American Journal of Public Health Podcast

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in the September Supplement, September and October issues of AJPH, including: community emergency readiness, immigration health policy issues, racial biases and health disparities 400 years since Jamestown, and lessons learned from surveying hard-to-reach populations in national health surveys. The guest presentation features the History Section of AJPH, prepared by Editor Ted Brown.

The November 2019 AJPH podcast is out here: https://am.ajph.link/POD_November2019. The US system of insurance is at a crossroads. Will it continue to grow incrementally or are we on the brink of a profound transformation in which all of the existing financing institutions are canceled and replaced by a single system? This complex machine was built progressively and underwent many social and political battles. The population coverage has improved in quantity and quality over time but remains a combination of sometimes contradictory systems and, importantly, it leaves out 30 million people without health insurance. My guests are Prof Jonathan Oberlander (University of North Carolina) and Dean Sherry Glied (New York University)

Since the first sale of African captives in 1619, North America has had about 250 years when slavery was legal and 150 years during which slavery was abolished. In this podcast I discuss whether this slavery past has left an imprint on public health in the United States. I also trace the mechanisms for which the impacts of this history can still be observed today. My guests are Thomas LaVeist, Dean of the Tulane School of Public Health, and Susan Reverby, historian of public health at Wellesley College, MA.

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in the June Supplement, July and August issues of AJPH, including: population mental health, science and industry, US food and nutrition policy, and interventions to reduce ageism against older adults. The guest presentation is on Protecting Universal Health Coverage in Non–United Nations Member States: Lessons from Taiwan”.

This is the SEPTEMBER 2019 podcast of the American Journal of Public Health. I review what happened in public health over the last 12 months as reflected in the columns of the journal and in its monthly podcast. I replay some snippets of old podcasts, AND conclude with statistics about the journal’s performance last year.

Last week the Supreme Court has prevented the Census Bureau from adding a question about the citizenship of the respondents in the coming 2020 US census. But the decision has not entirely clarified what will happen next year in terms of participation. I review the importance of the census for public health and what is at stake next year with my two guests, Prof Margo Anderson,(Uni of Wisconsin Milwaukee), and Prof Nancy Krieger (Harvard School of Public Health.)

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in the April to June issues of AJPH, including: National Public Health Week, protecting immigrant health, public health workforce issues, maternal and child health topics, despair among US adults entering midlife, 50 years after the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and tribute to Dr. Elizabeth Fee. The guest presentation is on Injury prevention in China: government–supported initiatives on the leading causes of injury-related deaths.

This month I discuss the role of science in assessing public health risks associated with industrial products, reviewing two cases prominently featured in the news recently: ovarian cancers linked to asbestos present in talc powder, and glyphosate contained in the herbicide Roundup associated with cancer and neurological troubles. I address the complex relationships between corporations and governmental agencies when consumers’ public health comes into question with David Rosner, historian, Columbia University, Howard Rodenberg, a former health officer in Kansas, and Jonathan Samet, Professor and Dean at the Colorado school of Public Health.

"Our Bodies, Ourselves" was conceived in 1969 as a self‐help guide about health written by women for women. Most of the listeners who were at least teenagers in the sixties are familiar with the book but younger people are less likely to have ever read it, perused it, or even seen it. So is "Our Bodies, Ourselves" history or does it still have a role to play in today’s world? My interviewees are Judy Norsigian, Sally Guttmacher, and members of the 2019 AJPH Student Think Tank Jay Balagna, Shanae Burch, Emily Dalton, Jeremy Wang, and Caitlin Williams.

This month we tackle a major crisis occurring in the governmental public health workforce, in state and local health departments. With JP Leider I review the massive wave of retirement that will slash a third of the workforce, with Karen DeSalvo I discuss what needs to be done to adapt the workforce to the current needs and challenges of public health 3.0, and with Katie Sellers we discuss how PH-WINS is conducted and what it tells us about the current interests and needs of the workforce.