Follow the Data Podcast

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a "code red for humanity" when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared its latest report this week, which calls climate change "unequivocal" and "an established fact." And the growing frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, and storms like the ones we've experienced this summer are to be expected for years to come.

Climate action is of critical importance for local leaders, as extreme temperatures are expected to be off the charts more frequently and for longer periods of time, causing significant harm to human health and well-being. While cities are often hit hardest by the impact of climate change, they are also on the frontlines in this fight.

From planting trees to help cool down cities to reimagining and improving access to public spaces, mayors are taking immediate, bold action to improve quality of life for their residents. Bloomberg Associates, the pro bono consulting arm of Bloomberg Philanthropies, works with cities to implement sustainable and scalable solutions to fight climate change now.

To tell us more about how cities are working to become more sustainable and resilient, Jacob Koch, who works on our Sustainability team at Bloomberg Associates, sits down with Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya, a Professor of Architecture at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia. Alejandro formerly served as the City Architect of Medellín, and helped design the city's award-winning "Green Corridors" project, which helped to reduce average city temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius.

Jacob also sits down with Ilaria Giuliani, the Deputy Chief Resilience Officer of the City of Milan. Bloomberg Associates has helped to support Mayor Beppe Sala's goal to plant three million trees by 2030 and to help re-imagine the historic streets and piazzas to be greener and ensure all Milanese live within a short walk of an upgraded public space.

On this episode, Jacob, Alejandro and Ilaria discuss how cities use data to drive decision-making and evaluate impact, and the importance of bringing nature back to cities.

The pandemic has forced many to change their diet and exercise routines - and governments around the world are weighing how to encourage citizens to eat healthier and to get active again. In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reviewing a report recommending a Salt and Sugar Reformation Tax, a first-of-its-kind policy which would add a 3 pound tax per kilogram of sugar sold at wholesale and 6 pounds per kilogram of salt sold at wholesale. If enacted, the tax would help fund an expansion of free school meals to 1.1 million more children in Britain.

Healthy food policies help move more people toward healthier diets - but a lack of research expertise is a barrier to guiding national policies in countries around the world.

The Vital Strategies Health Food Policy Fellowship, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, supports outstanding PhD candidates from Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, or South Africa who are committed to creating healthier food environments through public policy. The fellowship supports students from these countries as they are focus countries for Bloomberg Philanthropies' food policy program.

Ahead of UN International Youth Day, Kristine Momanyi of our food policy team sits down with Trish Muzenda, Joana Cruz, and Nicholas Guzman - three Vital Strategies Healthy Food Policy Fellows - to discuss promising food policies and the fellowship program.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, two other public health epidemics have surged: gun violence and youth vaping.

Parents have an important role to play in addressing these challenges - and it should come as no surprise that two of the most prominent advocacy groups fighting for public safety measures in the United States are organized by mothers.

Mothers have long been leaders in mobilizing around social issues like drunk driving, women's suffrage, and child labor laws - and today's activists and organizers are leveraging social media and other digital tools to connect with and build a diverse coalition of volunteers across the country.

On this episode, Katherine Oliver sits down with Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement fighting to protect Americans from gun violence with more than 6 million supporters, as well as Meredith Berkman and Dorian Fuhrman, the co-founders of Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes, or PAVE. PAVE seeks to educate parents about the dangers of e-cigarettes and advocate for legislative change to protect minors from Big Tobacco.

Kindly note the views of the podcast guests are entirely their own, and Bloomberg Philanthropies hasn't independently verified any of the statements made by this week's podcast guests.

Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury and death around the world. More than 90% of drowning deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and children under the age of five are most at risk. To highlight the impact drowning has on communities - and to draw attention to the need for urgent action - the United Nations General Assembly passed its first-ever Resolution on Global Drowning Prevention, declaring July 25th as World Drowning Prevention Day.

Our founder, Mike Bloomberg, is the World Health Organization’s Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries. Given that drowning claims more than 235,000 lives a year, he’s working to draw more awareness to this cause.

Since 2012, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Initiative to Prevent Drowning supports tailored efforts to tackle the specific causes of drowning on a local level in Bangladesh, Viet Nam, and Uganda.

To tell us more about the Initiative, Kelly Larson, who works on our public health team, sits down with Dr. Aminur Rahman, the Director of the Center for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh. They discuss why drowning is so prevalent for children below the age of 5 in Bangladesh, the importance of community daycares to prevent drowning, and why the government of Bangladesh is taking a lead on drowning prevention.

Then, Becky Bavinger of the Bloomberg Philanthropies public health team sits down with Huyen Doan, the Viet Nam Country Director for the Global Health Advocacy Incubator. They discuss creating a survival swimming program for nearly 15,000 children in provinces with high drowning numbers and how we’re measuring progress in drowning prevention.

National Science Foundation data shows that while Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, and Latinx people 18 percent, in 2019 they received just three and seven percent, respectively, of new engineering, math, physical sciences and computer science PhDs.

This spring, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Johns Hopkins University launched the Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative - an effort to address underrepresentation in STEM fields and prepare the next generation of researchers and scholars to assume leadership roles in tackling some of the world's greatest challenges. The program will create pathways for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as Minority Serving Institutions, to pursue and receive PhDs, and is part of Bloomberg Philanthropies' Greenwood Initiative - an effort to increase intergenerational Black wealth and address systemic underinvestment in Black communities.

The initiative is named after Vivien Thomas - a Black surgical laboratory supervisor who developed a life-saving cardiac surgery technique to treat "blue baby syndrome" at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1940s. Despite his life-saving research, Thomas's contributions went unrecognized for decades because of racial discrimination.

Damani Piggott, the inaugural Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Diversity and Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, the President of Spelman College, sit down with Garnesha Ezediaro of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Greenwood Initiative to discuss Vivien Thomas' legacy, how we can ensure diversity in PhD programs in the future, and why it's important to create pathway programs to prepare the next generation of leaders in STEM fields.

One public health challenge that receives limited attention and insufficient resources is road safety. Our founder, Mike Bloomberg, is the WHO's Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries. Given that road traffic crashes kill nearly 1.35 million people and injure as many as 50 million every year, this is a major focus in his role. Weak and inadequate road safety laws, minimal or nonexistent vehicle safety standards, and streets designed solely for vehicle use - and not pedestrians - are serious threats to road safety, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

In order to save lives on the road, Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded road safety efforts since 2007, and will continue to support its Initiative for Global Road Safety through 2025. It supports strengthening road safety laws and implementing evidence-based interventions in cities and countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with a particular focus on speed management.

In this episode, Kelly Larson of the Bloomberg Philanthropies public health team sits down with Soames Job, Head of the Global Road Safety Facility and Global Lead for Road Safety with the World Bank. They discuss how the World Bank works with countries around the world on road safety initiatives, how the pandemic has changed the way people drive, and how the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility works to ensure safe speeds and enforcement of speed limits around the world.

Kelly Larson also sits down with Juanjo Mendez, the Secretary of Transportation of the City of Buenos Aires, to discuss how the city is working to reduce fatalities by 50% in the next 10 years, why the pandemic was an opportunity to strengthen road safety in Buenos Aires, and the role that reducing speeds plays in saving lives.

Over the past year, the United States has seen the rise of two major public health epidemics: the coronavirus and gun violence.

When we talk about gun violence, we rightly talk about the lives lost. The pandemic has accelerated an austere fiscal environment, where every level of government is straining to maintain critical services like sanitation, public transportation, and education. At a time when every dollar counts, our colleagues at Everytown for Gun Safety researched how much gun violence is costing us - and it's a staggering $280 billion each year.

This $280 billion figure represents the lifetime costs associated with gun violence, including immediate costs starting at the time of an incident, subsequent costs such as treatment, long-term physical and mental health care, forgone earnings, criminal justice costs, and cost estimates of quality-of-life over a victim's lifespan.

Everytown for Gun Safety was formed in 2014, when Mayors Against Illegal Guns - a coalition co-founded by Mike Bloomberg during his mayoralty - merged with Moms Demand Action to create the largest gun violence prevention organization in America. Everytown President John Feinblatt and Everytown's Director of Research, Sarah Burd-Sharps, joined the podcast to tell us more about how their team calculated the economic cost of gun violence, why good storytelling is critical in the fight for gun sense action, and how Everytown is working to prevent gun violence at the federal, state, and local levels.

Imagine a lawless frontier. It probably wouldn't be so different from the ocean, where abuses like slavery and human trafficking or crimes like rape or murder are hidden from sight.

Ian Urbina is a journalist focusing on lawlessness at sea. He has investigated how Chinese fishing vessels are illegally operating in the waters between Korea, Japan and Russia, violating UN sanctions, and recently, how the food security of coastal populations in West Africa is are at risk due to overfishing. After reporting on staff at The New York Times for about 20 years, he's started The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization which focuses on telling stories about the environmental, human rights, and labor abuses occurring offshore around the world. In order to reach a broader audience, Ian has also launched The Outlaw Ocean Music Project, which allows artists to create music inspired from journalism on ocean issues. As a result, hundreds of musicians from more than 80 countries have been telling new audiences about issues at sea.

On this episode, Ian joins Melissa Wright - who oversees the Vibrant Oceans Initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies' program that works to protect the ocean and those who depend on it -- from climate change, pollution, and overfishing. Melissa and Ian will tell us more about how reporting at sea has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, how his team uses data from Global Fishing Watch to corroborate his work, and how you can take action to protect our ocean at home.

This marks a very special episode of Follow the Data: It's not only our 100th episode, but this podcast also coincides with the release of the 2020 Annual Report, our yearly review of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ efforts to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people.

To celebrate our 100th episode, Patti Harris, the CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies, joined the podcast. She oversees our programs focused on the arts, education, environment, government innovation, and public health, as well as Mike Bloomberg's corporate and personal philanthropy and Bloomberg Associates, our pro bono consultancy that works with mayors in cities around the world.

She's spent more than two decades working with Mike, and previously served as first deputy mayor during his mayoralty. Patti is the first woman in New York City to have served in this role, which is the city's highest appointed position. Before joining the Bloomberg Administration, she managed Corporate Communications at Bloomberg LP, overseeing Philanthropy, Public Relations, and Government Affairs.

Patti sits down with host Katherine Oliver for a socially distanced podcast recording at Bloomberg's global headquarters in New York - our first in-person recording in over a year! - to discuss how Bloomberg Philanthropies worked to make the biggest impact possible during the COVID-19 crisis, how employees at Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies have worked to support communities in need, and what's keeping her hopeful right now.

It's been just over a year since the first coronavirus case was reported in the United States, and the virus continues to spread rapidly through our communities.

Last spring, we spoke with Dr. Arturo Casadevall – an infectious disease specialist and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University who was leading a team of experts to develop a convalescent blood plasma therapy for health care workers and for early treatment of COVID-19 patients. To help launch this research, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Johns Hopkins worked together to provide early funding for the potential therapeutic uses of convalescent plasma.

Fast forward to earlier this month, when the Mayo Clinic published a study showing antibodies in convalescent blood plasma therapy help lower mortality rates in over 3,000 coronavirus patients. While the COVID-19 vaccine continues to roll out, blood plasma therapy can help to save the lives of patients already infected with the coronavirus - and the Red Cross reports that hospital distributions of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patents have increased by 250% since October.

On this episode, Dr. Casadevall joins Dr. Jessica Leighton of the Bloomberg Philanthropies public health team to tell us more about how his research has progressed over the past few months, if convalescent blood plasma therapy and the vaccine are effective for new coronavirus strains, and how you could help save lives in your community.

If you’ve recovered from COVID-19 and are interested in donating your blood plasma to others, please visit redcrossblood.org.