First Opinion Podcast

Christopher Hartnick never expected his work as a doctor to intersect with political discussions about abortion and the right of pregnant people to make choices about their own bodies. Yet as a pediatric ear, nose, and throat physician who specializes in treating babies and children who have difficulty breathing, he's had up-close looks at how prospective parents make life-or-death decisions over...

During his long career as a pediatric oncologist and cancer researcher, William Woods thought highly of the FDA's work evaluating and approving new cancer drugs. But his opinion of the agency changed when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive disease that damages nerves in the brain and spinal cord. This week on the "First Opinion Podcast," Woods talks about li...

The number of children who become orphans because of Covid-19 rises each week: over 10.5 million children around the world have lost a parent or other caregiver living in the home, a staggering and heart-breaking figure. For comparison, it took 10 years years to create as many orphans as Covid-19 created in just two years.  Seth Flaxman and Susan Hillis have been tracking this grim statistic as pa...

For two decades, nurses have been considered the most trustworthy professionals in the country, above physicians. Yet the rigid hierarchy within hospitals and health systems places physicians at the top, creating a fraught power dynamic and a double standard when it comes to discipline. This week, nurses and educators Michelle Collins and Cherie Burke discuss this double standard as it relates to...

When Covid-19 began tearing across the U.S. in March 2020, Alex Goldstein started posting on Twitter the pictures and stories of people who had died from the disease.  Over two years later, as the U.S. marks the grim milestone of 1 million people dead from Covid-19, Goldstein is still at it. The account, @FacesOfCovid, has now memorialized more than 7,000 people.

Sickness can beget debt, which can then turn around and beget more sickness. That's the all-too-unfortunate cycle for people across the country who find themselves with overwhelming medical debt, the most common reason a debt collector might come after someone, with 1 in 5 households going into debt to pay for medical care. This week, Michelle Proser addresses ways to prevent medical debt and offe...

Clinicians walk a tightrope when trying to help their patients with chronic pain. They want to be able to ease a patient's suffering with medication, but must be mindful of the risks of addiction. There are some non-medication treatments for pain, but they're often hard to access or not covered by insurance.  Finding the balance can be challenging and emotionally taxing. And in the wake of the opi...

The roll out of a new mental health crisis line for the entire U.S., is scheduled to happen on July 16 — the blink of an eye in bureaucratic time. People in mental health crises or their family members will soon be able to dial 988, instead of 911 or the harder-to-remember 800-273-8255, the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The thinking is that calls to 988 will route people to...

When the Covid-19 pandemic began tearing across the country, it hit nursing homes hard. More than 200,000 residents and staff members at long-term care facilities have died from the disease. But as this week's guests point out, the care of nursing home residents and support for those providing that care have been long-standing issues. Jasmine Travers and David Grabowski discuss the current state o...

As a psychiatrist, Christin Drake has to turn away potential new patients every day — there just aren’t enough hours in the day to take them on. She doesn’t relish the rejection, especially when it’s for another Black woman who is looking to find one of the few psychiatrists who shares that identity and experience. But with the mental health crises brought on by the pandemic and an aging, shrinkin...

For trans people who want to receive gender-affirming medical care such as hormone treatments or surgery, one requirement is often a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria," which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines as deep psychological distress around one's gender. But not all trans people experience gender dysphoria. Many are just searching for the feeling of gender euphor...

Like many of us, Tom Sequist had no idea what was about to happen as he began his new job as chief medical officer of Mass General Brigham hospital system in Boston during the first weeks of 2020. Through his position, he saw firsthand how Covid-19 tore through low-income communities like Chelsea, just north of Boston. From 2,000 miles away, he also saw how the virus ravaged the Taos Pueblo tribe...

Sneha Dave has been living with a chronic disease for 17 years — almost her entire life. Diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when she was 6 years old, she has experienced firsthand the frustrating and often terrifying side effects of drugs that were not tested on people her own age. So when she sees Instagram posts and TikTok videos from pharmaceutical companies that are geared toward her generation...

It's a sad reality that people with diabetes know all too well: the price of insulin, a medicine they depend on to stay alive, has skyrocketed. Some people have trouble paying for insulin, forcing them to ration it or go without, which can be deadly. Alina Bills was diagnosed with diabetes when she was four, and can't remember life without it. Now age 26, she wrote a First Opinion essay about havi...

Science journalist Faye Flam explores medical information in part by unpacking the three-hour exchange about Covid-19 between scientist-turned-misinformant Robert Malone and Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan. Flam points out the holes in Malone's logic and how listeners can be aware of similar politically motivated tactics. "People are foregoing vaccines that would save their lives and people are actual...

Two years into the pandemic and in the midst of the latest hospital staffing crisis, nurses have finally gotten the country’s attention when it comes to burnout and attrition within the country’s most trusted profession. And it’s an important shift, because nursing is in trouble. This week, nurse and researcher Jane Muir describes some of the issues that are nudging more and more nurses to trade s...

We started the "First Opinion Podcast" in February 2021 because we knew there was incredible value in the perspectives shared by our essay contributors.  We'd hoped there could be added value in sharing those perspectives through real, in-depth conversations too. Now a little under one year and 43 conversations later, we've been thrilled by the results. To celebrate our last podcast of the year I...

Alison Singer learned how to advocate for a child with autism by watching her mother do it for her brother. When Singer had her own child with autism, Jodie, she immediately got involved with the activist community. But Jodie's condition doesn't look like the kind seen in television shows like "Atypical" or "Love on the Spectrum." She needs special support 24 hours a day. This week on the "First O...

If there was one moment that led Kathleen Bachynski to a career studying the public health significance of sports injuries and violence, it was blowing out her knee in three places as a high school soccer player. And after years of documenting the many ways that football in particular can harm young players, she's got one rule: no full-body collision sports for kids. This week, she discusses the r...

It can be hard to fathom that anyone other than you might own your information. But they do. Everything from what's in your electronic medical record to the average jogging speed recorded on an app may be someone else's property. For a profit, the magic is in the aggregate. On an individual scale, it's valuable information that paints a full picture of health for individuals and their health care...

Diseases like smallpox, measles, and dysentery killed two-thirds of the 1 million people who died in the Civil War. “Chronic diarrhea” and the stigma of smallpox scars plagued soldiers and others for decades afterward. And while Americans no longer depend on digging ditches for latrines, we’re still struggling with faith in national public health measures, racial disparities in health care, and mo...

Resident physician Sudhakar Nuti was almost too burnt out to write about burnout. He spent months working to find the energy to start his recent First Opinion essay on how the pandemic has aggravated the already dire mental health situation for many medical trainees around the country, including himself. "I feel like I've gone from doctor to debris," he wrote. Nuti joins "First Opinion Podcast" to...

Ever since medicine adopted a race-based formula to assess kidney health in the mid-2000s, some experts have spoken out against it & the life-threatening impact it has on Black patients.  Patients like Glenda Roberts, who long self-identified as Black, and who has lived with kidney disease for most of her adult life. The "Black correction" in the eGFR made it look like her kidneys were doing bette...

Natalie Ma knows a lot about antibiotics. She's familiar with the consequences of antibiotic resistance and the side effects of these essential drugs from her work at Felix Biotechnology, the biotherapeutics company she cofounded. So it was particularly daunting when what she thought was a run-of-the-mill urinary tract infection wasn't abated by the standard antibiotics. The conversation stems fro...

Americans have a tendency to fixate on what's commonly thought of of as "a good death" — a peaceful, quiet passing that looks like falling asleep. But physician Joel B. Zivot and medical philosopher Ira Bedzow are cautious about how this preoccupation can shield people from the reality of death. When they read a recent report in JAMA on using medication to eliminate the "death rattle" — a soft moa...