- Tonight we're very honored to have a panel led by Donna Friedsam, and she is with us to discuss healthcare access, reform, and finding equity for rural and urban communities. Donna Friedsam is a distinguished researcher at the University of Wisconsin, and health policy programs director within the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. She leads a team of faculty and researchers evaluating pilot and demonstration initiatives of the Wisconsin Medicaid and BadgerCare Plus coverage programs; she also oversees the UW's Evidence-Based Health Policy Project, a partnership with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Wisconsin legislative council; and the Covering Wisconsin program within the UW's School of Human Ecology. Friedsam focuses on healthcare coverage, access, financing, and the organization of delivery systems with a particular interest in how policies and programs affect low-income and vulnerable populations. She consults widely in the public and private sectors on state government programs and on reform initiatives. Her work has been widely published in both peer-reviewed journals and practice-oriented formats. State and national media outlets rely regularly on her expertise in their reporting on matters of state and federal health policy. Tonight she is joined by Greg Nycz and Lisa Peyton-Caire. Nycz is the executive director of Family Health Center of Marshfield Incorporated, a federally-funded community health center. Nycz has been involved with the planning and operation of the Family Health Center for over 44 years, and he's been involved with service, research and educational efforts aimed at improving the health of communities with a particular emphasis on vulnerable population groups, principally, rural and low-income populations. Over the past 15 years, he's become increasingly involved in activities designed to address oral health disparities and access to care and outcomes. Peyton-Caire is the assistant vice president of Life, Learning and Events at Summit Credit Union, where she leads efforts on diversity and inclusion, employee wellness, financial education, community giving and events; she's also the founder of the Foundation for Black Women's Wellness, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization committed to eliminating health disparities and other barriers impacting the lives of black women. And now, please, help me give a warm welcome to Donna Friedsam, Greg Nycz, and Lisa Peyton-Caire.  [audience applauds]   - Well, good evening. I'm going to see if I know how to operate this device. I'm very pleased to be with you all, and I want to thank you for, thank the Wisconsin Academy for inviting me to speak with you all about health access for rural and urban communities, and achieving equity. I also want to thank my good friend and colleague Tim Size who's with the Wisconsin Academy, a volunteer, I believe, with the Wisconsin Academy, and was kind enough to invite me to speak with you all. Tim is not able to be here because he is down with one of the terrible viruses that have been circulating this season, but I know that he is very committed to these issues and has been working on them for his entire career. I want to start by asking you all, who in this room has read either of these two books? So, several, although not the majority. But you may be aware though that, oh, these two books, the one of the right, Politics of Resentment, is by Katherine Cramer, a UW faculty member who has, did a lot of work interviewing people around the state, and the one left, Hillbilly Elegy, both of them exploring similar themes that became something of a dominant narrative over the last year and a half, looking at the issues around the rural dispossessed, so to speak, people who have felt that their concerns and their interests have not been well addressed, and the kinds of struggles that have been occurring, particularly in rural America, and an emerging underclass of people who have, who don't feel that the economy has been serving them well over the last several years. And this has been ve