The Dose

Hate crimes against Asians in the United States more than doubled from 2019 to 2020. Last month, in one of the most conspicuous acts of violence against Asians in recent history, six Asian American women were shot dead in Georgia. Racism against people of Asian descent is not a new problem, but it has been exacerbated of late by politicians using racist rhetoric to describe the coronavirus. Asians...

If you're an optimist, then every piece of good news about vaccine approvals and shots in arms has put the end of the pandemic in sight. If you're a pessimist, then all the new variants with names sounding like computer-generated passwords signal the apocalypse. Will hope win, or will dread? On the latest episode of The Dose podcast, Eric Schneider, M.D., talks about the high-stakes race between t...

Health care workers are among the heroes of the pandemic. One year in, many of us are experiencing stress, fatigue, and grief. But this can pale in comparison to the toll faced by those caring for the sick and dying on a daily basis. On this episode of The Dose, we listen to the stories of one group of frontline health workers: nurses. Often dealing with inadequate PPE and staff shortages, nurses...

Violence kills thousands of Americans each year and sends many more to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Even though many people recover physically, the issues that cause violence often go unchecked. On today's episode of The Dose, we talk about how interventions, both in hospitals and in communities, that can help break the cycle of violence that traumatizes people over time. Our guest...

Living with the COVID-19 pandemic for a year, it's hard to process the numbers. What we know is that nearly 500,000 Americans have lost their lives, and that Black, Latino, and Indigenous people are worst impacted. But behind the statistics are stories, and on the latest episode of The Dose , we listen to one of those stories. Our guest, Dr. Magdala Chery, is a primary care physician and Commonwea...

Almost a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. faces another health crisis – one of loneliness. Between lockdowns, social distancing, and the fear that contact with others could make us sick, many people are living in isolation. But there are ways to cope. On this episode of The Dose podcast, Matthew Pantell and Laura Shields-Zeeman, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco,...

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States appears to have learned few lessons from its disastrous early response.   Hasty lockdowns and bungled reopenings have now given way to a sluggish and uncoordinated vaccine rollout. This month, the daily death toll crossed 4,000, and hospitals in many parts of the country are overflowing with sick patients.   How are we going to get out of this m...

COVID-19 brought the lives of college students to an abrupt standstill – being in a classroom, a dormitory, a dining hall table with friends became risky activities overnight. How did universities navigate the impossible tradeoff between having students on campus with the risks of the coronavirus, and keeping students remote but putting their education in peril? Find out on this episode of The Dos...

A new president doesn't get four years to shape health care, he gets six months. And for President-elect Joe Biden, the most pressing health care issue is – no surprise here – COVID-19. On this episode of The Dose , the Commonwealth Fund's President David Blumenthal, M.D., talks about Biden's opportunity to leave a lasting health-care legacy by bringing the pandemic under control. History will jud...

President-elect Joe Biden says he is committed to strengthening the Affordable Care Act so that all Americans can get the health care they need. He also wants to work with people of all political stripes: in his acceptance speech, he said it's time "to listen to each other again." This week on The Dose podcast, we're bringing back an earlier episode on the compromise required to bring about big po...

People who are incarcerated have complex health needs, and to make matters more complicated, prisons and jails have seen some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the U.S.   But what happens when they leave prison or jail and need to receive health care on the outside? Many states that have expanded Medicaid are also trying to ensure that people leaving jail or prison are able to enroll in health co...

Masks. Lockdowns. Shuttered businesses. Hospitals strained beyond capacity. Weary of the pandemic's myriad disruptions to normal life, many Americans are pinning their hopes on a COVID-19 vaccine. But even if an effective one is developed, it won't make the virus magically disappear. On today's episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug...

Americans are stressed about COVID-19 – both the disease and what it's doing to the economy. And while the virus has touched every corner of the globe, many high-income countries have been more successful than the U.S. at easing some of the pandemic's pain. This week on The Dose podcast, we talk about why Americans are experiencing the anxiety and sadness of the pandemic differently than people in...

Health care is always important for voters, but this year, it is at the top of everyone's mind. The health needs and economic costs of COVID-19, and protections for people with pre-existing health conditions tie for first place in the Commonwealth Fund's latest poll on which health care issue matters most to voters in the 2020 election. Voters are also worried about health care costs, the safety o...

Hospitals in the U.S. started preparing for COVID-19 as early as January, but it wasn't until Italian doctors started tweeting in March that they had to decide which patients would get ventilators that Michael Apkon realized the severity of the crisis. On the latest episode of The Dose , Apkon, President and CEO of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, takes listeners on one hospital's journey through t...

***Originally Aired Nov 2019*** Bias in medicine – based on race and sex – is a well-documented problem. It's a problem because the health care system has historically marginalized the medical concerns of people of color and women, which has led to worse health outcomes. On this episode of The Dose , host Shanoor Seervai discusses ways to tackle bias in health care with Ann-Gel Palermo, who works...

***Originally Aired Feb 2020*** More than 800 women across the globe die each day from complications related to pregnancy. Some of them bleed to death. Some of them develop infections or severe life-long medical conditions because they are delivering their babies in unsafe environments. Many of these deaths could be prevented if more young people had access to birth control and other reproductive...

***Originally Aired Oct 2019***  African American women die of pregnancy-related causes at three times the rate for white women, even after accounting for income, education, and access to other resources. What is it about being born black in America that leads to such outcomes? To answer this question, Shanoor Seervai interviews Kennetha Gaines, clinical nurse manager for UCSF Health in San Franci...

When the pandemic hit, millions of Americans found themselves in a tight spot – practice social distancing to avoid COVID-19, but what if you have a health condition that requires seeing a doctor? Technology could transform the way people access health care, and the U.S. has made huge investments in this over the past decade. But, as health technology expert Aneesh Chopra explains on the latest ep...

On June 12, the Trump administration eliminated federal protections against discrimination in health care for transgender people. This means that transgender Americans can be denied access to health coverage and care – simply because they are trans. With the U.S. still grappling with COVID-19, the decision could make it more difficult for trans people to seek testing or treatment for the disease....

COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are climbing again, and data show that Black and Latinx Americans are contracting and dying of COVID-19 at higher rates than white Americans. The reasons for are complex, including: people of color are more likely to be poor, work in industries that expose them to the virus, live in crowded spaces, and have chronic health conditions. Then there's race -- the discriminati...

Every day, primary care providers are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, treating sick patients even as they worry about bringing the virus home to their families. Many still lack adequate protective gear, and many worry about the financial stability of their practices. With the U.S. starting to reopen, we need our primary care practices to keep their lights on — not only to test and tre...

Health care is about so much more than medical tests or treatments. But, too often, health care providers forget to ask patients what they think would make them feel better. Community health workers can help people take charge of their own health. Often living in the same communities and coming from similar backgrounds, they are able to share life experience with their clients and engender trust....

Getting and staying healthy depends on more than just medical care. In some instances, a patient also needs legal services. What if doctors could "refer" their patients to lawyers for help in dealing with a housing dispute, immigration status, or any number of legal issues? On this episode of The Dose , we hear from Norma Tinubu and Emily Foote about how attorneys from the New York Legal Assistanc...

Earlier this week, Germany became one of the first countries to start easing COVID-19 restrictions. That's because its initial response to the pandemic helped keep the death rate low. Germany: Caught the coronavirus early Does lots of testing Has a robust health care system. As the pressure mounts to reopen economies across the globe, other countries may have something to learn. On this episode of...