Food Podcast: Adagio Health resumes speaker series; 1st part features food bank CEO Lisa Scales

Adagio Health, a nonprofit organization focused on providing health care services in underserved communities, will host the Adagio Health: Better Health Outcomes Speaker Series, beginning Thursday.

The first part of the series will feature Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank President & CEO Lisa Scales alongside Feeding Pennsylvania Executive Director Jane Clements-Smith.

The speaker series format is not new to Adagio Health. The Transforming Women’s Health symposium launched in 2018 and 2019 but took a pause in 2020 during the pandemic.

“We were looking at a way to keep these conversations about women’s health and about serving vulnerable populations and communities moving forward,” said Alicia Schisler, chief of external affairs for Adagio Health.

Schisler said the pandemic has only heightened the need to talk about access to health care in vulnerable communities.

“Conversations we were having in 2018 and 2019 have been made all the more important,” she said. “Vulnerable populations have been made more vulnerable. We’ve seen how the pandemic has affected different populations disproportionately.”

This led to discussions about what topics were important to cover.

“We are definitely fans of the Lisa Scales fan club. Lisa is a board member for Adagio Health, and it made sense to discuss food insecurity during the speaker series,” Schisler said.

The Speaker Series will focus on encouraging advocacy for food security efforts and continuing to discuss how to achieve this but also offering resources on how to get help with food assistance.

The Speaker Series in April will feature discussions on the Black maternal health crisis, July will focus on behavioral health and in October there will be a look back on 2021 with discussions on race, health and equity and what has been learned over the past year.

Listen: The Food Podcasts discusses the Adagio Health Speaker Series