In "Don’t Diss-Connection," Filmmaking Meets Public Health

Dr. Yusuf Ransome and Josh Bibbey.

During his time as a barista at BLOOM, Josh Bibbey got to know the regulars at the Edgewood Avenue shop and cafe, who would stop by to get their drinks and make smalltalk with him as they waited. It’s where he met Dr. Yusuf Ramsome, and made him a lavender latte. Instantly the two hit it off, spending an hour and a half recounting their experiences with burnout.

Six months later, the duo is part of the team behind Don’t Diss-Connection, a documentary from Bibbey, Ransome, and fellow colleagues highlighting social connectedness and its effects on public health. The trailer release took place last Sunday evening at NXTHVN.

“The goal about life is to create a population that's well, that's flourishing, and that's what we envision social connectedness allows us to do,” said Ransome, founder of the Society, Connectedness, and Health (SOCAH) Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.

On a quest for mediums that beyond peer-reviewed articles and academic journals, Ransome said that a big goal behind his research is to disseminate his findings to the general public in an accessible method, free from paywalls and inclusive to all.

“So my task was simple: Where are people getting the information from, and how do we get it to them?” he said. “And so doing something in a documentary which most people have access to in terms of watching TV, whether it's on YouTube, it's accessible, but it's also in a format that they understand through simple conversation.”

Don’t Diss-Connection, the trailer to which is done, is set to continue production this year. Ransome said that he hopes to host another screening next spring to show their progress with the project.

The documentary features several New Haven notables—community leaders, nonprofit founders, artists, entrepreneurs, and poets sharing their experience with social connectedness in and with New Haven. Interviewees, for instance, include The Word Artistic Director Tarishi “Midnight”  Shuler, Haven's Harvest Co-Founder and Executive Director Lori Martin, and East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith.

It marks a full-circle moment for Bibbey, who serves as the documentary’s director and found social connectedness and community while investigating, paradoxically, his own social disconnectedness. Feeling burnt out from the pressure of freelancing, Bibbey turned to BLOOM as a side job. Being a barista was a retreat: he was able to take time to figure out his next creative move. It was through his meeting with Ransome, in turn, that his spark returned.

“I've been trying to understand what it is for people that lift them up because there's many times I think everyone can relate that in [some] moments, you don't know what it takes to get up in the morning,” he said. “You don't know what it is in the day that's going to give you that motivation or that fire.”

“And so I started going about trying to figure out what that question is, not just for myself, but from all these other perspectives because you know, you are a network of selves.”

In the crowd was Nicole Ahsan, a third-year student at Yale University who helped work on the film over the summer. As a film and pre-med major, Ahsan said that project married both skills.

“I’m really interested in the blending of storytelling and health and how we can use that as an agent for change,” she said.

From the project, she learned that there is an increasing desire for social connectedness as people learn how to navigate the social sphere after the isolation of Covid-19. The project also helped her improve on soft-skills; she once found it difficult to ask questions, but improved while in dialogue with interviewees.

“Especially in the post-pandemic world, social connection is ever more critical for us, and I think people recognize that, but maybe there's some confusion on how do we go about addressing that or how do we improve it for the future,” she said. “But overall, I think it starts with small action items on how we can improve and become more socially connected and reap the health benefits for that.”

Lori Martin, Jason Goubourn, and Dr. Yusuf Ransome.

The event also featured a panel moderated by Dr. James Frater, program administrator with Yale School of Public Health, and included people that had made an appearance at the film including Martin, counselor Krystal Jackson, the founder and owner of Simply Being Wellness Counseling, and Jason Goubourn, lead pastor at Church on the Rock in New Haven.

During the conversation, audience member Hannah Greene asked the panelists about their stance on capitalism and its relationship with social disconnectedness.

“I think a lot of the issues that we’re talking about are manufactured and they're not natural. And so, I just want to hear your thoughts on that,” she said. “For instance, a 13 year old having to have a job, it doesn't have to be that way.”

Martin responded by sharing that she is an anti-capitalist, and noted that one of her principles of fostering connectivity is fighting against social injustices like racism. To her, operating a nonprofit like Haven’s Harvest can be done with a charitable lens—but it should also empower the constituents that it serves, and provide them with the tools to build agency.

She also emphasized the importance of fostering workplace connections to push volunteers to see themselves on the same level as the people they serve. One of the ways she does this is by encouraging volunteers to take food.

“As a white person, I do see it as my job to talk about racism, which we didn’t discuss much here, with white people,” she said.

John Guillemette, Noelle Albert, Hannah Greene, and Marina Marmolejo.

Greene came to the show to support her  friend Marina Marmolejo, program manager for UniteCT.  Marmolejo was one of the interviewees featured in the film and reflected on how the experience prompted her to think about social connectedness in her career.

“And I think that lens was really new to me, so it was an important topic to reflect back upon myself, like, ‘What am I really doing?’ Right?,” she said. “We all as taxpayers pay a bunch of money into the system, and how is that like, to Hannah's point, equitably distributed? How are people who are decision makers in policy, in government, using a lens of social connectedness?”

Moved by Greene’s question, attendees John Guillemette and Noelle Albert also jumped into a discussion about capitalism. Guillemette, a writer who is a close friend of Bibbey’s, noted the number of corporations that profit off of addiction and substance recovery, and the offering up of temporary solutions. 

“We spend millions of dollars on a wrist slap,” he said. “You're getting wrist slapped by professionals, you know? But like, in reality, it's the disconnection that's causing those manifest illnesses, and it's the illness that's profitable for a very few.”

Greene called de-stressing from current events and practicing self-care “microsteps”for her to engage in social connectedness. For her, these steps look like engaging in inclusive spaces like the bookspace Possible Futures and advocating for third places that allow people to be themselves without financial constraints.

“I've been feeling like, really hopeless with  all the news and stuff…but it's like, you go where the work is, and that's where the hope is, and so where people are doing the work, that's where you feel more fortified, more grounded,” Greene said. “And of course, there are  all these macro issues, but there are really micro steps that we can take to support ourselves and support each other.”