Beyond the Stethoscope: Navigating Regulations and Technology

[00:00:00] Joy Rios: Hello there and welcome to the HIT Like a Girl show. My name is Joy Rios. I'm this podcast host and this is a place where we talk about the complicated world of healthcare. I liken it to a 30,000 piece puzzle that we're all trying to figure out, like what makes up the US healthcare system. How can we make sense of it?

And each one of our guests brings their piece of the puzzle and their expertise to share with our audience. Very excited to have you today as our guest. Aja, would you please take a moment to introduce yourself and your piece of this crazy puzzle?

[00:00:41] Aja Hardy: Thank you for having me. My name is Aja Hardy. I am, have been in the healthcare crazy journey for about like 20 years now. And I like to tell people that I developed software, implemented software, sold it, marketed it, in the process of regulating, with the idea that I'm looking at medical devices, and I work currently for the federal government, CDRH in particularly.

[00:01:06] Joy Rios: Okay, so what is your role, how, that sounds like a lot. We're going to learn a lot from you today, but as far as the regulatory side of things, what prepared you for that? And tell us a little bit, like what is involved on that side of things? Starting from, if I know nothing about how a medical device gets approved and then shared out into the world, what's its journey and how are you involved in that?

[00:01:32] Aja Hardy: First I have to say that my opinion is on my own and not reflective of my current employer or previous, so I had to get that disclaimer out there. But yeah, definitely. I can say that I've been on the side working on a vendor. So I started my career with Abbott and Pharma and then also in Cerner, which is a healthcare IT company recently was bought by Oracle.

So I was creating electronic medical records. I'm looking at those solutions, those devices that tie to that. And we worked with the federal government in the idea that we're a publicly traded company at the time and we were looking to how do you put your device, how do you put your solution out to market?

We have to, we have certifications that you have to adhere to, you have to show like proof of concept when you're doing this device, or i.e. a solution like a healthcare IT solution as I mentioned, and then there are guidelines, so these things that we push out, FDA pushes out is called a guidance is that essentially let you know what you will have to include in your package in order to submit to us and say, hey, you know what I would like to put this device on market and make sure that you are staying close to what you said the device is going to do for the population that you said it was going to be done for and then it does what it's going to do.

You have proof of concept as I mentioned, which typically includes probably a clinical trial or some other form of trial that you've done, which also shows our results. And so when I worked in Cerner, I was on that side where I had to put all that package together, and had to be sure that we were figuring out if it wasn't a clinical trial, that we actually had tested it in the market and that it did what it's supposed to be doing.

It worked well with others in terms of like other devices. And that we had at that time like physicians or nurses that actually wanted to use it, right? So we also had a market case because again, I was making a product at that time. And so then we submit that package to the government FDA and they take a look at it.

They go through it. They scrub it, make sure that everything is where it says it's supposed to go there's conversations that are had back and forth between the manufacturer and the FDA in reference to if there's anything that needs to be edited or changed. And then hopefully you go through, you get an approval and you get to put your device or your product on market and say that it is quote unquote FDA approved.

And that's how it works in a nutshell.

[00:04:00] Joy Rios: And if you were going for like best case scenario, how long would that process take?

[00:04:05] Aja Hardy: Ooh, that's a tricky question because it depends upon what you're putting out there because we have there's various avenues of, I would say various submission processes of the different types of products that you may have and you may want to put out there and it depends upon if you have any revisions or edits that are coming through that process.

Once you get in front of us, then it can take quite a bit. We also have a thing called, and I didn't notice at the time when I was a developer myself, but novel medicine, novel devices, and which means that, hey, this is something totally that we haven't seen before. So we're going to have to take some more time and looking into this.

But it's typically runs the gamut for maybe like up to a year or more about certain things. And so we think when you're a consumer, I'm a consumer as well, but when you're a consumer and you're out there and you're in CVS or if you're in the Walgreens of the world, the Rite Aids of the world, and you're looking at the devices even over the counter stuff you don't really think about how long it takes for that to physically go and be in front of you, right?

Similar to if you were thinking about even consumer goods, right? How long does it take for that cereal to be placed in front of you? You don't really think about that when you're just consuming, but I think that right now we're finding rapidly the bridge between and working to form that bridge between consumer and developer so that individuals like myself would know.

Hey if I see this heart monitor or over the counter blood cuff that's out there that it took quite a while for it to get out there and for it to be physically approved to do.

 [00:05:43] Joy Rios: Okay, I have like four questions running around in my brain right now.

[00:05:50] Aja Hardy: Open up the floodgates.

[00:05:52] Joy Rios: And it's partly because of the pace of innovation and especially when it comes to AI. So when it comes to like the beginning of that process of trying to get FDA approval by the time you're done through or completed with that process. How often is it that the technology has changed or do you have to start over again?

[00:06:11] Aja Hardy: We haven't, we're taking a look at that right now. I see the organizations on both sides, right? So manufacturers are taking a look at that. Developers are taking a look at that. And we are as well within the space, the federal government taking a look at that. And I would be remiss to say that there probably wasn't.

I'm only two years in my role and before I was in industry, right? So I remiss to say that before I got here that all things went through or all your things didn't come through because I really don't know.

[00:06:38] Joy Rios: But even ChatGPT has really only been available to the public for like less than a year. I imagine that so many devices are going to be including AI.

[00:06:47] Aja Hardy: I think that's definitely happened. You're seeing the inclusion of AI even in the things that we use currently right now, like LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn has an AI component. I wouldn't say it's an element, but a component of AI in there, I was recently, we were talking about general wellness, which we don't regulate right now, but general wellness and wellness apps.

And I was speaking to one of my friends who's within the yoga circle. And she was telling me about balance and how they have, like the meditation app in itself is AI infused in that it crafts a different journey for you based off of the questions that you say. Do you want to know about mindfulness right now?

No, I'm okay. Do you want to do 5 to 10 minutes? I'll just do 10 minutes. And then it crafts an actual meditation for you based off of that, I think. So being that those are all new apps, right? Balance is new. It's just, it's out in the market. It's doing, it's what we call like volume tests right now.

So that means they can, they've given it out in some cases free or even half that type of thing to get this knowledge that you're talking about, how long does it take to adopt to certain things we haven't. We are obviously looking at what we will take and where our products are going with AI ML, that's part of what the division in the office that I'm in right now, the digital health center of excellence, what we look at is AI and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

So we're definitely taking a good look at that. Have we seen that type of inclusion into existing products as of yet it's coming, we know it is, but again, like that development process. If you were. As I talked about like the volume testing of say balance, right? That volume testing is being done right now you know and it's being done as I said with allure. 

You know what? We call the FOMO allure, you can get this free or we can get it half to you for a whole year because they're want they need to have a what we call a proof of concept or an intent to use for a whole year. They need to have that data. Think about if that was going to happen with a device. That's going to be asking someone to use a meditation app versus asking someone to use a device for a year or more just to test it out.

That's going to be a larger ask. And so we'll see inclusion of AI or thought process of that AI come in and look, come in definitely to medical devices. We're thinking it's coming, but it won't be as quickly as what you've seen possibly within, say, these already existing devices. Tools that you're using that are maybe more consumer based.

[00:09:19] Joy Rios: On the medical device side of things, how much does interoperability come into play?

[00:09:25] Aja Hardy: It comes in quite a bit because if you remember, when I got into the game on cheat, which is now in office, a national coordinator high tech act was out there. It was helping to nudge hospitals and health systems to be automated by way of, you want to be like trying to medical record or we had the thing way back in the day myself now called National Health Information Networks and they had those and ACOs and all those things.

And so that was a start of the interoperability, larger discussion, right? And being a part of being a time when I was in the part of Cerner we helped start that conversation by way of a lab data because there was a lab solution to start, right? We started in a lab. And so lab data is highly numerical, and it's not necessarily one that could be that subjective, right?

So it's easier to start the interoperability conversation there. And LabCorp you're familiar part of LabCorp, like the large institution was like working with us on that. And so the first data elements that even came into that interoperability discussion and was able to transfer even between electronic medical records was lab data.

We with that start of that conversation of lab data, then the next thing came about was, okay, what other biomarkers or what other data can we use maybe from when you get your initial temperatures and things like that. So numerical data like hard set data is definitely easier to do interoperability wise than it is say.

Subjective maybe a treatment data. Subjective pretext. And so when you're thinking about that with the devices the first and this is even before I came to my current employer. I was talking to, I think it was like, IDX, and they were essentially thinking about radiology was the first clinical modality to look at this whole interoperability and machine learning and AI because of the idea that it's so many images, so many things that you have to take into consideration in order to even diagnose. And so radiologists have had it way before we even thought we were gonna, and who would have thought, right?

I for one didn't think that. I don't have any radiologist friends if I did, maybe I would know. But when you think about that stuff, you're okay, interoperability, machine learning, tech. Yeah, it got to be the physicians. The physicians are out there and it got to be, but it wasn't even it was really truly the individuals that are on some, oftentimes they're not in the basement of the hospital because radiologists don't have a really nice facility.

I used to work in pharmacy and pharmacy was always in the basement. We were all other people that are working together or all of the basement for radiology and pharmacy. We're one of the top ones to be pharmacy has a set formulary, as we call it, that formulary is designed and determined by the hospitals, and so it's not necessarily numeric data. But it is an actual hard set data set because of the fact that it's already your formulary is your formulary.

It doesn't really change or falter that much. So now we know we can build upon that for interoperability pieces. And if we're getting lab work that says that your blood pressure is this and we say, Oh, wait, we'll look at your treatment plan and see if you're on any medication, then medication we know will be something that was hard set within the pharmacy.

So that's how that interoperability discussion and how it's physically happening right now, we do have, as you've probably heard about HL7, the FIRE project. So those things are rapidly coming into fruition. ONC just launched, just released some documentation around that too, about what's happening with FIRE and what's going on.

So it, we have an interoperability group we have a working group that is a multidisciplinary, functional, it's not just, doesn't just sit where I am. And that interoperability is a big piece of what we're looking at, and it definitely even, I would say is a factor of translational science as well, too. How well does this work out in the actual population in which you want to do once you serve it the pre, pre post, as we call it, pre market.

Before it gets to market and post market after it gets to market and that post market is really where all the magic happens and where we're looking at going forward.

[00:13:52] Joy Rios: Imagine the world in which you live in when you're imagining the effect that you're having, it's on a glow, it's on a big scale.

You're not dealing with anything in small quantities because it, you're the, I'm not gonna, not gatekeeper, but basically holding things back until they are ready for the bigger, a bigger population. It's a huge responsibility. And I imagine, I don't know, is there anything that you feel like particularly proud of that you're like, “Oh I had a hand in helping that get out”. I'm just, you're saying right now in terms of thinking about the 50,000 foot level, like I'm just happy about how many people are at the table and wanting to have the conversation, right? It's a totally different ballgame from where I was before. We're not creating products, right? We're not a money making institution.

[00:14:42] Aja Hardy: We're essentially really just serving the public and we are there to serve the public and you're right. It is a large responsibility to look at and not just medical devices, but not just medical devices. We have like tobacco, we have food, we have cosmetics even. I'm interested as a woman who probably, who now wears makeup.

I'm interested in what I put on my body, what I put on my body, like the cosmetic products. Pieces of it. I was talking to some friends that work in that space not too long ago and all of those elements all those things are ran by or have people in them that really truly care and it is just It's amazing to see how much breadth, like, all of your organizations and agencies have.

And then also the people who were in I think I'm pretty smart. I guess I got two master's degrees, but there's people here that have PhDs, and this has been their life, this is, they're really dedicated to it. In terms of anything that, I wanted to maybe even point out just the standing up of this whole we're, the Digital Health Center of Excellence is like five years in existence.

We're a baby as well, and we're we've gone through our growing pains, our ebb and flows, and just the idea and the thought that within all of the iterations of whom we are, there's people on the team that, again, are just really truly here, like myself, to stand up something that. And we'll continue to do and move forward to this.

And these people are coming to tables. We just had a conversation around synthetic data not too long ago. And it was just like, whoa, these people are, I'm learning something all the time and I'm, hoping that I'm bringing stuff to the table too, because like I said, my experience is being in a vendor development space and going into big four consulting and then going to be in a startup and then being in VC and then coming back full circle.

I've seen a lot of different lenses. So hoping that we all bring our skill sets and our experiences to the table and we're heard and be able to put that to good use and help and serve the public in this process too.

[00:16:58] Joy Rios: I have a special affinity for public servants.

I'm just, they, I find them to be so humbling of just wow, the people who are very educated and are dedicating their life to making life better. Hopefully for the public, right? That's the goal. I'm curious about your journey. So you have two master's degrees.

Did you have an idea of where you wanted to end up and are you there? Are you past there? Are you not there yet? Where do you land in your map?

[00:17:29] Aja Hardy: Yeah, I do have two master's degrees. I have a very, I tell people typically in my past, has not been linear innovation rarely is right and I also say that there's a method to the madness.

So I took a detour from my path was to be a doctor and I took a detour from that path and it led me to an American Hospital Association fellowship. It's a program that I think is still in existence to this day, diversity and health management shout out to them, but did the fellowship undergrad had no idea about it.

And I was exposed in that fellowship to like Abbott Laboratories. I mentioned, I'm from Chicago originally. And so it's crazy enough that they have their own zip code. It's Abbott Park, Illinois, but crazy enough that I heard of Abbott, but I knew some friends like older than me had to work there, but didn't really know that much about it.

But just through the fellowship was able to get connected there, had a tenure in Abbott. And then we also got a chance to view different types of hospitals. And one of those hospitals was the VA. And the VA at that time was going through automation putting in their electronic medical record and things of that nature.

Again, As you think about it now, archaic technology, and that there was wires coming down and you had cows computers on wheels, but I looked at that and I was like I was like, this is, I decided then that I could impact more people by figuring out this health tech thing.

Instead of putting out a single shingle as a sole physician. And so that's where my journey detoured. And it was at a time when my school is known for producing people who go into medical school. And half of us who were pre med ended up going and going straight to getting a master's in public health.

And the other half went straight to med school. And I think at that time, like our Chancellor was very concerned about that change, but I think it, but I also feel like it showed something of a difference in the industry, right? That we understood there's a business to health care and that there also is around the time a lot of people talking about like physicians had bad bedside manners all the things in the business.

So going into public health, I think was one of those avenues where we said, “Hey, we want to understand more about not just the treating of the disease, but the treating of the patient”. And understanding what the environment, how it impacts it. And so I'm proud that was one of our shifts, but I did do the MPH.

I got my degree is in international health systems management. It's a dual degree. So I have some domestic, some international stuff. It's crafted from Tulane, so it's crafted, you can run a hospital anywhere in the world if you go, type of thing. And then when I graduated, I did look at government, crazy enough.

I applied to the, I think it was called the PMI, Presidential Management Internship thing at that time, which kind of like your entryway into government. And I applied to several other companies and I thought I was going to go into government, I got the PMI, but they had to place you, it was like a matching process similar to if you were in physician going to med school. And it took forever, it took a lot, it took a long time, and I was living off of my savings at the time waiting for it to happen, and I was, I guess I mean…

[00:20:42] Joy Rios: The clock is ticking, I can't. 

[00:20:43] Aja Hardy: The clock is ticking and I was, oh my gosh. And then at that time I was still talking to other interested parties and it just so happened that Cerner was one of those interested parties. And they were, hey you know what we'll bring you on board and you can do an executive development program. We'll rotate you through and this, that, and the other, and that's great.

Yeah, so that's how it ended. I tell people I fell into tech, so that's really how it would happen.

[00:21:05] Joy Rios: Whenever I say this out loud, I need to check this stat, but I'm pretty sure it's true that a third of the economy in the U. S. is somehow related to healthcare.

[00:21:13] Aja Hardy: Wow.

[00:21:14] Joy Rios: A significant portion. And of course, that's not all doctors and nurses it's software and technology and policy and a million other things of people that are all trying to do better.

And I also like the interest, the difference between public health and medicine. And sometimes those two feel so divorced the way that we treat them.

[00:21:33] Aja Hardy: Yeah. It should not be. It's like never the two so meet. It should not be. It was very, as you can imagine, when I started and I was doing this electronic medical record thing, it was looked upon in academia as woo we'll never this will never catch on.

It was how some physicians and nurses felt. And we were, I was in the health administration section for APHA in my professional association, which is the American Public Health Association. I was telling him, “Hey, I'm not really an administrator, but I work with a lot of administrators, but I think that what we're doing what we're doing is public health informatics”.

And I was, “No, it's not”. And I was, “Yeah, it is”. And it's no, it's not and I, and it's a story. So I'm not going to prefix it, but, essentially, I did think about going back to, or going to government. I never said going back, because again, I started to go and it didn't work.

And so my second foray into trying to get into government, again, was doing the CDC Public Health Informatics Fellowship. And I applied for that, got it, and then the gentleman said, at that time, the people who were in charge at the time said, “Hey, we don't think you do public health informatics”.

Whereas though, when I did my actual, I guess presentation when I interviewed the other people there were interviewing with us as well, and there was a nurse that was interviewing using a presentation of a Cerner implementation that she was on, that I was a part of the implementation team.

And she was presenting her work there because we do have, we have to work hip and hip is what's what it's called like the consulting method was hip to hip. So we really was working truly with the nurses, really was working truly with the physicians, crafting their workflows. What people now call user experience and user design, is what we were doing at that time and she was the head nurse of one of those work threads, and she presented her stuff, and was like, this is what I did, x, y, z, blah, blah, blah.

And I was, oh my god this is great. And I'm, hey, I work for Steiner. And that was my client. I didn't even know that we were going to be there at the same time. Yeah, so when the gentleman said “Hey, what you do is not public health informatics”, I think the scientist in me just took the definition of public health informatics from the Webster Dictionary and outlined it and gave every example that was underneath the definition and then sent that back in, good for you. I was, no, I'm okay, I'm not gonna go to CDC right down at this time, but that's, that was my second chance into getting into government.

[00:24:05] Joy Rios: So the FDA is actually your third attempt? It was your third chance to chime?

[00:24:08] Aja Hardy: Yeah, it's my third attempt. It's crazy, right?

[00:24:13] Joy Rios: What would you say what is the experience working for the government? Some people are, “Oh, you're the bad guy”, or “You're the good guy”. Depends on people's perspective, right?

[00:24:25] Aja Hardy: Yeah. I think anywhere you would get like similar we'll put it this way.

I would say anywhere. I'll use my own personal, when I was a Cerner, it was like I was a good guy. Some, I was a bad guy when I worked at a big four consulting firm. I was at Deloitte and Huron. You can only imagine you come in suits, that's an indication that something's going to happen.

You are a manifestation of change management, and you know that individuals do not, even myself, I can't say that I love change all the time.

[00:24:53] Joy Rios: That's scary. You represent change, and that's scary, by definition.

[00:24:59] Aja Hardy: You represent change and it's scary by definition. And so just think that, just to think that in your career sense, you have been, or I have been, if I look at myself personally, at least half of my time in my career, about 15 years or so, about 10 or so years ago, I've been the manifestation, the personal manifestation of change.

And I have experienced people's reaction to that personal manifestation of change in all degrees and forms and fashions. I used to tell a story about how I was 20 something and working in a hospital and doing, again, implementation, working in registrar's office, so even just the basic kind of keying in of like the registration information.

And a nurse told me that she had been working for this hospital longer than I've been alive. So what do you do with that information? Do you just take that personally and be, “Oh hey I'm here and this is no”, I was just, “Okay, you're right. That's probably true”.

That's more than likely true. Not even discrediting that I was, yet I'm here to help. And the idea is that the idea is that this change is coming. I know it's scary, but I'm here to help you through it. And we're going to be here as long as you need and once you get this, which is easy peasy, you're going to get it like once you get this, then you'll be able to manifest that and change that to other things, right?

It's so in the idea of are what we look like in the market. Before I came to federal government, I was at city government and city government. Same type of probably you that the public has and to the point where I would walk around and go to not walk around but I would go to lay up like public engagements or even create public engagements And I'm talking to people and I would get comments like “Why are you so happy? Oh, how dare you? Are you sure you work for the government?” 

You're very personable but this is the message that I crafted then. And this is what I would say we're probably still doing here in the federal government space that we understand that we have been transactional in nature, but we're looking to be transformational.

And in order to be transformational, we have to be relational, which means I need to work with you. I need to be in front of you. I need to see, I need to meet you where you are. That's pretty much what I used when I was in city government and it was transactional. The transformational has to be relational, and that's where I think we are here.

[00:27:35] Joy Rios: Okay you touched on something briefly a minute ago, which had to do with your yoga practice. I'm, how much of that comes into your play as far as just like mental health, peace knowing where to find your peace and your balance and bringing that with you where you go? Does that, fall into the ingredients of your life and making things?

[00:27:56] Aja Hardy: Yeah, thanks for that. I know a couple times we were talking about possible like hobbies or what keeps you balanced. And I would say that I wouldn't be honest with you if I said that sometimes the balance isn't it's not really where I want it to be, right? Sometimes you get wigged out.

Sometimes you're like, oh my gosh I don't know if I'll be able to accomplish this.

[00:28:17] Joy Rios: I would guess that there's a lot of pressure. I would imagine that there's a lot of pressure in your work. So I imagine you also have to be able to come from a place that you can handle it. 

[00:28:26] Aja Hardy: There's a lot of pressure just every people's jobs Everybody's jobs has like some form of pressure, right?

And then I think with ours and particularly and scooting up because I think my light, it's what's going on with my light here? But yeah, just so I'm originally from Chicago, I'm from Chicago, I'm from Hyde Park, and Hyde Park is a very diverse neighborhood, interesting neighborhood, and so I needed balance and some decompressor even at an early age, so I adopted a meditation practice at an early age.

I didn't know what it was. This is what exactly I would do. I would go, I lived across the street from the University of Chicago, so I would run on the weekends on the University of Chicago's campus with my mom. And then when she would go back to the to the house, I found this statue of some general on a horse, who knows, I don't know what it is, but it was a statue, and it was able, it was like in a big placement, I think it's still there, in the park where you can essentially walk walk on it, get on it, whatever, and then there's like a CT, there was like a CD all around it, and I would go and sit in the direction of the sun and I would just close my eyes and just relax a minute I was doing that at 12 years old. I didn't know what it was at that time.

I just knew I liked the sun in my face I like the I like being able to just drown out everything. I like the space and the time just being still and realize as I got older that oh I was meditating. I didn't know what that was. I'm trying to keep that adoption of a meditation practice in the rest of my life.

Do I meditate every day? I try to. It may not happen. But I try to get at least a meditation in a week if I can. The other piece of the puzzle is that I think being a creative that it extends beyond just like the digital health side and me being a physical like developer and implementer and that type of thing.

It also extends to like my hobbies and so I like physical activity but ones that I can choose if you will but that's ranged from like karate to kickboxing salsa dancing and now I love yoga. The yoga practice it's something that's structured, it probably just could be from, my mom's a teacher, she's an educator I wasn't one of those kids that had here's your chores, Monday, Tuesday. I had a structure when I was a kid, so it could just be something that's like that, I'm sure my therapist friends would probably tell me there's something like that, a coping mechanism, I don't know, but… 

[00:31:01] Joy Rios: It seems like a healthy coping mechanism, so that's fine.

[00:31:04] Aja Hardy: Yeah, but the fact that it's structured, like some type of structured exercise that I feel like I can attain to is helpful for me. So that's what yoga is doing right now, as I'm sitting with you and a little bit sore, but that's what it's doing.

[00:31:16] Joy Rios: And the good kind, hopefully. Aja, thank you so much for sharing your journey and all, what you do, and hopefully, I feel like I've learned a little bit more about just like the role of the government in helping bring products to life and to the public.

And thank you for helping to make it all safe because that it's a big deal.  

[00:31:37] Aja Hardy: Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. And the knowledge and just trying wanting to know about what we do, and that's knowing it's half the battle, we're trying to work on our visibility and our transparency and this is part of it.

[00:31:49] Joy Rios: Yeah. I appreciate you being open. If people want to connect with you or follow you, where do you direct them?

[00:31:54] Aja Hardy: Sure. If you want to connect with me, LinkedIn is best. And I'm at my full name, Aja Hardy. So that's A J A H A R D Y. And it has M B A N P H. And the end of it, and it's all one word, but if you want to find out more about the agency or even the office I belong to please just look up use whatever your search apps are.

I won't say Google it, but just look up CDRH, the Office of Strategic Partnerships and Technology Innovation, and our webpage will come up. You can even say CDRH OST and the webpage will come up with everything in reach and so you'll hear about, you can get the chance to see about the division that I'm in digital health and all the other divisions that we have that are doing similar activities and working to help make things safe for you all.

[00:32:42] Joy Rios: Thank you again. This has been lovely.

[00:32:45] Aja Hardy: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

[00:32:49] Joy Rios: Thanks for listening. You can learn more about us or this guest by going to our website or visiting us on any of the socials with the handle HIT Like a Girl pod. Thanks again. See you soon.

Again, thank you so much for listening to the HIT Like a Girl podcast. I am truly grateful for you, and I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave us a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend?

All those things help us podcasters out so much. I'm the show's host, Joy Rios, and I'll see you next time.

I'm the show's host, Joy Rios, and I'll see you next time.