The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

In this episode, Dr. Charity Dean walks us through the early days of COVID-19. She was told not to use the word "pandemic" because it could scare people, but sounded alarms anyway. Dr. Dean served as the Assistant Director for the California Department of Public Health. She was a key member of the executive team directing the COVID-19 outbreak response from the high-level overview, to tactical ope...

In this episode, Dr. Margot Kushel explains the country’s rise in homelessness and the critical impact of housing on the health needs of vulnerable populations. Dr. Margot Kushel is the director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations. Her research focuses on reducing the burden of homelessness on health through examining efforts to prevent and end homelessness and mitigating the effects of...

In this episode, emergency room physician Dr. Megan Ranney explains how gun violence is a public health crisis, and what she's doing to help end it. Dr. Ranney is a respected researcher, emergency physician, and advocate in the injury prevention and digital health field. She is a Professor at Brown University, and the co-founder of AFFIRM, the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Me...

In this episode, Dr. John Brownstein explains his work as a Digital Epidemiologist (not a finger doctor!) Dr. Brownstein has led projects like HealthMap.org, which offers real-time intelligence on emerging infectious diseases; Street Rx, which crowdsources the black market for prices of prescription drugs; and most recently VaccineFinder.org. Dr. John Brownstein is the Chief Innovation Officer at...

In this episode, Catherine Coleman Flowers (the “Erin Brockovich of Sewage”) explains how crumbling infrastructure causes toxic sewage spills in the backyards of poor, rural communities. Flowers also talks about how she discovered an outbreak of an intestinal, blood-feeding parasite we thought had been eradicated in the United States. Catherine Coleman Flowers is a MacArthur 'Genius' grant winner,...