EP49 | Creating Care Beyond the System with Dr. Jubril Oyeyemi

If you work in healthcare, you already know this. Conflict is everywhere. In the OR, in labor and delivery, in committee meetings, between physicians, nurses, administrators, and teams that are all trying to do the right thing.

But here's the problem.

Most of us were never trained to handle conflict well. We learned procedures, we learned Diagnostics, but we didn't learn how to navigate the moments when 2 professionals strongly disagree. That's why I developed the SPARK framework. SPARK stands for stop, pause, ask, don't assume, reflect and respond, and create a path forward. It's practical system designed specifically for high-stakes healthcare environments. Through keynote talks, residency workshops, and Spark Masterclasses, I teach physicians, nurses, and healthcare teams how to turn destructive conflict into productive conversations that strengthen teams and improve care. If your hospital, residency program, or medical conference is looking for a speaker on conflict communication and leadership in healthcare, I'd love to work with you. You can learn more in the show notes because in medicine, conflict is inevitable, but handled well, it can make teams stronger.

In every operating room, in every ward, in every clinic, and every team meeting, a silent battle brews. Conflict, negotiation, identity. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast, where I, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, Explore the hidden negotiations beyond modern medicine. Let's trade burnout for boundaries and learn the art of healing with precision and power.

Hello, my peaceful warriors, and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst. Now I'm going to ask you a question. You've been practicing, you've been working in healthcare, and you You've seen them come into your emergency room. You've seen them come into your clinic. They need you. They need care, but they have no idea how to access it, how to pay for it, and how we can actually work to provide resources for them to receive what they so desperately need. And our guest today on the Scalpel and Sword podcast is going to help us explore this very topic.

Hi, everyone.

I am so excited to have on the show today, Dr. Jabril Oyeyemi. He is an award-winning primary care physician who practices full-time medicine in Camden, New Jersey. He is on staff at Virtua Health, and he serves on various committees, including bioethics, quality, patient safety, and continuity of care for complex care patients. He is so passionate about healthcare access that he founded the Cherry Hill Free Clinic in 2017. Which is a nonprofit primary care center dedicated to serving the uninsured and underinsured free of charge. The clinic is staffed by a diverse team of passionate volunteers and generously supported by local community organizations and health systems. In just 8 years, the Cherry Hill Free Clinic has grown to serve thousands of patients, becoming one of New Jersey's largest free centers of care. Dr. Oyeyemi did his undergraduate degree in bachelor's in biology at Lincoln University, and he got his medical degree at Penn State. He did his residency at Jefferson Health, finishing there in 2012. He is also a member of the initial cohort of the Physicians Foundation Leadership Institute, which started in September of 2025 and is teaching health policy, is teaching about development of business ideas and concept models. And I was very fortunate to meet Jabril and have him sitting next to me at our initial cohort for PFLI. So Jabril, welcome to the show.

Thank you so, so much, Lee. It's a tremendous opportunity to get to just rub minds and share some of my work with you.

When we first met and we started talking and really getting into knowing each other, because I think This is one of the things we realized very quickly that this group that we were involved with, this is a very exceptional group of doctors. And I think one of the things I felt coming out of that first interaction with everyone is I had such hope for what medicine could become. And I think a big part of that for me, because we were sitting next to each other for that entire cohort, is I really got to hear your passion, your intentionality about what you've done with Cherry Hill. But there had to have been a starting point. There had to have been something that just clicked in you that said, I need to do this.

as a journey to embark on was that I got to see what a lot of just inaccess looked like. And now that said, there's a lot of amazing things about Nigeria, but my experience growing up was such that I saw what that inaccess was. And the height of that for me would've been sometime in my early teenage years, getting to experience my neighbor's daughter, who we loved and just adored and was just A spark. Just wake up one morning and she passed away. And yeah, you remember this, it stays with you. I remember this powerlessness of how could this have happened? Especially when we found out then that the reason she passed away was that she had gotten flu-like symptoms, got high fevers, and what I now know to be febrile seizures where she would've had, and that's what she passed away from.

Yeah.

At the time I didn't know it, but You look back now, you go, oh my God, just access to a doctor to recommend, bring the fevers down. Forget all the fancy stuff, just the recommendation to bring the fevers down might probably would've saved Esther's life. And so anyways, that moment would leave such a mark on me to go, you know what? I want to, I gotta pursue medicine so that there aren't Esthers in the world happening. And so anyways, fast forward, got outta high school, 16, came to the US right into college. I went sort of rapid fire, college, med school, residency, all straight through. And right after training, I joined a local health system here in South Jersey, one of the largest ones, as a hospitalist. And what's interesting about that choice itself is the unlikely part I spoke about earlier, internal medicine training. You get a lot of inpatient exposure, a lot of it, right? So you got really comfortable In the ICU, putting lines in, and just dealing with all these, like these extreme situations. But I did not care for primary care as the resident. In fact, I would've done anything to give away my primary care clinic as a resident. Because of all that exposure in residency, I went straight to become a hospitalist after joining the largest health system here in South Jersey. And as fate would have it, week in, week out, I'm admitting and discharging patients. And I would see about 5 to 10 cases of patient situations where, you know, whatever it is they were coming in for, when I dug deep to the source problem, it was always, I lost health insurance because life happened. And that life happening was usually in a form of divorce, loss of job, sick family member. Life happened.

Yeah.

Didn't have health insurance. Couldn't afford to see my doctor in some cases that I've had for years. And so I couldn't get refills of my $4 medicines. And because of that, now I've suffered a second heart attack, a second stroke. I've now lost 10, 15% of my ejection fraction. And it was just like week after week, I was just getting pummeled by these cases.

Yeah.

And I would say to myself like, oh man, I guess God wants something. I'm like, you know, cuz a lot of these folks I met, reminded me of like my own family members. Like they could have been my aunt, they could have been my next door neighbor, right? And I'm like, man, if I just met you 6 months ago when you were dealing with this loss of health insurance, I'd write you a year's worth of refills. It would take nothing from me to just give you a year's worth of your beta blocker, statin, you know, your diabetes medicines, right?

Right.

And so that would happen so much. And the straw that would break my back about that would be a 52-year-old retired school teacher I saw. In the ER, they come in with a second heart attack. Got down to the crux of the story, and it was there once again, that gut punch of life happens. She got really quiet during the interrogation, the history taking. She got really quiet with shame and stays with you. And she goes, yeah, I couldn't get my pills. I went through a divorce, you know, a couple months ago. I was sort of rationing my meds, couldn't afford my doctor's visit. And now I was like, this is it. We gotta do something. I'm like, I don't even care if we have to do something in a parking lot somewhere, but we gotta do something. And yeah, and there was how the Cherry Hill Free Clinic would come to be realized. But then that journey from 2017 until now, Lee, would be the matter of just when it launched, I said to myself, I was like, I don't care if I have to do the registering the patient, answering the calls, seeing them. Discharging them from the clinic, taking follow-up. I was like, I don't care if I gotta do all of that, but it's getting done, right? But—

Yeah.

I've been so blessed that along the journey, all these incredible angels have just shown up. They've shown up. And so I think it's one of the amazing things is to revive my hope on humanity, cuz these folks have shown up. And so such that I'm not having to do all of that. We are a team of about almost 200 people. We're making healthcare possible for our neighbors in New Jersey who can't afford health insurance.

Wow.

Oh my gosh. Okay. There's so much I want to talk about. So one of the first things that I think really jumps out as you're telling that story is that situation you're describing where you see people who didn't come in because they couldn't get their meds or because they didn't have the financial resources to do this for whatever reason. And very often it's not Situations of their own choosing. It's things that happened to them that they had no control over. And I think when those patients come into the ER or in their unit or however we encounter them, that if we don't dig deep enough to get an actual story, sometimes we're quick to assume that, oh, this patient's choosing to be non-compliant. This patient's choosing to do this. No, they're not choosing to do this. And I can't tell you how often it happens to me. Or I haven't seen a patient for 2 or 3 years. You know, they had an abnormal pap or they had something that definitely needed follow-up and we hadn't seen them. And then they come in 2 or 3 years later. This happened to me Friday that she came in and it was like, so I've not seen you for a while. She says, yeah, I lost my health insurance. And so I didn't come back in to get follow-up. And I'm like, we will always work with you. It does not matter what you can do. We will find a way. We will get you in and we will get this followed up. So I think first and foremost, you dug deeper.

Yeah.

On these stories for these patients. And digging deeper was really a big part of the impetus that encouraged you to take this step because you listened to their stories and then you actually went below the stories, you went into them. And for the patient, that's so powerful, right? Because you cared enough to do that. And I think it's really a great message for all of us as we're hearing these stories to take that one little bit of extra time to get deeper into that story. Because that was such a powerful motivation for you. But I think the other thing that's so cool about you starting Cherry Hill and having this now 200-strong group of people is that to do this, and you say it so beautifully, you have to be aligned in that mission to do this work.

That's right.

That all of you are very much in sync with your why. And that why is a big part, I think, of why Cherry Hill has grown so quickly is because you've been able to do that. In terms of having this really wonderful team and having this alignment, is that something that happened naturally or was that something that you felt like you encouraged or you had other people that encouraged where all of your team is very much in that same mindset?

Yeah, Dee, you make a great point with the start with the why. Because one of the things I've learned in this journey is that human beings are incredible. And I'll tell you, you know, there's so much to unpack there, but what I mean specifically in this case is that I have not met one doctor, no matter who you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what demographic you belong to, who's heard about the mission of the clinic and hasn't gone. I want to do that. I can't wait to do that. You know, what's often the struggle is capacity, right? Folks, you know, may be in a place where they don't have capacity, but they almost always say, I can't wait to get to do that. And that is such a motivator for me, but it also confirms something I know, which it's what a lot of us— it's why you'd spend all your decades, you know, just spend it all in pursuit of this one skill. And so I say that because There's a lot to go in the equation of the Cherry Hill Free Clinic to make it happen. But some of what powers that are those volunteer physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, PAs, non-clinical staff, right? Is that a lot of times these are folks choosing to come do this when there's literally 1,000 other things they could be doing. A Saturday, a Sunday, evening clinics, daytime on a day off, right, for an ear doc like this.

Right.

And so even in all of that, right? The why is crystal clear. And I don't often think about this, but one of my volunteers just yesterday was telling me, Tony, she said, the culture of this place. She was like, even just being in this place, like there's something about the culture of this place where there's a lot of graciousness. Like it's an arms-wide-open approach.

Right.

And that arms-wide-open approach ties into your first point about listening. Right? Because you listen differently when you're listening like this. Forget all the preconceived, forget all the assumptions. You know, there's a lot of assumptions that I've learned is just not true. Like one of them you mentioned, this premise that, you know, folks who are uninsured just are trying to spend their money on other things and they just don't want to buy health insurance. Absolutely not true. I've not found any else of that to have any footing because These are often folks, neighbors working multiple jobs, right? Caring for loved ones, caring for a special needs child, sometimes healthcare workers themselves, right? So, you know, that why of serving them is just like, no, like this could be me. This could be me at any point. This could be my mother, my sister, you name it.

Yeah.

And so when that why is clear, it just changes your mindset of being there. It changes your experience of the time you gave to care for that neighbor. And yeah, you walk away just feeling— the 13th century Persian poet Rumi said that when you practice loving kindness and compassion, you are the first one to benefit from that. I'll tell you a quick story. There's one of Modernology's volunteers. She runs a very busy neurology residency program at Penn, and she's got a young family. And so I was on the phone with her, but just tell me about your experience at the clinic. It's been a year. She goes, you know, life around me, she said, it's so busy that every time I sign up to volunteer at the clinic, I go, maybe this is the last time because again, it takes a lot. She's able to come on Saturdays only.

But she's like—

Right. Without fail, by the time she sees the first patient, is a reminder of this is the why, and I can't wait to do this again. I can't wait till my next shift almost. So it's just incredible. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. That's so beautiful that this idea that when the people are coming to Cherry Hill, when you're getting people to come and work and they're giving of their time and themselves, that they realize very quickly that the benefit that's being given is really the one who's serving, the one who's actually providing. That benefit in terms of how you feel and what you're gaining from that process, not just the fact of the experience that you're giving, but actually having that, like you said, the open arm listening, being able to connect with somebody in that way. And I also love how you put this, because I think this is one of the reasons why conflict kind of can blossom in terms of people working and doing the work that you're doing.

Yeah.

Is I think anytime you get into an us and them mentality. I think anytime you get into this idea that we are doing this and they are doing something different, but the concept of at any point in time, this could be one of us, that the circumstances that led these people to being underserved or uninsured, this could happen to anybody. And if you look at it as something that's a common experience, there's no more us and them. It's we. It's all of us. I am providing something that I can provide and I'm grateful that I can do it. I'm so grateful. Like your doctor, your neurologist that comes on Saturdays, she figures out with the first patient, I'm grateful to be the one that's here.

Correct. Correct.

And when people get into that headspace of gratitude and commonality, I think that's where you start to see conflict evaporate. I think you no longer see people arguing about resources or time or anything else. It is just one big pool of this is a common experience and I'm happy to be part of it. And you definitely have what you're describing. You cultivate that really well. And I also do love the fact that this person had worked there for a year and you were following up with her. You wanted to know what her experience was. And so that was important to you as a leader to actually hear what that experience was. So there's something also beautiful in the fact that you even have that story that you were able to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Before we started recording, one of the things that we talked about was as you were going through this process of starting Cherry Hill, you looked at pathways to avoid conflict and not in the sense of a conflict avoider. Like I freely admit that I am a recovering conflict avoider. You know, it's amazing to me that I actually do this work because I was a person for so many years that I would absolutely run from conflict because I didn't understand the power of it. I didn't understand that it actually had power to be transformative. But one of the things that you talked about before we started is that you actually looked for ways to start this clinic and to negotiate this process where you were anticipating conflict before it could occur. What did that look like for you when you were starting that process?

Yeah, so to delve into that, it was realizing really quickly that If the clinic is to serve the neighbors that we are here for, right? There were some dumb problems we needed to help them solve, right? So in the early days, what we'd solved really quickly was, well, put Dr. Jabril in the room with one of the neighbors we served, right? And they don't have to worry about the cost of seeing Dr. Jabril, right? What would've cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket for someone who doesn't have it, that part is zero, right?

Mm-hmm.

But then you realize very quickly, right? That's just one piece of the healthcare problem they got. They still got labs to figure out. Say Dr. Jubbal now decides that they need an ultrasound, an X-ray, maybe even a CAT scan or whatever advanced imaging, right? We're back to square one. In some cases, we saw neighbors who could not afford their critical medicines. So it's like, this was all for naught. See, again, the doctor's fee covered. It was often not. And so that got us to quickly realize the existential need for partners, right? Say what you will about the healthcare system is the healthcare system. This was our way of doing something for the neighbors we care about, but you still need portions of the healthcare system. You still need to put it together to make it work for Mr. Jenkins, who's now here, who's got heart failure. In his 40s and needs access to topical medicines, needs access to echo, needs access to all these things. And so realizing the need for those partnerships meant that we needed to approach conversations with those partners from a place of looking for, okay, all right, we've asked for this meeting, right, with healthcare system leaders, with radiology service line leaders, with the legal team of the healthcare system, right? There's this quote by Parveen Jee that drives this point home, right? And it goes, fight for things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. And what that does is it changes your mindset. Because even when you're fighting for something that's noble, right? You can't do it alone. You still need to pull folks along. You need that mission to become their mission. And the only way you do that is to do it from a place of openness, from a place of What are incentives that would work from a place of a common humanity, from a place of humility, right? Now, what's often not talked about is, you know, even when you've done all that, there's still patience and perseverance that needs to happen, right? Because just because you've done this, you know, you've got this great idea, you've got it started, doesn't mean it's gonna be taken quite seriously, like right away. Idea or fault, you know. In the theory of change, right? There are the early adopters and then there's folks that you've got to prove that, okay, this is actually working. And so we had to be patient enough to go through that phase where everyone in the community is going, no, this is happening. This is not some cutesy little project. This is like a full-blown operation. And then you get to pull people along. But anyways, I hope that answers that question.

Oh my gosh, absolutely. And One of the things I do love about this, because I think it speaks to so many things, the process of what you've done at Cherry Hill, but also the process of advocacy, is the idea that when you are in this fight and you are actively working on something that means a lot to you and is going to benefit a lot of people, that there has to be some type of alignment or agreement within that advocacy group. And that is how you take people with you on this journey. Is that you are very clear in your message. You're very authentic in your message. And that authenticity resonates with other people. And that is where you're going to get them to join you. And I also think like having talked to other people about advocacy on the show, that is where advocacy efforts can fall down. That you can have somebody who's got a really good idea. It's like, I've got a really great idea to start since it's going to help a lot of people. That's fantastic.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, if we're not really clear on that idea, or if for some reason we've got disagreement within this group, this advocacy is not going to go very far.

Right.

So one of the things that you definitely had to anticipate in starting Cherry Hill is how can I craft this message? How can I get buy-in from the community that's actually going to get people to agree with me and push this process forward and not create fighting within The group that I'm trying to work through. And so you were very wise in being able to craft that message. But I think this is just you, but I think you're very transparent and authentic with your motivation. And I think people can really see that. As you kind of got into this, and I think one of the things that's so great about you checking in with other doctors is that all clinical work is hard. All clinical work is challenging. All clinical work is prone to burnout and What you're doing at Cherry Hill is no different and certainly could make the argument that you're doing such important work within a population that needs you so desperately that burnout might even be a little higher in your 200-strong team at Cherry Hill. Is that something that you actively work on or try to also anticipate with your team?

There's an interesting paradox that I found actually in this work. And that is that healthcare leaders struggle with this when I make this point, but it's definitely been my lived experience, 9 years of running the clinic. And that story by that, which is just one of many, by the way, about my volunteer neurologist, right? I like that point, which is that in a health system where burnout is so in your face and it is such a crisis. It is interesting that for my 60-something providers, mostly physicians, it has been an antidote to burnout. Actually giving your time.

Wow.

Yeah.

Myself, I testify to that fact because there is something that is really hard to put to words about walking away knowing that you're in a space where You've made such an impact. And without your time that day, this person who is showing a lot of gratitude, who is just grateful for what you've done for them, that care would not have been possible. And I see it. I've done surveys at the clinic. I got surveys to show it. I hear it time and again, you know, when I brief our providers, especially the ones who do this work, like who are defiant with these schedules. Because— I'll give you an example. You know, we have a few orthopedic surgery volunteers right now, but our very first one, my beloved Dr. Laura Ross Adams, I was at dinner with her last week and I asked her, I said, listen, I said, Laura, you were in a practice, you were a solo doc running your own practice. So you're like in a busy practice of 20 staff, doing X amount of cases, seeing about 100 patients Monday through Friday. I'm like, you've got growing kids, a growing family, and then you show up here on Sundays. Like, it's awesome there, but I'm like, tell me why. Like, why are you doing this? Right? And she answered that question by sharing the story of one of the patients that she saw just that week at the free clinic, where she goes, well, this middle-aged woman works at a diner, a local diner. Right? Just washing dishes all day without healthcare. It's now reached the point where she's unable to use her hands. And so you can imagine all that downstream loss that's happened because her arms, which is her means of livelihood. Dr. Laura Ross sees her at the clinic, identifies that, oh, after, you know, being examined and doing her thing, that she's got really terrible carpal tunnel, lateral carpal tunnel.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, she tried injecting it at the clinic, didn't quite get a response. So guess what she does? She makes the case to a local ambulatory surgical center that does pro bono work for the clinic to say, hey, listen, we gotta take this case on. Gets her on the schedule, adds the case to her days of the week. But for her, she's going, I just helped this woman who would've otherwise— I mean, that might've been it as far as work goes, right? Because that median ear is getting just suffocated to a point of just weakness and incapacity. And so my answer to your question there is that there is this interesting thing we've found where Where actually giving of yourself for this cause is actually a reminder, a regrounding, an antidote to burnout. And I've made an argument on a large scale to health system leaders that we might wanna look at this here. You know, might wanna really seriously look at this because there is something that happens here that a lot of our physicians and clinicians are not getting in there, you know, within the health system, which is just a behemoth. There's so many things you can say about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful. And I think absolutely, and I hear you talk about this, when they come to Cherry Hill, they get regrounded. They are then much more anchored into their own personal why for showing up for these patients. And it is clarifying because you actually get it. This is why I started. This is why I went to medical school. This is why I'm here right now is because of this experience I'm having with this patient that I genuinely walk away, feel like I can help somebody. And I think unfortunately in their daily lives, other places, you are so mired in the obstacles and third-party payers and, you know, there's just so many things that can affect that. And the fact that they can come to Cherry Hill and have this very pure experience of practicing, and that very pure experience lights a fire in them. It's like, okay. I'm good. I have now been reminded of why I'm doing this, and now I can go back and I can actually fight another day in other parts of the system. And it's fascinating, right? Because I think so often we talk about burnout, we talk about treating burnout and the antidotes to burnout and all of those things that we kind of want to treat. And so rarely do we ever think about, well, practicing more medicine could actually reduce your burnout. And it's like, what?

Yeah.

That sounds very counterintuitive.

And yet it does.

Your experience at Cherry Hill Clinic is exactly the opposite, is that having this very beautiful experience of service is actually an antidote to burnout.

It is because that service with no strings attached, you know, and you know exactly what I mean by that. I spent the first decade of my career within a hospital, so I know why those strings are attached, but it denudes from the experience of service for which All of us endured all of this training. And so to be able to step away from that and come to a place where you're getting that in its most pristine and beautiful form, right? And so it's always interesting when I try to— and the reason I say I struggle finding words for it is that you think about how do you describe the sweetness of honey to someone? You could go, yeah, it's sweet, but it's not sugar, but it's sweet, but it's not all these other things. And how do you do that?

Yeah.

Here's a spoon of honey, right? You taste it, you go, oh, this is why it's called honey. You know, that's what I sort of liken volunteerism in medicine to is that, oh, this is something else. I came to this with the intention to do this and I'm able to do it in a way where that fits the ideals of why I went into this in the first place.

Yeah, 100%. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. So someone is listening to this podcast and they are inspired by what you have done to the point that they want to start something similar in their area. What one piece of advice would you give them before embarking on that process?

First, I would say start.

Okay.

A lot of times, and I say that because, I mean, you generally, these people who do Once you get all the facts ready and all that, which that certainly has its place, right? The needs assessment, the community, but we know the healthcare need is there. It's like, it doesn't matter what corner of the nation you're in, healthcare access is an issue, particularly for the uninsured in these times. So I say start because I know that your needs assessment is going to tell you, yes, there's a bunch of uninsured people suffering and rationing medicine and just Dealing with that. But then the second thing, which goes back to something we've touched on, is that you need to make friends. You need folks along the way. And so those 2 things, and then everything else, everything else you learn along, you learn so much along the way. It's incredibly rewarding journey. We actually have been thinking about codifying the secret sauce of life at the Terry Offutt Clinic, because part of being vested in this mission is not just for New Jersey here, it's to be able to do this for neighbors across the country. And so we've been thinking about how to do that because this is reproducible. This is impact. This is needed.

That's so brilliant. And I feel like that's such wisdom. It's so easy to overthink a process like this and create obstacles, not necessarily where there aren't any, because I think the process is very challenging. And I think you've done a beautiful job walking through it and asking other people to join you. But I think overthinking the process can be a detriment to starting any project. I definitely will testify to that as far as starting a podcast. You can think it and think it and think it. And really what you just need to do is turn on the microphone and go. And I think the same thing holds true for what you've done.

Exactly.

Is that at a certain point you can overthink to the point you talk yourself out of it. Don't do it. Just go. And then you see your first patient and just like your other physicians have experienced that first patient. Yeah, this is why I'm here. This is why I'm doing this. And I think you will undoubtedly draw other people to you and with you, because you've certainly done that so beautifully at Cherry Hill. Jabril, if people want to reach out to you and if they have questions about Cherry Hill, if they have questions about you and your beautiful journey, How would they best reach out to you?

Thank you for that opportunity. So cherryhillfreeclinic.org is our website. help@cherryhillfreeclinic.org. It's got a bunch of us sort of looking at that email. Sometimes it's patients, sometimes it's partners. But yeah, those 2 contacts there. We are quite active on social media. You know, you can tag Cherry Hill Free Clinic. And yeah, we're looking for partners, looking to serve, to reach underserved neighbors wherever they may be. We've started small. This works and we want to get to all the corners of communities that could use this type of service.

Absolutely. And there's so much need and I love the fact that you have found such a great way to meet that need. And I think people listening are gonna be really inspired to take these steps as well.

That's awesome.

Jabril, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. This has been a wonderful conversation.

It's It's always a blessing to get to share that. And that's funny, my mission officer said to me many years ago, he's like, at some point, this will get so big that your last question is what I'm actually gonna spend a lot of my time doing, which is how do we get there? How do we find individuals in the different communities who want to do this? And at the time I thought, I was like, I said, what are you talking about? I was like, you know, I'm just trying to run clinic. I'm just trying to make sure the next patient gets what they need. I'm like, what are you talking— and sure enough, 9 years later, I had a conversation with one of my newer volunteers. She's got a mind for like systems level. Like she's done remarkable work, like strategy work at different national organizations. So she and I had like a 2-hour conversation about it. And her ask of me, because she volunteers at the clinic seeing patients, but she's like, listen, we need to take this to every community, she said.

Yeah.

And so her and I, we pledged to have a series of meet-ins because we want to essentially codify. And her saying that to me was like, oh wow, like this is another reminder by the universe that this needs to happen because it's not just me thinking we're onto something here. You volunteered with us for a couple months, she's going, we gotta codify this and we gotta spread it. So anyways, Lee, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Absolutely. And definitely as you're working, codifying this process, finding the secret sauce that is Cherry Hill, I would love to have you back on the show and we can talk about that because I think that would also be an amazing conversation.

Sure thing.

Awesome. For all of the peaceful warriors who have joined us today on the Scalpel and Sword podcast, thank you so much for your presence. And until next time, be at peace.

Every episode is an invitation to speak, To negotiate, to choose. I'm Dr. Lee Sharma. Join the dialogue by subscribing to Scalpel and Sword. Until next time, peaceful warriors, may your choices be sharp and your voice be even sharper. This podcast is a reflection of lived experience and research in conflict resolution. The Scalpel and and Sword is not intended as medical or legal guidance. For personal matters, please consult a qualified professional.