Dr. Mary Bassett, New York State Commissioner of Health, says the COVID Omicron variant is still exposing health inequities — African Americans in New York have been hospitalized twice as much as the majority population during this latest wave. Bassett says achieving health equity “will be the North Star of my working life as a physician committed to public health.” Bassett also tells Conversations on Health Care hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that the state has four times as... Read More Read More

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Dr. Anthony Fauci back to the show, two years after his first appearance discussing the novel coronavirus spreading around the world. The Chief Medical Advisor to the Biden White House and long-time Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH expressed concern over the ongoing political divisiveness impacting our ability to contain COVID outbreaks leading to almost 1 million deaths in this country. He says FDA... Read More Read More

Dr. Cameron Webb, White House Senior Policy Adviser for COVID-19 Equity, is navigating a tricky situation — as he advocates for vaccines, the university where he works just dropped its student vaccine mandate. Webb tells Conversations on Health Care hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that he realizes the University of Virginia has some new dynamics to navigate. “There’s this rush to roll back a lot of the strategies that have gotten us to a point where we’re seeing less... Read More Read More

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, on her expectations for building consensus on revised Build Back Better legislation, as well as the possibility for more relief money for hospitals and other entities in the wake of the ongoing pandemic. She says the expanded Child Tax Credit has lifted millions of American children out of poverty, significantly easing economic pressures on working families, and that it should... Read More Read More

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome US Education Secretary Dr. Miguel Cardona, who discusses the Biden administration’s efforts to contain the pandemic’s impact while keeping students and teachers safe in school. He laments the influence of politics on the proven public health practices to prevent spread of the disease which includes mask wearing and widespread vaccinations. He says this pandemic has revealed the importance of providing medical and behavioral care in school-based health clinics. He also applauds... Read More Read More

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome renowned epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, who has served 5 presidential administrations in preparing for pandemics and bio-terror threats. Dr. Osterholm says the highly infectious omicron variant will continue to threaten hospital systems, schools and supply chains, warning the threat of future variants that may evade immunity is still a very real concern. He predicts that... Read More Read More

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, addressing confusion and frustration around lack of rapid COVID tests and need for more N95 masks for the public. She talks about the shifting plan of action from the Biden Administration in response to the dramatic surge in omicron-driven COVID cases, and the scaled up efforts to make rapid tests and high quality masks available to all Americans.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Vice Provost at the University of Pennsylvania and former member of the Biden administration’s COVID Transition Team. He and other former Biden advisors have called for a dramatic new approach to addressing COVID-19 saying we will not eradicate the virus, so we need new strategies to live with it. They’re calling for a radical re-tooling of our public health data system to capture real-time data, and for... Read More Read More

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, and co-creator of a new, low-cost vaccine for COVID-19. Dr. Hotez discusses plans for Corbevax, a recombinant protein vaccine shown to be highly protective against COVID-19, which has just been given Emergency Use Authorization by the Indian government. Dr. Hotez’s plan is to make the formula available to poor and developing countries around... Read More Read More

This week, Mark and Margaret take a look back at COVID’s hold on 2021, the early promise of vaccines, the relentless march of mutations and the vicious rise of new variants leading to pandemic surges around the world. They revisit conversations with memorable guests from famed virologists and epidemiologists like Paul Offit and Michael Osterholm, to President Biden’s COVID team leaders Rochelle Walensky, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Levine. They revisited guests focused on other health news: Bill McKibben on climate... Read More Read More