Urologists for Social Responsibility - Aditya Bagrodia & Manoj Monga
January 9, 2023
Aditya Bagrodia and Manoj Monga discuss the Urologists for Social Responsibility meeting. The goal of this meeting is to bring together our extended community to learn more from each other and experts in the field regarding the nuances of these social topics and to discuss approaches to being effective leaders for social change through dialogue, advocacy, and activism.
Urologists for Social Responsibility will take place January 14-15, 2023, at UC San Diego. Anyone passionate about social issues facing our society that impact the health and wellness of our world should attend. Specific themes and topics to be discussed will include global responsibility, national equity, and urology.
Biographies:
Aditya Bagrodia, MD, Urologic Oncologist, Associate Professor of Urology, Disease Team Co-Leader, Genitourinary Cancer, UC San Diego, San Diego, CA
Manoj Monga, MD, FACS, Urologist, Professor, Chair of the Department of Urology, UC San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, California.
Urologists for Social Responsibility will take place January 14-15, 2023, at UC San Diego. Anyone passionate about social issues facing our society that impact the health and wellness of our world should attend. Specific themes and topics to be discussed will include global responsibility, national equity, and urology.
Biographies:
Aditya Bagrodia, MD, Urologic Oncologist, Associate Professor of Urology, Disease Team Co-Leader, Genitourinary Cancer, UC San Diego, San Diego, CA
Manoj Monga, MD, FACS, Urologist, Professor, Chair of the Department of Urology, UC San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, California.
Read the Full Video Transcript
Aditya Bagrodia: Good morning. Aditya Bagrodia here, joined by Manoj Monga. Thanks for spending a little time with us. We're really excited about this event coming to you in 2023, Martin Luther King weekend regarding Urologists for Social Responsibility. Manoj, do you want to introduce yourself?
Manoj Monga: Aditya, thank you. And thank you for all of you for joining us to learn a little bit about an event, as Aditya says, we're very excited about. My name's Manoj Monga. I'm here at UCSD. Had the pleasure of working alongside Dr. Bagrodia, as well as a fantastic faculty.
Aditya Bagrodia: Excellent. So really an amazing program that was a brain child of Manoj, it's a group called Urologists for Social Responsibility. And tell us a little bit, Manoj, where this came from. What prompted you to really galvanize the urology community to get together?
Manoj Monga: And I would hesitate to call myself the brain child. I think this really arose from the passion and purpose that was clearly evident on social media surrounding some of our recent social events and political events in the United States and abroad. I realized that much of that energy was looking for a place to be directed. There were a lot of great ideas, great enthusiasm, and a desire to be advocates for change, but an uncertainty about how to do this. So the impetus for this meeting and the hope from what we'll accomplish from this meeting is to learn from people who've done it successfully, people who've been strong advocates in other areas, including the ones that we feel most passionate about, so that we can go beyond thinking and complaining and perhaps being down about what's going on around us, and switch to a theme of uplifting, uplifting our communities by being strong advocates for what their needs are, and in turn, turning this into a better world for our children.
Aditya Bagrodia: Fantastic. And I think a lot of us share some of these passions, think about them, and it can be a little bit challenging to navigate the system, get involved, understand how to be advocates. So the program's going to start on Friday, January 13th at six o'clock. There's a welcome reception where I will hopefully have participants to get together. Then there's a panel on Saturday, including some wellness time for people that are coming in to enjoy San Diego, especially around the winter time. Couple of keynote talks on Sunday. And if people are able to stay, a sunrise gathering at Soledad Mountain Park here in San Diego. So maybe at a high level, can you just talk about some of the topics, programs that will be highlighted?
Manoj Monga: Yeah. So thank you. They fall into some broad buckets related to urologists and diversity and equity, global volunteerism and global issues such as climate change, and then issues that may be a little bit more pertinent to the United States, including health access, health equity, homelessness, gun violence. So a variety of things that touch our communities in a variety of ways, touches our patients in a variety of ways and touches our urology community. I will just say that one of the things that arose from a social media was a shift away from calling it urologists for social responsibility. And now it's urology representing our broad community, not only our nurses and students and residents, but also friends of urology. So I suspect we'll have some attendees from outside of our specialty area who share a similar passion for change.
In terms of format, as you alluded to, the mornings will be mostly an opportunity for us to learn from experts, a few keynote speakers from public health, from law, from advocacy, people who can guide us on the right way to do it, the most effective way to do it. We'll have panels for people, some of whom many of our listeners will be familiar with, and others will be drawing in from outside of our community to talk about the specific topics at hand.
Then we'll have a break for two to three hours so that people can reflect on what they've heard, what they've learned, talk about it amongst small groups, or enjoy some of the outdoors. We realize that many of these topics are fairly heavy, and we wanted to make sure that we didn't burden people with information that could drag them down, but rather give them some time to themselves to reflect so that they can lift us up when they come back.
The afternoons then we'll be breakout sessions. In small groups we'll talk about what we can do and how we can do it with a wrap up at the end of each day, sharing those ideas with the larger group. And as you mentioned, Martin Luther King morning, we'll try to have a little visual on to watch the sunrise. That'll hopefully be a sign of the world changing.
Aditya Bagrodia: That's wonderful, Manoj. It's been amazing as we've started these discussions to actually look at our own urology community. And there's so many amazing leaders, international volunteers in urology, really doing some tremendous access work, advocacy work. And I think I'm very excited to get these key opinion leaders, thought leaders together in addition to people outside of our community that have expertise. And one of the things that I really love is your vision of bringing children, if their parents feel it appropriate to engage in some of these conversations. It's almost like a patient advocate. We're really advocating on behalf of the future. And I think that's a really novel way to approach it.
Manoj Monga: Well, Aditya, you mention key opinion leaders, and we want to make this a better world for our children. Who better to tell us how to do it than their voices?
Aditya Bagrodia: Well, Manoj, congrats on putting this together. I know it's effort required, but I think it's effort directed towards the right direction. So again, it's January 13th through the 15th here in San Diego. Thanks, UroToday, today for helping highlight this important event, and we hope to see you there.
Aditya Bagrodia: Good morning. Aditya Bagrodia here, joined by Manoj Monga. Thanks for spending a little time with us. We're really excited about this event coming to you in 2023, Martin Luther King weekend regarding Urologists for Social Responsibility. Manoj, do you want to introduce yourself?
Manoj Monga: Aditya, thank you. And thank you for all of you for joining us to learn a little bit about an event, as Aditya says, we're very excited about. My name's Manoj Monga. I'm here at UCSD. Had the pleasure of working alongside Dr. Bagrodia, as well as a fantastic faculty.
Aditya Bagrodia: Excellent. So really an amazing program that was a brain child of Manoj, it's a group called Urologists for Social Responsibility. And tell us a little bit, Manoj, where this came from. What prompted you to really galvanize the urology community to get together?
Manoj Monga: And I would hesitate to call myself the brain child. I think this really arose from the passion and purpose that was clearly evident on social media surrounding some of our recent social events and political events in the United States and abroad. I realized that much of that energy was looking for a place to be directed. There were a lot of great ideas, great enthusiasm, and a desire to be advocates for change, but an uncertainty about how to do this. So the impetus for this meeting and the hope from what we'll accomplish from this meeting is to learn from people who've done it successfully, people who've been strong advocates in other areas, including the ones that we feel most passionate about, so that we can go beyond thinking and complaining and perhaps being down about what's going on around us, and switch to a theme of uplifting, uplifting our communities by being strong advocates for what their needs are, and in turn, turning this into a better world for our children.
Aditya Bagrodia: Fantastic. And I think a lot of us share some of these passions, think about them, and it can be a little bit challenging to navigate the system, get involved, understand how to be advocates. So the program's going to start on Friday, January 13th at six o'clock. There's a welcome reception where I will hopefully have participants to get together. Then there's a panel on Saturday, including some wellness time for people that are coming in to enjoy San Diego, especially around the winter time. Couple of keynote talks on Sunday. And if people are able to stay, a sunrise gathering at Soledad Mountain Park here in San Diego. So maybe at a high level, can you just talk about some of the topics, programs that will be highlighted?
Manoj Monga: Yeah. So thank you. They fall into some broad buckets related to urologists and diversity and equity, global volunteerism and global issues such as climate change, and then issues that may be a little bit more pertinent to the United States, including health access, health equity, homelessness, gun violence. So a variety of things that touch our communities in a variety of ways, touches our patients in a variety of ways and touches our urology community. I will just say that one of the things that arose from a social media was a shift away from calling it urologists for social responsibility. And now it's urology representing our broad community, not only our nurses and students and residents, but also friends of urology. So I suspect we'll have some attendees from outside of our specialty area who share a similar passion for change.
In terms of format, as you alluded to, the mornings will be mostly an opportunity for us to learn from experts, a few keynote speakers from public health, from law, from advocacy, people who can guide us on the right way to do it, the most effective way to do it. We'll have panels for people, some of whom many of our listeners will be familiar with, and others will be drawing in from outside of our community to talk about the specific topics at hand.
Then we'll have a break for two to three hours so that people can reflect on what they've heard, what they've learned, talk about it amongst small groups, or enjoy some of the outdoors. We realize that many of these topics are fairly heavy, and we wanted to make sure that we didn't burden people with information that could drag them down, but rather give them some time to themselves to reflect so that they can lift us up when they come back.
The afternoons then we'll be breakout sessions. In small groups we'll talk about what we can do and how we can do it with a wrap up at the end of each day, sharing those ideas with the larger group. And as you mentioned, Martin Luther King morning, we'll try to have a little visual on to watch the sunrise. That'll hopefully be a sign of the world changing.
Aditya Bagrodia: That's wonderful, Manoj. It's been amazing as we've started these discussions to actually look at our own urology community. And there's so many amazing leaders, international volunteers in urology, really doing some tremendous access work, advocacy work. And I think I'm very excited to get these key opinion leaders, thought leaders together in addition to people outside of our community that have expertise. And one of the things that I really love is your vision of bringing children, if their parents feel it appropriate to engage in some of these conversations. It's almost like a patient advocate. We're really advocating on behalf of the future. And I think that's a really novel way to approach it.
Manoj Monga: Well, Aditya, you mention key opinion leaders, and we want to make this a better world for our children. Who better to tell us how to do it than their voices?
Aditya Bagrodia: Well, Manoj, congrats on putting this together. I know it's effort required, but I think it's effort directed towards the right direction. So again, it's January 13th through the 15th here in San Diego. Thanks, UroToday, today for helping highlight this important event, and we hope to see you there.