in LA and I was like, “Actually, this subspecialty makes complete sense.”

 

Sanjula Jain  15:22  

Wow, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to look into that. Social Emergency Medicine. That’s another career option for the next generation of physicians in training. That’s good to know. Going back a little bit to your travels abroad, you have some phenomenal stories of some very different experiences. What’s been one of the most challenging experiences? It could be just traveling itself or the work you’ve done abroad. I know you’ve seen a lot.

 

Parveen Parmar  15:49  

The first story that came to mind was one where I was in Cameroon. I was doing a survey when I was a fellow actually looking at sexual and gender-based violence among survivors fleeing from the Central African Republic into eastern Cameroon. It was my first experience really looking at that kind of trauma and really being faced with it in that way. I found that emotionally challenging. What was interesting was—this is true medicine as well—we’re starting to understand what exposure to that means long term. As a side note, I also lost like 15 pounds, because there wasn’t any food. It was one of those things. This was run by an international NGO who shall remain nameless, the logistics in the field was miserable. I came back looking like a skeleton. I weighed about the same starting as I do now, imagine 15 pounds, there wasn’t a lot to lose. So that wasn’t great. Along those lines, I think more recently, the work that I did with physicians for human rights, looking at what the Rohingya survived in terms of the genocide in Myanmar in Rakhine State was for the same reason really challenging. I always had this feeling when I’m studying these issues, and trying to document them that it’s always a balance between feeling like it needs to be documented, and a real sense of just responsibility and a little guilt and at making people revisit those times and a real sense of obligation. Every time I do one of these studies, I have a really deep sense of obligation that this information get used in a way that really does support the people who are survivors. A lot of times we just don’t know if it will or not, we just do our best and document and hope that it will. Human rights documentation is really challenging.

 

Sanjula Jain  17:31  

Wow, that’s not easy work at all, professionally but also personally. I don’t want to overlook that. I would have a very hard time spending a lot of my time in these other places where you don’t have all the luxuries and comforts that we’re so used to having here. How have you personally been able to adapt emotionally? You mentioned the food. It’s so different. How do you do it?

 

Parveen Parmar  17:58  

I was really lucky because when I was a kid my parents took me to India, which feels so daft because I was seven or eight and I went for the first time and I was in a village. We didn’t have running water. There were no latrines. It was like, “Go in the fields.” It’s a public health nightmare. The community has since gotten a decent public health standard, but that was my family. Something about early on seeing, “Oh, this is like how normal people live in the rest of the world. This is normal.” It wasn’t like exotic or anything like that. It just made it. I wouldn’t say it was easier, but it just was like, “This is fine.” It just makes it easier to adjust to that. I will say as well. Like, honestly, most of the time these days when I travel, I’m hardly roughing it. It was uncomfortable for me. I’ve had people ask me, “But do you feel like your safety is a concern when you travel?” Certainly, sometimes I have, but I have an American and a British passport so truly, most of the time I’m very well protected. It’s the people that I’m speaking with that are at risk. It’s manageable.

 

Sanjula Jain  19:03  

From a safety perspective, not to overgeneralize but I’m curious, have you felt a different level of security or treatment abroad because you are a woman? I’m just thinking about my own experience. Sometimes people say, “Oh, don’t travel here because you’re a female. You need to be extra careful.” Has that played into the equation at all for you?

 

Parveen Parmar  19:22  

Definitely. I’m always a little jealous of the tall dudes I travel with that are fine, they can go anywhere. They’re like, “I’m gonna go for a walk by myself.” I’m like, “Great, you enjoy that. I’ll go for a run outside,” but I can’t do that. Iman is a very progressive place, but walking out by myself feels a little strange sometimes. Jordan is a lovely, safe country and I love being there and everybody’s so warm and kind when I was in Pakistan. I was in a pretty conservative area for a while when I was working there. There were limitations about leaving the compound and that can be a little challenging. India was probably the toughest place because I was in New Zealand, in some ways. I was in New Delhi before there was we all know of the really high rate of sexual violence that occurs in India. In 2012, I was sort of wandering around Delhi by myself. I thought afterward, “I can’t do that.” As a single woman walking around New Delhi by myself, I must have been crazy. I was doing it at night, sometimes, just like walking around and taking public transport. Again, how much of this is cognizant, and how much of this is just perception and what we’ve been taught to be afraid of? How much of it is real? Most of the time, I would say, in all the countries I’ve been to, more often than not, people are kind, they are caring, they take care of you. When I was walking around New Delhi by myself, I remember two older Indian men going, “You really shouldn’t be out by yourself. You want someone to walk you home?” They did. I think a lot of the fear we have is internalized. You don’t want to go out and be reckless, but I think it’s fine to probably do more than we think it is.

 

Sanjula Jain  21:07  

That’s a really great point of view. I had not thought about this idea of perception of reality, and thinking about how much of that is just to self internalize, but always good to be cautious either way. Shifting gears a little bit, you wear so many hats, and you make it seem so easy. You’re teaching you’re seeing patients, you’re doing your research or traveling for a lot of your research. What advice do you have for others, particularly clinicians, who are juggling multiple professional commitments? It’s not just one job. It’s really multiple jobs layered in.

 

Parveen Parmar  21:42  

Schedule your time for the things that are important. Everything else comes after that. I’ve gotten better at this over the years. I wasn’t very good at it when I was in Boston. I’ve gotten a little better since I came to USC. Things like exercise are not really optional things. This is not like making sure you’re cooking healthy food. Eating healthy food is not an optional thing. You may start to realize, particularly as you age, it becomes more important to take care of yourself. Because you see the ways that not taking care of yourself just hurts. If you’re going to do anything for the world, for your family, for the people that you love, for the people 1,000s of miles away, you’re going to be useless if you’re not really prioritizing yourself a little bit. That’s probably the biggest piece of advice I would give. Then just making sure that you’re clear about anything, being honest with yourself about how long things are gonna take. It’s like you put a list of things for your day, and you’re like, “I’m going to do these 12 things.” Then every day you feel disappointed in yourself because you didn’t do it, and you know you’re not gonna do it. Just don’t do it to yourself. As I’m speaking, I’m literally looking at my list of 12 things to do.

 

Sanjula Jain  22:53  

This happens every day. A tip for that, I had a great mentor share this. She said to flip it so that at the end of the day—even if you make that list, you don’t accomplish it—make a new list at the end of every day and write the three to five things that you actually did accomplish, no matter how big or how small. Even if it’s “I read an article,” even if the broader task was “I need to do the lit review and write the first like three paragraphs” or something. Even if you just sat down and read it, count that as an accomplishment and write it down.

 

Parveen Parmar  23:27  

Totally. That’s great advice. I’ll start doing that.

 

Sanjula Jain  23:29  

It works really well but doesn’t make it any easier with that to-do list. Speaking of that point, what role have mentors played in your journey?

 

Parveen Parmar  23:38  

Oh, a lot. There are so many. There have been people that have provided realistic advice about what I should be looking at and exploring. I think about Dr. Stephanie Kayden, who’s the woman that was my fellowship director and how much she did for me during my two years there teaching me how to do a cluster survey in the middle of Cameroon. She was there with me. We both lost a bunch of weight together. I think about Dr. Gregory, who is my research mentor. There are countless other people that I can think of. The most valuable thing is sponsorship when people have an opportunity for you, and some people will say, “Here’s my advice on how to find a grant to do that work.” That’s really important. Here’s a person who you can connect with who will actually give you that grant, or here’s somebody at the foundation, so taking that extra step to go out on the line. Those are the people I feel I owe a ton to.

 

Sanjula Jain  24:39  

Absolutely. Whether it be mentors, sponsors, colleagues, bosses, we all get a lot of feedback. I feel like feedback is a gift, even if it is slightly negative or critical. Has there been a particular piece of difficult feedback that you’ve received in your career that stands out as an inflection point for you? How did you overcome that?

 

Parveen Parmar  25:00  

The most difficult feedback I got was when I landed at LA County Hospital as a new attending. I’ve always perceived myself as the nice attending people like working with me, my residents think I’m great. I’d been at Brigham for eight years at that point, so I had a very specific way of interacting with my residents. The Brigham has a very different environment, there’s a lot more attending work and residents work really hard. But attendings are very involved in every step of every decision. At LA County Hospital, there’s a slightly different way of operating where the residents. It’s really good for them as well. The Brigham is a great way of doing things too, but they operate differently. They have a little bit more autonomy so after my first year I got ripped apart in my evaluations. It was so bad I left the office of my supervisor in tears, which is horribly embarrassing. I had an important meeting later and I was like, “I can’t do the rest of the day. I’m going to go home.” I was so devastated. I hope my residents know they are at the core of what’s really important to me and my work. I feel like they come here to learn and I feel a very deep obligation to make sure they get a good experience and they really are supported in their learning. It was soul-crushing to see that and I took it to heart. I started to really think about how I could support them in a more autonomous way, how I could let go a little bit more, how I could become a stronger clinician to teach them a little better. I’m still working on that because (you mentioned many hats) I think I’m pretty good, but I’m not somebody who spent my entire career focusing on clinical medicine only. I’m spread a little thin, so sometimes there are things I may not know as well as some of the people that have spent their whole lives focusing on clinical medicine, so keep chugging.

 

Sanjula Jain  26:51  

The power in what you’re saying, underlying a lot of that is how we all do a lot of different things in a lot of different roles, but knowing the boundaries of our strengths and areas we need to work on, that self-reflection is really powerful. Recognizing those and taking that to keep improving on is the heart of being a good leader, so that makes a lot of sense. We talk to a lot of women physicians on the show and just generally in the industry, throughout your career, have you noticed any particular unique experiences or challenges that women physicians or women leaders in the academic medical environment uniquely face? What advice might you have for them?

 

Parveen Parmar  27:35  

It’s funny because I just did it: that tendency to rip yourself apart if you’re not perfect. That’s the biggest challenge we all face. This is such a broad generalization, but in general, I see a lot of people who identify as women feeling like their personal worth is tied to work and judgments from work and external approval. It’s so deeply ingrained, it’s really hard to beat out of yourself. But quite frankly, if you’re going to do a job like being an emergency physician, people sometimes are not going to like you, if you’re going to be a leader in any space, people are just not going to like you sometimes. That has to be okay. It has to be okay. I see women do it too. I see women trainees do it, I see male trainees do it, where there’s this assumption that if you don’t look a certain way, you’re not as knowledgeable or you don’t present yourself in a certain way that you’re not the same quality of leader or clinician or whatever. Early on, I tried to develop a way of speaking and presenting myself that projected authority, and it was a conscious decision. Sometimes I’m guilty of this. I will see women present themselves more traditionally. I got the makeup and stuff out, whatever, just like flipping it and I get judgmental as well. There’s a lot of bias still towards the way that women present themselves in medicine, which is really challenging. I’ve seen women who go into the same position as a man and get paid $50,000 less for really what only seems to come down to just being a woman, so there’s still a long, long way to go.

 

Sanjula Jain  29:15  

There’s a broader systemic issue at play, and a lot of us are talking about it from different vantage points. Are there things that you think a little bit is that bias of do we dress a certain way talk a certain way? Like how much of that do you think has to be done? or What advice would you have for individuals who are up against what societies those confines but then also trying to chip at it a little bit, too. There’s a bit of a balance playing within the game that exists today while also trying to change it.

 

Parveen Parmar  29:46  

One of the other hats I wear is that I’m the Director for the Center for gender equity in medicine and science at the Keck School of Medicine, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this and learning a lot. I’ve started to see my biases because we all have them. I don’t want to say that anyone should present themselves in any specific way to accommodate biases in society? I just think that’s wrong. It’s our collective duty to point it out. That being said, it is important to learn to project authority, whatever that looks like for you. It can look very different depending on who you are. I don’t want to say there’s a specific way to do it, but it has to ultimately emanate from a belief that what you have to say is important, no matter where you’re coming from. You can say that with humility, too. One of the nice things is that, for better or worse (and this is another terrible generalization), people that come from a specific background may have a greater sensitivity either as a woman or person of color, like you have a, you have an understanding of issues from a different vantage point. It brings a certain humility as well to the work and, again, broad generalization definitely knows plenty of people who don’t follow that pattern on all sides of the spectrum. We’re all guilty of being blustery and insisting that we’re right or not, just projecting authority, whatever that looks like for you.

 

Sanjula Jain  31:03  

That’s a phenomenal perspective. Flipping the table a little bit, what advice would you give your younger self?

 

Parveen Parmar  31:12  

Worry a little less about the future. It’s going to be fine. As I’m saying that, that’s advice I could take today because the future is a very theoretical place. When you’re seeking a career, do the things you like. When you’re seeking whatever you want in your life, taking the next step up and trusting that it’s going to be fine. Don’t be afraid of taking risks. Don’t take unnecessary risks. It’s all a balance.

 

Sanjula Jain  31:37  

I love the trajectory that you’ve been on and I’m excited to see what you’d continue to tackle in the years to come. Thinking about the healthcare leadership legacy you want to leave behind when you think about your autobiography coming at some point in time, what would be the title of it?

 

Parveen Parmar  31:58  

Oh, Work In Progress.

 

Sanjula Jain  31:59  

Love it. Very well. Parveen, thank you so much for spending some time with us. You are a phenomenal leader. Thank you for all the work that you do. I know it’s not easy, but know that it is making a huge difference and inspiring the career paths of so many to come after you.

 

Parveen Parmar  32:16  

Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

 

Sanjula Jain  32:20  

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