Mindful on Purpose

Welcome to Mindful on Purpose with Dr. Christina Blackburn—a health forward podcast dedicated to inspiring, educating, and empowering communities and professionals to prevent and eliminate gender-based violence.
Through insightful conversations with leading researchers, advocates, healthcare professionals, innovators, and policy experts, we explore evidence-based strategies for violence prevention, trauma-informed care, survivor-centered support, public health equity, and meaningful community action. Each episode offers practical knowledge and fresh perspectives to help listeners understand the root causes of gender-based violence and become part of the solution.
In this episode, you get a chance to listed in as Dr. Christina Blackburn speaks with Dr. Saad Ahmad, a population health expert specializing in health technology, wearable devices, and data-driven approaches to improving health and wellbeing. Together, they discuss how digital health tools and wearable technology can support emergency responders, clinicians, patients, strengthen population health, and help build safer, healthier communities.
ABOUT Dr. Saad Ahmad is a healthcare technology expert and commercial strategy leader with expertise at the intersection of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. He works with leading pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations to develop and implement data-driven solutions that leverage real-world data, provider and patient analytics, and AI-enabled insights to improve decision-making, operational performance, and patient outcomes.
His career has focused on helping life sciences organizations translate complex healthcare data into actionable business strategies, with experience spanning digital health, healthcare analytics, population health, commercial strategy, and technology adoption.
Saad holds a Doctor of Health Science in Population Health from Thomas Jefferson University, where his dissertation explored racial and ethnic differences in the adoption of health technologies, including health software applications, wearable devices, and online health resources. He also earned a Master of Health Administration from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Science in Life Science from The Pennsylvania State University.
In addition to his industry work, Saad serves as an Adjunct Faculty member at George Mason University, teaching healthcare leadership and management while mentoring the next generation of healthcare professionals. He is passionate about the responsible use of AI, digital health innovation, and data-driven strategies to improve healthcare delivery and shape the future of the healthcare ecosystem.

Welcome to the Mindful on Purpose Podcast! This month we will talk with NYC Hon. NYC Judge Deborah Modica.

Deborah Stevens Modica was born and raised in Queens, New York. She attended Christ the King High School and Fordham University for her undergraduate studies. Following her father’s footsteps, Deborah attended law school, graduating from Fordham University Law School in 1976. After law school, she applied to defender organizations and District Attorney’s Offices. She was ultimately hired by the Queens District Attorney’s Office, where she got excellent experience in the Appeals Bureau, the Felony Trial Bureau, and the Homicide Bureau. She ultimately returned to the Appeals. Bureau as its Chief. Deborah next moved on to the Kings County District Attorney’s Office as Bureau Chief of the Supreme Court Trial Bureau and held Executive District Attorney positions. Starting in 1990, the Kings County District Attorney’s Office developed a very serious approach to domestic violence cases. In 1997, Deborah was appointed to the Criminal Court of the City of New York and assigned to Queens County, where she handled all domestic violence cases in their early stages and all misdemeanor Domestic Violence cases until their conclusion. In 2003, Deborah was made Supervising Judge of the Queens Criminal Court. After almost ten years in that position, Deborah was assigned to Supreme Court, where she handled all felony domestic violence cases involving intimate partners. Deborah retired from the bench at the end of 2020.

The MINDFUL ON PURPOSE PODCAST is a safe space where unexplored topics on gender-based violence/intimate partner violence/child endangerment are discussed with FIELD EXPERTS to increase awareness and improve care for vulnerable women and children. Target listeners: doctors, nurses, hospital and clinic executives, law enforcement, domestic violence researchers, government officials, all frontline workers, survivors/victims, family and friends of survivors/victims, and ALL concerned humans. www.speranzaproject.org

Creator/Host: Christina M. Blackburn, MSc - Award-winning medical educator, advocate for women and children in crisis, and survivor.

Welcome to the Mindful on Purpose Podcast! *This month will be a little different.

In this episode, Dr. Alan Cherney. Emergency Medicine Physician, Assistant Director of Emergency Medicine, and Assistant Professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA, and Dr. Valentina Nikulina, Clinical Child Psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Queens College, City University of New York, separately, will discuss the upcoming conference in New York City and why it's important to attend if you work with victims of domestic violence! If you are interested in attending either in-person or virtually, tickets will reopen on November 1st at www.dvconference.org.

Dr. Cherney - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-cherney-ba598721/

Dr Nikulina - https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentina-nikulina-ph-d-4772201/

The MINDFUL ON PURPOSE PODCAST is a safe space where unexplored topics on gender-based violence/intimate partner violence/child endangerment are discussed with FIELD EXPERTS to increase awareness and improve care for vulnerable women and children. Target listeners: doctors, nurses, hospital and clinic executives, law enforcement, domestic violence researchers, government officials, all frontline workers, survivors/victims, family and friends of survivors/victims, and ALL concerned humans. www.speranzaproject.org

Creator/Host: Christina M. Blackburn, MSc - Award-winning medical educator, researcher, and survivor.

Welcome to the Mindful on Purpose Podcast!

In this episode, we will talk with Tina Ruysseveldt. Tina is an indigenous best-selling author, wellness warrior & ICU_ SADV Nurse, Tina invites compassionate and action-based discussions and solutions to inspire workplace wellbeing and activate personal self-care into daily practice.

For the last decade, Tina has authentically found the courage to walk the solid road of recovery. As the creator of The LiveWell Recipe™, which she credits with saving her life, she shares her inspirational story and life-changing methods to invite others to thrive in the face of their challenges and turn their intent to live well into action.

Author of; The Courage to Be True

Inspirational Speaker; keynotes.

Tina’s; guided meditations

https://www.instagram.com/tinainspires/?hl=en

https://tinainspires.com/

The MINDFUL ON PURPOSE PODCAST is a safe space where unexplored topics on gender-based violence/intimate partner violence/child endangerment are discussed with FIELD EXPERTS to increase awareness and improve care for vulnerable women and children. Target listeners: doctors, nurses, hospital and clinic executives, law enforcement, domestic violence researchers, government officials, all frontline workers, survivors/victims, family and friends of survivors/victims, and ALL concerned humans. www.speranzaproject.org

Creator/Host: Christina M. Blackburn, MSc - Award-winning medical educator, advocate for women and children in crisis, and survivor.

Welcome to the Mindful on Purpose Podcast. This month we have two amazing interviewees:

DR. CLEO SILVERS Cleo Silvers began her career as a community and labor organizer as a VISTA Volunteer and activist in the South Bronx starting in 1966. Her training as an organizer was based on the Saul Alinsky organizing method of door-to-door meetings and listening to people in the community. She was co-founder of the Trinity Avenue Block Association, the Jackson Avenue Block Association and the Kelly Street Block Association, Lincoln Detox, and the Think Lincoln Committee, TLC (a coalition of members of the community, interns and doctors, Young Lords, and Black Panthers and hospital workers).

Cleo, as co-chairperson of HRUM (Health Revolutionary Unity Movement), which with the Think Lincoln Committee collectively penned the Patients Bill of Rights (a watered-down version is now seen in every hospital room across the country). In 2007, Dr. Steven Levin, Medical Director of the Mount Sinai Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, hired Cleo to be the Director of Outreach for the tragic 911 medical program from which she retired in 2014. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Purpose Prize Fellowship (for activists over 50 who changed careers in the second half of life), now titled the AARP Purpose Award.

Today Cleo works as a consultant for the Cossitt Library in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, and Crosstown High school. She is part of a mentoring program for sixth-graders and high school students. She will be helping youngsters design and implement a podcast on the need for protests and how to organize. The program is called Speak Your Truth: How to Stage a Protest. Black people in Memphis were NOT allowed to use Memphis Public Libraries in town until a sit-in of students from Southwestern University (now Rhodes College) at the Cossitt Library in 1961! Most recently, Cleo has received the 2022 honorary doctorate of Humane Letters - from the City University of New York/Lehman College. Cleo is also working and hoping for help to complete her memoirs within the next few years.

LOIS MOSES, ESQ Lois Moses, a native of Philadelphia, is a professional Poet and trained Actress, Lawyer, Clinical Therapist, Director, Playwright, and Filmmaker. She graduated from Temple University School of Law, where she was the Political Social Awareness Committee Chair for the Black Student Law Association. She was also the founder and co-editor of BLSA Speaks, a newsletter that sought to give voice to and empower African American law students. Lois has a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from LaSalle University and has worked as a Clinician/Therapist with Human Service agencies and educational institutions. Lois was also the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of an African-Centered Charter school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, that operated from 2007 to 2016.

Mrs. Moses has toured and performed extensively throughout the United States, directing and performing in three Off-Broadway shows in New York. She has published three collections of poetry entitled “Not Just Another... Black/Woman”, “Missing Pages... (Women Behind the Glass Door)”, “A Timely Trinity”, and a Self-titled spoken word CD. Mrs. Moses is an executive member of the Sift Media 215, a Woman of Color Film Collective in Philadelphia. She is currently working on a miniseries entitled “Epistles of Love: The Gospels According to Edgar and Clara,” a love story based on the true story of her ancestors. She is also a Board member of the Big Picture Alliance, whose mission is to engage, educate and empower Philadelphia youth through filmmaking & digital media arts. She sits as Board President of Extended Play, a Non-Profit for film and media artists of Pennsylvania with a new focus on Women of Color. Websites: www.loismoses.com www.moseslineproductions.com https://siftmedia215.org/ https://extendedplay4sift.org/