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Rowan Wellness Village: Ali Houshmand
2 Playsin 3 days
Season 4, Episode 10: Dr. Ali Houshmand is the president of Rowan University and the thought leader behind the Rowan Wellness Village. Listen to Ali discuss the vision for the Rowan Wellness Village, the components of a healthy community and strategies for cultivating purpose for young adults and senior citizens.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Wound Dresser'
00:00:09
Speaker
You're listening to The Wound Dresser, a podcast that uncovers the human side of healthcare. I'm your host, John Neary.
Meet Dr. Ali Houshmand
00:00:21
Speaker
My guest today is Dr. Ali Houshmand. Dr. Houshmand has been the president of Rowan University since 2012. During his tenure, Rowan integrated at School of Osteopathic Medicine from the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
00:00:35
Speaker
and also opened Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and the Schreiber School of Veterinary Medicine. He has also spearheaded the Rowan Wellness Village, which is a recently announced innovative living learning community anchored in health and wellness.
What is the Rowan University Wellness Village?
00:00:49
Speaker
Dr. Ali Houshman, welcome to the Wound Dresser. Thank you. Great to be with you, John. Earlier this year, under your leadership, Rowan University announced a $690 million dollars West Campus development project, which includes the Rowan University Wellness Village.
00:01:05
Speaker
You've described the Rowan University wellness Wellness Village as a living, learning community anchored in education, health, and wellness. What inspired this project?
The Inspiration Behind the Wellness Village
00:01:15
Speaker
ah The inspiration came when I, first of all, thank you for inviting me to your podcast. I'm glad that I'm talking about this important topic.
00:01:24
Speaker
Inspiration came to me when I joined Rowan University 20 years ago. And at that time, Rowan had already purchased about 600 acres of land about a mile away from the main campus, which we now call West Campus.
00:01:39
Speaker
And about 2009, we were talking about what we're going to do with all this land. Because at the time, even though they were ours, they were really, they were growing peaches on this thing by some farmers. So it was just 600 acres of land sitting there.
00:01:55
Speaker
So I started dreaming about this thing and I came up with this concept and I wrote a kind of a booklet with lots of pictures and drawing and and and kind of rendering of what I call a holistic wellness village. And the idea was, how would you transform a beautiful suburb of a major city into a living, learning place on the edge of a university campus, especially a public university?
Intergenerational Living Benefits
00:02:22
Speaker
where people instead of necessarily going to, let's say, retire in a place like the villages in Florida and play golf and that kind of lifestyle, wouldn't it be better if they are on the edge of a major city? They could be get engaged with the university in terms of being an adjunct, learning courses, going to plays, sitting in some lectures, doing consulting, you name it.
00:02:50
Speaker
And as well as young people living in there and having an intergenerational community that instead of people waiting until they get sick and then go to doctor to be treated of their ailment, wouldn't be great if you could kind of create a preventative way of people not getting sick, if possible, or getting less sick?
00:03:12
Speaker
And the idea was, how do we bring therapeutic activities into this place where you can have animal therapy, music therapy, spirituality, where you can have exercise, nutrition, where there is walking trails over there. There are various activities of that sort. And also we have an institute over at the osteopathic medical school called Institute for Successful Aging, which basically teaches people how to kind of live a very dignified aging life.
Challenges in Developing the Wellness Village
00:03:42
Speaker
And mix of these things, as I said, with young people and all of that was the idea. And next to that, I was dreaming about having medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, veterinary school, you name it.
00:03:54
Speaker
So slowly but surely after, when I presented this thing in 2009 to our board, at first people thought, you know, it was a crazy idea because we were a very unknown university. We had no medical school. We were basically a master's classified university. We were not what we are today, which is a research one, top-notch university with three medical schools. So the idea was over dreaming for an institution that didn't have the capabilities of really putting that kind of thing into practice.
00:04:25
Speaker
But I never kind of gave up and I kept on talking about it until I became president and then we started building and developing the West Campus The first thing that happened was the building of the hospital, which belongs to Inspira.
00:04:39
Speaker
And that was exactly the location that I envisioned the hospital would be built. And then the rest of it came basically came to power, eventually put a bid on it, and there were developers who were interested to come and partner with us. And this is how did the idea got developed. And now we are at the stage of getting security, all the permissions and everything from permits, so that hopefully the construction can begin soon.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, so it sounds like a lot of thought and vision went into this. This has been, you you mentioned 2009, 17 years, so a long time in the making. And as you mentioned there, it seems that there's like a number of guiding philosophies. When I hear you talk, it seems like in general, you're pitching a integrative health model, something that sort of ah looks at health from a variety of perspectives and lenses and and brings all different perspectives to a person's health. um You mentioned intergenerational ah living. Can you talk more about like what you know intergenerational living, ah how that will play a role in this community?
00:05:39
Speaker
Well, right now we have a veterinary school that has a class that will eventually have a class of 90 students. So you're talking about 360 in four years of veterinary school.
00:05:51
Speaker
It's very possible that very soon we bring the School of Osteopathic Medicine and move it back to the West Campus. They have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 students. And all of these kids have to do their rotations, have to do the residency, and they need to live somewhere. They cannot live without the graduates mixing the small dorms. These are grown-up kids. Some of you guys married, and got life, and you've got kids. So it's not like you're now an 18-year-old.
00:06:20
Speaker
Therefore, they need to create that kind of facility. So we are envisioning rental for medical students, for residents in the Inspira Hospital or Cooper, as well as you know other young people, the students who are graduate students pursuing their PhDs at the university.
00:06:36
Speaker
So think about those people having a beautiful place to live in that
Farming and Health Integration
00:06:40
Speaker
environment. At the same time, different mix of people. Some people, we're going to have lots of rental and we're going to have some homes that people can purchase. And we're going to have some age-restricted region where people over 55 can live.
00:06:53
Speaker
so So all of these groups are together and that interaction, in my opinion, where there is the center is full of intellect. There are mostly a lot of educated people. Hopefully the people that will live in here are going to be people who are retired. They've been executives or somebody who wants to really be a very prestigious and safe community. So I can envision that kind of model eventually become a model in America where different places on the edge of big cities, you could have these kind of communities, which people can really live a healthy life. And then what other thing we are doing, John, is that we are building, we have a farm over there, a major farm. We grow things. We also have indoor farms, you know, the aquaponics farming with fish and everything else. All of those things, the idea is eventually create what we call a pharmacy with F.
00:07:39
Speaker
So that doctors can actually write prescription for better basic nutrition, given given the way that we can grow the most nutritious everything. So the freshness of vegetables and all of that, the farming into this thing, in my opinion, that community would be very exciting. In fact, we are building that very same, we have built that very same thing. In the northern part of our campus, remember, the wellness village is in a region that is about 210 acres of land, leftover land, plus the 100 acres we sold to Inspira. Then in the northern part, we have another 300 acres.
00:08:16
Speaker
And there is a street in between them. And in the northern part, I have the farm. So we have greenhouse in there, we have koi fish in there, we have bass in there. We grow indoor and we grow grow outdoor and we package this thing. We give them to people, and anybody who wants it for free.
00:08:31
Speaker
And we also want to, as I said, partner with with these developers who actually write prescriptions. Doctors can actually help people with best nutrition, best food. So that's the idea. The idea is really an intergenerational model that hopefully can be duplicated elsewhere.
00:08:47
Speaker
Wow, that's it that's a good pitch. When can I move in? Exactly. A lot of people will say exactly that because that's exactly
Preventing Isolation in Communities
00:08:54
Speaker
the kind of places that people would like to live in. A place that is number one safe, number two is beautiful, number three has a lot of options.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. And then number four is the on the edge of an excellent center of intellect. We can here keep on your curiosity. You want to take courses. You want to teach courses. You want to take further degrees. All of those things are available to you.
00:09:13
Speaker
And I think it's not really, really nice. Yeah. Yeah, and I think with the intergenerational yeah living structure that you're pitching, a lot of older people, you know they don't go live somewhere else out of, it's it's out of necessity. When they can't, when they you know the infrastructure isn't in place for them to stay engaged, so they kind of just get put on an island, which leads to isolation, which leads to poor health outcomes. but i Absolutely, you know absolutely, you're right, right on.
00:09:40
Speaker
yeah another That's absolutely the case. I mean, you would see Time and again, I've heard the people who have been very, very active in their lives and suddenly retired and they had no purpose after that. They were basically playing golf or staying at home. Chances are they're not going to last very long.
00:09:59
Speaker
And that is unfortunately the fact. And the more people active, especially mind wise, where you can think, you can create, you can develop, the longer, i you know better than I that, you know, people last longer.
00:10:11
Speaker
yeah especially when those kind of activities are in there. Also music therapy, animal therapy, these are really, really very helpful things. And you know that mind and body are really highly interconnected when it comes to illness.
00:10:23
Speaker
Absolutely. Another related concept ah to this, I know that's kind of guiding this project too, is is the blue zones. So there's blue zones in like Japan, i think another one's Sardinia, Italy. There's kind of these zones concentrated with people who live to be 100, 110 and ten and just just have like very a very good track record of aging well. Absolutely.
00:10:45
Speaker
have you Have you done some kind of work to connect with people in those regions when when looking at this project? I have not. Initially, when I was thinking about this model, I did a lot of research at the time. I didn't find many of them, but there were one or two examples at the time. That was, again, 16, 17 years ago, where I was working with my assistant on this thing, but not lately. I've always felt that, irrespective of it, when you tell the story properly to anybody, irrespective of their gender gender or age or or or, you know, ethnicity or anything, it's a very appealing concept.
00:11:19
Speaker
Therefore, there was no need for me to kind of show the proof of a proof of concept, so to speak. That's a look what they have done is and they're very successful. I really believe this kind of concept is appealing to people because precisely what you said,
00:11:31
Speaker
People want to remain active and
Community Activities and Engagement
00:11:34
Speaker
they want to have a purpose in life. I mean, when you wake up in the morning and you see a group of young and old over there being active, some people are walking, some people are going to class, some people are teaching, some people doing consulting. All of these things keeps your mind alive. And for as long as this thing is alive, the body can really you recover.
00:11:52
Speaker
It's this thing that really causes the age aging to be to be really detrimental. So you mentioned the the farm courses, different educational opportunities.
00:12:04
Speaker
ah you know Beyond that, what are some of the other resources and amenities that would be available to residents of this community? but For example, the older people, there are executives. Many of them, we want to offer them the position of professor of practice so that they can actually get involved with the university and teach to the extent that they can or to get involved in consulting and other things. So that's one option. We are going to give them option of reduction in tuition if they want to take certain courses so that they can really remain active in there.
00:12:34
Speaker
Again, we we want to get them engaged in the farming part of it if they are so it's so desired. There are a whole host of activities. I mean, the activities of thinking about the people who want to ah volunteer in the center when we do the animal therapies.
00:12:47
Speaker
where the trained dogs and cats are are there and these people can come in and kind of be volunteers in there. So you create some purposeful activities for them as well while we do a lot of those things. And so then just to get a better sense of of how this community would be run, that I understand Rowan has a number of partners involved. how how would ah like Who would kind of be responsible for what parts of this community?
00:13:11
Speaker
First of all, this is this is a living community. Therefore, the developer builds the houses and they do the rental or leasing or selling. They're independent, just like you go and rent someplace, right?
00:13:22
Speaker
At the same time, Inspira has the hospital and they're going to bring all of their main offices in there and there's going to be a hotel in there. And Rowan is going to bring Center for Successful Aging as well as all those activities are going to be all their internships that other students are going to provide in these centers. So students, musicians can do music therapy. The people from the veterinary school can do the animal therapy.
00:13:48
Speaker
The people from the law law and justice or or or or I think the, no, Yes, foreign languages and religion department can do the spirituality aspect. So you have also some internship activities for the students, as well as potential research possibilities for professors in those departments.
00:14:06
Speaker
And then as I understand, there's a United Methodist Group is going to be doing ah with with with ah the aging population as well. Well, United Methodist Group, for some financial reason, recently decided that they pull out of this this activity. I don't know what their purpose was. They said some financial reason.
00:14:25
Speaker
But there are other... ah there were It was an add-on to our of concept. It did not does not change the concept in any way, shape or form because there are lots of other activities. Other groups who may be interested, in fact, a number of them have talked to me that they want to talk to the developer. So the concept is exactly there and it's going to continue.
00:14:45
Speaker
when you When you talk to folks on ah but like who actually are you know running in hospitals and so forth, ah how do they respond
Rowan University's Evolution and Growth
00:14:53
Speaker
to this? It sounds like back in 2009, there wasn't as much traction with it, but are are people kind of ah slowly... you know No, at that time, there was there was traction. there were People thought, wow this is an amazing idea.
00:15:06
Speaker
And then they would ask the second question, why Rowan? Rowan doesn't have the wherewithal to kind of engage in these kind of activities because we were such a small university. we did We were a master's classified at university. We were not ranked in any way.
00:15:20
Speaker
We didn't do any research in there. So that was a different university that 2009, right? So at that time, when we were talking to people and I presented this thing to the Cooper board, to Inspira board, to Lourdes, to Kennedy that later on became Jefferson, all of these boards resend to this thing as well as our own board of trustees. Everybody said, clap, clap, wonderful.
00:15:47
Speaker
But how are we going to do it? I mean, what what what wi do we have? Do we have any, for example, presence in medicine? We didn't. We didn't have a medical school. We were just talking to john Governor Corzan at the time to establish the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.
00:16:03
Speaker
And the the school opened in 2012. The building opened. I remember that I went there in July and we opened it then. So the idea was very exciting to people It was as if that it didn't make sense because first of all, Rowan was such a small university at the time. I mean, think about it. At that time, we were only just 10,000 students.
00:16:25
Speaker
Our research was $5 million. dollars Today, we are 25,000 students. Our research is in excess of $80, $90 million. It's a different institution.
00:16:36
Speaker
We had no PhDs then. We now have 17 different PhD programs. We had no medical school then. We now have three medical schools. We only had five colleges six colleges then. We now have 16 colleges and schools now.
00:16:49
Speaker
Vastly different. And we are a research one operating university, whereas we were a master's classified then. So at that time, people didn't take that very seriously because of us as champion of it.
00:17:03
Speaker
But suddenly when we became who we became and we built all of these additional schools and all these developments, for example, we have built about a billion and a half of buildings in Glasgow and the surroundings.
00:17:15
Speaker
Then people started realizing, oh, yes, these are serious partners. That's what happened. so I see. So the concept became fully developed and functional, so to speak. At at at various times, there were was nice concept, nice story, but, and there were a lot of bots there.
00:17:34
Speaker
But those bots have been removed as a result of the progress that we have made. Yeah. And I mean, but I mean more about like the the conversations you you have with health care professionals now in 2026. I feel like the integrative health model, which I'm really interested in. That's why I i was so ah you know excited to talk about this idea. But other people don't see health and health care that way. And Do do you find yourself having to to kind of pitch this idea the existing health care institutions that are maybe a little ah rigid in how they view, you know, health care, how they view primary care? You know, currently you don't go to the the physician and get a ah prescription for animal therapy, spirituality and and farm food, although no you you definitely would be healthier if you did. So how do you how do you kind of get people to to shift more in that direction as opposed to like the old the old ways we're doing things in health care?
00:18:28
Speaker
I think this is the kind of concept that people like yourself and I and people that believe in this kind of thing need to really have more and more conversations with fellow physicians and other physicians to kind of get them the concept to realize that because they also believe in this kind of thing. Once they know it, they probably need to see an example of it. They need to see a living example of it.
00:18:49
Speaker
At the time when I talked about that concept, I was thinking about the following. I was thinking about... Our region, Philadelphia region, being one of the most kind medically medical education concentrated in the whole world.
00:19:03
Speaker
Within about 25 mile radius, there are five allopathic, two osteopathic, and two veterinary schools. Nine of them within 25 miles radius. There are states in this country that have no medical school.
00:19:15
Speaker
Deliver one of them. So you can imagine how kind of massive it is. And also, if you look at this corridor from New York all the way to Maryland on 95th, there are about 36 research one and research two universities.
00:19:29
Speaker
And there are, at least in this area, 17 or 18 medical schools. Some of the best ones, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Princeton, Rutgers, NYU, and so forth. Maryland and so forth.
00:19:48
Speaker
Cooper, absolutely. Yes, yes. um All of these fantastic schools, fantastic institutions. And I said that This place should become a new, number one, a new Silicon Valley.
00:19:59
Speaker
And number two, a new, what I call Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic, where people from around the world come in here and get the best health and learn the whole new lifestyle in a village.
00:20:12
Speaker
in terms of new nutrition, new exercise. Let's assume a person from, let's say, Singapore, who is a billionaire and he's got a triple bypass. And there is a cardiologist over there who is ola also affiliated with Cooper as an adjunct faculty, brings the patient in here on a first-class plane. Somebody goes and pick him up with their limousine, bring them into this beautiful cottage in in this village. And then he goes through a battery of tests with the best cardiologists that exist in here that have their own private clinics and businesses. And then they also learn the whole new lifestyle, what to eat, how to eat, how to exercise, and then pays a billion million dollars and get in the plane and go back to his country.
00:20:51
Speaker
That was the concept. No, um'm um'm ah seriously, oh but that's what i was thinking about. I mean, think about this thing. Imagine just between thats say between cardiology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, and neurology.
00:21:07
Speaker
These four alone, you can get the whole population to come in here and you got the best of them. Are you thinking more of like a temporary stay model or like a more permanent living situation or both with the Roan Wallet? No, what I'm saying is the idea also evolved. Initially, that was what was thinking. I wanted to bring the other physicians to become part of this business and this village to be built by them.
00:21:30
Speaker
Then I realized that was a very hard concept to sell to them. Then it turned it into a kind of a concept where there's a living. Let's do the living and and and and and exercise. And then because there is a healthcare care hospital in there, maybe we can then bring these kind of brilliant experts who can have their own private clinics in there, who can then affiliate. You know what I was thinking about, John? I was thinking about thinking about all the doctors that are best doctors in the country that is friendly to the United States, and they become affiliated with our medical school, and they become adjuncts to that.
00:22:03
Speaker
yeah And then they can do referral of the patients and they can come in back to this country and do continuing education, medical education. I was thinking about that concept. And so that I was trying to create and create more business kind of it.
00:22:16
Speaker
But then I turned into that kind of a housing and living part first, then going to that next stage. I still believe in that. So that that that model of of of people coming and visiting from around the globe, that's that's more, once you get the proof of concept of the wellness village, then you can kind of expand out to something like that.
00:22:34
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. So really... Now you imagine, that imagine that the best orthopedists in here create a business and build a beautiful clinic in there and even ah in a surgery center.
00:22:47
Speaker
And they hire you know everybody that they need in order to run the best and they have the best cottage in there for these people to get the best street care by the best nurses, professional, all separate from not the hospital, but just all of these things being like a hotel type of it places.
00:23:04
Speaker
Imagine that. And then you bring, you're talking about the top 1% of the population that have the wealth and the ability to take to to demand this kind of service. So that's what I was thinking about initially.
00:23:18
Speaker
And I still believe that that's viable because if people come to go to Mayo Clinic, which is in Minnesota, but what it is, is the center of health care. It's a fantastic medical school over there. Even though there is lots of of snow in winter, but I see people go there for treatment or people go to Cleveland Clinic because of, you know, the,
00:23:37
Speaker
Medical school over there. Yeah. Or people go to Houston because of, again, the you know the the medical the school over there. I think that we have the better concentration, especially then you can add to this whole concept, the whole concept of tourism too.
00:23:51
Speaker
You're standing between New York and Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. Almost medical medical tourism that you go on vacation, not necessarily to do unhealthy things, but to do really healthy things and improve yourself, right?
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about. And I really think that concept, in my opinion, is very viable today. still is Still is very viable, especially when we are talking about. At the the core of this all, I mean, really the question you're asking is, ah what is a healthy lifestyle? And maybe even more importantly, what is ah a healthy community? So if you...
00:24:28
Speaker
if If you were to frame, you know, more abstractly speaking, what makes a healthy community? How do you how do you kind of conceptualize that? what What makes a healthy community is an interaction between a like-minded group of people who are reasonably educated, who can engage in set of activities that are civilized, that are healthy,
00:24:57
Speaker
that are revenue generating, that is lifting the community, ah that has ability to intellectually to get to get better and and improve your intellectual capacity. I see all of these things as ah as constituting a healthy community. It's interaction between the people in a positive way. That really to me creates the most health.
00:25:20
Speaker
I remember the days that I used to go run marathons and up. the conversation that I had with my fellow runner was the greatest therapy I could ever have. So that's the kind of thing that I'm thinking about. I think that is a healthy community. of Of course, nutrition is very important. Exercise is important. Reading and interacting with fellow citizens is very important. Having a broad view of seeing the humanity for what it is and and in a broader sense rather than in a divided kind of world, is is ah ah these are all healthy.
00:25:54
Speaker
And educated people tend to be more civilized in a way, more peaceful in in so many ways. And I think that the all that concept, in my opinion, lifts everybody. Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
No, you definitely see, you know, even thinking about, you know, where I grew up. At one time, people like neighbors used to see interact more. and And now it seems like some of that has been lost. that that isolated Exactly. Exactly.
00:26:18
Speaker
In front of every house there was a basketball. no There's nothing. nobody No kid comes out of the you know arab of house after the school. Yeah, and it's it's really it's really sad. and And also another thing I think is really tough is that you know families and friends, they kind of get split up all over the country. they kind of you know There isn't that proximity where you can really build ah like a healthy community. Exactly. I mean, think you about the family.
00:26:43
Speaker
where son and daughter can live in the younger area and then the mom and dad can live in the restricted area or age restricted. But all of them can enjoy each other and have their own independence too. Absolutely.
00:26:55
Speaker
But I think so with this project, you're kind of building that from the ground up. But can you apply things to existing communities to make those visions possible? Or are you more interested in kind of building these communities from the ground up?
00:27:08
Speaker
i want I want to really be integrated with the community because these the area communities need school. Therefore, you need to work with the school. You need to work with the police department. and You need to work with the fire because all of these amenities are also parts and parcel of the community, right? So yeah um we are working with the with the townships in having all of these discussions, making sure that the school size is right, making sure that the number of people that we are going to bring the capacity is there for the school to absorb the new students and all of those things are part and parcel of it.
00:27:41
Speaker
And additional businesses, of course, restaurants and, like you know, somebody wants haircut and all of those things are additional that that really come with this kind of activities. But how would you bring like some of these healthy living concepts, these, these you know, intergenerational living, blue blue zone philosophy to a place like Camden, you know, where where we're, we're trying so many different things to improve the health of community. And um you know we've made made strides, but we I think we definitely want to go further in in building more of that healthy living community here in Camden.
00:28:14
Speaker
I think Camden is an ideal place for these kind of activities for a number of reasons. Number one, it is it's on an ascension. It's moving up. It's gone through this hardest time And I think it's really improving. If you compare Camden up to David, Canberra 15, 10, 15 years ago, it's vastly improved.
00:28:34
Speaker
A lot of new buildings, lot of facilities and other things. Number two, the front, the the you know the shoreline ah area, that land area where former prison and all of that, if you look at it, the most view that you have, you have the high rises of Philadelphia. So you have an amazing view of building facilities over there, beautiful.
00:28:53
Speaker
The challenge is bit with Camden are two things that, You don't want to kind of ignore the population and basically through gentrification bring new population in there. You know, this is going to cause problems. That's one thing. But at the same time, you cannot do that in a holistic way. The solution to Camden is the way that people are doing it right now.
00:29:15
Speaker
Take a neighborhood, develop it, make it safe, go to another neighborhood. Take it, develop it, make it safe, make it beautiful. I think that's what they need to do, and they need to integrate the population into that, because they are the ones who really belong to that place. They love the city.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's not fair for them not to be given the opportunities to be part of that development. So it's a different challenge, but it's a very worthy one, because I think the people will will will absolutely will love this kind of concept.
00:29:49
Speaker
Everybody wants to be safer there and have a healthier place. You know, think about, them for example, one of the big challenges that you have is from the from the population of Camden, the number of people who go to to the emergency room because they don't know any better. And the cost of that thing to everybody is massive.
00:30:07
Speaker
And the system eventually breaks down when you have so many of those things. So the more your people get to people to this healthy situation, creating small communities where nurse practitioners or physician assistants can take care of the basic things, you can reduce all of those costs too. So this is something that Canada needs to do as a whole city, bring the into entire business and everybody can look at the concept and realize that everybody will benefit if it's done that. way And I really do believe that Camden has tremendous opportunity, especially given that we have the medical ah school. Cooper has a fantastic presence over there. And as I said, you know, that the city is is really improving. if The closer you get to the shoreline, you realize how wonderful that area is as you move, drive through Cooper Street.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that I wonder, like, so with, you know, the investigations I've done of integrative health, it seems like on one hand, you can kind of pitch it as a much lower cost solution than ah the way healthcare is currently run, right? You're focusing on nutrition, exercise, you know, socializing, those those things, if done in like, you know, a reasonable way can be very, very cost effective. But then on the other hand, if if you, ah you know, think about adding on things like, you like animal therapy or or lots of different ah other opportunities, then it probably becomes a little more expensive, right? So it's like, what what kind of what kind of package of of of services would be reasonable for you know a certain group of people, I guess? Also, so I mean, think about it When we talk about music therapy over here over there, there are brilliant musicians there.
00:31:41
Speaker
yeah Take those kids and create a kind of a a, organize them and they become intern to Rutgers Camden or Rowan University over there and do those kind of thing. When you're looking at, for example, animal therapy, everybody has pets. Imagine that you create a beautiful caged area, one for large animal but large dogs, another one for small dogs, where people can bring theirs into there and they can play with each other and keep it clean. That could be therapeutic. So it doesn't need to be something organized by the university. The population can put those kind things together.
00:32:14
Speaker
You know, all it needs is the concept and then the leadership to kind of put it together. It's doable and it's not very, very expensive to do this kind of thing. Music, I mean, think about it. do You've got the most brilliant people over there in terms of music that they can actually be part of that thing.
00:32:31
Speaker
The same goes with animals. The same goes with sports, new exercise. It's tapping into the the pool of people that are already there. Exactly. Because it needs to, you see, concepts like that needs to have local ownership.
00:32:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. If people own it, they don't respect it. They don't pay attention to it. That's why I'm saying that it needs to be done in conjunction with the population. They need to own it.
00:32:55
Speaker
It needs to be their concept. Yeah, absolutely. Rather than somebody from outside comes and says, this is how it's done. They will never work in a place like Camden because they have pride, they have history there.
00:33:09
Speaker
And I think they need they need to be part of it. And I really think that people like yourself can help tremendously in doing organizing these these concepts and bringing people ah into these kind of things.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've always thought of, ah you know, Camden and Cooper being an ideal place. A lot of a lot of, you know, programs throughout the country are creating integrative health programs that can really partner with the community to create these sorts of opportunities. So yeah I think, ah you know, moving forward, that's, you know, something I've always been interested in within within Camden.
00:33:40
Speaker
um The other the other thing I wanted to ask you about, I think, you know, we've we've talked a lot about integrative health care, health care in general, Like one of the the ongoing challenges in health care nationwide, but, you know, I would say definitely and even Philadelphia and South Jersey, too, is the fragmentation of health care.
00:34:00
Speaker
You know, people have so many different doctors within so many different systems that everything is just so... fragmented You know, I think companies like Amazon or, you know, other other like minded people, they're they're kind of people are so frustrated with the product of health care that they're getting that they're just trying to ah get in that vacuum and and create a convenient customer experience so that people can get their health care. And so, you know, in the context of this wellness village or even broader speaking, how can we help consolidate some of that health care ah to make the the user experience, the the the patient experience better?
00:34:39
Speaker
ah To me, John, in my opinion, this concept, is see this this issue is so massive and so complicated that it only will get solved if every constituent, important constituents come together.
00:34:54
Speaker
And the most important, of course, are the population who need the health. But you need the doctors, you need the insurance companies, you need the healthcare executives. And each of them have different views and different concepts.
00:35:05
Speaker
I mean, let's look at, for example, the doctors. Let's say that, you know, you are a cardiologist. In order to become a cardiologist, you have to go through four years of undergraduate, four years of graduate medical school, three or four years of residency, and then a subspecialty. By a time you're 33 or 34, you're probably $400,000 in debt, and you want to start your practice.
00:35:27
Speaker
And so what are you going to do in order to have a life, in order to buy a house, in order to take raise your kids and you do all of that thing? You need to have a little income that, first of all, pays your first big mortgage and then pays your second mortgage and all of those expenses. And as a result, you have to have a certain earning that that is commensurate with this.
00:35:47
Speaker
That's your issue. Then comes the insurance companies. Insurance companies, by their very nature, have to make money. Okay? They have executives who make, I don't know, big seven-figure salaries, and they need to be covered. They have big offices that have got these beautiful towers in the cities with fantastic furnitures they need to be paid for, and they need to therefore make the profit in order to keep that fund going, right?
00:36:11
Speaker
And then you have the house hospital executives who need to basically see the patients, go through the Medicaid, Medicare, insurance, and all of that in order to get a margin.
00:36:22
Speaker
And also paid for their executives, their beautiful offices and all of that. And you can see each of them have a different agenda and they don't they don't come into congruence. And it's extremely difficult for you, let's say, as the doctors say, I'm going to solve the problem by by by reducing my expectation for my salary.
00:36:42
Speaker
You're not going to do that. Right? Why should you? How you going to deal with your life? Insurance companies are not going to say, i'm not going I'm going to close down or I'm going to basically reduce my profit margin to 5% so that I can pay my executive only half a million dollars in instead of $50 million. dollars They're not going to do that.
00:37:00
Speaker
And they're the same good. So you can see that it's massive and it's absolutely necessary. i mean, when you really look at this whole Obama care and everything, somehow he managed to bring those constituents together. Somehow.
00:37:14
Speaker
Not perfectly, Lots of problem with it. But what is the alternative? The alternative is exactly what you just said. I, as a patient, have got multiple doctors.
00:37:25
Speaker
I go for pain to somebody, cardiology for somebody, general medicine for somebody, each of them. And none of them talk to each other. They don't know this. Every time I have to go, they have to check what medicines I have. They have to go and look at my chart. They have to talk to each other that they wish they don't have time. And they have to to deal with all the bureaucratic nonsense instead of seeing patients.
00:37:47
Speaker
So it's it's a massive, massive project because what we have done in this country, I don't know, for whatever reason, the system is what it is. It's the best best healthcare care system in terms of technology and quality of doctors, but somehow it's so inefficient, so expensive, and so back-breaking.
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, the the solution that seems to be keeping coming up is just ah a bigger and bigger emphasis on primary care, that you can have one doctor who knows you really well, who ah you know can handle a lot of different issues for you.
00:38:20
Speaker
But you know the the feedback you get from primary care doctors is that you I only get 10 or 15 minutes for a visit. I have to basically refer out for everything. I have to make this all more complicated because I don't have time. or um So it's...
00:38:34
Speaker
That's our problem, too, actually. If you look at, for example, this state of New Jersey, in four years from now, the state is short of primary care position by $3,000. And the medical school simply cannot produce them.
00:38:48
Speaker
Number one, the students don't want to go to medical primary care to make only $200,000 a year salary, which barely pays for their expenses, right? And they don't want to go to rural born area to to to take care of the patients because, again, the income and the quality of life and quality of the school and all of those things is going to impact their lives.
00:39:08
Speaker
So you can see that it's become, even as it is, even for the medical schools, it's very difficult, very, very difficult. So this thing is going to just get bigger and bigger and bigger and more complicated.
00:39:23
Speaker
So, I mean, imagine if we didn't have the number of foreign doctors who come to this country and practice, we would be awfully short, really short. Because the medical schools simply are not producing enough.
00:39:35
Speaker
We just can't. I cannot force you to go to medical, I mean, primary care. It's your choice. And you are absolutely right. What this country needs are really a lot of primary care.
00:39:50
Speaker
well You need the specialists, but we need a lot of those to go in everywhere because that's really what to do what I need. As for my first place to go to.
00:40:01
Speaker
Well, I think in general... What I've tried to talk to people about is that in some way we need to demonstrate to insurance companies that primary care primary care doctors keep people healthy and healthy people make them more money. So it it seems like for some reason that we still can't make that connection that healthier people will you know create a more prosperous society. Right. And don't know why You know why they see it as well.
00:40:28
Speaker
except that they worry about the next quarter of their income. I mean, they're their finances. The health primary care makes you healthier 10 years. yeah These guys cannot wait for that.
00:40:42
Speaker
They're looking at tomorrow. They're looking at the next quarter. They need to answer to their board and their shareholders. So a top executive who wants to show that he's done great so that he can get this but fat bonus cannot wait for 10 years.
00:40:56
Speaker
Nor is he going to invest for 10 years from now. He's going to invest for what gives him the best result in quarter from now, two quarters from now. That's another big challenge. Well, we could do a whole episode on just the way insurance is. Yeah, the complexities of the system. It's a very, very complex system.
00:41:15
Speaker
And then on the top of that, the federal government comes in and and basically cuts Medicaid, which is going to do further damage to the rural areas because all the rural area hospitals who heavily are dependent on on Medicaid not going to go bankrupt.
00:41:28
Speaker
So it's going to be less health facilities in rural areas for average people. Well. We're working on it over here. but I know you guys are. I know. And I know how but how valuable that issue comes to me. But really, John, it's a very complicated system. It's a shame because it's the best health system in the whole world.
00:41:50
Speaker
And yet it's very inefficiently run. Yeah. Yeah. If you're if you're acutely ill and you need to be resuscitated or have an emergency surgery, you want to be in the United States. But if you if you want to have long term health, don't the United States is not the place to be. Absolutely.
00:42:05
Speaker
Absolutely. my My last question is, you know, you mentioned how a lot of older people struggle to have like, you know, meaning and purpose in their lives and how that row wellness village could kind of provide some of that meaning and purpose for them into their old age, help them age better. i think you could also say the same thing about a lot of young adults, right? 18 to 29 that ah ah COVID even, you know, accentuated that more, but that, you know,
00:42:31
Speaker
Like you said, young young students are are getting into debt. They're going into careers they really don't find necessarily meaningful. And and and you see a lot of them, a lot of young adults struggling. So how how ah can you at Rowan, you know, create the space and environment so that they can find that meaning and purpose as well?
00:42:47
Speaker
I think the best way for me that what I truly believe in my heart, that higher education in this country has to become practically oriented. and far more close to the people who use the result of our, a product of our higher education, graduates.
00:43:03
Speaker
And that is really, that that lack of fit, who we produce are not who they want, is causes also some unemployment or underemployment. I'll give you an example. Think about the major in humanities or social sciences that has a thousand graduates in a state, and the state only needs hundreds of them.
00:43:26
Speaker
100 of them, okay? What are you gonna with the 900 remaining? Why? Because a faculty thought that in order for me to have a bigger department my and bigger students and bigger budget, I'd like to have lots of students in here.
00:43:41
Speaker
What would happen after them is their problem, their issue. That shouldn't be the case. We need to produce people for the needs of the society. You just talked about that. Primary care physicians for rural areas so that everybody gets the best education, best healthcare, right?
00:43:58
Speaker
For exactly the same thing. If I want, if the country needs 1,000 mechanical engineers and I'm producing 500, then I'm short by 500. That means 500 jobs that require mechanical engineering are not going to happen.
00:44:13
Speaker
And the reverse is also true. that extra capacity is going to be underutilized. So somebody goes into a restaurant and serves people for $20 an hour.
00:44:25
Speaker
Now you don't go to a school and spend a lot of money and create a lot of debt in order to make $20 in a restaurant that has nothing to do with your major. So, and now with the age of AI and all these things that are happening right now, these issues become even more, far more acute.
00:44:41
Speaker
Everybody needs to be current with the new new technology, new knowledge, be acquainted with AI, irrespective of your major and everything else, and understand how to function in today's fast economy.
00:44:53
Speaker
Because yesterday is gone. Way gone. But you find that...
00:45:02
Speaker
So essentially what you're getting at, though, is more more practical ah you know training to serve society, and that will down the road to more meaning and purpose for young folks. Hands-on education.
00:45:13
Speaker
That should be the way. Trade schools. That's really, a lot of Americans, instead of going to four-year school, they've got to go to trade school. The country needs them. They get better salaries, a far more dignified job, and it's much more needed.
00:45:27
Speaker
Go and be an electrician. You make a six-figure salary immediately. There's no way you can make a 60-year salary without a graduate degree. Yeah, no, i I hear I think i definitely all sorts of more practical job opportunities for for young folks would, I think, go a long way to to just just just feeling like the fruits of your labor are are are really ah you know valued. so Practical education is the way to go. Americans are very, very bright, very ingenious, and very inquisitive. What they need to see, they need to see the result of this thing. I mean, everybody, we all learn when we when we practice things.
00:46:06
Speaker
That's why the schools that are co-op schools that are very good. That's why medical schools send people to rotation. Why do they do that? Because they want to see you in practice. They are not going to send you in front of a patient unless they know that you already practiced enough.
00:46:22
Speaker
With that, it's time for a lightning round, which is a series of rapid fire questions that tell us more about you. I know you have your own line of of hot sauce. i I bought some of it for my brother for Christmas. I think he really likes it. So what's your favorite hot sauce?
00:46:35
Speaker
My own is the Nasty. nasty The Nasty? The Nasty, the middle one. yeah The middle one that is with habaneros. The one with Carolina Reaper is very painful.
00:46:47
Speaker
I know you studied at the University of Michigan just like me. What's your favorite memory from Ann Arbor?
00:46:54
Speaker
Oh, so many, man. Just being in a big house and watching Michigan beat to Notre Dame on Ohio State. That's the greatest feeling. ah What's your ah go-to items at Wawa?
00:47:08
Speaker
oh Milk. Milk? I don't go to Wawa very often. Don't go to Wawa? Oh, man. Unless my wife sent me to go for a quick You know, a bottle of milk. white What's your favorite weekend activity in South Jersey?
00:47:24
Speaker
Going to my farm and dealing with those beautiful fish that I have, as well as, you know, growing vegetables and giving to people. Love it. And lastly, what's one change you'd like to see in health care?
00:47:37
Speaker
That everybody will have access to amazing American physicians. All right, Dr. Ali Houshman, thanks so much for joining the show. My pleasure.
00:47:47
Speaker
Have the best day, my friend. Thank you.
00:48:00
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Wound Dresser. Until next time, I'm your host, John Neary. Be well.