Oh my goodness, did you see Rihanna's latest look with that string going across that pregnant belly. Yes, she is putting out looks that I wouldn't dare to and she's doing it with a plus one in her belly. Yes, she is definitely that girl, that girl. You know, it feels only right that when our good friend Rihanna goes through the changes, that we go through them right beside her. Yes, I'm having sympathy pains, are you. Yes, I've been eating a lot more, you know, feel like I'm eating for
two or maybe I'm just greedy. Who knows it could be. I'm not gonna say with one. I'm not gonna say what I think. Our age group we kind of grew up with Rihanna, so it feels like a family affair. So talking about all the motions that she's going through it feels therapeutic for us all. And so it's only right that we jump into what her new future will look like and what it looks like right now in the landscape of maternal health. I'm TT and I'm Zakiyah
and from Spotify. This is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dosa friendship. Now, we've already talked about our friend Rihanna, but we also want to remember that Mother's Day is right around the corner, so it's only fitting that we're talking all about maternal health this week. That's right. We specifically wanted to know about the current status of our maternal health care system, whether it's working, and what
we can do to better support birthing parents. And because this is such a huge topic, we're going to have another episode next week, a Part two, to dig in even deeper into maternal health. Let's get into the recitation. So what do we know? Well, I know we already talked about reproductive health, and maternal health is kind of related to reproductive health, but a little bit different. The things that started coming up in that episode that we did on reproductive health is now coming to life on
Monday of this week. So May second, it was leaked that Row versus Wade might be or probably is going to be overturned, which in my mind, I think I said this in the Reproductive Health episode. I just don't it feels like we are taking such large steps backwards, you know, even the fact that that was a draft opinion that uh doesn't feel good. It does not feel good. And hopefully we'll be able to update all of you
all as more information comes out. I think we also know that having children is a long term commitment and it is very expensive, and so having the right resources in place is very important. And I also know that having children not only is expensive and a long term commitment, it's risky. Yeah, there are so many things that come along with it. And as more of my friends are having kids, I'm like, that's a risk, that's something that could happen. It's wild, honestly. And I guess that gets
into what do we want to know? And I want to know why after all this time? You know, people have been having babies forever. Yes, I know we say since the beginning of time as just like a phrase or turn phrase, but literally, since the beginning of time, people have been having babies. And so I want to know why we're still having all of these issues with maternal health care and not just blanket issues. So it's blanket risky, but then within that risk disparities whereas riskier
for certain groups? Right? Why? Yes? And then I want to know about the stuff that is not making front page news or is not you know, associated with some of these really big names celebrities, that has happened to them. I want to know about some of the stuff that you might not know about. Yeah, day to day swept under the rug. Absolutely, and then once we understand that TT then what if we know all this stuff, what's next? What can we do? I want to know what the
future of maternal health looks like. Fuja. All right, let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab is Simone Tate.
I'm Simone Tate. I'm the founder and CEO of poppy Seed Health.
Poppy Seed Health is a telehealth app that connects birthing people to duelas midwives or nurses for one on one support. And the fact that an organization like poppy Seed Health exists already points to some gaps in our maternal health care system, you know, absolutely. So the first thing that we asked Simone was to help us understand maternal healthcare in the United States right now? Where do we stand?
Maternal healthcare in the US is what I like to call perfectly antiquated. We haven't evolved in the same ways as some of the other developed countries we are still addressing, especially populations that are underserved in a lot of the same ways that we were doing twenty thirty and forty years ago.
So basically, it's still the game of Thrones if you're on the maternal healthcare journey. I wish I knew a game of Thrones reference shame. That's the one that I think of all the time. Shame on the healthcare system.
For being like that what we see happening in maternal healthcare today as it leads to the rise in maternal mortality and morbidity cases, especially for women that look just like us, right, black and brown women in the US, and in near misses, which means that you might have complications or something that's literally a near miss that could be fatal.
In a lot of ways, morbidity and mortality are often grouped together. Morbidity refers to health issues, and when we say maternal morbidity, we're referring to health issues due to pregnancy you're giving birth, whereas mortality is death and that's death from health issues during pregnancy or given birth, or within six weeks after a pregnancy ends. The US spends the most money on maternal health in the world, but has one of the highest mortality rates among developed countries.
According to the CDC, each year, around seven hundred birthing people die from pregnancy or birth complications, and that risk is three to four times more likely for black women. So we ask simone to break down what is included in maternal health.
As soon as you go to see your doctor, which is typically somewhere between eight to nine weeks pregnant, you are then in the maternal healthcare system in the US, and that doesn't matter who you are right where you are on the spectrum of health insurance, commercial health insurance, or medicaid. As soon as you're identified in the system, there is a maternal healthcare journey that you are immediately put on.
For most people, this looks like twenty minute monthly appointments with your OBGYN.
That might include having a sonogram. There's some major milestone tests that you're also getting along the way. One of the big ones that most people know of is the anatomy scan, when they scan and measure the entire baby. There's your gestational diabetes test, which is another big milestone, and then there's labor and delivery. Once you have that baby, you are effectively out of the maternal healthcare system.
It happens really fast. The federal requirement for insurance coverage after the delivery of a baby is only sixty days, so that's a really short window to get your things together and to have appointments. You know. Yeah, And on average the points are to minutes twenty minutes over ten months. It's only two hundred minutes worth of time eyeball to eyeball with a doctor. And that's if it's eyeball to eyeball, girl. Hello, If it's eyeball to eyeball, that would make me very nervous.
That doesn't seem like enough time, especially considering all the changes that are happening to your body. And now it's a whole new person here too, exactly, like who go look out for this thing? They just got here.
Once you have the baby, the entire thing shifts and you have follow up appointments for your baby. But the birthing person typically is only going to see their doctor at that fateful six week mark when you get to find out if you can have sex again or not. That's what most people know that appointment for. And then you're back into your normal health care.
I think I would have a lot of follow up questions. Yes, I would want that doctor to move in with me, And I think that's what Simone is advocating for. Holistic care, a doctor or provider to look after your body and mind considering the major event that just took place. Yes, birth pushing a whole body out of your body.
Yes, the maternal health care system is really focused on the baby. We want to focus on both the baby and the person. So your emotional mental health support, which is healthcare, is just as important as your physical care. And also having the kind of evidence based information and knowledge that helps you to understand what's actually happening with your body as you go through one of life's biggest milestones. That's a cultural shift that's going to take time, and.
These opportunities for birthing people to get that emotional mental health and support should happen throughout a pregnancy, not just during the twenty minute appointments with their doctor. It's also important to have continued support after birth too.
That first year of postpartum is so critical. For example, if you look at the Nordic countries or even the UK, you get sent home from the hospital after having a baby, and within just a day or two, a nurse or a doula shows up on your doorstep and they are with you for the first four to six weeks, sometimes eight weeks after you have the baby, just showing up taking care of you and also taking care of the baby.
So there are so many points that we can improve on for the whole person for the best of health outcomes.
We've been talking about what maternal health can look like if everything goes right with pregnancy and birth birth and people are looking at ten monthly appointments, a six week follow up, and then they're pretty quickly back into their regular health care. But we know healthcare access and quality are not equal for all people in this country. According to Simone, there are three main bottlenecks when it comes to accessing care within the maternal health care system.
So the first one is when we think about showing up to appointments. That means that you are able to leave your job, take the time off. If you have other children, you're able to get child's care. It also means that you have a car or transportation, and I'm talking about these twenty minute appointments. But let's be honest, we show up to the doctor's office and we're usually there for way more than twenty minutes.
If you think about taking two hours out of your day every month for ten months, that's around twenty hours. That's a lot of time spent not working. Not everyone's allowed to do that. Not everyone is allowed to do that, and even if they're allowed, not everyone can afford to do that, exactly because time off is money lost. So then we have to ask what are the outcomes for a birthing person who's unable to attend those monthly appointments exactly.
And this relates to the second bottleneck in our current maternal health care system, the lack of remote care options.
Our infrastructure and maternal health care is not set up for both the digital space and the in person space. I take a strong stance that holistic care and a new care model is both in person and not in person to make sure that people are taken care of wherever they are.
So we've seen COVID increase access to telehealth right, but that's a double edged sword because there are still these disparities that exist. For example, who has a computer right and who feels like they're able to connect with their doctor. So on one hand, it may be beneficial to have some appointments over telehealth. On the other hand, it may
be beneficial to have them in person. And so I think that's why Simona is suggesting a blended model absolutely, because there are some things that are lost through, you know, FaceTime.
We know that just from our social interactions with people, yes, and sometimes just being able to be like physically in person, looking your doctor in the eye gives you a certain level of comfort in your ability to explain what's going on with you and the service that you may require from them, And that leads us right to the third point. Simon says, the third bottleneck is maternal health care deserts.
That means someone lives ninety miles or more from their closest healthcare provider or hospital.
If you live in an urban area or major city in the US, we're all in bubbles. It's hard to imagine that your home is that far away from a hospital or your closest provider. So this is rural America. It's also the majority of where people are living that need paternal health care. We also are seeing a decrease in obgyns in these areas and also in doctors who go through med school and decide to become obgyns.
This is all really interesting, but one thing that jumped out to me is the obgyn shortage. Why is there a shortage? It seems like there's a lot of factors. It's a supply and demand kind of thing. You know. Interestingly, when we look at our population over time, the number of women over eighteen has really increased, but the number of positions when we think about obgyn training, so first year residency positions, is not growing at the same scale.
So you're having fewer obgyns even able to push through the training, and then you have more women who need to be served. That's just the baseline, the basic layer. The other part is when we consider we have aging populations that are retiring, and additionally, when you look at surgical residencies, obgyns are not getting paid a lot. And you know the other part is that they want to live in urban areas too, So then this doesn't help that shortage that we see in rural areas. Most of
the training is in urban areas. Like when you think about where med schools are right and where major hospitals are I think I saw something that said people are likely to stay in the same place where they did their residencies.
So these maternal healthcare deserts are becoming a major concern in the US. And just to put that in perspective for you, that affects about seven million birthing people in the US.
That's wild. Ninety miles is the lower limit. Twelve miles in DC is forty five minutes, truly, and you could speak on Atlanta. Oh, I know that traffic is wild.
Man.
They're doing crash cars on the highway right, They're doing monster trucks. And so even if you think about how long is it going to take? Is there public transit? What I feel safe getting in like a car service, you know, like Luber or Lyft? Can I afford to do that? There are so many compounding factors. Absolutely. I recently saw a TikTok of a woman who was pregnant and she was trying to get to a doctor's office.
She doesn't have a car, and to use public transportation it would probably take her half of a day a workday, so like four hours just to get to the doctors. And so she was saying that she kept asking friends for help, and every time they would say yes, and then it would eventually fall through. So she had already missed two two months of appointments, and she was very nervous that this would negatively impact her health and the
health of her baby. And when you think about stories like that, Simone is basically telling us that this is not just a one off. This is happening to millions of Americans that are pregnant. And this really makes me start thinking about how all these bottlenecks can then be further exacerbated or directly linked to socioeconomic status. Absolutely, if gas prices are up and your doctor is ninety miles away or more, maybe that's adding up. It now costs way more to get to the doctor.
Furthermore, fifty percent of the birthing population in the US are on Medicaid, which means they don't have equal and equitable access to the best care.
This is a really important point that Simone is making, and we are going to do an even deeper dive into Medicaid and access to equitable care in next week's episode in our part two. Okay, so back to the population on Medicare.
So for that population specifically, those folks aren't even showing up into the maternal health care system until they're somewhere between twenty to twenty three weeks pregnant, so almost half or more than half of your pregnancy without prenatal care definitely affects health outcomes. But we need to stop blaming and shaming the person and look at the systems and the infrastructure that are lacking to begin with.
Those are a lot of cars to have stacked up against you. Yeah, that seems like more than just one deck. It seems like a few decks of cards stacked against you. Blackjack six dicks, mm hmm. We wanted to learn more about some of the disparities in maternal health and why black and brown communities face more challenges in receiving care.
So the CDC was not reporting on maternal health care outcomes for a decade, and when they did report on maternal healthcare outcomes and morbidity rates in the US, it showed that black and brown women are three to five times more likely in some parts of our country who have died from preventable deaths. That means that there were medical interventions that happened that escalated and resulted in a
preventable death. The other side of that is that there were no medical interventions that happened and resulted in preventable deaths.
Things can go bad if people get involved, and then things can go bad if they don't. Right, It's a scary situation to be in because you see two doors and there might be some bad behind both.
Yeah, not only was it shocking, but it was truly unexpected. And that is because when we look at how our neighboring countries are doing, we see that maternal mortality rates are really low or non existent.
So my question is why is this happening in the United States. Simon told us that the US pours the most money in the world into the maternal healthcare system. Clearly something isn't working.
And as we know in our maternal healthcare system, in our healthcare system as a whole, the deep, deep racial bias that exists.
There are these myths when it comes to black people and birth right about black women being able to withstand a lot of pain, or that all black people are all medicaid, and we know Medicaid isn't giving equal and equitable care, and we'll talk about that more next week. But I think all of that stuff just distracts us from these disparate health outcomes that black and brown people are experiencing in the healthcare system.
And historically speaking, we also know that black women were used for experiments. We know that black women, pregnant black women's specifically were used in the medical industry to create all sorts of life saving surgeries. Yet these same things aren't being used today to save our lives.
We've talked about racism and medicine on the show before, and so you got to understand that obstetrics and gynecology are no exception. Take us back intom TT. James Marion Simms, who's been called the father of modern gynecology, performed experiments on enslaved black women without anesthesia in the eighteen forties until the procedures were safe enough for white women. Later, he became the president of the American Medical Association in the American Gynecological Society.
I want to relate this to this narrative that I would love us to smash. We are not stronger than every other woman out there. We absolutely feel pain, we know pain and were reporting pain. We need that to be taken seriously and currently because of racial bias, we know that Black women are not getting the kind of pain control or the kind of attention what we say that we are in discomfort, So being disregarded in that
way can be fatal. There's a higher rate of pre eclampsia that happens for Black women.
Preclamsia is a pregnancy complication that usually occurs during the second half of pregnancy, after twenty weeks. If left untreated, it can be fatal for the birthing parent and baby, so it needs to be carefully monitored and managed until delivery. The most common symptoms are high blood pressure and excess of protein in your urine. Some people also experience headaches, dizziness, nausea, and blurred vision.
If there are any symptoms that you feel that just don't feel great, you're swelling or bloating, or something that's very out of the norm for you, make sure that you're calling your doctor immediately, but keep a pulse, keep a check on your own body, and make sure that you know that you're not the only person responsible for your health, but that you have places and partners and that kind of network that can really support you.
And thinking about what Simone just said, it really ties back to those bottlenecks we talked about earlier, and if we think about do you have social support, do you have somebody else that's responsible for your health or is it just you? Right? Do people believe you when you say things? Are you able to get to a doctor to address all of these concerns? I mean, because so many changes are happening, how do you know if it's a normal change that comes with pregnancy or a life
threatening change? And twenty minutes once a month is not a lot. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk about what we can do to support birthing people, maternal health policy, in the future of maternal health care. We're back. We've been talking with Simon Tate about maternal health and some of the challenges facing birthing people in
the US. Next week, we're continuing this conversation because this is such a big topic, and we're going to be focusing on the historical and political context to help us understand these disparities more. All right, so let's get back to the lab. Let's talk about maternal health in a post birth context. We know that there's a six week check up after birth, but what other resources are necessary for birthing.
And the weeks and months after that, there's not really anyone checking in on you, which is why it's so important to consider having a duela, making sure that you're leaning into your support network. I oftentimes suggest to never bring flowers. If you're going to visit someone who's just had a baby, please lend a hand. That could be baby sitting the other kiddos, or cooking a delicious, nutritious meal, or doing a load of laundry. Don't make the whole
thing about the baby. Don't make the whole thing about the bump. Ask them how are they doing, and really mean it and really listen, because that's so important to show up for that person.
This is such a great point because you know, the baby's cute. We're all inside of the baby's heare. We want to see it, and you know, be vaccinated before you visit the baby, of course, to create that cocoon of health and safety. But someone just went through a
very traumatic experience, not in that oh they're traumatized. Some are, but I mean your body, their bodies are going through so so much, and some people can't really walk well, they can't move around, they can't bend down, they're in a lot of pain, they're uncomfort so lending a hand is definitely better than bringing in those flowers that are gonna die in two days.
And the other thing that I want us to consider here is what happens, what is actually happening to your body. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a medical professional, but I can tell you as a jewel of myself though hormones are all over the place after you have a baby, and you cannot control what's happening between your brain and your body.
As soon as the baby and the placenta are delivered, progesterone and estrogen decrease. So you might remember those from Lab forty one on birth control. Yep, oxytocin surge is immediately following birth to compensate for those drops in progesterone and estrogen. And so this is what's responsible for what's known as like the strong mothering instinct. How they've lifted those cars. Yes, or maybe that's adrenaline. That's adrenaline, but
will allow it, will allow it. But then and you still have to consider that oxytocin working itself out of the system, and so then you're still going to get some of those baby blues in those first few days postpartum, And that's just those three hormones. We're not even talking about breast milk production and the hormones involved in that. We're not even talking about the physical pain as your body tries to heal me are even talking about your immune system. Right, all your organs got to get back
to the right location. Baby they lost in there no math Cupid shirt on trying to find the right, to the left, to the left, to the now kick. Then it could take months for hormones to settle to pre birth levels, and that can have a lot of big effects on your mental health. According to the CDC, about one in eight women experienced symptoms of postpartum depression, and
really that number could be hired earlier. We learned that many people just have that one six week follow up after birth, So you might not even have captured it, honestly, because what if your issues with postpartum depression happen at seven weeks or eight weeks, you're not a part of that study.
After having the baby, it's sometimes really hard to focus on yourself and how you're feeling. And one of the things that's so important to focus on is your mental health. I know it sounds crazy to try and fit that in in between perhaps sleepless nights and a million feedings a day, but it is important for you to know when you have postpartum mood disorder or the kinds of feelings that don't feel safe for you or the baby. Those can be very lonely and isolating in dark days
for people. We also know that that is the number one reason why people who've just had babies have thoughts of suicide, are harming themselves. So getting this kind of help is really important, and even if you don't realize it for yourself in the moment, it's important that your partner does, your support system whoever is around you.
That's if somebody is around you. There are a lot of assumptions about what birthing looks like, right. We see it on television, and it don't always look like that right. Sometimes you give birth in you are with a person who is abusive. Sometimes it's just you. Sometimes it's just you and you're not able to do the necessary things to check in with yourself because you never have time off.
I've never had a child, but it looks time consuming and so that becomes the question, how do we consider all of these different context in which birthing happens, in all of these needs that can look different for different people. What type of public health interventions are in place to address these issues.
Let's talk about the Black Maternal Health Caucus and the Black Maternal Health Momnibus, which is a historical legislation. It was originally led by our now Vice President Kamala Harris. We work very closely with Rep. Lauren Underwood's office on this.
But the reason why this is so historic is because the Momnibus has legislation in it very specifically to increase funding around getting doulas in to our communities, our hospitals, our healthcare networks, to support black and brown birthing people across our country. This is really important in bridging the gap in the everyday lives of pregnant and postpartum people. Dulas are your emotional and well being best friend that
you never knew that you needed. I became a dula myself when I was thinking about launching poppy Seed Health, and it's work that you're called to, but it's also really emotional and physical work. For example, my shortest birth was twenty seven hours that's not something that people can do every single day, and folks don't really realize that, plus all the prenatal appointments and all the things that you're doing with your clients.
When you have a doula, there's a sixty five percent decrease in interventions that happen when you're going into labor and delivery. But I mean, is a doula covered? You know? Is that right something that's accessible for everyone. I don't know if that's on the healthcare plan, they don't talk about it. If it is. Air Kabadu is a doula, I bet she's expensive. I'll put in a special request.
For a very very long time, the narrative has been that only wealthy women, which dulas are not covered by insurance, that can pay somewhere between fifteen hundred to sometimes upwards of four to five thousand dollars out of pocket to have a doula. The great thing about everyone paying attention to doulas now is that at the state level, it's very exciting to see so for example, in New York City, Mayor Adams just announced that we will be rolling out
a DULA pilot, which I'm very excited about. To help about five hundred families in this pilot for every single one of them to have dulas and very specifically for those dulas to be making a livable wage.
So then you know, this sounds great, but are there similar programs in other cities.
One of the other pieces of legislation that was actually passed in twenty twenty one was for veteran mothers to be able to support them through their pregnancies. The Momnibus is so historic because for the first time at the federal level, we are focusing on solving for bringing those preventable mortality rates from where they today down to zero.
Protective moms who served act as the Veteran Mother's Act. She just reference and that passed the Senate with unanimous consent and then the House with four fourteen to nine. And the cool thing about this bill is that it gives a fifteen million dollar investment from the VA to improve maternal health care for birthing veterans and that includes
parenting classes, nutrition counseling, and breastfeeding support. It will commission a first ever comprehensive report on maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity among pregnative postpartum vets, and those are things that we have no clue about, and it will additionally focus on racial and ethnic disparities in the outcomes for those vets too.
The other thing is that for the first time, VP Harris actually had the very first historic Maternal Health Care Day at the White House, and they focused on the BMNI bus. They also focused on some of these pieces of legislation. But it is an open national and public conversation about improving maternal health care in our country, especially for underserved populations.
This feels like the right trend. Rihanna has turned our eye to maternal health. I mean, maybe for some people it wasn't Rihanna. For some people, it was VP Harris's policy and some of the other policies that are going through. And we're just coming off Black Maternal Health Week, which
was mid April. I mean, I'm excited. The possibilities feel limitless. Yes, Black Maternal Health Week takes place every year from April eleventh to April seventeenth, and it was officially recognized by the White House on April thirteenth of twenty twenty one.
And so I'm excited about what's happening at the national level policy takes time, but it also takes politics, and that doesn't always mean that things get solved for immediately. And for that reason, it is just as important that the everyday person has the reason versus in their community to be able to have the best possible health outcomes.
With all that we know now about the maternal health care system, some of the disparities that are there, we act Amone to share her perfect world for maternal health care and her visions for the future.
I take a bold stance and that maternal health care in our country needs to be equitable and accessible for every single birthing person, no matter what their socioeconomic background is, no matter how they identify, no matter where they live in our country, and so it doesn't matter if you're a Medicaid or you have commercial insurance. Everyone should be able to get the same exact care. And that new way forward includes both in person and also virtual care.
So hybrid health is not only good for the birthing person, but it's great for the entire family. We have to consider what telehealth looks like in a really innovative way to be able to support people exactly where they are in the journey it's important to me that the future of maternal healthcare for the person feels like they have almost no questions about the kind of support, and they have no questions about the safety and the trust, and that is so important for someone who is going through
life's biggest moments in their pregnancy, as a first time parent, as a partner, and as families.
I think all of these things are so important for understanding all the different ways that we need to serve folks who are giving birth, from pregnancy to the birthing
experience even after it. And it's really incredible what Simone has been doing to make a change in the system, absolutely because I mean, I think we see a trend in a lot of the labs that we done in the past is that the policy isn't in place for a lot of reasons, and one of the major reasons being that politicians historically have been white and male, and we know that they don't care about stuff that don't
affect them directly. And so now that we're seeing this increased focus on maternal health care and bettering the maternal health care space, I think it's really great that you know, everyone's voice is heard, black and brown, folks are also given a microphone to say the issues that they have, people that are living in rural areas, people of lower income.
Everybody needs to have the opportunity to say their lived experience so that we can make this world a better place for everyone that is bringing another life into this world. All right, it's time for one thing tt I want to hear from you. What's your one thing this week? My one thing this week is a movie and it's called Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. I saw it last week mm hmm, and it is phenomenal. It is such a good movie. It has such a good story, and
there was so much thought put into it. It kind of lends itself to a little bit of science where it kind of references the many World's theorem that some people subscribe to, and that's the idea that there's an infinite amount of worlds and an infinite amount of like use that there are just based off of little minute differences in your life, so like depending on you know, if you put on a certain shirt a versus another shirt, it changes the trajectory of your life, and that, you know,
creates a different world that becomes. But every iteration in between also exists, and it is just such a beautiful story and it's so well done, and it really had me hooked this movie. It felt like I was inside of it, mm like you were invested in the storyline, very invested, and then also just like engulfed by the production. It's so good. It's just really really good in The
story is good, and so I really enjoyed it. I don't watch movies more than once, but I feel like I would watch this movie multiple times because it was just so well done. Give them all the awards they deserve it. I'll have to check it out. That's it for Lab sixty two, where you just as shocked as me about some of these things we learned about our maternal healthcare system. Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought, or give us an idea for a lab
we could do this semester. We really like hearing from you. That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight, And don't forget that there is so much more to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat sheet for today's lab, additional links and resources in the show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter check it out at Dope Labs podcast dot com. Special thanks to
today's guest expert, Simon Tape. You can find and follow her on Twitter at Simone Tate That's s I M M O N E T A I T T and learn more about her work at Poppyseed Help. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at dough Blabs podcast. T T's on Twitter and Instagram at d R Underscore T s h O. And you can find Zakiya at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owned Media Group. Our producers are Jenny Radlett Mask and Lydia Smith of Wave Runner Studios. Our associate
producer from Mega Oh Media is Brianna Garrett. Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak, mixing by Hannes Brown. Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugier from Spotify, Executive producer Corin Gilliard and creative producer Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Borison, yasmine A, Fifi Kamu, Elolia, Till krat Key and Brian Marquis Executive producers from mega Own Media Group r us t T Show, Dia and Zakiah Wattley.