American Journal of Public Health Podcast

In this October podcast we discuss lung cancer screening. It is currently recommended that specific categories of heavy smokers be screened for lung cancer using low dose cat scan. However, some occupational exposures also cause lung cancer, as asbestos and radiations. I interview Dr Steven Markowitz from the Worker Health Protection Program (Queens College, CUNY), Fred Carpenter, a participant of the program who screened positive for lung cancer, and Dr David Weissman, Director of the Respiratory Health Division, at NIOSH.

The September podcast reviews episodes from podcasts recorded over the last twelve months that were particularly timely with respect to hot issues in American public health. I selected four of them, which, I believe, revealed inspiring solutions: rebuilding after hurricanes with Reed Tuckson (Tuckson Health Connection), public health advocacy with Georges Benjamin (APHA), gun violence prevention with Colleen Barry (Johns Hopkins University) and institutional racism with Lisa Bowleg (George Washington University).

In this podcast we explore this notion of so-called institutional racism (IR) with Mary Bassett (NYCDOH), Lisa Bowleg (George Washington University) and Georges Benjamin (APHA). It has three chapters. We start by defining institutional racism. From there, we illustrate these definitions. We follow this discussion by specifying how public health agents, researchers, and policymakers can play an active role to combat institutional racism and its impact on the health of the public.

The July 2018 podcast of AJPH asks the following questions: If there are realistic goals that could slash gun violence in the US, what can be done by gun violence researchers and by gun owners to reduce the burden of deaths and disabilities caused by gun violence? How can both sides of the controversy be brought to find a common ground and start a constructive dialogue? My guests are Professors Colleen Barry (Johns Hopkins), Sandro Galea (Boston University), Matthew Miller (Northeastern University), and Jonathan Metzl (Vandebilt University, TN).

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in AJPH, including: Adaptive behavior of sheltered homeless children in the French enfams survey; cumulative prevalence of maltreatment among New Zealand children; a selection of articles that focus on climate change and environmental justice; rising trends of prescription opioid sales in contemporary Brazil; maternal folic acid supplementation and plasma folate concentrations in the Boston Birth Cohort (Dr. Guoying Wang from Johns Hopkins University, an author of the article on Folate in pregnancy to introduce their paper); and the Collaborative Improvement And Innovation Network (COLIN) to reduce infant mortality: an outcome evaluation from the US South.

Is the new public health activism different from the old one? I address this question because we are in 2018 and that 50 years ago, 1968 remains the symbolic year of a transformative decade, the sixties, from which public health emerged profoundly transformed. Today there is a new public health activism challenges which challenges injustices. How different is the new activism from the older one? My guests are Prof Nick Freudenberg, from CUNY, and Prof Jeanne Stellman, from Columbia, both public health scientists who were student activists in the sixties, and Kelsey Schertz, who is currently a MPH student.

In the May issue of AJPH we tackle a sensitive question: when and how widely should we use causal language to describe scientific findings of direct public health relevance? When can we say X is the cause of Y? This question is polarizing epidemiologists. Here, after having spoken with Miguel Hernan who coined the C-Word, I interview Professors Jennifer Ahern from UC Berkeley, Heidi Jones, from City University of New York, and Dana March, from Columbia University, all senior, experienced, and influential teachers, about whether we should use the C-Word more often or not.

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in AJPH, including: Evolution of PH Education in China (1/2018); Hurricanes: Rebuilding Communities Right 1/2018); THE Linked Epidemics of Opioid Addiction and Hepatitis C (2/2018); Various Types of Arthritis in the United States (2/2018): Prevalence and Age-Related Trends From 1999 to 2014; Hearing Aid Acquisition in Chinese Older Adults With Hearing Loss (2/2018); Work as a social determinant of health (3/2018).

The two dialoguing guitars in the podcast intro announce an issue about dialoguing in public health between people having as different worldviews as republicans and democrats. I interview Georges Benjamin (APHA), David Sundwall(R-Utah), Dick Gottfried (D-NY), Pete Kirkham(R), Dick Zimmer(R-NJ). My last question to all is about a possible bipartisan public health initiative that could have some chances of success in the coming weeks. Check it out. You may be surprised to see how their opinions may sometimes converge.

This month we review the role of work in public health and in population health research. Work, whether we have one or not, is central to our lives but it clearly does not have the major place in public health it should have. Why is it so? To answer this difficult question my guests are Emily Ahonen (Indiana University), Michael Wright (USW), Adam Finkel (Michigan University, former OSHA), Paul Landsbergis (State University of NY), and Celeste Monforton (Texas State University).