Better Off

In a special bonus episode, recorded a day before Juneteenth was made a federal holiday, we listen in on a conversation between Opal Lee, an activist and teacher often called the "grandmother of Juneteenth," and Harvard University professors Annette Gordon-Reed and Evelyn Hammonds.

This spring, public health officials have been laser-focused on getting more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19. So why do racial disparities persist around vaccination? And once more Americans are vaccinated, how do we ensure that Black and Latino families aren’t left vulnerable to future public health crises? In the latest episode of Better Off, Mary Bassett talks about the historical roots of health inequities, and the big changes needed to close those gaps.

Guest: Mary T. Bassett, director of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University

When Aaron (Ari) Bernstein met his first pediatric patient infected with COVID-19, he realized that this little girl's health was connected to an infected bat on the other side of the world. Climate change and deforestation have made it easier for new pathogens to spread across the globe. On this episode of Better Off, Ari Bernstein explains how protecting the environment could also secure the future of our own species.

In the 1980's, there were millions of cases of Guinea worm disease across the globe, mostly in rural Africa. Donald Hopkins, MPH '70, has spent 40 years working to eradicate this painful and debilitating disease – and he's had remarkable success. Last year, there were only 27 cases worldwide. In the latest episode of Better Off, Donald Hopkins talks about eradicating a disease that many people thought wasn't worth fighting.

The technology that is helping us combat COVID-19 is also poised to help us tackle tough infectious and non-infectious diseases. Immunologist Sarah Fortune explains how these vaccines work, and how the mRNA platform could transform the prevention and treatment of deadly diseases.

When Antón Castellanos Usigli was asked to help bring younger LGBTQ people into a Brooklyn clinic for sexual health services, he thought it would be a piece of cake. But after his first attempts failed, Antón turned to the one place where young people talk about sex every day: dating and hookup apps.

In this episode of "Better Off," DrPH student Antón Castellanos Usigli talks about creating positive conversations about sexual health, and the parallels between sex education and the public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Are kids going to be okay when the pandemic is over? That’s the question on many parents’ minds as remote learning continues, and friends and family remain six feet apart. Better Off talks with psychologist and researcher Archana Basu about kids’ mental health and the COVID-19 crisis.

Better Off talks with Harvard Chan School's Howard Koh about lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, also known as swine flu, and how the incoming administration can use those lessons to respond to COVID-19.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us didn't think about indoor air very much, if at all. But healthy buildings expert Joseph Allen has been studying indoor air for years. He says that since we spend 90% of lives inside, we need to do more to make our offices, homes, and schools places where we can breathe easy.

How can we make our families, communities, and our world a little bit better during the COVID-19 crisis, and beyond? That's the question we're asking on Better Off, a new podcast from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In each episode of Better Off, host Anna Fisher-Pinkert will introduce you to the people who are hunting down solutions to current public health challenges, and innovating to solve public health problems that we haven’t even imagined yet.

Subscribe to Better Off wherever you get your podcasts. First episode coming soon!