Color Code

This season, we’re zooming in to the birthplace of American suburbs and the place where host Nick St. Fleur grew up: Long Island, New York.

Suburban communities in the U.S. have a reputation for being largely white, wealthy, and healthy, but the reality is much more complex. In this first episode, we dive into the history and current reality of segregation on Long Island. We speak with Martine Hackett, an expert on suburban public health with a particular focus on Long Island.

The second season of Color Code will launch in just under two weeks on May 8. Episodes will air every other week. Thanks for listening!

This year marks the 50th anniversary of an investigation by the Associated Press that revealed to the public how – for four decades – government researchers deceived African Americans who thought they were receiving treatment for syphilis. Here’s a conversation with Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician, scholar and activist who led the Legacy Committee of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which urged the Clinton Administration to issue a Presidential Apology for this atrocity.

Vertus Hardiman wore a wig for more than 70 years. More than a style choice, his hair piece concealed a painful secret — a head ravaged by a raw, open wound that was eating through his scalp and skull. As a child, Hardiman was a victim of irresponsible medical practices that left him with physical and psychological scars for the rest of his life.

Clinical trials are critical to advancing lifesaving medications and treatments. But the U.S. is falling woefully short in making sure that these trials represent the broader population. In this episode, we speak with STAT cancer reporter Angus Chen, who recently went to Richmond, Va., to report on the efforts of physician Robert Winn, who connects with the local community, fosters relationships, and educates folk about clinical trials. Researcher Jonathan Jackson tells us about the barriers to achieving more diverse clinical trials and what needs to be done to topple them.

For our bonus episode this week, Color Code is bringing you an episode of one of our favorite podcasts: Tradeoffs. Tradeoffs is a show that tells engaging, emotional stories about the complicated, costly and often counterintuitive world of health care.

Artificial intelligence and medical algorithms are deeply intertwined with our modern healthcare system. These technologies mimic the thought processes of doctors to make medical decisions and are designed to help providers determine who needs care. But one big problem with at artificial intelligence is that it very often replicate the biases and blind spots of the humans who create them.

In this episode, we hear from Casey Ross, STAT’s national health tech correspondent, about his reporting on racial bias in AI . Chris Hemphill, the VP for Applied AI & Growth at Actium Health, tells us about the rise of responsible AI in healthcare. Ziad Obermeryer, an emergency medicine physician and researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, walks us through how his team found bias in an algorithm widely used in our healthcare system and an instance where AI was used to correct a health care injustice.

This week in Color Code Bonus content: A new conversation with Dr. Altaf Saadi and Dr. Brooks Walsh on the current medical understanding of the term "excited delirium." Saadi worked on a recent Physicians for Human Rights report on excited delirium. Walsh is an emergency medicine physician and member of the American College for Emergency Physicians.

"Excited delirium” is a controversial term that is used by some to describe a person who experiences an acute, extreme disruption in their behavior and ability to think, and often comes up in relation to people who have died in police custody. To investigate the origins of excited delirium, we turned to my colleague Isabella Cueto, a Sharon Begley science reporting fellow at STAT. She traveled to Miami to learn more about the historical roots the term has in the medical examiner’s office there.

This week in Color Code Bonus Content: more from our conversation with expert Rachel Hardeman on the racial disparities in maternal mortality. Hardeman is a professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.