American Journal of Public Health Podcast

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, doctoral student at Yale University, reviews highlights of the July and August issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Dr. Dongshan Zhu from Shandong University, China. He discusses the topic of “Disease-Specific Excess Mortality During the Covid-19 Pandemic”.

New: the podcast also exists as a youtube video here:

https://youtu.be/-RR-WL3Ll_4

In the absence of a FDA authorization to vaccinate for children under the age of 12, teacher vaccination, non pharmaceutical measures and contact tracing are the tools available to allow for school reopening while the highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant” is spreading. Is there a way to avoid the political polarization on these issues and be effective on the ground? Listen to the experience from Alabama, New Hampshire, and Indiana with Ana Isabel Bento, Margaret Franckhauser, Brea Louise Perry, and Andrew C Rucks.

In this issue, Prof. Vickie Mays, Jody Heymann, and Mary Bassett discuss the contents of the supplement guest-edited by Vickie Mays and Susan Cochran,(UCLA), entitled When Dying Really Counts. It is about which data a public health surveillance system should be collecting to reduce and not worsen health inequalities. This discussion is a formidable reminder that public health involves the art of making sense of population data to generate health and equity.

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor

Pengfei Guo, a doctoral student at Yale University, reviews highlights

of the April to June issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Dr. Sue

Lin from HRSA, DHHS. She discussed the topic of Covid-19 vaccine

distribution equity in underserved populations.

Today with my guests, representing voices from the LBGTQ, Latinas, and Black women communities, we discuss what they see as the top priority now to finally end the HIV epidemic. George Ayala, Alameda County Public Health Department, CA; Hortensia Amaro, Florida International University, and Dázon Dixon Diallo, Sister Love in Atlanta, Georgia and Johannesburg in South Africa.

On March 18, two months after its installation, the new US Presidential Administration achieved the symbolic mark of 100 million vaccine shots. The vaccines are safe, but the speed of vaccination has been slowing down across the country. There is a tendency to assign the slowdown to a lack of confidence in the vaccine. But there is also evidence that former vaccine hesitant have changed their minds. Have we reached the vaccine rollout tipping point? What is the best strategy to get the largest possible coverage? I am discussing these questions with Mike Fraser, Executive Director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and with Professor David Broniatowski from George Washington University.

In this context of growing violence against persons of Asian descent and exactly one year after the former president of the United States, referred to coronavirus as "the Chinese Virus," in an infamous tweet, I discuss with Dr Gilbert Gee from UCLA and and Dr Sylvia Chou, from the National Cancer Institute, how the hashtag Chinesevirus has impacted anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. We also approach the role of social media in feeding or preventing racism and xenophobia.

Regional Editor of @AMJPublicHeath, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, a doctoral student at Yale University, reviews some articles recently published in the January to March issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Professor Lisa Bowleg, Associate Editor of

AJPH, and Professor at George Washington University. She

discussed the importance of intersectionality research in public

health. (Translated and read by S. Yu).

As it is now a tradition, in the April issue of AJPH, we publish several points and counterpoints between democrats, republicans and libertarians about key issues in public health. This podcast focuses on one of these conversations, dealing with the future of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC. My guests are Drs Rebekah Gee, who advised the Biden team during last presidential elections and Dr Julie Gerberding who was director of the CDC under the George W Bush administration. They approach the future of the CDC from very different political perspectives. It will be fascinating to see where their opinions diverge, and whether they can converge.

History has always occupied an important place in the Journal. In this podcast, we show how the tables were turned over the course of a century and left three countries, the USA, China, and Spain, in very different relations to each other and to the pandemics in just about a century. I am meeting with with Dr. Ted Brown and Dr. Miguel Hernan in a panel session and separately with Dr. Ruth Rogaski to explore these historical turnarounds.