Epidemiology Counts from the Society for Epidemiologic Research

Our infectious disease epidemiology experts, Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard School of Public Heath, are back for a special Q&A episode of the podcast! Host Bryan James relays a compilation of your fantastic questions to the experts leading to a very insightful conversation on how to navigate the “new normal” of life during...

Drs. Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard School of Public Heath are back for a fourth episode to discuss the coronavirus pandemic with host Bryan James. Between our first podcast in early February 2020 and this recording, the pandemic has grown from 11 cases of COVID-19 in the US to over 1.3 million known cases and 84 thousand death...

Depression and anxiety disorders remain among the most common and destabilizing health conditions worldwide. As the COVID-19 epidemic progresses, mental health has emerged as a principal concern, given the increase in social isolation, trauma exposure, and grief and bereavement, among other exposures. Today, Bryan James hosts a discussion with we talk with Katheleen Merikangas, Senior Investigator...

The coronavirus outbreak is now a global pandemic and the US is ground zero for the COVID-19 crisis. Drs. Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Heath are back to discuss the latest developments with host Bryan James. They address whether social distancing is helping to “flatten the curve” and why we have tur...

Infertility is increasingly common, and it is likely you know someone who has experienced infertility or may have experienced this yourself. Given that this is a very stressful time for couples and that treatments can be very expensive, couples often try everything they can to improve their fertility. There is a lot of advice out there for what you should and should not be doing to improve fertili...

Twenty days after releasing episode 12 “Coronavirus”, host Bryan James follows up with two experts in infectious disease epidemiology, Dr. Justin Lessler, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Dr. Michael Mina, Assistant professor of Epidemiology and Immunology at Harvard School of Public Heath, and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The...

The novel coronavirus outbreak originating in Wuhan, China has sickened tens of thousands of people and the number of cases is growing as of this recording. The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency and countries around the world have enacted travel restrictions and public health measures to contain the outbreak. The situation is changing rapidly and the public is unders...

Screen time has been blamed for health issues ranging from sleep disturbances, to depression, and obesity. But how much do we actually know about how media use affects health? Are some people more at risk than others? What role does the content of what we watch play in these health outcomes? Can screen time be beneficial? In this episode, host Bryan James is joined by Anna Pollack to explore this...

As the new year approaches, many people (epidemiologists included!) will resolve to begin exercising more. Making a renewed commitment to exercise is among the most common New Year’s resolutions. Although almost everyone knows they should be exercising, there is a lot of confusion about how much exercise we really need to stay healthy. Does the amount or type of exercise you need depend on whether...

We are in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. More American lives have been lost to drug overdoses than were lost either at the height of the AIDS epidemic, or during the Vietnam war. There has been a lot of recent debate about what has caused this epidemic, and to what extent is the pharmaceutical industry at the root of this problem. Yet a lot of questions remain about this issue. Why do w...

Gun violence is endemic in the United States. It’s become a politically polarized topic and the discourse, which tends to focus on mass shootings, is replete with misinformation. Key questions underlying this debate are inherently epidemiological and population research can help separate fact from fiction. For example, what does the data tell us about trends in gun ownership and gun violence in th...

While cigarette smoking has declined in the US, vaping has increased dramatically—especially among younger Americans. While vaping may be less harmful to human health than combustible tobacco products like cigarettes, it still contains highly addictive nicotine and other potentially harmful but not well-understood chemicals. And yet many of us don’t really know exactly what vaping is and how it di...

Did you get your flu shot? Employers and other institutions that have a stake in our health, wellbeing and productivity have decided the flu shot is a worthwhile investment. However, many people seem ambivalent about the flu shot. What is behind these different perspectives? In the 6th episode, Matt Fox and Jennifer Ahern interview Dr. Arthur Reingold on the topic of influenza and the flu vaccine....

How do we know what’s really making us sick? And how to do we make it better?  If we read the newspaper, we might think it’s whether we follow a low fat diet, whether we took the stairs those two flights to our office instead of jumping on the elevator, and ditching cigarettes once and for all. But our guests today, Sandro Galea and Katherine Keyes, will argue that those decisions are all part of...

Did you know there are 39 grams of sugar in a standard can of soda? That’s approximately equal to consuming 10 sugar cubes in one sitting! In the fourth episode, Matt Fox and Hailey Banack interview Dr. Barry Popkin on the topic of sugar sweetened beverages. In this episode we highlight the links between sugar sweetened beverages and obesity and discuss some ideas for public health policy to limit...

In the third episode, Matt Fox and Anna Pollack interview Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, professor at NYU Langone Health, on plastics. In this episode, we answer that nagging question as you microwave your lunch – should we microwave our food in plastic? Do plastics in consumer products reflect a health risk? If so, how could we change our habits to minimize that risk?

In the second episode, Matt Fox, Justin Lessler and Jennifer Ahern discuss the concept of herd immunity or community immunity. What is it? What has it accomplished? How do we know it works? What happens when we lose it? Interviews with Walter Orenstein, Elizabeth Halloran and Saad Omer, enrich the discussion by bringing historical, technical and social perspectives to understanding of this importa...

  Welcome to Epidemiology Counts from the Society for Epidemiologic Research! Each episode delves into a particular disease or health condition or something that we are exposed to in our daily lives that may affect our health, and bring you a look at what we currently know and don’t know about each of these conditions or potential causes of disease. In this inaugural episode, Matt Fox,...