We'll be unpacking lessons from the COVID 19 pandemic for many years to come. Dr. Tomás Aragón, who leads public health for the State of California, joins us to discuss what he learned guiding America's most populous state through this challenging and disruptive period. 

We discuss:

• That public health’s deepest power lies in the ability to help diverse groups reach consensus under great uncertainty

• How California redeployed an army of census workers to support the COVID response

• The biggest opportunities to use AI for public health

• Three great book recommendations: “How Emotions Are Made” by Lisa Feldman Barrett, “High Conflict” by Amanda Ripley and “Fifth Discipline” by Peter M. Senge

Dr. Aragón shared insights about leading teams through times of crisis: : 

“The other thing is to really appreciate the importance of human psychology. It is so incredibly important … You're going to come up against people who are going to “resist”. I don't think of it as resistance. I just think they're being human. That's just all it is. People have variability in how they process information … And so rather than seeing things as resistance, you really just see it as part of the diversity of ingenuity that exists in an organizational culture.”