The Pursuit of Health Podcast

A conversation with Dr. Jennifer Bute  What small changes can we make to improve our healthcare system? For Dr. Jennifer Bute, it’s about improving the way we use communication - both in clinical settings, in training, and particularly: in health insurance denials. Dr. Bute is a professor of Communication Studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, who studies how people navigate health challenge...

A conversation with Dr. Heidi Schrumpf The mental health of healthcare workers must be a priority. With too many clinicians, nurses, and healthcare workers experiencing burnout, Dr. Heidi Schrumpf - Director of Clinical Services at Marvin Behavioral Health - joins us to share some cost-saving, life-saving solutions. Our guest couldn’t be better placed - Marvin’s core mission is to deliver high-qua...

A conversation with Dr. Arthur Burnett “Optimizing sexual function is one of the most important things men can do to increase their overall health and happiness.” We welcome Dr. Arthur Burnett to the conversation, one of the world’s leading urological surgeons, educators and a pioneer in surgery and men’s health. His discovery of the role of Nitric Oxide in the erectile function helped make Viagra...

A conversation with Terri Milton You are the CEO of your own health. Terri Milton received a diagnosis of fatty liver disease in 1998, and was told there was nothing they could do. But liver disease is progressive, and after it developed to Stage 4 cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma twenty years later, Terri received a liver transplant in 2022. Her story exposes how routinely this disease has...

A conversation with Kirsten Karchmer “What happens in society when we restore women to their full, embodied selves?” Kirsten Karchmer is a reproductive health expert with over 20 years of experience helping women navigate fertility challenges. Having been diagnosed with MS in her early adult life, Kirsten experienced major improvement through Chinese medicine principles - which highlighted a focus...

A conversation with Carol Roopchandsingh He never stopped fighting. Neither will she. Matthew Roopchandsingh - known to many as Lil Roopie - lived for nearly thirty years with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. He built a YouTube channel, designed his own logo, and spent his life reaching out to others with disabilities, telling them never to give up hope.  He passed away on November 14th, 2024. His mot...

A conversation with Kody Kinsley “Leadership starts with each of us.” Kody Kinsley is the former Secretary of North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services, who currently serves as a Senior Policy Advisor at Johns Hopkins University and the Milken Institute. His impact on North Carolina policymaking saw Medicaid expansion to 600,000 residents, $835 million secured in behavioral hea...

A conversation with Indu Navar We have to care to cure! Indu Navar is the founder of EverythingALS and a leading voice in patient-driven ALS research. After losing her husband to ALS following a long and exhausting diagnostic process, Indu turned her background in technology and data systems toward fixing what she saw as a broken approach to ALS care and research. She takes us through the history...

A conversation with Dr. Christine Petrin Healthcare is not a partisan issue. No better organization demonstrates this fact than Doctors for America, a national collective of 40,000 members: doctors, medical students, healthcare workers, patients, and retired physicians. And who better to talk us through their mission, than Past President Dr. Christine Petrin. In her own words, “Every time I join a...

We don’t need to hide. Our guest this week shares this message loud and clear: as providers, we have nothing to hide from our patients. Dr. Erica Urquhart knows a thing or two about our healthcare system - having trained at Harvard as a biomedical engineer, she received a MD-PhD in Molecular and Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins and is now a practising orthopedic surgeon. She joins today to talk thr...

A conversation with Dr. Paul Offit We didn’t just eradicate measles through vaccines, we eradicated all memory of it - that’s why vaccine hesitancy is on the rise. Today’s guest Dr. Paul Offit is angry. He’s an undisputed authority in the vaccination field, professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania, co-inventor of life-saving vaccine RotaTeq, author… in short, Offit has been in th...

A conversation with Dr. Troyen Brennan Our primary care sector is dysfunctional. Enter Dr. Troyen Brennan: author, adjunct professor at Harvard, former CMO for CVS Health and Aetna, and a national voice on the issues facing our healthcare system. He explains how the primary care/specialty care balance led America to adopt a profit-driven model, highlighting the repercussions this has had for prima...

A conversation with Katie Keith We need to make healthcare more resilient.  Here to guide us through the policy issues affecting modern healthcare is Katie Keith, J.D., M.P.H., director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and Principal at Keith Policy Solutions. With an impressive resume that includes a stint at the White...

Obesity is a chronic disease. So why are we still not treating it as such? Enter Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Stanford is a global voice on obesity - redefining it as a chronic disease, not a personal failure. In taking us through the science behind it, Dr. Stanford guides us to the heart...

A conversation with Brent Dial To Brent Dial, the pursuit of health is about three things: agency, education, and collaboration. And that’s exactly what Beek Health, the start-up he co-founded earlier this year, are all about. Beek are on a mission to revolutionize the bloated patient data process: reducing wasted time, resources and patient stress. Gone are repeated scans, poor communication and...

A conversation with Dr. Katherine Gergen-Barnett and Cheryl Harding Healthcare is a matter of trust. Pouring their efforts into rebuilding the critical tenet of medical trust are family physician and prominent voice on health equity Dr. Katherine Gergen-Barnett and community champion and strategic advisor Ms. Cheryl Harding. Our two guests forged a bond when Dr. Gergen-Barnett assured an unwell Ch...

Our primary care system needs an Overhaul. Leading the discussion is Dr. Marla McLaughlin, a national leader in care delivery innovation and CMO of apree Health. As a family medicine physician with decades of frontline experience, Dr. McLaughlin knows the value of primary care firsthand. As she says, its value lies in the strength and depth of the relationship between patient and physician. With a...

True health is only possible through prevention. Our guest this week is renowned physiotherapist, educator, and founder of the AMT System - Tom Swales. Tom has over 20 years of experience in orthopedic care, injury rehabilitation, and human performance - working with a huge range of people, from world-class athletes to the elderly. Yet in 2023, Tom suffered with a near-fatal Streptococcus A infect...

A conversation with Dr. Munir Ghesani Cancer care is due an update. Leading the field with cutting-edge treatment options and an ethos rooted in equity, are United Theranostics - represented today by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Munir Ghesani. As a leading voice in nuclear medicine, Dr. Ghesani expertly guides us through the current problems in cancer care, before outlining the promise of theranostic...

A conversation with RJ Kedziora “In the near future, it’s going to be irresponsible to not use AI.” As co-founder of Estenda Solutions, RJ Kedziora is an expert in leveraging data for healthcare organizations, with over 25 years of experience improving patient outcomes. He is a passionate advocate for the AI-clinician partnership: lightening administrative workloads, deepening patient connections,...

A conversation with Ariana Thacker We’re living through the 1918 flu pandemic all over again. But this time, it's silent.  Here to shed light on the staggering scale of mold related illness is Ariana Thacker - venture capitalist, former chemical engineer and Founder/CEO of MoldCo. After battling mold toxicity, Ariana realised just how little modern American healthcare knew about mold - it’s b...

A conversation with Sahil Diwan The future of healthcare is proactive. And that can start from the smallest of treatments - as simple as getting your ears cleaned. Enter Sahil Diwan, Co-Founder and CEO of SafKan Health, the medtech company behind OtoSet, the first FDA-cleared automated ear-cleaning headphones. Sahil and his brother have designed a product with mass appeal - it’s regularly going vi...

This episode is a collaboration with Doctors for America.  “ It's our turn to step up and speak out.” In another special episode of the Pursuit of Health podcast, Dr. Eric Fethke collaborates with Doctors for America to reflect on the impact of the 4th July tax bill, and the extent of its threat to our healthcare system. Calling on former guests to contribute, and through resharing pertinent...

A conversation with Neal Shah The healthcare insurance system is on the cusp of collapsing. Enter former Wall Street hedge fund manager Neal Shah, who channelled personal experiences of managing care for family members into a mission for transforming our entire system. As CEO of social enterprise and health tech platform CareYaya and Chairman of Counterforce Health, Neal is dedicated to spearheadi...

A conversation with Ryan Johnson Healthcare is a game of moving targets. No one knows this quite like Ryan Johnson, an ER nurse turned CEO and co-founder of health-tech innovators Float. Float are in the business of helping hospitals free-up needed capacity, empowering patients through home treatments, paying nurses fairly for their work, and easing staffing pressures. The result? Reduced costs, b...