Public Health On Call

Epidemiologists, community health workers, laboratory professionals, data analysts, and a whole spectrum of public health workers rose to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, years of underinvestment in public health departments undermined the response. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about what the pandemic has taught about u...

Native American communities were especially hard hit during the pandemic with COVID cases 10 times that of the rest of the US. Dr. Allison Barlow talks with Stephanie Desmon about how the Native Americans went from the highest rates of cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities to the highest vaccination rates in the US with 70-95% of the community fully vaccinated. They also talk about how much the...

According to a new report by the Network for Public Health Law, several states are considering or have passed legislation to limit the ability of public health agencies to respond to infectious disease and other emergencies. At stake are the ability of health departments to impose quarantine to save lives or require masks for any conditions, including infectious tuberculosis. Donna Levin , Nationa...

As a 2004 Olympic silver medalist in swimming and public health expert at the Center for Health Security, Dr. Tara Kirk Sell is uniquely positioned to talk about what to expect at next month's Olympics. Dr. Sell talks with Stephanie Desmon about how the Olympic committees are working to keep athletes safe, what could go wrong, and why we need the Olympics now more than ever.

With millions of Americans still unvaccinated and dangerous variants continuing to spread, the footrace against the virus continues into the summer months. Want to help? The Made to Save Coalition is a national grassroots effort to ensure communities hardest hit by COVID-19 have access to vaccines and accurate, timely information. Chris Wyant , executive director, and Alice Chen , senior advisor,...

The Bloomberg American Health Initiative offers full scholarship for MPH and DrPH degrees to people working on the front lines of key challenges to health in the United States. This special episode of the Initiative's American Health Podcast features an interview with host Shane Bryan and scholarship recipient and "Bloomberg fellow" Julianah Marie , the Waste Reduction Programs Coordinator with th...

Maryland's new Health Equity Resource Act will provide more than $50 million to support community-led plans that advance health equity. What might these plans include? Where did this idea come from? Dr. Josh Sharfstein interviews Michelle Spencer , a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who previously led the development of a similar program to establish "Health En...

The Baltimore Convention Field Hospital was established in the spring of 2020 by the state of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland to fight COVID. A few weeks ago, Dr. Josh Sharfstein was invited inside the 100,000 square foot field hospital's command center to meet with Director Dr. Jim Ficke and Deputy Director Dr. Chuck Callahan . He also speaks with Dr. Mindy Kantsiper, Dr....

After being fully vaccinated, only 50% of people who are immunocompromised show an antibody response against COVID-19, compared with 100% of those with a typical immune system. Hopkins transplant surgeon Dr. Dorry Segev talks with Stephanie Desmon about how the immune response is blunted in individuals taking medications for organ transplants or who have overactive immune systems, what antibody te...

While gun violence has increased in most cities, Richmond, California, has seen a marked decrease in the last decade thanks to an organization that works with the people most likely to be the victims of gun violence: the shooters themselves. Guest host Dr. Daniel Webster , director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy, talks with DeVone Boggan , founder, and CEO of Ad...

In this episode, Dr. Josh Sharfstein talks with Hopkins researchers who break down three papers looking at the effectiveness of different COVID-19 vaccines against variants of concern. Carli Jones , a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, talks about some good news from a study looking at the effectiveness of Pfizer's vaccine against the variants found in the UK and South Afric...

The Bloomberg American Health Initiative offers full scholarships for MPH and DrPH degrees to people working on the front lines of key challenges to health in the United States. This special episode of the Initiative's American Health Podcast features an interview with host Shane Bryan and "Bloomberg fellow" Ashley Hickson , a senior policy associate at the Center for Science in Public Interest, a...

At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed like COVID-19 didn't really affect young people. But a recent uptick in cases and hospitalizations among younger adults could point to the transmissibility of newer variants. Dr. Emily Martin , an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how the variants may be changing the risks for you...

The Bloomberg American Health Initiative offers full scholarship for MPH and DrPH degrees to people working on the front lines of key challenges to health in the United States. This special episode of the Initiative's American Health Podcast features an interview with host Shane Bryan and scholarship recipient and "Bloomberg fellow" Katherine Chon , the Director of the Office on Trafficking in Per...

Police violence is one of the most observable manifestations of structural racism in the US, but is addressing this a matter of finding the "bad actors" or rethinking the system altogether? Guest host Dr. Daniel Webster , director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy, talks with Tracey Meares , professor of law and founding director of The Justice Collaboratory at Yal...

Dr. Justin Lessler, an infectious disease epidemiologist, returns to the podcast to talk to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the Scenario Modeling Hub's models for the fall of 2021. Researchers projected what could happen under four scenarios of vaccination rates and viral control measures. The upshot? As has been the case since the beginning, what happens next is up to us.

After 9-11, the US government convened a crisis commission to investigate what happened and why, and to glean lessons to inform crisis prevention and response in the future. Philip Zelikow , the executive director of the 9-11 Commission, talks with Stephanie Desmon about laying the groundwork for a COVID-19 Commission. They talk about why it's so important to take stock of what's happened and crea...

According to the ACLU, Black students are arrested, suspended, and expelled from school at higher rates than other students and far more likely to wind up in the juvenile justice system. Guest host Dr. Chidinma Ibe talks with Dr. Odis Johnson , director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools about how to end the "school to prison pipeline" and help all kids feel safe, secure, and...

A recent survey found that 90% of young people support the Black Lives Matter movement's work to end racism in policing. Guest host Dr. Chidinma Ibe talks with youth leader Jada Johnson and with Joni Holifield, the founder of Heart Smiles, about how they experienced George Floyd's murder and Derek Chauvin's conviction. You can read more about Heart Smiles' work with Baltimore youth here: https://m...

Guest host Dr. Chidinma Ibe talks with Joe Jones , executive director of the Center for Urban Families about the economics of racism in the United States. They discuss how discrimination in education, housing, health care, and jobs keep Black people from success, and how much of this gets attributed to individual decision making without recognizing the larger context. They also talk about what it...

In the year since George Floyd's murder, there have been calls for police reform, record voter turnout for a Presidential election, and 360 bills with restrictive voting provisions introduced by legislators in 47 states. Guest host Dr. Rachel Thornton of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity talks with democracy and elections expert Kareem Crayton about which elected officials are in position...

George Floyd's murder had an impact on our collective consciousness, and racism by itself is a "biopsychosocial stressor." Guest host Dr. Rachel Thornton of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity talks with Dr. Wizdom Powell of the UConn Health Disparities Institute about the potential for mental health fallout from increased racialized violence, the impacts of trauma, the "adultification" of...

Graduation is May 25 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Josh Sharfstein talks with soon-to-be Dr. Asari Offiong , an expert in the health and wellbeing of adolescents. Dr. Offiong talks about how she came to study public health, how she experienced the tragedy of the pandemic, and how she sees the future.

Where are we in terms of technology in testing for COVID-19? What kinds of tests are available now, how accurate are they, and which tests should be used in different circumstances? Will workplaces require testing? What about schools in the fall? How accurate are over-the-counter COVID tests? Dr. Gigi Gronvall from the Center for Health Security returns to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon...

Are school closures helpful in preventing outbreaks of COVID-19? Epidemiologist Justin Lessler and statistician researcher Elizabeth Stuart co-authored a recent research paper looking at the risk of COVID-19 in households where a child attended in-person schooling. They talk with Stephanie Desmon about what they learned.