Announcer:
0:01
Welcome to MedEvidence, where we help you navigate the truth behind medical research with unbiased, evidence-proven facts, powered by ENCORE Research Research Group and hosted by cardiologist and top medical researcher, Dr. Michael Koren.
Dr. Michael Koren:
0:17
Hello, I'm Dr. Michael Koren, the executive editor of MedEvidence, and I'm really excited about the program that we have today. We have a very, very special guest, Mr. Ken Amaro, who's a local celebrity. He's a media star for many, many years and now is into policy as a councilman here in Jacksonville, Florida, and we're going to have a discussion about the truth behind the data, which is our slogan at MedEvidence because, as you and I were just talking about, you can have data points. Data points can be interpreted in many different ways, but ultimately, there's a truth behind all those data points and as a clinician group, as physicians, we want patients to understand that. And in your realm, in policy and in your media life, you had a big part of helping people get to the truth behind data points, often consumer complaints. So I'm really excited to talk to you about this and welcome to MedEvidence.
Ken Amaro:
1:17
Thank you, sir. It's a pleasure for me to be here with you this morning and have this conversation, and I'm looking forward to it because I like the title of the program and I think it is even more relevant today than you may imagine, not just in a medical sphere, but in our conversation as a culture where social platforms have now become primary sources of information, where truth has been altered or disguised, if you will. And so some folks don't know what's the truth behind what they're reading.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:50
Exactly. Yeah, it's timing. Yeah, perfect. Well said, we say this all the time. If you look up things under Dr. Google or somebody else, somebody's going to be trying to sell you something, typically in the medical field, and often they'll get to the truth and through conversations. We find the MedEvidence platform platform is very, very helpful for people to understand what we know, what we don't know, and how we're going to learn about the stuff that we don't know. So tell the audience a little bit about your background. How'd you get involved in media? How'd you get to where you are now as a council person? And, uh, I'm curious to know some of the details. I know a little bit, but not all of it.
Ken Amaro:
2:25
Well, I grew up in the Virgin Islands, in the U. S. Virgin Islands. I was born there and grew up there, graduated high school.
Dr. Michael Koren:
2:31
Which island?
Ken Amaro:
2:33
St. Croix.
Ken Amaro:
2:34
The larger of the three but not the capital, and after high school graduation was in a place of uncertainty. High school graduation was in a place of uncertainty and a friend of mine who has attended UConn University, Connecticut, at the time during the summer break, said Hey man why don't you come on up at UConn and check it out. So I moved up there around the month of June, July somewhere there and was really impressed with the campus and the community. And while we were there, he and I, we were able to participate in the college radio station which was in the field house and the students could engage.
Ken Amaro:
3:25
And the students were allotted so many hours that they could play whatever they wanted to play, and so the guy before would be playing classical music, the guy behind him would play jazz. The guy behind him would play Caribbean or whatever, but anyway that got me engaged and got into my blood that I you know I like this broadcasting thing. But something happened around the month of August, if I remember. I experienced Indian summer where the warm temperatures just plummeted at night I'm like, oh my God, it's cold here.
Ken Amaro:
4:05
And I wanted to get into broadcasting. There was nothing really at UConn, no kind of curriculum, if you will which was interesting because they did have a college radio station. And then I considered New Jersey area and the station engineer told me about Jones College in Jacksonville, Florida, that had a broadcasting curriculum, and so I applied from there and ended up here, and that's how
Dr. Michael Koren:
4:35
Wow. So you were a young man when you came to Jacksonville .
Ken Amaro:
4:41
Yeah. And the social shock for me, coming from the UConn campus, the Jones College campus, was where's the rest of the school? But nevertheless I enjoyed my stay and graduated from there with a degree in broadcast business administration. And while there in my senior year I was able to start some internships at the local radio station and television and things just evolved, you know. But it was a struggle at first, considering I still was holding on to my Caribbean dialect, if you will, and and we're in a communication business. I remember one of my peers said why don't I go do something else? And of course I ignore what he had to say and just stayed and plowed through to where I am.
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:34
So you went straight from your education to local media and tell us a little bit about how you developed your reputation as the investigative reporter.
Ken Amaro:
5:43
It was interesting because in the inception of my career I was general assignment reporting, which means you cover just about everything, and then I became the education reporter, then the government reporter and there was something I did. I did a report. It was just about when the AIDS epidemic occurred and I was given a task of doing some investigative work on AIDS and community behavior and things of that nature. And so when I went out and did the piece just pursuing how people were behaving or reacting to the AIDS epidemic, if they had changed their sexual behavior or thoughts or anything of that nature the story was very successful. It won an Emmy Award.
Ken Amaro:
6:45
And after winning the Emmy Award in the process, the station had a void of a consumer advocate, and so my management at the time decided if I would be interested in that role, and I said I would, and so that's how I ended up there, and for about 20 years I stayed in that role as a voice for the voiceless, advocating and investigating consumer complaints from all angles. Uh, if you will, and that skill set that I developed taught me a lot about how to deep dive, if you will, beyond the surface. It is a fact that, for example, if I had a complaint about a bad car sale, it is a fact that the car is broken. It is a fact that the car has only been in the consumer's hands for two weeks , but then you got to go beyond and see if there was something nefarious, if it was a piece of junk to begin with, or was it something that the consumer actually did to contribute to the problem?
Dr. Michael Koren:
7:56
Did the seller have knowledge that maybe it wasn't quite what was advertised .
Ken Amaro:
8:01
Precisely. And so it taught me a lot that the you know the old cliche that there's one side, two sides and sometimes three sides to the story.
Dr. Michael Koren:
8:10
So I'm very interested in that concept and also how you manage those expectations. So you know, I'd imagine that you know you were very well known in the community. People would be upset about whatever their issue was. They'd call the station, call you. So how would you sort through credibility? How would you choose which cases you looked at in more detail? How was your sense for how you get to the truth behind the data, if you will?
Ken Amaro:
8:39
Well, after a while, you learn to um, categorize or prioritize, and, uh, one of my threshold was does this situation, number one, has the potential to be replicated with others? Does it? Does it have a broad effect of? Is this just isolated?
Dr. Michael Koren:
9:01
Yeah, makes sense, yeah, and so we call that generalizability in medicine
Ken Amaro:
9:09
Then you shift If it does, then you give it some attention. And one of the things that I've tried to accomplish was not to discredit whomever was bringing the complaint, but to listen to them wholeheartedly and just embrace the facts as they are and not try to be quasi-judicial, if you will, and not make a determination right away as to whether they were right, wrong or whatever, but just to take the facts as they are. And then from there I proceeded to investigate the truth and look at the evidence as it is presented to me and try to put that into some perspective before making a determination. Sometimes it became difficult because some of the other sources that you needed to get a complete picture would not participate.
Ken Amaro:
10:09
And so sometimes that became kind of a challenge, and since we're in a medical sphere, I'll use this one that comes to mind immediately. One day I'm at my desk and I received a call from a physician by the way who had hired a third party to go after some outstanding debts, and that third party had not remunerated or paid the physician the monies that were collected. And so the physician is like I need your help. I've hired ABC. ABC has collected but won't give me my money .
Ken Amaro:
10:57
And I'm going to have to start billing the patients again. Just the thought of him billing the patients again who had already paid their debts kind of infuriated me if personally, and so I started researching and legally he was in that position where he could do that because as far as he's concerned the debt has not been satisfied. And I thought it was a legitimate cause and I started again exploring, spoke with some of the affected patients and they had confirmed and presented fact that they had indeed satisfied the debt. So then my alternative then was to go to the debt collector, to the company he hired. And it was interesting because I'm pretty sure you've seen the Mike Wallace situation where the person is chasing Mr. Wallace ,Get out of here.
Ken Amaro:
11:55
And it was one of those classical moments where you walk in, cameras are rolling and you identify yourself and you say I'm here to get to the bottom of this and find out what the facts are and it turns into a very aggressive assertive, tirade of profanity and that kind of thing
Dr. Michael Koren:
12:21
And What was their position?
Ken Amaro:
12:21
Well, it was never explained.
Ken Amaro:
12:22
It was instead get the heck out of here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And. And what they didn't realize is that's great for television. because, uh, you've seen the clips on 60 minutes bleep bleep bleep and so, uh, it's funny, I remember this one, but anyway. So, sure enough, we get back to the studio and we edit the piece and present it all sides and we got the bleeps going because, like I said, it was laced with profanity.
Ken Amaro:
12:55
and it hit the broadcast and two minutes from the broadcast to my desk. The guy is on the phone. Listen, I'm so sorry. I've got the check. I'll bring it to the office.
Dr. Michael Koren:
13:09
Interesting.
Ken Amaro:
13:09
You know, it's interesting because he could have done that.
Dr. Michael Koren:
13:12
Right.
Ken Amaro:
13:13
He could have said, he could have called the physician and say your check is out. And that would have
Dr. Michael Koren:
13:18
No, totally, it's so interesting. and that's the beauty of what you did for many years just shining a light sometimes is all you really need.
Ken Amaro:
13:30
But that's one of those that just came to mind. But there are some things that you deep dive, sure, as you say, the evidence behind the fact. , and I remember one time I was investigating why certain individuals within the city government were having outrageous salary increases and I requested, on their public records, the data.
Ken Amaro:
14:03
empirical proof? Sure, it's there. The fact speaks for itself. But then when you start deep diving, then you realize that this person had been there 30 years and it was a step increase per contract. That's why the increase looked that way.
Dr. Michael Koren:
14:20
And it was consistent with the other cities, or what have you?
Ken Amaro:
14:27
and while the fact was there, it was not as alarming or or abusive as you first thought when you put things in context,
Dr. Michael Koren:
14:31
interesting yeah, context is so important.
Dr. Michael Koren:
14:34
Um, so to that point, can you think of an example where somebody came to you as a consumer advocate? You thought they had a good story, but when you dug in, maybe it wasn't such a good story. But when you dug in, maybe it wasn't such a good story. And how do you break that news to the person who may still be sincere, but that's coming to you for help?
Ken Amaro:
14:51
One of the things that I pride myself on is to be honest and it's a matter of choosing the right words. But if I discovered that the evidence didn't support what they were claiming, I would tell them that as honestly as possible. But not only that. I would try to suggest if there was another recourse, like litigation or whatever. I would suggest pursuing that path because from my position, this is not what you think it is and I'm not going to be manipulated into being a soapbox.
Dr. Michael Koren:
15:32
You want to be a tool for that person when they may not be in the right
Ken Amaro:
15:36
and unfortunately, that can happen when you don't do your diligence and investigate the facts Interesting.
Dr. Michael Koren:
15:45
Well, this has been a great start to our conversation and in our next segment, I'm going to talk to you and get a little personal, because I understand that you're actually involved in a clinical trial and I'm a cardiologist, a preventative cardiologist, really interested in lipid issues and I'm going to ask you to share a little bit of that experience with me and the audience and talk a little bit about how clinical research works in terms of hypothesis testing and eventually to get to the truth.
Ken Amaro:
16:14
All right.
Announcer:
16:15
Thanks for joining the MedEvidence podcast. To learn more, head over to MedEvidence. com or subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
