Dr. Angelica Hardee: Passionate Public Health Professional and Lifetime Urban Leaguer
When I logged on to my video chat with Dr. Angelica Hardee, I could feel her energy and enthusiasm – even through video. Dr. Hardee’s mother worked for the Urban League in Cleveland, which instilled in her a lifelong passion for service. When, as an undergraduate, she learned that a career in public health brought together her passions and interests in service, healthcare, and community-based research, she was all in! Dr. Hardee still maintains her youthful enthusiasm for public health. We talked about public health, policy, and her current projects as the V.P. of health strategy for the American Heart Association and president of the local Urban League of Young Professionals.
Interview by Tracy Van Wagner. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
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Tell us about yourself.
My name is Dr. Angelica Hardee. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio; I’ve been in Cincinnati for 11 years now. I originally came to Cincinnati to go to the University of Cincinnati (U.C.), like many others. I went on to get my master’s and doctorate from U.C. I had the opportunity to teach, do research, and study abroad, and, in that time, Cincinnati became my home. I have my parents, a brother, a sister, and a host of nieces and nephews. I am a super auntie!
When I was getting my doctorate, I did a ton of volunteer work because I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to work. I felt like I was really embraced by the public health nonprofit community because I had been so active in my volunteerism. When I got a job, it was like, “You’re not new. We know of you in a different capacity,” which is really nice. I was able to grow my work and my career based on that.
What made you want to go into public health?
I have always been really big on volunteering. My mom worked for the Urban League in Cleveland when I was growing up. I don’t think I really understood what I was doing; I was just going to work with my mom. I caught the volunteer bug, which carried with me throughout my whole adolescence and young adult life. When I came to college, I initially was an athletic training and pre-physical therapy major. I loved healthcare and really wanted to work in sports medicine. I had a whole plan... until my junior year of college. The lifestyle in athletic training would be very transient: I would always be out on the road, traveling with teams, and I realized that’s not what I wanted.
I was soaring in my electives, which were public health courses. A couple of people in my circle said, “Why don’t you try public health?” Even though I was in the classes, I didn’t see the career trajectory. I found out I could work in a nonprofit and I started to understand what the profession looked like as a lifestyle. I had my first research experience at that time. Before that, I only saw research as bench and lab science. I didn’t want to do that – I love people and I love communities! Then, I learned about community-based participatory research. I ended up doing a research internship at Cincinnati Children’s. Once I had coupled healthcare and volunteering – and found out about research that didn’t have to be in a lab – I was like, “I am changing my major and I’m going to work in public health!”
How did it go making that switch?
Once I got into the program, I was enamored by public health! I did tons of service-learning opportunities. My first internship – my first experience in the workplace of public health – was at Hamilton County Public Health. After that, I was soaking everything up. I wanted more and more experience. Then people said, “You should get your master’s!” I was like, “I’m definitely going to get a master’s because I want to learn more!”
That first semester of my master’s, they said, “What about getting a Ph.D.?” It was this great experience where I was able to continue to learn and grow for another four years – learn about public health, health education, and health policy. I’ve always been really interested in systems-level work: how you transition these programs and initiatives, what we need to do to prepare communities for systems-level changes, and who needs to be at the table. That was where public health all came together as this hodge-podge of my interests and, as soon as it came into my life, it has yet to leave. I love that I continue to learn more about how to serve in different capacities, which is what keeps me interested.
It takes so long to establish change. You’re doing this for your family, kids, my nieces and nephews in the future. It may not benefit me. We have to be in that mindset: It may not benefit me, but it may benefit the future of this city, this county, and this country.
There was a doctoral student graduate assistant who taught my public health classes when I was transitioning my major. She was the one who told me about one of the internship programs that really catapulted my public health career. It was a minority health program at the Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.), where they send students in to learn about different departments within the C.D.C. It’s a great research experience! You get to learn from ethics classes and all of these things that are public health-nerd stuff. I applied and didn’t get in. I was like, “Okay, I’ll apply next year,” and I did. And I got it! I moved to Atlanta and worked with the C.D.C. As a recent graduate from undergrad, that was super prestigious.
Then I began applying to programs that could give me more experience in public health. For me, it was the only way to know what I liked and didn’t like. If I didn’t like something, I did something else, which is how I’ve done so much! If I liked it, I settled, and was very excited and thrived in that environment.
Would you tell us about some of your work?
Currently, I am the V.P. of health strategy at the American Heart Association (A.H.A). I will have been there a year in October. I lead mostly policy systems environmental change related to our health priorities at the moment, which are the tobacco e-cigarette epidemic, the high numbers of hypertension within the greater Cincinnati area, and healthy food access.
We created a Tobacco Endgame Coalition right after the passing of Tobacco 21 in the city of Cincinnati [raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco to 21]. After that passed, the state passed Tobacco 21. There’s enforcement in the city, but outside the city limits of Cincinnati, there is not any enforcement of Tobacco 21. My current goal is to get more areas with enforcement. Enforcement doesn’t look like penalizing the individual who is buying the cigarettes; what we don’t want is youths getting arrested for buying cigarettes and e-cigarettes. What we are focused on is creating a tobacco retail license, very similar to the licenses they already have to sell tobacco, but more focused on compliance and making sure they’re not selling to anyone under the age of 21.
People ask, “Why 21?” Most people who start smoking start before the age 21; 18 to 21 years of age is a pivotal time when individuals decide to start smoking. If you have never smoked by 23 or 25, you will probably never smoke for the rest of your life. The health implications of not smoking tobacco are extremely important. I remember learning about the tobacco initiative work and the tobacco cessation work from the ‘90s. They had really done a great job of starting to decrease the smoking rates nationwide.
How has the rising popularity of e-cigarettes affected that?
The popularity of e-cigarettes has really put the tobacco industry back up top. The tobacco industry owns the electronic cigarette companies. That’s why I use the terms “electronic cigarettes” or “e-cigarettes” instead of “vaping” – the tobacco industry created the word “vaping” to make it seem as if it’s not a cigarette, which it is. They have tobacco and nicotine and are so addictive.
The marketing is all for youth. You’ll see them on Snapchat and TikTok, influencers smoking things like cotton candy or blueberry gum flavors, and you know that stuff is not marketed toward adults. Adults don’t smoke cotton candy-flavored anything! The demographics are totally changing. You have this aging population that has been smoking for years that are, unfortunately, most often passing away from the risks associated with smoking. The tobacco industry thought, “We have to continue to sell.” So they’ve created a whole different market of people that smoke, as well as devices that are just as or more expensive than cigarettes.
There are about 30 organizations involved in the Tobacco Endgame Coalition, including faith-based organizations, local health departments, school administrators, and nonprofits. It’s a great example of how we cannot do this by ourselves. We can’t just say, “Health departments, that’s on you. Create some messaging that says ‘Don’t smoke.’” We know that doesn’t always work! We know that creating messaging is a great tool, but if you think about it, these tobacco companies have 15 times the marketing budget than the health department.
Can you tell us some more about your hypertension work?
We do a lot of work with hypertension [high blood pressure] and working on how we engage with our federally qualified health centers to reduce the levels of hypertension locally. Hypertension is one of the silent killers and one of the most modifiable risk factors. Things like losing 10 to 15 pounds and starting to eat healthier have been known to make a huge impact on your hypertension.
We know if your blood pressure is lower, you’re less likely to have any adverse heart or health effects. This is a lot more difficult to conquer because there are so many social determinants of health that play a role. Do you feel safe walking every night after dinner? Do you have access to healthy food? What does that look like in your community? If there’s no access to healthy food, it’s very difficult to tell someone, “You should make sure you’re having x, y, and z to eat every day.” How far is that grocery store? How are they getting there? Do they have a working refrigerator?
We so often forget about taking care of ourselves. So, what does wellness look like for me? How am I working to be well?
These are things I’ve learned to think about; I’ve learned to make sure I’m not the only at the table. It’s essential to know from the patient’s side what the reality is for individuals living with hypertension. Sometimes people have this idea that some people just want to be unhealthy. That is so untrue! People want to be healthy, they want to live long, and they want to see their kids grow, thrive, and strive for more. So often, there are many barriers attached to that and they’re not able to really achieve their optimal health. I’m putting up a very big umbrella when it comes to health. I’m thinking about educational attainment and career attainment, because we know socioeconomic status, education, and housing and infrastructure all affect health. That’s another thing we’re trying to work on and conquer.
Can you tell us about your work with the Urban League of Young Professionals?
I’m currently president of the Urban League Young Professionals, and that doesn’t feel like work. Getting individuals to register to vote, having voter education, making sure everyone takes the census, having volunteer and community engagement opportunities with our youth, and helping them see their next trajectory doesn’t seem like work. Those things are fun! It’s great being with a network of people who also want to serve.
I started with the Urban League with my mom and, as they say, once an Urban Leaguer, always an Urban Leaguer! I laugh, because I was on the annual report for the Greater Cleveland Urban League with my dad, Ivy, when I was four. So, it’s my baby face and my dad’s baby face and we’re hugging! The picture is in my parents’ house and we look at it all of the time because it was a pivotal moment. I started volunteering when I was four!
So what exactly is the Urban League of Young Professionals?
The Urban League of Young Professionals is an affiliate of the Urban League of Southwest Ohio, and then there’s a national Urban League of Young Professionals. They also have Guilds: The Urban League of Young Professionals is for ages 21 to 40, and then for 40 and up, there’s the Guild. Members are individuals interested in serving in the community.
We have tons of young professionals who have just moved here, or they’ve been here a long time, or they’re from here and they’re looking for a different way to serve. One of our big ways to serve right now is advocacy and understanding voting in general. When was the last time you got a crash course in government? For the average person, they may not have talked about how to pass a bill since high school.
How do we engage? How do we have knowledgeable conversations? How do we understand how to get success when it comes to policies and things of that nature? Who are the leaders? So often, we know the people who hold these positions, but we don’t know what they actually do. We’re trying to create educated voters. So, what are the issues we’re voting for? How do you create a platform for yourself so you then vote for who is the right person for you? Voting is an important way to get your point across.
Advocacy and civic engagement are a huge part of our organization. We’ve done a lot of community involvement in the past; this has definitely slowed down, unfortunately, because of the pandemic, but we’ve done a lot with U.C. in getting young professionals from college to their first job. We also work with youths, a lot of mentoring; it’s mainly event-specific or workshops. We do “lunch and learns” on different topics; we do a large STEM event each year, reaching out to Urban League members who work in STEM fields and planning events for the kids; we do a lot of wellness work. During a virtual meeting, we had “Coping with COVID” with a therapist who was able to talk to members about what’s going on. It was interesting because we so often forget about taking care of ourselves. So, what does wellness look like for me? How am I working to be well?
We have a great opportunity to help with the census, which falls under advocacy. We’re trying to get individuals to fill out their census. We know it’s been difficult because of COVID. So, how do we get hard-to-count communities to fill out the census? For ten years, that’s how it’s decided how many dollars are allocated to the city and county. That is a horrible plan! People can move, grow, the population can get bigger, and it doesn’t matter! You have to get counted and if you don’t, then that’s less resources that come to the county and the city. It’s a flawed system. It doesn’t make any sense to wait ten years when people move and transition. We act like we don’t have the technology to do this better; it doesn’t make any sense.
You touched on voting earlier – what policies would you like to see passed in Cincinnati?
I have a lot of things I would love to see passed! First, housing and infrastructure policies. I’m not in housing so I don’t know all the details, but I do know the gaps and the implications of the lack of affordable housing in Cincinnati and Hamilton County on health. I would love to see housing and infrastructure investment in creating affordable housing for our neighbors so they don’t have to be displaced from their homes because the rent got too high or the homes are too expensive.
Another one would be tobacco. I mentioned tobacco retail licenses already, but I would also like to see flavor restrictions and bans. Flavor is what has been getting youths addicted to e-cigarettes. Nicotine does crazy things to the developing brain – it’s really bad. In addition to what it’s doing to youths, I’m also talking about Black people in America and menthol. Menthol was marketed directly toward African Americans. It’s not a normal tobacco flavor; it tastes like mint. No one knew we were being targeted with marketing and ads for these things that are so unhealthy and addictive. And the next generation is now all smoking menthol e-cigarettes. So, it’s come full circle: If someone can’t find the e-cigarette, then maybe they will smoke the regular cigarette.
We’re trying to create educated voters. So, what are the issues we’re voting for?
The last thing I would say is food policy. We have to figure out how to provide healthy food access in our community. It has to be a partnership. Neighborhoods are not going to get full grocers anymore. We need to do the systems-level change work to provide healthy food access. Who are the partners to do that? How do you work together? I don’t have the answers to all of that.
There is this huge distrust with some of the work in policy because I think now people are learning more and more that policies were not created to benefit them unless they were rich and powerful and knew the game. People are learning about redlining now: Housing is how individuals became wealthy. A whole group of people were not involved in that – Black people were not able to create wealth. Here we are, years later, having the same conversation, trying to figure out why Black people don’t have wealth. We need to learn from our history and past mistakes to create trust to move forward better, or else all of this is for nothing. I hope we take this unique time in history to make change for the better and not continue to rest on past history. How do we acknowledge the past and move toward the future for a better tomorrow? And not even just for ourselves; it takes so long to establish change. You’re doing this for your family, kids, my nieces and nephews in the future. It may not benefit me. We have to be in that mindset: It may not benefit me, but it may benefit the future of this city, this county, and this country.
Tell us about some influential women in your life.
I’m definitely going to start with my grandmother, Samantha. She passed away three years ago now. It’s crazy to think how influential she was – and I just didn’t get it then. When I think about my love of the arts, my volunteering spirit... all of those things came because she told me to do them! I’ve reflected a lot as an adult on how those things I learned as a child made a huge impact on who I am today. Those also came from my mom. We are, all of us, so much alike, even though it drives us crazy!
My mom, Gardenia. I mentioned the influence of her working for the Urban League and the impact that has had on my life. I did not think about that until about four years ago. People kept asking me where it all started. I was like, “College?” I didn’t think about where the service aspect of it started. I think about how influential that was and the implications it made to my trajectory and my career.
I have another great group of friends, called my Doctor-Sister-Friends. We all got our Ph.D.s together at U.C. and we have been through a time that we hope to never live through again, also known as a doctorate program. Once you do it, you don’t want to go back! We lived through that together; that has definitely molded me as well.
Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention all of the influential women in Cincinnati who have taken me under their wings. I definitely would not be where I am today – would not continue (hopefully) being successful here in this city – if there were not so many women who have said my name in a room when I wasn’t there, been a sponsor, a mentor, a friend, and an advocate so many times. I feel at home in Cincinnati, even though I’m not from here. Especially since I went to U.C. for so long; there’s a U.C. bubble, where you stay in Clifton, you go downtown, then you go back to Clifton. When you’re in that bubble but people are embracing you outside of your bubble, you really start to become at home and create this sense of belonging here. Without this, I would definitely not be here at all; I wouldn’t have wanted to stay. If I didn’t have these influential women in my life here in Cincinnati who have been professors, friends, bosses, etc., I wouldn’t have stayed here. I wouldn’t have bought a house, and thrived, and wanted to grow, and wanted to put down roots here if it was not for women in Cincinnati.
That’s why I was so excited when I got the email [to chat with you]. It’s awesome and I think, just thinking about and seeing women you know in passing or that you’ve seen featured in articles, and you may not know them personally, but you’ve read their stories and you learn more. I wanted to end on the fact that, literally, women of Cincinnati have definitely been extremely pivotal in my being here.
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